Page 32 - Studio International - May 1973

(Top) seat. It looks so flat because it runs parallel to
Co Westerik the picture-plane on either side of the curve:
Schoolmaster and Child 1961
Oil and tempera on canvas, 88 x 110 cm visually it appears to lie parallel to the pictorial
Photo: courtesy Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam plane, despite its spatial quality in the illusion.
That there is something wrong with it is
(Bottom)
Co Westerik suggested by the rim of the back bench. Its
Bather Drying 1967 broken curve contrasts with the direction of the
Oil and tempera on canvas, 92x 108 cm
Coll: Fritz and Agnes Becht, Hilversum border of the picture-plane, and does suggest a
Photo: courtesy Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam space. The fact that it looks just like the front
rim does not make the painting any more
simple, on the contrary it adds to the
complexity.
Roeland's work is subtle, not spectacular; it is
reluctant to give away its visual secrets to the
spectator. This reluctance, however, contributes
to a diffuse poetry, which is a characteristic of
his work and which contains a promise. In the
work of others his thematics have sometimes
resulted in dull formalism — of Roeland I expect
more.
Koos van de Water, the youngest of the five,
started out in 1967 as a realist. His best work is
that made between his debut and 1969, and that
of the past eighteen months, so there is not very
much quantitatively. Van de Water starts out
from the most simple daily experiences such as
going from one room to another, or sitting down
in a chair and getting up again, or looking
through a window from either side at different
times of day. But no human experience is
truly simple, and the more common the
experience, the more important it may become
in the general pattern of human reactions. Van
de Water concerns himself with giving form to
the hidden complexities of the simplest
experiences. Being painterly, his work looks
Dutch in the same way as that of the other
Dutch realists, even though he hardly knows
their work and took a number of British and
American realists as his starting-point. The
Window changes its spatial identity according
to the times of day; on the left, space as a general
datum is indicated by an abstract tone-scale in
blue placed vertically; time is suggested by a
tone-scale in grey for the times of day and by a
small serial composition for time in general.
Although he is a fullblooded painter, Van de
Water is also a sophisticated objecteur. The
objects and paintings or drawings belong
together in little groups around a common
theme. Such works should preferably be seen
together, but it is not mixed media art we are
looking at. It is another aspect of his
complexity: Van de Water is curious to find out
how one theme assumes different forms by
virtue of different techniques.
Painterliness, complexity, conceptualness — if
a modern realist painting answers to any two
of these criteria it may very well be Dutch (or
Flemish, for that matter). For lack of space I
must forgo defining spiritual relationships with
British and American pop art, which are
evident in some cases. What matters in art is the
way in which content is given form; the forms of
Dutch realism are different enough to add
something valuable to realism as an
international phenomenon in art. q
214