Page 41 - Studio International - May 1973

J. J. Schoonhoven

R69-19 R69—r9 1969
Plaster and paper painted white
103.5 x 104 cm
Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum
In terms of tectonics, Schoonhoven's*
structures are laconically simple; straight
ridges mounted on wooden plate, vertically and
horizontally, forming shallow boxes, sometimes
narrow, sometimes rather wide. Though
basically geometric in overall organization, the
reliefs do not work with the usual sharpness of
geometric art; they don't have suavity at all, and
instead of standing out like cool images, they
show in their surface the nervous traces of their
manual making. Their dull off-white colour also
makes them curiously soft and diffuse.
Geometry functions here as a structure of
neutrality, without accentuation and
compositional hierarchies. Therefore, through
this absence of a composition which might be
semantically particular, the elements are visually
more important than anything else; the whole
of a relief is just that serial grouping of singular
elements.
In each relief the elements (the boxes) have
been manipulated in a certain way. In the relief
R 69—z9, which is almost square, the square
boxes have been diagonally subdivided, and the
resulting triangular planes have then been
placed obliquely. One plane yields from the top
left corner of the box towards the diagonal,
and the other one from the diagonal towards
the bottom right corner. Spatially this element is
rather complex; apparently there was no need
to introduce differently structured elements for
the relief to achieve an (in its own aesthetic
context) acceptable visual variety. In other
reliefs, like Rectangle with oblique planes,
more than one kind of element has been used.
Rectangle with oblique planes 1967
Rectangle is a structure in which boxes with Untitled 1962 Plaster and paper painted white
Plaster and paper painted white
oblique 'bottoms', yielding towards the right 20 X 30 cm 131 x88 cm
or towards the left occur in alternating The Hague: Gemeentemuseum Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum
horizontal series. This makes for a radically
different expression, again. While R 69-19 is
angular and agitated, Rectangle is serene as a
gothic church façade.
By the different spatial positions they take,
the planes (framed by ridges) create areas of
light and shadow; and conversely, light and
dark articulate spatial position. In the very early
reliefs (like Untitled, 1962) the chiaroscuro-
contrasts were usually stronger and more
concrete, in a way, than in the recent ones,
because of the relative height of the ridges and
the narrowness of the boxes. Those early reliefs
were conceived, clearly, as rather self-centred
grids of ridges; recently the ground-plate has
been integrated with the ridges and is there no
more as an entity apart from those ridges.
Instead of grids, the recent reliefs work as
structures of planes, or even as subtly
manipulated surfaces. In a very open way they
are pure receptacles of light. p
R. H. FUCHS

*Born 1914, Schoonhoven lives and works in Delft.
223