HOA02 - De Stijl and the Netherlands’ Cultural Canon
Submitting Institution
University of YorkUnit of Assessment
Art and Design: History, Practice and TheorySummary Impact Type
SocietalResearch Subject Area(s)
Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Art Theory and Criticism, Visual Arts and Crafts
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies
Summary of the impact
In 2007, the Dutch Ministry of Education introduced the Cultural
Canon of the Netherlands: 50
events, artefacts and people that every citizen should know, including the
Dutch modernist
movement, De Stijl. The canon was designed to guide school curricula and
to create a sense of
shared Dutch heritage and responsibility. In response, in 2011 the
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
opened a 750m sq De Stijl display, promoted as the permanent Dutch `home'
for De Stijl and
definitive port of call for scholars and the public. The display's
characterisation of De Stijl was
heavily indebted to Michael White's De Stijl and Dutch Modernism
(2003).
Underpinning research
Michael White (appointed 1999, promoted to Senior Lecturer 2007 and
Reader 2011), carried out
the research for his monograph, De Stijl and Dutch Modernism
(#3.1), during the academic years
1999/2000 and 2000/2001. The research was supported by a period of two
terms' leave funded by
the University of York in the spring and summer of 2001.
In the monograph, White set out to examine the connections between
artists associated with
the De Stijl group and modernising projects more generally in the
Netherlands in the early
twentieth century, particularly in fields such as social housing, urban
planning, commercial display,
exhibition culture and graphic design. Much of the research was carried
out using archival and
library resources in the Netherlands in order to provide a better
understanding of the local reform
discourses that brought about the group's formation and intersected with
its development.
Where the history of De Stijl previously emphasised its position in a
succession of modernist
movements centred on locations of international cultural activity, such as
Paris, White's study
demonstrated that the group was better understood from the opposite end of
the telescope, so to
speak, from the housing estates of Rotterdam. White's principal argument
was that De Stijl should
not be understood in the manner in which avant-gardism has traditionally
been presented, as the
failed, utopian attempt to utilise aesthetic principles developed in
isolation to effect social change.
Rather, White contended, De Stijl needed to be understood as both a
product of social processes
and as a catalyst for their transformation. In particular, White paid
great attention to the way in
which De Stijl reformulated the discourse of gemeenschapskunst
(community art), an idea that had
been current in the Netherlands since the late nineteenth century and that
had been deployed by
advocates of an authentic modern art for a mass audience, a key aspect of
which was the
integration of the arts.
White has continued to research in this field. The integration of art,
architecture and design
promoted by De Stijl was presented at the exhibition `Theo van Doesburg
and the International
Avant-Garde' at the Stedelijk de Lakenhal, Leiden and Tate Modern in
2009-10, of which he was
consultant curator (#3.2) and he has written further on this topic for
catalogues of recent De Stijl
exhibitions which have taken place in France (#3.3), Germany (#3.4) and
Italy (#3.5).
The attention White paid to the interaction of local and international
currents of cultural
production, to the relationships between esoteric, avant-garde artistic
activity and the everyday,
and to the world of commerce as well as fine art, made his research
particularly influential at a
moment when the Dutch Government sought to emphasise the relevance of
cultural knowledge to
the wider population through the introduction of the Cultural Canon.
References to the research
3.1 M. White, De Stijl and Dutch Modernism (Manchester University
Press, 2003; reprinted 2009).
This book was part of the Department's RAE 2008 submission, in which 95%
of the returned
work was assessed as 2* and above. The book received the following
reviews: Thomas
Muirhead, `The Mod Squad', Building Design (26 September, 2003);
Carel Blotkamp, `Re-
viewing De Stijl', Art History 27.3 (2004), 470-474; Paul Overy,
`Revising De Stijl', Oxford Art
Journal 28.3 (2005), 491-495; and Flora Samuel, `De Stijl and Dutch
Modernism', Journal of
Design History 18.2 (2005), 224-225.
3.2 G. Fabre, D. Wintgens Hötte, eds, & M. White, consultant ed., Theo
van Doesburg and the
International Avant-Garde (Tate, 2009). (Submitted to REF2)
3.3 M. White, `Cities of Style' in Frédéric Migayrou ed., De Stijl
(Centre Pompidou, 2010), 77-84.
3.4 M. White, `De Stijl: Eine Kunst fürs Volk? / De Stijl: An Art for the
People?' in H. Friedel & M.
Mühling, eds, Mondrian De Stijl (Lenbachhaus, 2011), 46-59.
3.5 `De Stijl: un'arte per il popolo?' in Benno Tempel, ed., Mondrian:
L'armonia perfetta (Skira,
2011), 60-67.
The Department can supply copies of these outputs upon request.
Details of the impact
The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag is one of the most important museums in the
Netherlands and
one of the best known museums of modern art in the world. Its reputation
rests primarily on its
collection of early twentieth-century art and it has, since the 1950s,
been the home of the largest
single collection of works by the painter and De Stijl contributor, Piet
Mondrian, which now number
over 300 objects.
The reputation of the De Stijl collection at the museum has gone through
significant turmoil in
recent years. In 1998, a national scandal was caused following the Dutch
government's purchase
of Mondrian's unfinished canvas Victory Boogie Woogie for $40
million from a private American
collector. The deal for the picture was struck in private and subsequently
required the finance
minister to seek a retrospective royal decree, a procedure attracting a
storm of criticism that
challenged the integrity of the government. The work itself, part painted,
part covered in bits of
coloured tape, was subject to pillory in the national press, and, when
finally installed in the
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, was placed behind a protective screen and subject
to round-the-clock
security for fears that it might be damaged by outraged citizens. In
response to the
accompanying media tirade, art historians and museum professionals began
to speak of the work's
canonical value. However, at that time, it was solely to position it as an
exalted masterpiece.
Following the institution of the Cultural Canon in 2007, the curator
responsible for the Mondrian
collection at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Hans Janssen, contacted White
to discuss the
possible re-presentation of Mondrian and De Stijl in the museum with the
express aim of employing
aspects of White's 2003 book in the new display (#5.1). Alongside painting
and sculpture, the
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag has very extensive design and textile collections,
some of which
relate directly to De Stijl. However, they had never been shown alongside
one another, but kept in
separate departments. With these various contexts in mind, Janssen's idea
was to follow the
tendency of White's monograph, and even to sharpen it where possible, by
bringing together items
that were formerly consigned to different areas of the museum, and also to
include long loans from
specialist institutions, such as the Netherlands Architecture Institute
(#5.1).
As the concept for the display developed, Janssen consulted White
regularly, and the final
display includes several sections which focus on the explicit elements of
his research, for example
the patronage of De Stijl by industrialists, such as Cornelis Bruijnzeel,
a wood manufacturer whose
company still exists in the Netherlands and is one of the largest
suppliers of fitted kitchens; and the
presentation of Mondrian's studio, formerly considered an exceptional
project of almost mystical
significance, here contextualised in relation to a number of contemporary
Dutch contexts. In
addition, the exhibition opens with a section dedicated to the concept of
gemeenschapskunst, the
central exhibit of which is a model of H.P.Berlage's Amsterdam Stock
Exchange building, a project
which brought together architecture, sculpture, stained glass, wall
painting and poetry in one
ensemble in a great public building. White had used this example in the
introduction to his book to
analyse the idea of community and how it was analogised in aesthetic
terms. Drawing significantly
on White's research, then, the exhibition sought to reorient the
presentation of De Stijl's canonical
character from being about the refinement of an abstract vocabulary of
pure colour and form to an
engagement with public art practices and mass culture; an agenda tying
closely with the Dutch
government's desire to capitalise on, and create a public audience for, as
well as a sense of
shared ownership and responsibility towards, De Stijl (#5.1).
The display, which is intended to remain in place for an initial period
of five years, opened on 24
September 2011, and, since then, has provided the first port of call for
members of the public,
schools and community groups who wish to find out more about what is now
nationally recognised
as the most important artistic contribution to the cultural life of the
Netherlands of the twentieth
century, as well as Dutch contribution to European modernism. As a
permanent display, there are
no separate ticket sales from which to record attendance. However, the
museum estimates that
around 250k people visited the display between its opening and May 2013
(#5.2), which is half of
all visitors to the museum during this time, a very large number for a
permanent installation in
competition with the museum's rolling programme of high profile temporary
exhibitions. This should
be seen in the context of an overall Dutch population of 16m and a museum
in a city of 500k
inhabitants. Each school day, the display is visited by around 7
educational groups, and the
museum has devised educational programmes at primary and secondary levels
in direct
connection to it (#5.2-3). The display is also linked to many of the
museum's other educational
tours and workshops which cater for around 15k school children and 10k
adults annually (#5.2-3).
Media interest has been exceptionally high for a permanent installation.
On opening, the display
attracted commentary from all the major Dutch newspapers, as might a
temporary exhibition
(#5.4). Interestingly, the display has continued to be discussed in the
press, on the radio and on
television after that point. It has featured on review programmes
(`Kunststof TV', Nederland 2,
December 27 2011; `Kunstuur', Nederland 2, March 30 2013) as well as
children's television (`Het
Klokhuis', Nederland 3, November 17 2011), thereby reaching an extremely
diverse range of
audiences across the entire country.
To accompany the display, the museum commissioned a book in Dutch and
English editions,
Het verhaal van De Stijl / The Story of De Stijl (#5.5), inviting
White to co-author it with the curator.
To ensure the impact of the exhibition, the book relates closely to the
design of the show; one of its
structuring devices is the identification of chapters under headings of
`Home', `Street' and `City',
bringing to the fore the links between De Stijl and modern transformations
in those areas. The
book is the only general text on De Stijl recommended by the official
Canon of the Netherlands
website, among a range of other specialist books, and White is the only
non-Dutch author listed on
it in the De Stijl-related literature (#5.6). The decision to publish in
two languages indicates that the
results of White's original research are being disseminated not just to an
Anglophone academic
audience, but to a Dutch generalist audience, and to the very many
English-speaking international
visitors the museum receives every year.
In 2010 and 2011, just prior to the opening of the display in The Hague,
De Stijl exhibitions were
held at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Lenbachhaus, Munich; and the
Complesso del Vittoriano
in Rome, all of which benefitted from collaboration with the
Gemeentemuseum and in which the
approach to the subject the Gemeentemuseum had taken was clearly present.
The catalogues of
the exhibitions contained essays by White (#3.3-5), the only author to
contribute to all three of
them, examining the engagement of De Stijl with public art practices,
demonstrating that, while this
topic has obvious significance for a Dutch audience, its reach and
significance go far beyond the
Netherlands and relate to the manner in which its culture is perceived
abroad.
Sources to corroborate the impact
5.1 Corroborating statement from Hans Janssen, curator at large,
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.
5.2 Statistics on visitor numbers, educational visits and media coverage
compiled by Samantha
Hoekema, research assistant, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, May 2013.
5.3 Copies of educational brochures from the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.
5.4 Portfolio of museum press releases, social media activity and 36
press mentions from the time
of the exhibition's opening to the end of 2012.
5.5 H. Janssen and M. White, Het verhaal van De Stijl / The Story of
De Stijl (Ludion and
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 2011).
5.6 Copy of the relevant page of the website of the Canon van Nederland:
http://entoen.nu/stijl/verwijzingen/boeken-en-films.