Art and Sculpture in Den Haag

Using the street art of Den Haag as an example, I shall explore what contemporary art has to say about man and society.  It is primarily a sociological inquiry upon which I am embarking.
    But rather than starting in the street, let us begin our journey in the Gemeetemuseum, the principal art museum of Den Haag, where the curators have felt the need to add helpful explanations to accompany some of the modern works on display.
    The comment on Bourgeois's Cell XXVI (1) indicates fear as the artist's subject, and we understand immediately that with contemporary art we are in the domain of the twisted and tortured modern psyche.   Nowhere in contemporary art do we escape this theme.  This piece cries out to us, "I am in pain!"
    Naturalism in the representation of the human figure is rejected in favour of primitive elements of distortion.   Imprisonment and torture are metaphors for the contemporary experience of the self.
    Bruce Nauman's Carousel (2) also exemplifies this theme.  The helpful curator comments:
    "This is not a merry kind of carrousel you would find at a funfair.      These leashed animals conjure up associations with a poacher’s         trap.  They are casts of stuffed animals.  So they have no eyes, ears,     claws or hooves – and no genitals.  They evoke an image of                 mutilation.  We simultaneously feel compassion and disgust.              Nauman seeks that contradiction deliberately."
    The key words I extract from this are mutilation and disgust.  Technically, also, these are casts - so the artist does not feel impelled by an inner need to create form independently of what he has already found.  The work hovers precariously between sadism and repulsion.  This piece is appropriately set in front of a Triptych (3) by Francis Bacon (1902 - 1992); it is Bacon's work that pioneered the path towards the free representation of mutilation as a theme.  In an adjoining room we have Berlinde De Bryckere's representation of a mutilated human figure (4) ; in the background there is a bleak landscape by Anselm Keifer  (5) which is reminiscent of the scenes of trench warfare - alternatively, symbolic of death, mutilation and crisis.
    When I visited the Gemeetemuseum there was an exhibition on show dedicated to the theme of love.  If the artists are anything to go by, contemporary man has difficulty dealing with the positive aspects of love, and the exhibition abounded with images of torture and distortion.  Two which I choose to illustrate here are (6) a stuffed cat by Anselm Keifer, and (7) a still from a film that looked, somewhat humorously to be sure, at the modern obsession with vampirism.  At the time I was visiting the museum I was accompanied by an 11 year old boy and a 9 year old girl.  In addition to the many images of self-loathing, coupled to disgust and obsession with nakedness, there were several representations of a phallus on display - one bejeweled.  The curators of the museum charge a modest entry fee to adults, but generously make the museum and its exhibitions free for children.  So we see that children are encouraged from an early age to associate love and the human body with negative emotions; although the obsession with the phallus is arguably neutral in tone, the general impression is one of dissolution and despair.
    Such representations are ubiquitous and wholly unrelieved by anything positive or celebratory, so it is not possible to infer that these are accidental works of possibly mentally disturbed people.  On the contrary these are the creations of normal people.  From these emotional outpourings we may judge that people in the Western world commonly experience a kind of inner crisis in relation to their self-image.
    It is not difficult to see from whence this emotion may have arisen.  Modern philosophy affirms very strongly that we are human meat, soulless mechanisms with fragile egos, metaphorically floating on an ocean of unconscious animal urges.  It is a profoundly disturbing and disgusting image of the self, and one that therefore finds expression in art.  To be sure, these negative images of the self arise against the backdrop of ugly politics and disturbing social history, the mutilation of conflict and war, but there has been no century free of those social aspects, and likewise, no period so preoccupied with such self-loathing.  And if, this analysis is not correct, then what alternative explanation for this social phenomenon that we call contemporary art can be offered? - for the ubiquitous presence of the motif of mutilation cannot be denied.
    Turing now to the sculpture commissioned by the City Council that we find in the streets of Den Haag, let me conduct you down The Kalvermarkt and its connecting Grote Marktstraat.  (The names of the artists are not given on the works, so these must now be unattributed here.)  There is a piece (8) of two struggling male torsos, back to back.  It builds on the figurative tradition, and presents a forceful image of pointless conflict.  It is not a contemporary work; nonetheless, the incipient theme of mutilation is present.
    The city council of Den Haag likes sculpture and has commissioned a lot of it.  There is a good deal of humour present in these works, though of the cynical variety.  Outside the newly erected Bibliotheek there is an amusing piece (9) that I believe is a satire on marriage.  The image reminds me of that brilliant attack on the Victorian institution of marriage The Owl and the Pussycat  by Edward Lear.

            Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
                How charmingly sweet you sing!
            O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
                But what shall we do for a ring?'
            They sailed away, for a year and a day,
                To the land where the Bong-tree grows
            And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
                With a ring at the end of his nose,
                      His nose,
                      His nose,
                With a ring at the end of his nose.

As the principal work commissioned by a capital city this sculpture, nothing so brilliant in its invention as Lear's poem, is an odd choice.  What really does it say about the contemporary experience of relationship?  It is very cynical.
    That theme of cynicism is reflected in other pieces, not always with such good humour.  One that I shall call Pinocchio (10) pours scorn on the human form; another (11) is a crude and clumsy representation of what I take to be a mother and daughter, scorning that relationship with mutilated arms, disproportionate features and scarred legs.  An image of a middle aged gentleman (12) ridicules vanity, with distorted head and falsely modest downcast eyes.  A Disney like duck-man (13) loudly pokes fun at inanity.  There is a satirical homage (14) to the unknown citizen.  These pieces portray man as shallow, vain, empty and hollow.
    The other theme of the Grote Marktstraat is the phallus; and there are liberal representations of this - in fact, practically every work on display is a phallus.  (15 to 23.)
     What are these artists trying to say to us, or what unconscious forces account for these images?  Is it fertility that we celebrate here?  We are told that the phallus is not a totem (which is an image of a plant or animal emblematic of a social group), but rather a boundary marker.  Perhaps these are unconsciously related to the same forces that lead men to mark territory by graffiti, and also by urinating?   However, please do not misunderstand me - in many ways I like these pieces; but the question as to what forces can account for them remains a valid one, and I am not suggesting that I have closed off all possible theories.  Maybe they represent symbols of the ultimate man, the divine gift of God.
    But that is not likely in the context of a culture that is avowedly atheist and increasingly so.
    Yet another question remains - and that concerns the future.  Now that we have entered a cultural condition in which we (a) don't believe in spirit, (b) do believe that man is meat, and (c) experience our own psyches as disturbed, is there any way out of this morass, if that is what it is?  For these images may sometimes be made in stone, but they are not all that exists, or all that can be said about man and his society.  One thinks, sooner or later, man will grow tired of such representations, just as he has grown tired of everything else.  Perhaps.
    But that way out is not likely to be taken unless there is a spiritual revolution of some kind.  Thus, the two sides of the equation must be addressed - art and philosophy.  For art by itself cannot save itself.  Images of the beauty of man are by themselves powerless to move, when they are addressed to people who are convinced that man is excrement.  It is the excrement, the painting of shit on the wall, that speaks.  But what if that philosophy is just plain wrong?  What if man is not excrement? What if, notwithstanding the fact that man has a material aspect - that he is a body and a machine - man is also something else - something for which, and for want of the better word, can be described as spirit?
    Then the decision of the city of Den Haag to portray so many variations on a single theme will look like just madness.
    It will also look like indoctrination.
   There is nothing unusual or distinctive about the contemporary art in Den Haag - it is the same as the art you will find in every city of the Western world - wherever the contemporary philosophy has penetrated, there you will find it.

_

(1) Left; Cell XXVI by Louise Bourgoeis. Above, the "helpful" caption explaining its "meaning" from the curators of the Gemmetemuseum.

(2) Bruce Nauman, Carousel

(3) Francis Bacon: Triptych

(4) Berlinde De Bryckere: Into One-Another II to Pier Paolo Pasolini. In the background, (5) Anselm Keifer: The Autumn’s Whisper – for Paul Cohen.

(6) Bart Jansen: Orvillecopter

(7) A still from an animation on the theme of vampirism.

(8) Struggling torsos

(9) Satire on marriage

(10) "Pinocchio"

(11) Mother and daughter

(12) Dutch gentleman

(13) Disney like duck-man

(14) Homage to the Unknown Citizen

(15) Cage

(16) Metal dome

(17) Mystic tower

(18) Architectural tower

(19) Mutilated tree trunks

(20) Mutilated tin man

(21) Organic fluids

(22) Bricks with yeast like bud

(23) Female torso

The Unknown Citizen  by W. H. Auden
(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.