{"id":1368,"date":"2021-05-14T15:27:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T15:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2021-05-15T14:20:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T14:20:48","slug":"fundamental-art-stylish-but-not-a-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/14\/fundamental-art-stylish-but-not-a-style\/","title":{"rendered":"FUNDAMENTAL ART: Stylish but not a style"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Fundamental Art is not considered a movement nor are the artists from the same generation. What they have in common is a shared idea about art. They sought to bring art back to its essence: the material and the way it is applied \u201cis\u201d the artwork. As a result the artworks have little or no visible connection with the world outside the artwork, no representation and no deeper concept.\u00a0 <\/span>The painted surfaces give an impression of neutrality.\u00a0 <\/span>Subsequently the artworks called \u201cSilent Art\u201d, minimal looking with limited use of colour and no powerful gestures.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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THE FUNDAMENTAL ARTWORK<\/b><\/p>

A fundamental artwork starts with the basics: an artwork is\u00a0 <\/span>a tangible object. It is a canvas consisting of linen and a wedged frame, covered with paint on one side. A drawing consists of ink or graphite on a surface of paper.<\/p>

The size of this object is the next step. Many fundamental artists have a preference for a neutral format. In most cases this turned out to be a square. The size of the canvas or paper has a specific relation to the human body. This attitude is not conceptual but practical: the canvas must be treated with human means, without complicated artificial devices.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Then the act of creating starts. It seems simple, but it has been pre-ceded by a process of thinking. The artist works according to a plan. During the work he is subjected to the influence of the labor involved: the applying of paint with a brush or the drawing of a line with a pencil. It might look machine made but it\u2019s all done by hand, over lengthly periods of time. A slight tremble of the hand or fatigue is visible in the end-result. Intuition and imperfection are embraced.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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FUNDAMENTAL ART IN EUROPE<\/b><\/p>

There is no clear starting point for Fundamental art. Some artists were already for years working\u00a0 <\/span>towards the foundations of art. It was only a matter of time before the artworld caught up. One of the first exhibitions connected to Fundamental Art was\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cUne exposition de peinture r\u00e9unissant certains peintres qui mettraient la peinture en question\u201d curated by Michel Calura\u00a0 <\/span>It opened in the spring of 1973 in Paris and later travelled to Antwerp and M\u00f6nchengladbach. The artists Daniel Buren, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman and several others participated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Other exhibitions followed in 1973 and in 1974, but highly influential was \u201cFundamentele schilderkunst\/Funda-mental painting\u201d in 1975 at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. This exhibition showed artists of the \u2018new painting\u2019 movement who researched\u00a0 <\/span>the\u00a0 <\/span>basic principles of painting. They restricted them-selves to anti-illusionist painting in which all compositional elements are absent. The exhibition gave name to Fundamental Art as an approach and had a great impact on the Dutch and Belgian Art world.<\/p>

In may 1975 the exhibition \u2018Elementary Forms of Contemporary Painting and Drawing in The Nether-lands\u2019 took place. This exhibition was related to the one in the Stedelijk museum but focussed on works on paper.\u00a0 <\/span>The exhibition included works by JCJ van der Heyden, Tomas Rajlich, Martin Rous, Jaap Berghuis, Rob van Konings-bruggen, Jan Schoonhoven and Carel Visser, amongst others.<\/p>

Across Europe the ideas of Funda-mental art resonated. In Belgium Andr\u00e9 Beullens, Am\u00e9d\u00e9e Cortier, Jo Delahaut, Marthe W\u00e9ry, Dan Van Severen and Raoul De Keyser experimented with the principles of Fundamental Art . \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fundamental Art is not considered a movement nor are the artists from the same generation. What they have in common…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martdehouwer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}