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Sonsbeek 86: Sculpture in the Hothouse
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11348 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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11 / 1986 |
1,695 Words |
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Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen
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In his famous novel A Rebours, the bible of symbolists and decadents at the end of the nineteenth century, J.K. Huysmans depicts his main character's obsession with the unnatural, the artificial. Jean Floressas des Esseintes, a duke with a morbid craving for beauty, lived in seclusion in a house in Fontenay, which he had furnished and decorated in complete accordance with his peculiar tastes, and in which almost everything was artificial. Even the flowers with which he surrounded himself had to have an unreal character, hence he collected the most bizarre and exotic varieties.
Perhaps it is somewhat farfetched to argue that the organizers of the international sculpture exhibition Sonsbeek 86, which was held this summer in Park Sonsbeek near Arnhem, the Netherlands, embraced artificial beauty with a passion equal to that of Huysmans' des Esseintes. The nineteenth-century concept of artificiality cannot be merely transposed to the 1980s. However, in Sonsbeek one could view a wealth of sculptures of refined aesthetics. "Artificiality" typified even by a Rimbaud poem in the catalog was constantly on the lips of the exhibition's organizers and visitors.
The key words at Sonsbeek 86, in which forty-eight artists of different nationalities and generations' participated, included: lightness, transparency, fragility, decorativeness, and reality versus illusion.
The majority of the approximately 100 sculptures, which were either made especially for the exhibition or were loaned by international collections to Sonsbeek, were not shown in the open air of green pastures or wooded areas as was usual, but rather were shown inside, in glass pavilions and in hothouses. Anno 1986 appeared to be too fragile to be exposed to the elements. Saskia Bos, head of the Amsterdam-based art institute De Appel (The Apple) and this summer artistic director of Sonsbeek 86, remarked: "Artworks of today are now, more than ever before, artificial products which do not adapt themselves to nature."
Sculpture exhibitions in Park Sonsbeek date back to 1946. Initially these events had a traditional character, but in the mid-1960s Sonsbeek evolved into an overview of the most contemporary developments in predominantly European and American sculpture. The last Sonsbeek display before Sonsbeek 86 took place in 1971 and was a revolutionary exhibition that attracted the attention of the international art community.
As far as content is concerned, one cannot imagine a greater contrast between the '86 and the '71 events. The '71 exhibition was subtitled Sonsbeek buiten de perken [literally: "Sonsbeek Beyond Its Bounds," or freely as: "Sonsbeek Let Loose." (Translator)]. It was organized by Wim Beeren, presently director of the Stedelijk (City) Museum of Amsterdam and was not limited to the confines of the park, but instead stretched out over all the nation. This was the period of landart, conceptual art, process art, minimal art, performance, and video; the traditional socle sculpture had disappeared.
In Sonsbeek Beyond Its Bounds the concept of sculpture as such was put to discussion. As Beeren said in the 1971 catalog: "We have consciously organized this Sonsbeek to be no longer an exhibition of statues, because there is so much more that allows the artist to give expression to
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