Went back to the Stedelijk today to visit Temporary Stedelijk 2. Expected a lot – Temp 1 was great – but was disappointed. Temp 2 promised to present a representative selection  from the Stedelijk collection  in innovative ways and related to the renovated building. Present they did –  more overview than update, though. Innovate they did not. Link to the renovated building- the thing that made Temp 1 so interesting – not discernable this time.

Not a total waste of time, though. They resurrected two of the exhibitions that made the museum famous in the ’60 and ’70. Both ‘Dylaby’ (combination of dynamic and labyrinth, 1962) and ‘Bewogen Beweging’  (Calder, Tinguely, 1961) invited the public to participate. Which I find extremely interesting, see my Experiments 005 and 007.

This stuff from the ’60 should be old, old hat. It turned out to be extremely interesting, though. It was like going through the family foto albums and tracing family traits back in time – who’s got my eyes or ears or hands, who did I get my curly hair from.  Also the surprise of discovering  the odd aunt or uncle the family has kept very quiet all that time ….

One aunt I’d have loved to have known is Nikki de Saint Phalle. The only woman in the bunch that did “Dylaby’, she put in plaster sculpture, overhung with bags of paint, and encouraged the public to shoot at the bags and so ‘paint’ the sculpture. The resulting work was thrown away at the end of the exhibition – the process being more interesting than the result – but bits and pieces remain. The head I photographed being one of them. I love her and I love her Nana’s.

Some great pics on the walls of kids enjoying the artworks at ‘Bewogen Beweging’. Love the attitiude kids bring to art – if it isn’t do-able, they have little interest, but if it is do-able, they have such an experimental attitude. Blogged about this before, of course, as a lot of my work is aimed at resurrecting this experimental attitude in grown-ups.

Good overview of famous Dutch exhibitions after ’45 to be found here