The more structural description of the spatial situation in the first part of the quotation might have come from Richard Serra. In addition, and this is hinted at in the second part, there is something about Auke de Vries’ public commissions that makes them attractive as objects in themselves. This is all the more surprising because they are generally abstract. Cor Blok was on the track of that ‘something’ when he compared Auke de Vries with Claes Oldenburg. He justified this ostensibly strange comparison by saying that both formal idioms originate in everyday reality. Oldenburg spectacularly enlarges commonplace objects; one of the reasons for their success could be the ‘aha’ of recognition they induce in the beholder. Auke de Vries is also inspired by his visible surroundings but the sources of that inspiration cannot usually be recognized in the sculptures. Even so, there is something ‘blown-up’ about them: even the 16 x 32 metre NAi sculpture clearly shows that it is a true-scale enlargement of a 75 centimetre model he put together with his own hands in the studio. What is enlarged is less an object than the act of its making, and the big sculpture seems to retain the fragility of the design – although structural engineering makes this impossible of course.

The father of structuralism, Claude Lévi-Strauss, in a foreword entitled ‘La science du concret’ to his book ‘La Pensée Sauvage’, described artistic creation as merely the construction of models of reality. To illustrate his point, he himself employed a model: the model of the ‘bricoleur’, a potterer or amateur constructor. He wanted to show that artistic creation is not as extraordinary a phenomenon as people tend to believe. The model was often used to make a primeval human, and also the artistic, mental process, understandable. I offer my own paraphrase of the Lévi-Strauss model here because of its evident analogy to Auke de Vries’ method and to the appearance of his sculptures. The bricoleur must make do with what is at hand – a collection of materials and tools which he has kept because they might come in handy one day. He inventories this arsenal in order to find answers to his problem within the limited possibilities offered by the whole. He duly examines each item to see what it could ‘mean’ to him. During the construction process every decision to use one item or another brings about a change in the total structure. In the final result the original function of many components can still be recognised, but this recognisability is forfeit to the total project, within whose scope its new function is more structural. The result will never be precisely what the bricoleur intended, and so he speaks not only with the objects he has used but, unintentionally, through them as well. Without ever fully realizing his original project, he always – deliberately or otherwise – puts something of his own personality into it.

The procedure adopted by Auke de Vries differs from this model in that he firmly refuses to formulate an artistic project. Since the possibilities are already limited by objective basic conditions (surroundings, budget), he rejects the addition of self-imposed limitations.

The design process seems comprehensible – any potterer would feel able to copy the model. The fact that the process remains visible in the technically ambitious, big sculptures is what gives them their ‘esprit’. The NAi sculpture is a particularly good example. I have already mentioned the tousled mop of hair. The central ‘yellow’ referred to by Auke de Vries above could be an abstraction of an electric light bulb (de Vries strenuously denies this) – the beholder is ‘enlightened’.

The difficulties Auke de Vries has often encountered in realising his public commissions have never led to the disastrous fate suffered by Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc. On the contrary, like the Maas sculpture, the NAi piece, too, has acquired a nickname (‘Joint’), thus attaining landmark status. This could have to do with the processes responsible for the sculptures’ characteristic recognisability, processes of a distinctly frivolous nature. Topographical analysis of a structure as proposed by Serra calls for a willingness to settle for a certain degree of abstraction. Both artists, however, take into consideration the location of a proposed sculpture. The location thus becomes part of the sculpture – actually generates it, as it were: ‘What I absolutely want to stress here is this: you analyse the area, the use of the location, in the social sense of traffic too, summing up: everything a city has to offer. But you can’t make a sculpture with that. The surroundings don’t dictate the sculpture, the sculpture isn’t derived from them. It’s hard to understand, but sculptures develop themselves. …to me that means that I lapse into a state of impotence every time, where there is no knowledge and everything is impractical.’