INTERMEZZO: THEMATA

In his catalogue article for an Auke de Vries exhibition in the Wiesbaden Museum (1990), Cor Blok attempts a preliminary thematic classification of de Vries’ output. Unfortunately he mixes up the categories, juxtaposing classifications such as ‘hanging sculptures (falling theme)’ or ‘floorpieces’ with ambitious installations like the Maas or Dutch Telecom sculptures. By ‘theme’ Blok seems to understand an identifiable group of works. The definition, however, fails to embrace the distinctive traits which characterize de Vries’ oeuvre. More appropriate is the definition used by the scientific historian Gerald Holton: ‘…I have proposed a ninth component for the analysis of scientific work – that is thematic analysis. In many (perhaps most) past and present concepts, methods, and propositions or hypotheses of science, there are elements that function as themata, constraining or motivating the individual…these elements are usually not explicitly at issue. The attitude I have taken in the task of identifying and ordering thematic elements in scientific discussions is to some degree analogous to that of a folklorist or anthropologies who listens to the epic stories for their underlying thematic structure and recurrence.’

This definition of theme permits us to recognize verticals and horizontals, for example, as themes in the NAi sculpture. Although they are not present in the sculpture, they are present in the building, towards which the sculpture develops a relationship of tension. As a matter of fact many of Auke de Vries’ works of the seventies actually do feature vertical or seemingly tumbling rods. The underlying motivation for a vertical/horizontal theme is obvious. Since Mondrian at the latest, we have been aware of the fundamental significance of this type of structure for wide areas of Dutch art. Of extra significance to the sculptor is the fact that the vertical is the line of gravity (and the theme resurfaces in the hanging sculptures, incidentally). Remembering, then, that swinging the horizontal into the vertical was mentioned in connection with the step from the Maas sculpture to the Dutch Telecom sculpture, and adding Cor Blok’s ‘floorpiece’ category and the one he calls ‘graphic sculptures’ – by which he means, however, a type of sculpture which ‘almost imperceptibly takes what is after all the decisive step away from two-dimensionality’ , we now have two large groups in which the works develop horizontally or vertically, as if emerging from the flat surface of a picture. In this connection it is important to know that Auke de Vries started off as a painter, and that he was best known as a graphic artist until the early seventies. This brings us to the second theme: the picture surface.

The third theme is surely the most striking. Even those sculptures which do not ostensibly develop from a flat surface lack the volume traditionally associated with sculpture. They are constructed chiefly from lines of varying thicknesses and are accentuated by planes. The prevailing absence of colour emphasizes the linear character. As I said, Auke de Vries was a graphic artist before he turned to sculpture – what is more, the first sculptures he made around 1967 were not conceived as sculptures at all, but as models for etchings. Basically, though, the etching is a three-dimensional technique, for the lines have to be carved into the metal plate. Donald Judd actually exhibited his plates as reliefs, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the tradition of sculptures as drawings in space (Gonzalez, Calder, Smith) was inaugurated by Picasso, a painter.

Lines are not a natural phenomenon. Where they do occur in nature, it is due to human intervention. With the artistic appropriation of nature, man has learned in a lengthy process to abstract an infinite multitude of perceived points and invest them with a new quality. The line makes it possible to isolate forms, to identify and define them. It is thus one of the first testimonials to the human capacity for analytical thought; it is also the basic artistic device for conveying reality.

Another painter, Kandinsky, was the chief protagonist in liberating the line from its function of representing reality. A line freed from that function, though, itself becomes a thing: ‘The line is a thing whose meaning is just as practical and functional as that of a chair, a fountain, a knife, a book…’. To Kandinsky, as to Mondrian, acknowledgement of the line’s objecthood paved the way towards the principle of abstract painting. Picasso, who as we know never made it through to absolute abstraction, needed the spatial drawing to make the line literally ‘graspable’ as an object.