Joep van Lieshout has a studio, just like Rubens!
- Jump to topRead more
-
The life of Achilles
For the tapestry series, Rubens chose eight events from the life of Achilles: 1. Thesis dips Achilles in the Styx. 2. The Centaur Chiron educates Achilles 3. Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes 4. Achilles enraged at Agamemnon 5. The return of Briseïs 6. Thetis receives Achilles’ armour from Vulcan 7. Achilles kills Hector 8. The death of Achilles. Most events are taken from the Iliad by Homer. But Rubens took some events, such as the baptism, from descriptions written by later classical writers. The only sketch that is not in the collection of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen shows the return of Briseïs. This can be found in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
-
AVL
Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL), founded by artist Joep van Lieshout (1963) in 1995, is a multidisciplinary art practice encompassing installation, design, furniture and architecture. The name Atelier Van Lieshout emphasises the fact that the works of art do not stem solely from the creative brain of Joep van Lieshout, but are produced by a creative team of artists, designers and architects.
-
Four series of tapestries
Rubens designed four series of tapestries. The first series (1616-1618) used the heroic deeds of the Roman consul Decius Mus as its subject. They were made for an unknown nobleman from Genoa. The original painted cartoons are the major works in the collection of the Liechtenstein museum in Vienna. The second series took the life of the Roman emperor Constantine as its subject. The series is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The third series, the largest that Rubens made, portrays the Triumph of the Eucharist and was made around 1626 specially for the Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, the daughter of King Philip II of Spain. The twenty tapestries were originally intended for the church of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid (the Barefoot Royals), and can still be found in the monastery. The fourth and last series portrayed the life of Achilles.
-
The Towering Inferno
They can be seen at the exhibition The Towering Inferno of AVL from 29 May to 26 September 2010 in the former submarine shed of the Rotterdam Dry Dock Company on the Dokhaven in Rotterdam.
-
Weaving and mirror image
The designs produced by Rubens are the mirror image of the actual tapestries. This is due to the weaving technique. The detailed modelli produced by Rubens were used to make cartoons that were the same size as the final tapestries. These cartoons have not survived, but it is known that the illustrations were made with chalk, water colour and scumble on paper. The cartoons were cut into vertical strips so that they could be laid under the warp threads of the loom. The weaver could thus copy the example underneath. On the uppermost surface, on which he worked, he made the necessary connections between the various colours and weft threads. This uppermost surface ultimately became the back of the tapestry. The side that was under the warp and which had a beautiful level surface became the front. Rubens had to take into account from the very start that everything he drew would appear as a mirror image. On the sketches, Achilles holds his sword in his left hand; on the tapestry he holds it in his right.
-
Terminology
It was only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that systematic use was made of terms such as (oil) sketch and modelli. Nowadays, a sketch is called the first design; the sketch is then elaborated in a modello so that it can act as a direct example for a large painting or tapestry. In Rubens’ time, the word ‘sketch’ was used indiscriminately for what we today call sketch or modello. The inventory drawn up in 1643 by Rubens’ father-in-law mentions ‘Eight sketches on panel’. In the seventeenth century, oil sketches on panel were often referred to with the word ‘drawing’. That word was also used for sketches on paper. In order to avoid confusion, the word ‘drawing’ is now only used for works on paper.
-
15 april 2010
Funky Bones was installed in the Indianapolis Museum of Art on 15 April 2010. Reporter Sarah Green made this short impression.
-
Website and film
The website of AVL contains interesting background information about the work of Joep van Lieshout. The installations at The Towering Inferno exhibition are part of Slave City, at the same time utopia and dystopia. At the gates to Slave City, a decision is made about how the person wishing to enter can be most useful. Is he or she suitable to help decide the future or do they only have a healthy body that is useful for organ transplants? If the organs are of no use, then perhaps the flesh is suitable for consumption. And finally, old and worn-out people can be usefully transformed into gas to serve the city as fuel. Slave City is thus a model of a society in which our economic and ecological principles are implemented to the limit. In episode 6 of Boijmans TV [add url later], the artist will be interrogated about his idea by Arie, the security guard. Van Lieshout is working on an (animation) film about Slave City.
Tools
save
Video marked successfully. You can go to your favorites now.
Twitter
Digg it
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Yahoo!
del.icio.us
Google
Gmail
Reddit
Windows LiveEmbed
Place code snippet beneath on the desired place in your webpage.
<div id="arttube-tijdreizen-4_en"><!-- ArtTube Player--></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://arttube.boijmans.nl/media/arttube/behaviour/swfobject/swfobject.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://arttube.boijmans.nl/media/arttube/behaviour/fab/boijmans/arttube/embedded-player.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
arttubePlayer({
containerId:'arttube-tijdreizen-4_en',
sd:'mp4:tijdreizen4_en_gr.mov',
hd:'mp4:tijdreizen4_en_gr.mov',
bg:'/media/uploads/video_groot/Lieshout_680x382.jpg',
width:520,
height:310
})
</script>
Joep van Lieshout has a studio, just like Rubens!
Back and forth. From Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp to Joep van Lieshout in Rotterdam; and all this only to discover that nothing much has changed in four hundred years? Rubens (1577-1640) was in charge of a large studio and left a lot of work to his assistants. They were required, for example, to turn his oil sketches into large paintings or ‘modelli’. Rubens’ vast knowledge, creativity and inspired technique come together in the sketches made by the master himself. At Atelier Van Lieshout in Rotterdam, things still take place in the same way; even the method used for enlarging the sketch - with a raster - dates from the seventeenth century. But not everything is comparable. In his work, Rubens reaches back to classical mythology and allows the immortal Achilles to move slowly but surely to his downfall. Van Lieshout portrays a modern society, such as ours, in which economic and ecological principles are applied slightly more consistently.
credits
Camera and editing: BoogieMen
