October 8, 2011 - March 4, 2012

Straight-Backed Chairs, Upright Citizens
Domestic design under the influence of ’t Binnenhuis

One of the Netherlands’ first ever interior design stores opened to the public in 1900. Known as ’t Binnenhuis and run by H.P. Berlage and Jacques van den Bosch, the store and its well-designed modern household furnishings were extremely popular among the affluent residents of central Amsterdam, Oud-Zuid and Het Gooi. Straight-Backed Chairs, Upright Citizens focuses on these well-to-do customers. What did they buy from ’t Binnenhuis and how do the pieces they purchased feature today in the homes of their descendants? Photographer Johannes Schwartz (b. 1970), one of the artists representing the Netherlands at this year’s Venice Biennale, has recorded their present fate in a wonderful series of photographs.
The innovative design articles on sale at ’t Binnenhuis were an attractive alternative for anyone unwilling to furnish his home either with undulating Art Nouveau chairs or with mass-produced furniture. The design of the store’s chairs, tables and cupboards was almost Spartan in its plainness and the pieces were honest and old-fashioned in their execution.

Moreover, the founders of the store had an explicit social ideal; they wanted to make household furnishings of good design available to large sections of the population. In fact, although they had many socially concerned customers like socialists Henri Polak and Floor Wibaut, all of them were members of the upper classes. The Binnenhuis’s high prices saw to that. The company did not sell chairs to the working classes, but to well-heeled people who cared about their lot.

The ‘modern’ style of interior design propagated by ’t Binnenhuis was actually rooted in traditional Dutch styles that went back to the country’s seventeenth-century Golden Age. This made the store popular with lovers of antique furniture and people like the scions of the country’s old ruling and patrician families, who found that the pieces combined well with their family heirlooms. For example, the Fentener van Vlissingen family and historian Johan Huizinga were major clients in the early years of the venture.

Bulb manufacturers Anton and Gerard Philips of Eindhoven also found their way to the Amsterdam store. They bought several pieces of furniture from Berlage and Van den Bosch and also gave them various commissions for the furnishing of their two villas. They even had made hand-forged light fittings to accommodate his hypermodern electric light bulbs.

Especially for this exhibition, photographer Johannes Schwartz has produced an intriguing photo-reportage on Binnenhuis furniture in contemporary interiors. His photographs are the starting point for the exhibition and give a clear impression of the way the store’s cupboards, tables and chairs are still being used by the descendants of the original purchasers and how they remain part of their domestic interiors after all these years.


October 15, 2011 - January, 29 2012

Paris
City of modern art

The prestigious Centre Pompidou in Paris has loaned forty of its top works for a special exhibition in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. The exhibition includes famous masterpieces by such artists as Kandinsky, Brancusi, Picasso, Matisse, Miró, Giacometti, Léger, Braque and Delaunay. Visitors to the museum this autumn will have a unique opportunity to experience Paris as the dazzling city of modern art in The Hague.

In the first half of the 20th century, Paris was an irresistible magnet which attracted up-and-coming artists from all over the world. It was here that modern art history was written. The most progressive artists of the Netherlands were also drawn to this exciting site of renewal and artistic freedom. This autumn the flow has been reversed as the top collection of the Centre Pompidou comes to The Hague, forming the backbone of a major exhibition featuring Paris as the centre of modern art. This exhibition is being complemented by the historical photography exhibition Gard du Nord in The Hague Museum of Photography.

Never before has there been an exhibition focused on the relationship between the Netherlands and Paris as the cradle of modern art. A look at exhibitions in Europe in the past shows many examples of the connection between Paris and Berlin or Moscow, but up to now the Netherlands was missing from this list. Yet various Dutch artists experienced crucial developments in their career while they were in Paris. One such example is Piet Mondrian, who after visiting Paris embarked on a completely new direction, both in his work and his private life. And it was not only Mondrian: Kees van Dongen, Karel Appel and Constant were all inspired and influenced by the exciting and flourishing artistic life in Paris. This presence of Dutch artists in Paris will be given a special focus in the exhibition.

During the first half of the 20th century, art underwent a period of rapid renewal. Stirred up by the apocalyptical character of World War I and driven by the idea of a better future, or in a reaction against the style of their predecessors, the artists in Paris developed new styles in an enormous range of exuberant colours and forms. Paris was an artistic refuge where artists could meet in bars and cafés, form groups, discuss, influence each other and argue their principles. Nowadays we can use internet to exchange experiences and ideas with people all over the world, but in the early years of the 20th century, the only way to meet was ‘in the flesh’, and Paris was the community of modern art.