Many of the pieces are conceptual, using texts to make us muse on the nature of art itself
Image: Kröller-Müller Museum via The New York Times
OTTERLO, the Netherlands — “This work is installed when the word ‘Time’ is spoken,” says a single white sheet of paper framed behind glass. That is the full extent of the conceptual artwork “Time Spoken” (1982) by Ian Wilson.
In the corner of a gallery at the Kröller-Müller Museum in De Hoge Veluwe National Park, we quietly whisper, “Time.” And we have “installed” a work of art. And then we laugh.
Such is the comical and sometimes philosophical nature of many of the works on display in this exhibition, “Not in So Many Words,” on view until May 10. About a two-hour drive from Maastricht, the museum makes a scenic and cultural side trip for visitors to the European Fine Art Fair, or TEFAF, with an exquisite permanent collection that features one of the world’s largest troves of Vincent van Gogh paintings and a sprawling outdoor sculpture garden.
“Not in So Many Words” focuses on art that employs text — letters, words, sentences, fragments and the spoken word — and undermines the notion that art is a primarily visual medium.
Many of the pieces are conceptual, using texts to make us muse on the nature of art itself. Belgian poet and artist Marcel Broodthaers, for example, writes his signature, M.B., repeatedly on a large piece of tracing paper, daring us to question its authenticity as a work of art. (After all, doesn’t a signature on a work usually convey authenticity?)
In a companion piece, Italian artist Piero Manzoni in 1969 printed a “declaration of authenticity” on official letterhead from the Musée d’Art Moderne in Brussels, certifying that Broodthaers was an artist. The title: “Piero Manzoni declares Broodthaers to be an authentic work of art.”
“There’s a lot of humor in these works,” Renske Cohen Tervaert, a curator for the Kröller-Müller, said in a telephone interview. These artists “were very much looking for ways of placing art in a very different sphere. There’s a participation of the audience as well. It’s not just looking.”
©2019 New York Times News Service