Concept and curator: Henk Schut
Participating artists: Eylem Aladogan, Maria Barnas, Michaël Borremans, Hafid Bouazza, Constant Dullaart, Jan Fabre, Alicia Framis, Ryan Gander, Arnon Grunberg, Christian Jankowski, Anish Kapoor, Job Koelewijn, Yayoi Kusama, Nicole Krauss, Gabriel Lester, Navid Nuur, Rory Pilgrim, Cheng Ran, Viviane Sassen, Pilvi Takala & Siri Baggerman, Simon van Til, Diego Tonus, Wouter Venema.
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Curator statement:
“The exhibition When I Give, I Give Myself with work from 23 contemporary artists all responding to a letter from Vincent van Gogh is the last part of a triptych I started working on in 2012 and which also resulted in the installation the Van Gogh Mile.
Reading all his letters I discovered a truly incisive thinker capable of critical self reflection. He has incredibly well thought out artistic insights on technique, use of color, the importance of context and artistic development. He also used his writing to ventilate his doubts and insecurities, to invoke himself with courage and share the things in life that pleased and inspired him. To me his writing can be seen as an integral part of his artistic practice and essential to his development.
Then I read a fragment in letter number 805 which for me is about the invisible and ongoing connection between past and present. Van Gogh firmly believed that the work of an artist was important not only to his contemporaries, but also to future generations. It is about ‘passing on’ your legacy, realizing that as an artist you are part of something bigger. It was the source for the third part of the triptych, the exhibition When I Give, I Give Myself, because his letters did not only resonate to my own artistic practice, but while reading I also constantly made connections with other living artists. With this exhibition I could show the relevance of Van Gogh’s intellectual legacy by making a connection with the contemporary art world. Because this letter about the cycle of life and death isn’t that something that Yayoi Kusama can relate to? Or this letter about the intrinsic value of color, isn’t that something Anish Kapoor could have said? The fear for the blank canvas and how you overcome this, how would the American novelist Nicole Krauss treat this material? Why don’t I send them a letter and ask them to respond? I made a list of artists and send each of them a very specifically chosen letter by Van Gogh that related to their art practice. Having contemporary artists respond to his writing shows their relevance today and the invisible and ongoing connection between past and present.
To emphasize the concept behind the exhibition the contemporary works are to be viewed as a temporarily integrated part of the main collection in the Rietveld building. Showing these works in between Van Gogh’s paintings with the letters as a trait d’union will bring his thinking to the foreground and reaffirm its value.
Surrounded by living colleagues Vincent is freed from the iconic status he got after he died and can be seen again as the artist he is: always wanting to learn more and with continuous self reflection. At the same time When I Give, I Give Myself gives an insight into the way contemporary artists respond to the same existential and artistic questions Van Gogh asked himself.
The title of the exhibition is a fragment from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, who was also read by Van Gogh. To me this has to do with having to expose yourself as an artist and making choices. It is the essence of artistic creation. Risking something and showing who you are.”
The catalogue accompanying the exhibition was written by the Dutch art critic Hans den Hartog Jager.
When I Give, I Give Myself was realized in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum. Funding came from the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and the Gieskes-Strijbis Fund, the Goethe-Institut, Frame Visual Arts, M.A.O.C. Gravin van Bylandt Foundation and the Embassy of the Netherlands in London.
