Is This a Good Painting? #2

stedelijk│reading group
2nd Reading group as part of the exhibition 'Bourgeois Leftovers'.
Date: June 7, 2013, 7 – 9 pm
Venue: de Appel arts centre, gallery space
Reservations: It is necessary to make a reservation. Send an e-mail to reservation@deappel.nl, stating your full name, e-mail address, telephone number, and the date of the program you want to attend.

Texts:

• Donald Barthelme, “Not-Knowing,” in Not Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme, ed. Kim Herzinger, New York: Random House, 1997;
• Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation” in Against Interpretation, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966.

The title of the reading group is borrowed from Marcel Broodthaers’ “Interview with a Cat,” in which the artist asks his cat to evaluate a painting’s value. Texts by Boris Groys, Susan Sontag, and Donald Barthelme will be introduced in relation to such topics as the status of objects in museum collections, the notion of “contemporaneity,” and ways of establishing value.

This second reading session proposes reading as a way of establishing personal and intuitive relationships with the historical art object, without seeking to “recuperate” or interpret. Taking inspiration from Susan Sontag and Donald Barthelme’s call for subjective and sensuous responses to works of art, we invite you to join us for a series of individual readings to the paintings on display at de Appel arts centre. This evening features four writers and artists with text-based practices (Olivia Dunbar, Moosje Goosen, Tamara Kuselman, and Arnisa Zeqo), who will each read beside or in relation to chosen paintings on display throughout the building. Drinks will be served.

More information on 'Bourgeois Leftovers'

“Bourgeois Leftovers,” the exhibition of de Appel’s 2012-2013 Curatorial Programme, presents 32 Dutch genre paintings borrowed from the Van Abbemuseum together with commissions and contributions by contemporary artists. Produced between roughly 1910 and 1939, many of these still lifes, landscapes, and portraits were part of the founding collection of the Van Abbemuseum, but they have not been selected for display in the museum. “Bourgeois Leftovers” sets the stage for 19 contemporary artists to co-produce the presentation of the paintings. Two main approaches come to the fore in the exhibition: the first considers each painting as a guest within de Appel’s exhibition spaces, with its own individual history and unique condition. The second sees the paintings as a conceptual entity: a group of leftovers, the surplus of a collection. From this angle, the paintings become a microcosm for present-day questions of the role of cultural heritage in the context of populism; (de-)collection and acquisition policies of museums during times of economic austerity; and notions of artistic and financial value, and how this is determined and by whom.

Please visit www.bourgeoisleftovers.com for more information.