Valkenburg exhibition in Utrecht | FAZ | EUROtoday

He is just not one of the essential Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, and but the artist Willem de Rooij, a professor on the Städelschule in Frankfurt since 2006, has been working with the work of Dirk Valkenburg for fifteen years. This artist, who used the widespread genres of his period, i.e. primarily painted portraits of his rich shoppers in addition to searching nonetheless lifes, is an exemplary case for de Rooij.

According to de Rooij, Valkenburg’s photos reveal the visual-political technique of a Dutch elite that owed its social and financial standing to a selected enterprise mannequin: the exploitation of the Dutch colonies and their inhabitants.

Valkenburg (1675 to 1721), who spent about two years in Suriname in South America on behalf of the plantation proprietor, artwork collector and momentary Amsterdam mayor Jonas Witsen, painted bugs and unique vegetation like Maria Sibylla Merian earlier than him, however peaceable scenes of life on the plantations have been in all probability way more essential to his consumer. In Valkenburg’s Suriname there are locks like these within the Netherlands, cloud formations that by no means happen there however typically happen over the North Sea, and slaves solely at a protected distance – often they stand subsequent to buildings, as an indicator of the proportions within the depictions.

They are views of a cultivated panorama that seems tamed and fertile, unthreatening and at most so unique that no viewer is disturbed. There is a seemingly pure order right here, put in and maintained by the women and men who, as members of the Dutch higher class, are amongst Valkenburg’s shoppers.

De Rooij has introduced collectively thirty works by Valkenburg within the attic of the Centraal Museum. The exhibition in Utrecht is the painter’s most in depth solo present so far, however above all, based on de Rooij, who represented the Netherlands on the Venice Biennale in 2005 along with Jeroen de Rijke, it’s itself a murals: “Willem de Rooij. Valkenburg”, because the exhibition title says, sees the act of presentation with all its particulars (which aren’t instantly obvious to the customer) as a posh set up that traces the hidden meanings of the works. As Bart Rutten, the director of the Centraal Museum, emphasizes within the forthcoming exhibition catalogue, de Rooij is anxious with an afterlife of the artworks within the spirit of Aby Warburg and Georges Didi-Huberman. In Valkenburg’s work, the “white gaze” of his period has been preserved undisguised.

The exhibition begins with a portrait of Valkenburg by an unknown hand, adopted by 4 consultant portraits of a number of the shoppers, that are hung so that each one 4 pairs of eyes are on the similar peak. The subsequent room is dominated by a partition wall with 4 nonetheless lifes, in every of which a lifeless rabbit suspended by the legs dominates the composition. Then comply with examples of animal portray that carelessly mixes unique and native animal species and presents them in an vintage setting. In unique fruits such because the coconut, which was thought-about a standing image and on the similar time represented the pure wealth of the colony, de Rooij approaches the core of his exhibition: Valkenburg’s photos from Suriname.

There aren’t many, however they’re nearly distinctive, as Valkenburg was among the many first European artists to work within the colonies. At that point he was fairly profitable at occasions, however right now his identify is primarily related to a portray that traveled from Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst to Utrecht for the exhibition: It is entitled “Gathering of enslaved people on one of Jonas Witsen’s plantations” and is taken into account one of many first artworks to depict slaves.

Valkenburg reveals muscular our bodies, shiny pores and skin, half-naked girls. The surroundings is picturesque and erotically charged, with out giving any concrete clues as to its cause. The anthropologist Renzo Duin suspects that the gathering befell in reference to a non secular ritual, whereas the historian Frank Dragtenstein investigates the speculation in his catalog article that a few of these depicted have been concerned in a sort of slave revolt, in the middle of which Valkenburg itself turned violent, whereupon some slaves fled into the forests.

In the trial that adopted, Valkenburg testified as a witness. The sentence was merciless: 5 of the slaves have been to be slowly burned alive and tortured with red-hot tongs. Their heads have been then to be lower off and displayed on skewers. To keep away from additional unrest, all these convicted have been pardoned. Unlike Maria Sibylla Merian, who had already traveled to Suriname in 1699, Valkenburg appeared to don’t have any reservations about slavery and the system that had so richly lined the pockets of his employers.

Willem de Rooij. Valkenburg. In the Centraal Museum Utrecht; till January 25, 2026. An in depth catalog with fifteen essays on Dirk Valkenburg and his work is in preparation.