my favorite 2025 reads 💫

de bieb staat er weer patent bij.
#jaarlijksritueel

details of artwork:

Kathe Köllwitz, Mothers, 1919
Collection of Kunstmuseum, The Hague
Seen at @centraalmuseum, Utrecht

Remember what’s at the heart of Christmas: a newborn family who were refused access, hospitality and care, fleeing from persecution, while eventually bringing hope and light for so many across the world. Let’s try to see the light in one another a little more in the new year ⭐️✨💫

#ArtAdvent

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As we are heading towards Christmas and the new year, I wish for wisdom for the powers that be and somewhat more kindness and care for those in need. It honestly is not that hard, why do we keep failing? 5/

the enduring worry and fear they experience as children grow up to become adults in a world full of uncertainty, and the simultaneous power and powerlessness they endure in making this world a safer place. 4/

Köllwitz lost her son in WWI, she portrayed many mothers who shared the same life-changing experience. This print is titled Mothers - and to me expresses the endless love parents feel for their children, 3/

There’s simply too much going on in the world. The many crises humans have caused to itself and others, are endlessly entangled and we seemingly cannot find a way out. So, I chose this print by Kathe Köllwitz, whose Pièta was featured in the Art Advent before. 2/

ART ADVENT #25/ Dec. 24

I long doubted what to select for the final Advent post. A post to mark the culmination of many days of anticipation, of light, and promise. The celebration of new life, of eternity. It’s beautiful and warm. Yet, I didn’t manage to select a glowing, celebratory artwork. 1/

A fascinating allusion to the power of the collective, which can be both frighteningly out of control and a beautiful sense of connectedness.

Anri Sala, Take Over, 1974
Collection of, Seen at AROS, Aarhus

#ArtAdvent
#PowerOfMusic

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Sala is intrigued by the narrative potential and power of musical sounds. In the installation at first hands are playing the pieces, but after a while the piano plays itself - the system has taken over. 4/

- which together constitute a cross form. The sounds produced by the piano play are from two famous compositions: the Marseillaise, and the Internationale. Both musical compositions are tied to revolutionary events and ideologies in history - 3/

In the basement of AROS museum, several rooms are especially dedicated to installation art. That floor is all about immersion, perception and the senses. The installation “Take Over” by Anri Sala addresses all: two screens on which a piano is played are combined with two transparent glass walls 2/

ART ADVENT #24 / Dec. 23

I’m looking forward to a new year in which music will play a bigger role in my professional life again. It’s one of the reasons why I think fondly of having seen this installation during my summer holiday in Denmark. 1/

and with that the sense of these figures being alone together.

Edward Hopper, The Nighthawks, 1942.
Collection of, Seen at Art Institute, Chicago.

#ArtAdvent
#NightHawks

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Hopper made it to evoke the loneliness of life the city. People living in close vicinity but completely along side each other, without really making valuable contact. The abnormal cleanliness of the street and the absence of other urban details heightens the eeriness of the scene, 2/

ART ADVENT #23 / Dec. 22

Another icon I got to see for the first time in my life this year: Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. I fully understand why this is an icon. What a magnificent painting! The sense of loneliness it embodies is strongly palpable. 1/

The primary colors that invoke a miraculous spatial experience. It made me have an experience of wonder again, similar to that very first experience.

James Turrell, Milkrun III, 2002.
Collection of, Seen at Aros, Aarhus

#ArtAdvent
#LightArt

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About your state of being at a certain moment in time, and how art has the power to transform that being - if only for a little while. This summer it was such a pleasure to see Turrell’s red installation in Denmark again, with subtle yellows and blue. 3/

Being led into one of Turrell’s Wedgework installations during a schooltrip, taking the time to sit down and letting your eyes get used to the light: I suddenly understood how art could be about perception. 2/

ART ADVENT #22/ Dec. 21

For the shortest day, I chose a work by one of my favorite light artists: James Turrell. Seeing a work by Turrel when I was in high school, was my first encounter with contemporary art. Until then, I had had no real experience with it. 1/

Fiona Lutjenhuis, Ankhmania (detail of exhibition space), 2025
Seen at 1646, The Hague

#ArtAdvent

5/ end.

For me, this duality of eeriness and embrace is key to everything she makes. I can’t wait to see where she will take her work next. Fiona was one of the four nominees for this year’s Prix de Rome NL. Although she was not awarded the prize, for me she certainly was the winner. 4/

She surrounded the visitors to this exhibition with both feelings of eeriness and embrace. One of the ways she achieves this, is to create rotating doors which you have to step through in order to reach a new part of the exhibit (which is why I chose this photo). 3/

With an abundance of symbols and visual atmospheres, she completely drew me in. For her work, Fiona draws on her younger years growing up in a religious cult and the feelings and emotions that still accompany her from that time. 2/

ART ADVENT #21/ Dec. 20

One of my favorite exhibitions this year was Fiona Lutjenhuis’ solo at 1646 in The Hague. It was a total installation, with wall paintings, her (by now) iconic room dividers, sculptures, bread installations and a soundscape. 1/

ps. I’ve posted a detail of the work, because of stupid censorship rules. which kind of underlines the point…

I find it a mesmerizing, telling painting, but it also saddens me as it is perhaps a bit too recognizable to my liking. Yet, it was an encounter to remember.

William Merritt Chase, A Modern Magdalene (detail), ca. 1888
Collection of, seen at @mfaboston

#ArtAdvent
#MaryMagdalene

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And yes, the interior in which this modern Magdalene is located is indeed filled with such fabrics. But above all, for me, she exemplifies the dominant sexual and physical moral projected onto women. Turning away, modestly, ashamed for her nudity, due to the gaze that we (you and I) cast at her. 3/

As it is part of the permanent displays, the loan was not granted, and it kind of slipped my mind where it was located. Until I was in Boston, turned a corner, and there she was!! In the most unexpected of places: the applied arts section about 19th c. fascination for Japanese prints and fabrics. 2/