Art history must be rewritten. The authoritative ‘art bible’ Janson’s piles one error upon another blunder when it comes to artworks made of wood.
There are plenty of such sculptures. The P+ Special ‘A Correction to Art History’ shows in 20 pages concealed wooden works by world-famous artists and cultures. Never before has such a selection been brought together.
The real world embraces wood
The real world embraces wood as a sustainable building material. In Amsterdam, a complete city district with wooden houses is being built. Design shops and webshops are increasingly full of wooden tables and wooden art objects. Large compensation programs are planting ‘climate forests’ that suck CO2 from the atmosphere. Residents take action when old trees are cut down in their city or street. Wood is a ‘hot issue’ in sustainable circles, certainly also in the circular economy.
But the art bible Janson’s, at 1200 pages thick, offers less than 30 illustrations of wooden art objects that determined and still determine Western cultural history. Ethnic art with many wooden sculptures is even completely absent. This 60-year-old textbook for museum directors, curators, gallery owners, art academies and financiers can go to the waste paper, P+ concludes.
Not made of wood, but of plaster
The art world doesn’t learn that the oldest wooden sculpture of humanity is 11,600 years old and has been named the ‘Shigir Idol’. The famous sarcophagi from ancient Egypt are missing. The highly valued Art Deco from Bali in the Netherlands is overlooked. No trace of the wooden sculptures Gauguin made in Tahiti. Only 30 years after his death did beautiful wooden sculptures by Picasso surface, including a head made of scrap wood. Grinling Gibbons, the Rotterdammer who rose to ‘King’s carver’ in England, personally set a standard in fine carving in lime wood. Not a word about him in Janson’s either.
Janson’s even blunders on those few occasions when a photo of a wooden artwork is shown, by showing a work by British sculptor ‘Dame’ Barbara Hepworth that is actually made of plaster.
A sculpture in 300 Greek letters
The result: contemporary Dutch artists who work in wood are marginalized. Their sculptures can only be admired deep in the provinces, particularly in collections of private collectors and companies. A good example is the sculpture of the Greek poetess Sappho by artist Gerhard Lentink. It can be found in the special collection of ‘Het Depot’ in Wageningen.
Lentink’s sculpture shows the poetess in a garment that is built from the desperate heart cry of the classical Greek poetess Sappho. The artist sawed out 390 Greek letters for it, built from about 2,600 individual parts. An unprecedented labor of love, which he worked on for a year. All letters of the poem run from the neck along a central axis elliptically downward, to her bare feet. It produces a sculpture of classical beauty made with astonishing craftsmanship. It is a work of art that has no equal anywhere in the world.
Reflection on today’s thinking
Rehabilitation is therefore urgently needed. The art circuit has a blind spot for what is really going on in society. The themes of sculptor Lentink, for example, reflect essential questions about economic growth. In P+ he says: “I question the idea that we always have to grow and move forward. Why? To where? What kind of word is that: progress? I advocate slowness, the timeless, the universal.” So it is certainly not the case that the work of contemporary sculptors in wood is purely craftsmanship and offers no commentary on today’s thinking.
Therefore this P+ Special with a correction to art history from the perspective of sculptors in wood.
P+ also invites readers in ‘The Wood Art Poll’ to express a personal preference about 5 wooden art sculptures, selected by a jury of creative makers of the magazine. Among them works by Duchamp, Picasso and the oldest wooden sculpture of humanity.
Text Jan Bom
