Grammofoon

Description

In 1976 René Daniëls created a series of works in which lines, rectangles and ellipses are loosely condensed into irregular structures. Here, although a rectangle may look like a brick and an ellipse may resemble a wheel, there is no clear figuration. All this changes in 1977. While the brushstrokes and the speed they suggest still play a significant role, the resulting image becomes meaningful. Rectangles form a bookcase, an ellipse becomes a gramophone record, a combination of angular and round shapes form a movie camera. They are all objects that refer to forms of communication and art: literature, music and film. Daniëls loved the emotionality of punk rock that burst onto the scene at the time. During a talk with art historians Jan van Adrichem and Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen in 1983 he said, "I filmed concerts with a Super-8 camera, and that’s the reason I chose records and cameras as my subject". On the painting shown here, we can see a gramophone and a movie camera at the same time. The camera grip could be the arm of the record player, but as Daniëls uses the same colours for both objects, they cannot be distinguished from one another.

[2020]

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