Marty Bax | |
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Born | Martine Theodora 10 November 1956 |
Citizenship | Canada, Netherlands |
Alma mater | Vrije Universiteit , Amsterdam |
Occupation | Art historian |
Known for | Leading scholar in the work of Piet Mondrian; modern art and Western Esotericism |
Website | baxart |
Martine Theodora Bax (born 1956) is a Dutch-Canadian art historian and art critic in modern art. Her specializations are the work of Piet Mondrian and the relationship between art and Western Esotericism, especially Modern Theosophy and Anthroposophy.
Bax was born on 10 November 1956 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her parents were both journalists for the newspapers Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant and Algemeen Dagblad in Rotterdam Netherlands). In Canada her father Jack was a radio reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After remigration to the Netherlands he became Chief of Public Relations of the City and Port of Rotterdam. He was the first in the Netherlands to implement a public information center for inhabitants, in which city developments were openly discussed. In the 1960s he was one of the first who envisioned local radio and television as public information channels. [1] Bax is the sister of the human rights activist Robert van Voren and of Jacky Bax, programme manager and deputy director at NRPO SIA / Taskforce for Applied Research, formerly Programme Manager Innovation Universities at Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
Bax studied art history at the Vrije Universiteit , Amsterdam. In 1987 she graduated on a thesis on the profound but still scholarly unrecognized influence of Japanese calligraphy on the work of the American Abstract Expressionist Franz Kline. In 2004 she received her PhD on the influence of Modern Theosophy on Dutch art between 1880 and 1920.
Bax' scholarly approach to art is interdisciplinary, combining art history and art analysis with (socioeconomic) history, sociology, philosophy, history of religion and genealogy. She works as an independent (co-)curator of and scholarly adviser to many international institutions on modern art from 1850. She has published many books and essays and wrote entries on Dutch architects for the Oxford Art Online. She has been editor of the university art historical magazine Kunstlicht and founder of its foundation, and editor-in-chief of the scholarly magazine Jong Holland. As an art critic for Het Financieele Dagblad she has written approximately 500 articles on art, architecture, design, institutional and private collecting, and the art market. She organized various conferences, e.g. on Nazi plunder and cultural heritage.
Piet Mondrian. The Amsterdam years 1892-1912 (1994) contains the first extensive analysis of the extensive social and artistic network of Piet Mondrian, based on genealogy and research in primary archival sources. In 1996 she was appointed editor of Volume I of the Catalogue Raisonné of Mondrian's work. [2] The book Mondrian Complete received the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award in 2002. Ever since she publishes and lectures regularly on aspects of Mondrian's life and art and serves as an authentication expert of his work. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] In 2014 she launched the first 3D virtual multi-user Mondrian Museum together with ActiveWorlds Europe and DX Media. [8]
Bax started her research into art and Western Esotericism after the exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 (1986-1987), of which Bax was assistant-curator at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in The Hague.
In 1991 she published Bauhaus Lecture Notes 1930-1933, in which she describes the continuing influence of Western Esotericism on the theory and practice of the Bauhaus, right until its closing in 1933.
The exhibition Okkultismus und Avantgarde (1995), of which Bax was member of the scholarly board and organizer of the Dutch section, was the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the influence of Western Esotericism on European art, thus opening a new field of art historical research.
In 1996 she joined the study group ARIES, founded by Wouter Hanegraaff and precursor of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. As a member of ESSWE she contributes to international conferences, lectures and scholarly discussion groups and sharing research data.
In 2001 she was co-founder of the Stichting ter bevordering van wetenschappelijk Onderzoek naar de geschiedenis van de Vrijmetselarij en verwante stromingen in Nederland (OVN; Foundation for the advancement of academic research into the history of freemasonry and related currents in the Netherlands). Main focus points of this foundation are research funding, the preservation of archives, and architectural heritage.
Her dissertation Het web der schepping. Theosofie en kunst in Nederland van Lauweriks tot Mondriaan (The Web of Creation. Theosophy and art in The Netherlands from Lauweriks to Mondrian, Vrije Universiteit 2004), published in 2006 by Uitgeverij SUN, is the first systematic and interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship between art and Modern Theosophy. It contains a prosopography of the members of the Dutch branch of the Theosophical Society, which gives insight into the social and religious structure of the Society. Although the book focuses on The Netherlands between 1880 and 1920, it has set an empirical-methodological standard for any research in this complex field of art history.
The exhibition Holy Inspiration. Religion and Spirituality on Modern Art (2008) was the first exhibition in the history of the strictly modernist Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to focus on the religious, spiritual and Western Esoteric sources of inspiration of modern artists in the collection, based on the views of Jürgen Habermas. Parallel she contributed to Traces du Sacré held at the Centre Pompidou. In 2010 Bax made the full membership list of the Theosophical Society available online as a primary source for scholarly and family research. [9]
In 2010 she became interested in the life of Grete Trakl, musical prodigy and sister of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl, because of her notes on lectures by Rudolf Steiner. Research resulted in the first comprehensive biography of Grete Trakl, published in 2014. This book contains several chapters on her brother's position within the tradition of Western Esotericism.
De Stijl, Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands. Proponents of De Stijl advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to vertical and horizontal, using only black, white and primary colors.
Neoplasticism, known in Dutch as Nieuwe Beelding or the new image, is an avant-garde art theory that arose in 1917 and was employed mainly by Dutch De Stijl artists. The most notable advocates of the theory were the painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondriaan. Neoplasticism advocated for an abstract art that had been purified by applying the most elementary principles through plainly rational means. Thus, a painting that adhered to neoplastic theory would typically consist of only simple shapes and primary colors.
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The Amsterdam School is a style of architecture that arose from 1910 through about 1930 in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam School movement is part of international Expressionist architecture, sometimes linked to German Brick Expressionism.
Victory Boogie Woogie is the last, unfinished work of the Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian, left incomplete when Mondrian died in New York in 1944. He was still working on it three days before dying. Since 1998 it has been in the collection of the Kunstmuseum, in The Hague. It has been said that "Mondrian's life and his affection for music are mirrored in the painting [and that it is] a testimony of the influence which New York had on Mondrian."
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian, was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being one of the pioneers of 20th-century abstract art, as he changed his artistic direction from figurative painting to an increasingly abstract style, until he reached a point where his artistic vocabulary was reduced to simple geometric elements.
Gerard Caris is a Dutch sculptor and artist who has pursued a single motif throughout the course of his artistic career, the pentagon.
Herman Heijenbrock, was a Dutch writer, painter, pastel draughtsman, and lithographer. He founded the "Museum van den Arbeid" in 1923, which later became NEMO Science Museum.
Herman Frederik Bieling was a Dutch painter, sculptor, graphic artist and Modern Art propagandist.
August Allebé was an artist and teacher from the Northern Netherlands. His early paintings were in a romantic style, but in his later work he was an exponent of realism and impressionism. He was a major initiator and promoter of Amsterdam Impressionism, the artist's association St. Lucas, and the movement of the Amsterdamse Joffers. Amsterdam Impressionism – sometimes referred to by art historians as the School of Allebé – was the counterflow to the very strong Hague School in the movement of Dutch Impressionism. As a professor at the Royal Academy of Amsterdam he fostered a cosmopolitan attitude toward art and the promotion and motivation of his students, and provided a significant stimulus to developments in modern art.
Berend Strik is a Dutch visual artist working and living in Amsterdam.
Johannes Jacobus (Jan) van der Vaart was an influential Dutch ceramicist from the 20th century, known as founder of the abstract-geometric ceramics in the Netherlands.
Wietske van Leeuwen is a Dutch ceramist, who lives and works in Monnickendam. Her works are constructed in a baroque style, with shells and fruit as recurring motifs.
Daniël (Daan) van Golden was a Dutch artist, who has been active as a painter, photographer, collagist, installation artist, wall painter and graphic artist. He is known for his meticulous paintings of motives and details of everyday life and every day images.
Evening; Red Tree is a 1908–1910 oil on canvas painting by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.
The Netherlands Design Institute is a former institute for the promotion of design in the Netherlands. It was located in the premises of the former Museum Fodor at Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. Its mission was to stimulate high quality design in the Netherlands, to stimulating the interest in it, and to encouraging discussion about the profession.
Agatha Wilhelmina Zethraeus (1872–1966) was a Dutch artist.
Roos Theuws is a Dutch media and video artist.
The Red Cloud is an early painting by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. It was painted in 1907. Mondrian completed the painting while staying near Oele, in the east of the Netherlands. One art historian has noted that the "hard colour contrasts and charged, expressive brushwork" is part of Mondrian's evolution towards an abstract painter.