MANY artists define their style while abroad. Like Daan van Golden. He left Holland in 1963 to visit Japan. During this trip he began to model his work on everyday objects. As an abstract expressionist he was tired to see the form develop during the process of painting. Big inspirations were decorative patterns on textile and wrapping papers, forms he picked out in advance to work with. In Japan Daan van Golden also started to paint with Japanese Enamel paint. It gives his work a very smooth surface. Like the painting Mitsukoshi, made in 1964.

TOMOKAZU Matsuyama’s work has elements of Japanese folklore and graffiti. The first one can be traced back to his childhood in the traditional city of Takayama, Japan. The second element increased in his work after his arrival in New York City, shortly after 9/11. Therefore he can’t be placed in a box. Or as he says it: ‘I am not a Japanese artist, I am a  modern artist that is Japanese.’

IT looks that these party’s Howard Kanovitz painted all were situated somewhere in the Upper East Site. They are filled with WASPs. Artist Kanovitz (1929 – 2009) was a forerunner of Hyper Realism and lived in New York.  The first painting below called ‘The Opening’ from 1968,  can also be looked at as some offshoot of Pop Art.

WHEN seeing the paintings of Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) you can see he evolved from a photographer focusing particularly on architectural subjects to one of the founders of American modernism. Sheeler liked to paint factories and barns. Both structures played a role in his life. Sheeler owned a farmhouse in Pennsylvania and he was hired by Ford Motor Company to make paintings of their factories.

ART don’t always have to be minimalist paintings and difficult sculptures. It can be a vacuum cleaner. British artist John Kaine made a line of slick dust busters. He called the series ‘vacuum cleaning as fine art’. The desire of human beings to change or interfere with the environment has always been a key element in the work of Kaine. Check also his artificial flowers.

WAITING on a train in the station of the Dutch city Delft don’t have to be boring. You can kill time watching the tile tableau in the hall of the station. Creator of this lively scene is the artist Nicolaas Wijnberg.  He made this work in 1960 and named it ‘Het Oude Station’ >>the old station<<. For years the tableau was hidden behind a wall, but a recent renovation of the station revealed the work.

IN the middle the Dutch national park De Hoge Veluwe lays the museum Kröller Muller. The garden of the museum is the home of sculptures of various artists like Rodin, Moore, Dubuffet and Tom Claassen. The last one filled a part of the garden with his ‘ 18  Lying Wooden Men’ , a project from the year 2000.  The eighteen of them are resting in the woods, covered with moss and fungus. The pictures below are taken a week ago, so the elements had their way for nine years. Tom Claassen doesn’t make only wooden men; He is more famous for his sculptures of animals like these rabbits.

ZEBRA’S are already some kind of fantasy beasts, with its dazzle paint hide. Put the animal in a temperate forest and you got a surreal picture. The British painter George Stubbs did it in the year 1762 when he made this oil painting. Stubbs is known for immortalizing hoofed subjects. His most famous work is a portrait of Whistlejacket, a legendary racehorse. The owner of that horse had a real cool name: Lord Rockingham, aka the Marquess of Rockingham.

THE opposite of an artist that hangs his work on a white wall of a gallery, is an artist that uses the frame that holds the canvas as a kite en hauls the painting in the air. Artist like Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann and Karel Appel made these ‘art kites’. The kite on this page is the work of Japanese painter and print-maker Kumi Sugai (1919-1996). Sugai worked from 1952 in Paris. He once compared his work with road signs. More pictures of the kite here.

ONE of the most distinguished graffiti writers of all times stays humble in choosing his canvas. The Frenchmen Mode 2 rocks the scene since he was a little boy. Since the beginning of the eighties his characters outshine every piece they stand next to. His latest work is a bit more explicit than his early work. These three cardboard box panels hang in the exhibition ‘URBAN AFFAIRS extended’ in Berlin until the end of July.