Try and Treasure. Babs Haenen

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+++An ArchivorumxM artist's book+++

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| An intriguing look at the works of ceramic by Dutch artist Babs Haenen

| A new publication published by Jap Sam Books in collaboration with Archivorum

Babs Haenen (b. 1948) creates expressive and impressionistic ceramics that give equal importance to colour, line and form. Her work is embellished in a painterly manner, highlighting the influence of abstract painting and landscape motifs, like rippling water, on her practice. Haenen first worked as a dancer before studying visual art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (1974-1979), where she later taught (1994-2013). In 1990 and 2003, Haenen received grants from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. In 1991 she was awarded Inax Design Prize for Europeans, Japan. In 2012, she was granted the Mondriaan Fund, Visual Arts and Cultural Heritage. In 2019, Haenen was awarded the Achterbergh Prize.

Archivorum is a non profit organisation that started in 2023. Archivorum has a tripartite focus: the Archive, Public Events and Research. What distinguishes Archivorum from other art foundations/organisations is the commitment to spreading archives as social resources of civil progress, as well as cultural growth. This is achieved by uniting the spaces of both a physical and online library and archive, with a physical space for residencies and public events, as well as education and research platforms. In continuation of its commitment to the protection and promotion of artists and art-related publishing, Archivorum is launching a series of artists’ books called Archivorum×M, and involves artists and publishers from all over the world, with the aim of enhancing and disseminating their creativity through books. Here, the nature of a ‘book’ becomes a peculiar expression of the artists’ creative production, yet also still an object of common use that can be disseminated more widely, accessible to all. 

From the beautiful appreciation by Maarten Asscher 'Unchaining the Form: On Babs Haenen's Ceramic Art' for this new publication:

'Clay, like sound, paint and language, is a basic material in the world, perhaps the most fundamental of all, on a level with water, air and fire. Its elemental character as an artistic medium corresponds with a very long history, longer than that of all the other materials and media mentioned so far. The earliest examples of heated clay objects date from some 25,000 years ago, making them almost twice as old as the earliest rock painting in the caves of Lascaux and five times as old as the earliest traces of human writing systems. 

In a way, every young artist embarking on a professional career must reinvent the whole history of an artistic discipline to achieve an individual mode of expression that fully realises the potential of the chosen medium. Starting out rather late at the age of 27, after several years of training as a dance teacher and two years of study in a fashion academy, Babs Haenen (born in 1948) set herself to master the potter’s craft. Honing her skills at Amsterdam’s renowned Rietveld Academy from 1974 to 1979, under the supervision of her ceramics teacher Jan van der Vaart, she soon banished the traditional potter’s wheel and began to explore and conquer other techniques and forms. As a result, in the ensuing years – in which she took her degree, became an independent ceramic artist and for many years herself worked as a teacher – she was able to develop her own style: raising pottery from its traditionally lowly status to achieve full artistic autonomy. Very soon, her accomplishments as a ceramic artist equipped her to meet the composer, the painter and the poet at eye-level.

With an expanding oeuvre of colourful and spectacular porcelain vases, sometimes called vessels or pots, her reputation spread, and from 1991 onwards – the year in which she was granted the Japanese Inax Design Prize – a stream of exhibitions established her as an innovative artist with an unmistakable style and technique, two elements that are closely and visibly linked in her work. What especially attracted the attention of critics, curators and collectors was the energy, the dancing quality, or as some have called it, the ‘turbulence’ in her treatment of the porcelain clay, and the rich and subtle colour effects that she elicited from the material with a multiple firing and glazing technique.

Babs Haenen’s fully developed status as an artist and figurehead of contemporary Dutch ceramic art was confirmed by prominent solo exhibitions in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Princessehof in Leeuwarden and other museums and prestigious galleries around the world. Her vases have found a place in the collection of dozens of national and international museums (including the MET, Cooper-Hewitt and Carnegie Institute in the US, Hetjens-Museum in Düsseldorf, Shigaraki in Japan), and in the homes of many collectors, some of whom who are willing to endure long waiting lists until a desired work has reached completion.'

 

www.babshaenen.com

www.themagicmegeve.com/the-art/archivorum-x-m/ 

An ArchivorumxM artist's book

€39.95

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