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Lot Essay
With its ambiguous narrative, coarse expressionistic style and blend of abstraction and representational imagery, Gespletenheid Geaccepteerd (Disunity Accepted) is a comprehensive example of René Daniëls’ graphic signature. Pinned at the nape, the figure exposes its two heads to the viewer. The duplicity of form in the foreground is mirrored in the background as the tree splits at the trunk. An arrow shot heart is engraved on the left side of the tree, bookmarked by the letter ‘p’. Suggesting more than it reveals, the work evokes an atmosphere to which form and content are subservient.
In a 1983 interview in Haagse Post, Anna Tilrose asked ‘There are regularly recurring figures with two heads in your work. Are these two souls also hiding inside you?’ to which Daniëls’ replies ‘Yes, and they argue as well! What people often see in my work, is their own frustrations. And that is what they will have to do with. I don’t have to explain everything from A to Z about my work?’. Highlighting the ambiguous nature of Daniëls’ work as well as the importance of the viewer’s interpretation, Daniëls’ interview indicates that he may have seen himself as the figure with two heads represented in his work.
Throughout the 1980s, Daniëls’ work becomes more versatile and complex, with recurring motifs creating a network of staggered meanings throughout his oeuvre. The two-headed figure reoccurs in his Historia Mysteria series, painted as a critique of the art establishment. Executed the same year, the present work may be understood as both a criticism and participation within the commercial art world. Read in this context, Daniëls creates a paradox for the viewer as at this time Daniëls’ work was being shown in galleries throughout Europe and included in the seminal international exhibitions of the decade; Westkunst, Documenta VII and Zeitgeist.
Defying coherent interpretation, Gespletenheid Geaccepteerd (Disunity Accepted) is a paradoxical combination of playfulness and subversion. The visual poetry of Daniëls’ work is confirmed by artist himself, ‘I think you can divide art history into people who are concerned with the well-founded development of a particular style and artists who keep on taking different routes. I feel at home with the latter group’ (Dorine Duyster, ed, Sputterance: Texts on and by René Daniëls, De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, 2007, p. 28).
The present work installed at the René Daniëls, John van 't Slot exhibition at 121 Art Gallery, Antwerp, 1982.
René Daniëls, Untitled, 1982.
In a 1983 interview in Haagse Post, Anna Tilrose asked ‘There are regularly recurring figures with two heads in your work. Are these two souls also hiding inside you?’ to which Daniëls’ replies ‘Yes, and they argue as well! What people often see in my work, is their own frustrations. And that is what they will have to do with. I don’t have to explain everything from A to Z about my work?’. Highlighting the ambiguous nature of Daniëls’ work as well as the importance of the viewer’s interpretation, Daniëls’ interview indicates that he may have seen himself as the figure with two heads represented in his work.
Throughout the 1980s, Daniëls’ work becomes more versatile and complex, with recurring motifs creating a network of staggered meanings throughout his oeuvre. The two-headed figure reoccurs in his Historia Mysteria series, painted as a critique of the art establishment. Executed the same year, the present work may be understood as both a criticism and participation within the commercial art world. Read in this context, Daniëls creates a paradox for the viewer as at this time Daniëls’ work was being shown in galleries throughout Europe and included in the seminal international exhibitions of the decade; Westkunst, Documenta VII and Zeitgeist.
Defying coherent interpretation, Gespletenheid Geaccepteerd (Disunity Accepted) is a paradoxical combination of playfulness and subversion. The visual poetry of Daniëls’ work is confirmed by artist himself, ‘I think you can divide art history into people who are concerned with the well-founded development of a particular style and artists who keep on taking different routes. I feel at home with the latter group’ (Dorine Duyster, ed, Sputterance: Texts on and by René Daniëls, De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, 2007, p. 28).
The present work installed at the René Daniëls, John van 't Slot exhibition at 121 Art Gallery, Antwerp, 1982.
René Daniëls, Untitled, 1982.