Lily van der Stokker
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Duration: 07:53-
Maurizio Cattelan: a striking portrait
00:30
Maurizio Cattelan (1960) made this self-portrait in 2002. A hole was made in the floor of the museum hall specially for this installation. With this, Cattelan breaks down the foundations of the museum, both literally and figuratively. The artist enjoys making fun of the museum as an institution. His works explore the borders between legal and illegal, responsible and immoral. In 2002, he exhibited a kneeling figure in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen of Hitler praying. This gave rise to enormous controversy: exactly Cattelan’s intention.
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The pleasure principle, Lily van der Stokker
00:60
Lily van der Stokker (1954, Den Bosch) is known for her works about optimism and kindness. In the past she has questioned the heavy, intellectual nature of the art world, replacing it with the so-called ‘pleasure principle’. She has made large wall paintings with fluorescent colours and decorative forms, and covered furniture, clothes and even entire buildings with her flower motifs. However, there is a critical dimension to this apparent frivolity. For Van der Stokker, art is not only about beauty and exaltation. And yet Van der Stokker’s idea of ugliness is presented with frills, curls and exuberant decoration.
An artist who makes ‘ugly drawings’ and presents her work in the museum under the title Terrible has quite a bit of explaining to do. In this interview, Lily van der Stokker explains that the game she plays with beautiful and ugly must be viewed in the light of her attitude to life. By constantly asking questions and by cutting the ground from under her own feet, she remains aware of what she is doing as an artist. In this way, producing art becomes therapeutic and at the same time contributes to a broad social discussion.
This interview is a compilation of an interview with Lily van der Stokker in Boijmans TV (episode 2: beautifully ugly), which she gave on the occasion of her exhibition Terrible (6 March - 13 June 2010). The interview is supplemented with material which could not, for time constraints, be included in the television programme.
