Page 42 - 1968 ... 2013 Soft Living Room

The Soft Living Room by armchairs. Everything breathes the spirit of the time: new
materials, hallucinating colours, a youthful atmosphere

Maria Van Elk and a wink to design, advertising and pop culture.

Ria van Elk (she later used her original name, Maria)
Bert Jansen spends a year studying at the Academy in Groningen,
from 1961 to 1962. In 1962 she moves to Amsterdam and
marries Lysander Apol. She met Lysander in the circle of
The Sixties friends held by her brother, Ger van Elk, and his class-
mates at the Academy of Art in Amsterdam, later renamed
Maria van Elk tells me that there must be a forgotten the Rietveld Academy. These were among others, Wim
Polaroid somewhere of her standing on a pedestal by Schippers, Bas Jan Ader, Bob Wesdorp and Art van West-
Mansoni. The photo is taken in the Stedelijk Museum erop. They present themselves in July 1961 in newspapers
Amsterdam during the Zero Exhibition in 1965. On and magazines as the Adynamic Group and follow up in
display was a Socle Vivante by Manzoni (1961), a wooden December with an exhibition in the Fodor Museum. Ger
pedestal with two footprints on which you could stand van Elk and Bas Jan Ader have already departed for Los
and be transformed into a sculpture, according to the Angeles, at the time.
artist, as long as you stood there. This kind of work
characterised the sixties in which art, and ideas thereof, Unlike her brother and his friends, Maria’s entry into
changed vastly. Artworks of the period consist sometimes the museum art world takes place via advertising and
of a performance by the artist himself or of an idea about the club circuit in which she and her husband move. Her
art. Sometimes the artwork has the dimension of land mother-in-law, Anni Apol, along with Benno Premsela,
art, outside in nature, or takes the temporary form of a is responsible for the design of the window spaces at the
momentary installation, which is or is not captured in a Bijenkorf department store. In one instance, Maria designs
photograph. In general the separation between artist and one of these window spaces for a large food campaign.
viewer, between the making and the perception of art,
is demolished. Another typical characteristic is the use Lysander Apol makes a collage in 1962 for Knoll Inter-
of new materials such as plastics, artificial fur and visual national’s window at the Bijenkorf and works as an art
references to the pop(ular) culture that symbolises the new director at the advertising agency Prad. Maria would later
era. Everything at the time is focussed on removing the pose as a model for a milk campaign by the same agency
division between high and low art. with the slogan: Milk, The White Engine. At the time,
she visits many clubs, the Bimhuis for instance, where
As I write this, examples of this period are on view at the Maarten van Regteren Altena plays jazz sessions with Han
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in a hall dedicated to the Bennink, Willen Breuker and Micha Mengelberg. She
decade. A textile collage by Maria van Elk from 1967, remembers also the jazz concerts of Thelonious Monk,
Mama Watch Your Kids, hangs next to a painting by Roy Charlie Parker and John Coltrane at the Concertgebouw,
Lichtenstein, As I Opened Fire, in the style of an enlarged in 1961. Talking points in the visual arts world at the time
comic strip. Also in Maria’s work, comic strip elements are the Zero shows at the Stedelijk Museum, of 1962 and
are incorporated. On the opposite wall is exhibited High 1965. The installation Black Water by Armando, where
Voltage by Martial Rayss, a photo portrait of a woman in a dark room, you walk across a platform over a layer of
coloured using aerosol paint, her mouth executed in neon. water on black plastic, suggesting an unfathomable depth,
Next to this hangs a work by Michel Cardena in vinyl and makes a deep impression on her. As does a happening with
plastic. Alongside this, a work by Pieter Engels in which the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama in the Birds Club on
an expensive women’s patent leather coat is removed of its the Rembrandtplein, where a naked Jan Schoonhoven is
meaning as clothing and is pulled flat into a monochrome painted with white dots that illuminate under black lights.
yellow painting. In the centre of the hall stand two plastic This happening precedes repetitions in gallery Orez in

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