Johan Bakker – Rob Scholte ‘Reproduction Obliged’
Rob Scholte (foto QuizzClub)j
Rob Scholte ‘Reproduction Obliged’
De Bataafse Leeuw op de Cover van De Angst! (1982) van Rob Scholte (foto)
Rob Scholte (foto unknown)
Luther van Scholte in Maastricht
Baul Blanca – Portret Rob Scholte
Wat is het Beroep van Rob Scholte (foto QuizzClub)
Rob Scholte – Sign of the Times
Rob Scholte ‘Reproduction Obliged’
Rob Scholte: ‘Reproduction Obliged’
The Latest Retrospective of Rob Scholte in the Netherlands took place in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam: How to Star (1988). More than Three Decades Later, De Fundatie in Zwolle presents Reproduction Obliged, A Varied Selection from the Painted Oeuvre of the ‘King of Copyright’.
Mondriaan Revisited 2
Scholte has been preoccupied with the meaning of the term ‘property’ since the 1980s. As an artist, he was not allowed to depict a bottle of Coca Cola because of its image rights, but he encountered those bottles everywhere uninvited, so that he thought that he was forced to look at them. Thanks to his idiosyncratic approach and his immediately appealing style, Scholte soon became part of the international art scene. When leading American galleries indicated that he did not produce new work quickly enough, he made several series of screen prints like ‘Golden Horizon’ and ‘Tartufo Tartuffi’, both of which are represented in the Fundatie.
Tartufo Tartuffe 3.7, 5.3 & Golden Horizon 9, 17
Curator Ralph Keuning cannot possibly show everything that came out of Scholte’s hands. His most extensive work ‘Après nous le déluge’ is a reflection on the role of wars in history. Scholte painted this gigantic wall and ceiling mural with his team of assistants in a reconstructed version of Royal Palace Huis ten Bosch at Nagasaki Holland Village in Japan. This project fits perfectly with Scholte’s philosophy: copying reality takes on new meaning in a different context.
Question Mark 10
During his stay in Japan, Scholte also copied some billboards that he saw along the side of the road. These can be seen in Zwolle. Not many visitors will understand the meaning of the texts, so that they can focus their attention entirely on the image itself.
X Ray
On 24 November 1994 Scholte’s life changed dramatically. A hand grenade exploded under his BMW in the centre of Amsterdam, causing Scholte to lose both his legs. His pregnant wife actress Micky Hoogendijk lost her child as a result. A year later the artist exhibited his battered car in art centre Arti & Amicitae. De Fundatie also exhibits work that reflects on this dramatic event. The painted X-ray photos that the hospital made after Scholte’s accident are displayed on the museum wall in Zwolle. The distorted portraits of Princess Diana sitting in the back seat of a car are also revealing: ‘Lady Di and I were both possibly the victims of an assassination attempt,’ explains the artist.
Diana 1
Scholte has always had a love-hate relationship with the Netherlands. From 1995 to 2003 the artist lived and worked on Tenerife. Back in the Netherlands, he and his family settled in Den Helder, where he lived and worked in the former post office, which he transformed into the Rob Scholte Museum. In addition to his own work, he displayed his fascinating art collection there. Scholte seemed to have become a different person and found peace to create new work.Instead of being proud of the presence of one of the most important post-war Dutch artists, the narrow-minded municipal authorities put spokes in Scholte’s wheels. In 2018, the family was forcefully evicted and all the paintings and objects present in the museum were confiscated. The municipality of Den Helder were apparently not even willing to give up some of the works on loan for this exhibition
Elizabeth R
The amount of work that can be seen in Zwolle is therefore surprising. There are some wonderful examples from Scholte’s ‘Blue Period’ (2004). Reproduction Obliged shows many striking examples of Scholte’s copy art. For instance, he made an interesting series of painted signatures of celebrities such as Thomas Alpha Edison, Fred Astaire, Queen Elizabeth and himself as classic versions of contemporary graffiti tags.
Blue (2014)
In the open middle section, distorted portraits of women are displayed under the name ‘Plug-In’. Scholte’s self-mockery can be seen in ‘Nostalgia’ an enlarged and colour copied article from NRC Handelsblad of 3 December 1986, that accused the artist of plagiarism. It hangs next to ‘Utopia’, the work that was the subject of this unfortunate dispute.
Nostalgia
Utopia
ROB SCHOLTE REPRODUCTION OBLIGED
PAINTINGS
Museum De¨Fundatie
Zwolle
18 December 2021 t/m 26 June 2022
https://auteurjohanbakker.nl/en/rob-scholte-reproduction-obliged/
Meer informatie
https://robscholtemuseum.nl/?s=+Johan+Bakker