Foreword
About the purpose of the yearbook The Low Countries. Foreword to the very first issue.
www.the-low-countries.com
High Road to Culture in Flanders and the Netherlands
About the purpose of the yearbook The Low Countries. Foreword to the very first issue.
Rotterdam has played a leading role in the field of architecture since the 1920s. On the one hand the municipal council is not afraid to choose radical new approaches. One fruit of this is for instance that the city is enriched with a spect...
However perilous it may be to attempt to pin down an artist as protean as Hugo Claus to a single basic attitude, it is perhaps possible to trace his incessant experimenting and his continual shifts in form of expression back to a fundamenta...
It is an indisputable fact that the existing linguistic variety is rapidly being eroded in virtually every part of the world. But if the Netherlands wishes to remain a Dutch-speaking country, while at the same time benefiting from its situa...
Mini-essays on and translated poems by Miriam Van hee, Elma van Haren, Anneke Brassinga, Anna Enquist, Christine D'Haen, Eva Gerlach and Marieke Jonkman (who turned out to be a male poet in the end).
The musical relationship between England and Flanders from the 15th to the beginning of the 17th century can be graphically portrayed as a monumental arch linking two massive pillars. The first pillar represents the early 15th-century 'fris...
While Dutch feature films have never attracted great interest in other countries, documentaries have always enjoyed a high reputation at home and abroad. Aan article about some classics and the future of the Dutch documentary.
The author points out that the Dutch policy preparation regarding environment is without doubt superior to that in Flanders. However, this need not necessarily mean that the quality of the environment policy itself or, more important, the q...
Roger Raveel's contemporary painting is rooted in a tradition which begins with the Flemish Primitives. The power of his art lies in the exceptionally varied way in which he attempts to give shape to the complexity of life. His work, which ...
A brief look at some of the leading 'postmodernist' (post-war) writers in the Netherlands and Flanders, such as Louis Paul Boon, Sybren Polet, Louis Ferron and Ivo Michiels. The author notes that the picture of postmodernist literature in D...
Mondrian, who started out as a fairly traditional landscape painter has come a long way in his last paintings. In Broadway Boogie-Woogie and Victory Boogie-Woogie he added a new and quite significant dimension to his abstract work. The prom...
Although the Netherlands is no longer the 'Christian nation' of the 19th century, the importance of religion nowadays should not be underestimated. Apart from being an important historical heritage, Christian ideology and the churches still...
From Georg Everhard Rumphius to Beb Vuyk and A. Alberts, we see that Dutch colonial literature is not a poor relation of mainstream Dutch letters. It developed continguously with Western literature, acquiring its own specific themes, mandat...
Marlene Dumas is a South African painter residing in the Netherlands, yet she finds her work relevant and useful for her new home country: 'Let us make mountains for those who have no mountains. Let us invent incredible stories and sagas fo...
About the mutual increase of interest between ex-colony and ex-colonizer. At the beginning of 1993, after a confusing and tumultuous year, the author notes that the prospects for wide-ranging intensive cooperation between the two countries ...
About the blooming of contemporary dance in the Netherlands and Flanders. But if dance in the Netherlands is relatively cherished and cared for like a hothouse plant, in Flanders the various groups have to contend with weather conditions mo...
Belgium was born of a divorce and in 1992 we see a state with three linguistic and cultural communities that are officially recognised. And the author concludes that the evolution towards a Belgian confederation does not seem to be grinding...
Within the context of contemporary Flemish art history, the sculptor José Vermeersch is a unique figure. The way he uses his fragile material to express his feelings is both classical and contemporary. He has also succeeded in using ceramic...
A double portrait of two great Dutch historians. Between the two world wars and during the first decade thereafter both were considered abroad to be the best representatives of the Dutch historical profession and both wrote books and essays...
A poet among the professors: the writer's personal take on his time as a visiting lecturer at Berkeley University.
A short portrait of Cees Nooteboom as novelist, poet and travel writer.
A short history of one of the most important museums in the Netherlands: the Mauritshuis in The Hague, home of the Royal Picture Collection.
The 'reality effect' peculiar to much Dutch painting has persuaded many viewers that this art registers how things are or how they were. But art historians have argued that things are not what they seem to the eye - they are devised with me...
As soon as biochemists began to grasp the principles of genetics, many Flemish researchers immediately jumped the boat as well. Today they are still manning the decks and are even playing a leading role in many fields.
The poems of Rutger Kopland are very accessible and inviting. But for Kopland that poetry about familiar situations and emotions is at the same time a way to ask questions, and to keep on asking them: the poet as a digger.