A free five-day stay if artist in residence in a luxurious suite of a five-star hotel in the center of Amsterdam, including dinners, room service and what not. During the corona pandemic, few artists turned down the offer of hotel The Grand. In exchange for the hospitality offered, they had to give up a work of art made during their stay.
Mayor Femke Halsema opened the exhibition of Artists in Residence at The Grand (AIR), as the project has been named. On the ground floor, the hotel displays 52 works of art by as many painters, sculptors, photographers and writers. A large proportion of the works are for sale, a smaller portion, by the best-known artists, will be auctioned by Christie’s later this month. The entire proceeds will go to Dutch artists associated with the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. The Prince Bernhard Cultuurfonds, together with the academy, is responsible for allocating the funds.
Closed schools
The project is an idea of Ivo Weyel, a freelance publicist who writes a lot about the good life. Shortly after the outbreak of the corona pandemic, he became bored. “I wanted to do something, but everything was closed.” When he saw a report on television about the enormous consequences of the pandemic for the art sector, Weyel called Emmy Stoel, general manager at The Grand.
The director immediately embraced Weyel’s proposal for a year-long artist in residence project at the hotel. “A no-brainer,” says Stoel. “The Grand has a rich art history and the lack of tourists allowed artists to bring a bit of liveliness to the hotel.”
Because of the beautiful incidence of light, Stoel reserved suite number 742 for a year (daily price in the high season 1,200 euros). For inspiration, she hung a work of art by Karel Appel from the hotel collection in the living room of the suite.
Writer Sophie van der Stap was the first to move into the rooms on 17 August 2020. Sculptor Ivan Cremer stayed at the hotel for five days from January 3 this year as the 52nd and last artist. Weyel: “Due to corona, the hotel was sometimes obliged to close, so the project ultimately took seventeen months.”
The interviews in the extensive digital exhibition catalog show that some older artists have a personal connection with the stately hotel building, which was Amsterdam’s city hall until 1988. Their parents got married there or they submitted grant applications to the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts a long time ago.
Johan Cruijff
Sculptor and performance artist Adriaan Rees (65) remembers sitting in the then council chamber in football uniform on 2 December 1968. He was one of the pupils of Ajax who the marriage of star player Johan Cruijff attended.
More than half a century later, in the summer of 2020, Rees thoroughly enjoyed his stay at the hotel. He started his days as an artist in residence swimming laps in the pool. Then he visited the sauna, and then had breakfast in the courtyard in a white hotel bathrobe with warm rolls and cool champagne. Rees: “I felt like a little prince. Certainly when I asked whether it was not a problem for me to appear at breakfast in a bathrobe. ‘Mr Rees’, the waiter replied, ‘you are our guest.’”
An experience that inspired him for his contribution to the project. In Tokyo, Rees says, he had once seen a sumo wrestler in a bathrobe on the subway. No traveler took offense to that. Would that also be the case in Amsterdam, he wondered. With a photographer in tow, the performance artist went into the city in his breakfast suit: to Dam Square, the Red Light District, with the ferry across the IJ, a ride on the metro.
He got to know his own city in a new way, Rees says. “Apparently it is appreciated if you manifest yourself so vulnerable. Tourists took selfies with me and I got nothing but positive reactions.” His contribution to the exhibition is a framed photograph in which he, seated in a bathrobe on the war memorial on Dam Square, embraces an Italian tourist. Asking price: 450 euros.
magnet fishermen
Photographer Bob Eshuis did something completely different. He wanted to comb waste in the Red Light District for one of his waste-photos: still lifes à la the seventeenth-century fine painters, but with litter instead of rummers and oysters. Contrary to expectations, Eshuis found little to his liking in the red light district. “A well-maintained neighborhood; a sweeper comes by every ten minutes.”
To his delight he saw magnet fishermen behind the hotel. They fished rusty metal objects from the canal: bicycle wheels, cut padlocks, a shopping cart. Initially, he lug the mess through a back entrance to his suite, to his makeshift photo studio. Until the hotel concierge encouraged him to just walk through the lobby. Eshuis: „Staying there felt like a warm bath; the staff was always curious to see what I was doing.” Christie’s will soon be auctioning his rust still life with, among other things, an umbrella handle and a waste can with a target price of at least 1,000 euros.
Performance artist Adriaan Rees (65) is looking forward to the opening of the exhibition. In line with his contribution to the exhibition, for the occasion he will again dress in only a bathrobe and slippers from the hotel. On his wish list, Rees says, is a selfie with Mayor Halsema.
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