Membership list Theosophical Society online again

Due to various circumstances, not in the least because of extreme monsoons in India last December, my site TheArtArchives eventually became defunct. This site contained the membership list ( "General Register") of the Theosophical Society (Adyar branch) from 1875-1915. A new site has been established, www.tsmembers.org, which now makes it possible to study the list until 1942. Head over there and start your search!

New books at Bax Book Store

How influences of western esotericism in art are influenced by family networks

Art is not only the product of artistic inspiration, it is also determined by the social context of an artist. The avant-garde was ideologically determined by Western Esotericism, especially spiritualism, modern theosophy and anthroposophy. Genealogical methods uncover networks of artists, which not only run ‘vertically’ in generations, but also in ‘horizontal’ lines between families.
Text in Dutch.

Mondrian's Passions

No artist has changed the face of modern art, design and architecture more fundamentally than the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. During his career Mondrian slowly but surely evolved from a traditional 19th century realist painter to the prime pioneer of pure abstraction.
Post-war art historians and critics have always depicted Mondrian as an odd hermit, socially shy and introverted, with a frame of thinking as rectilinear as his art and his Calvinist upbringing.
But how true to his life is this image really?
This book is about Mondrian’s true passions: how painting, the struggle with outward appearance and painterly substance, becomes the inner expression of a view on life; how writing about painting evaluates ideas and development; and the cultivation an extensive social network to reach out to the world.
Mondrian’s message can be condensed into the magical amount of seven words: Art is passion, and passion is life.
This book contains a selection of seminal essays on Mondrian, published in international exhibition catalogues and books between 1994 and 2014, in various languages.

The painting methods of Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck

De Stijl movement never was a coherent group. Analysis of the painting methods of Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Bart van de Leck reveal why.

  

How genealogy explains Theo van Doesburg's alias

The real name of the artist Theo van Doesburg, most active propagator of the De Stijl movement, was Christian Emil Marie Küpper. How and why did this Emil Küpper decide on his alias? Genealogy has all the answers.

 

Jacques Northe - Amortisatie (Amortization)

Bax Book Store holds the honor of publishing an extraordinary book by Jacques Northe.

 

Jacques Northe (ps. of Jacques Sitter) was born in Amsterdam in 1934. After studying history in the 1950’s he worked in theater, film and opera in cities as Berlin, Zürich and Paris. In 1974 Northe self-published the first part of his opinionated and meandering debut novel Amortisatie (Amortization) in a stenciled edition of 150. Fragments of the manuscript Wenk (Hint) were published in Raster and in the Flemish magazine Heibel. Subsequently little was heard of the writer who so promisingly entered the sphere of literature.
His work was rediscovered in 2010 by writer and photographer Lucas Hügsen. Through his efforts the first complete publication of Amortization has been realized.

Amortization is about a certain Waldemar, in whose estate an unfinished manuscript is found on a committee issuing a liber amicorum on the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. That story, with its numerous cultural and political ramifications, is so bizarre that an unnamed introducer, vaguely reminiscent of Charles Kinbote in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, feels the need to annotate the text and provide comments.

New websites Bax Art

During the last few months I have been updating various sites to fully responsive websites.
Enjoy the new dynamic layout and new functionalities!