Dr. Marty Bax, art historian, international expert on the work of Piet Mondrian, and on Modern Art & Western Esotericism; Expert provenance researcher on the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in the Netherlands for the Claims Conference-World Jewish Restitution Organization Looted Art and Cultural Property Initiative

Websites by Bax Art Concepts & Services:

Company website baxart.com
Bax Book Store - ebooks on art and culture
Membership Database of the Theosophical Society 1875-1942
Museum3D - the first virtual multi-user museum on the web
Education


04 October 2013

Hilma and the enigmatic Mathilde N.


This year I have been in Sweden twice, for the retrospective exhibition on Hilma af Klint. The invitation came through the Ax:son Johnson Foundation, founded in 1947 by the late Consul General Axel Ax:son Johnson together with his wife Margaret, owner of the Nordstjernan group. The foundation, led by the highly amiable Kurt Almqvist, facilitates scientific research in general, but in particular the liberal arts and the social sciences. I was deeply impressed by their hospitality and professionalism. The foundation has clearly thought very deeply and constructively about their strategy how to inform a wider public about pressing issues in society. Conferences with scholars from all over the world, a website, a magazine, even their own TV channel with the top-Swedish interviewer Thomas Gür, who courteously and tongue-in-cheek said it was his fun ‘to ask stupid questions and get intelligent answers’. All in all: amazing. I wish we had such an institution in my country!

The adventure started in February, when an expert meeting was organized at the opening of the exhibition. The meeting was held in Engelsberg, a top-list Unesco heritage site own by the Ax:son group. Mid-winter, snow-covered landscape in the middle of the woods, paths at night lighted with candles along the sides, in the typically Swedish manner. A truly romantic setting. And a relaxed place to meet many international colleagues from other disciplines. For me personally, my acquaintance with Hilma’s work came full circle, when I met Maurice Tuchman again, who in 1986 organized The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. Its venue at The Hague constituted my first job as a curator. That exhibition showed Hilma’s work in public for the first time after WWII.

In May some of the scholars travelled to Stockholm again, at the closing of the exhibition, to lecture at a public conference in the Moderna Museet. The main objective of the conference was to publicly discuss how Hilma af Klint and her art should be positioned in her time, between the other pioneers of abstract art, and how her art can be understood. The debate intended also to point towards the future. Where does Hilma advance from here? Where should her position be within art history? All of the proceedings and the interviews circling around these basic questions are now on the Axess website. In this blog I want to add a little more to the discussion.

13 July 2013

Biography on Grete Trakl coming up in 2014

During the last four years I have been researching the life of Grete Trakl (1891-1917), sister of the well-known Austrian 'expressionist' poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914). Although Georg has been a research topic ever since he died, the biography of his favorite sister Grete, with whom he is said to have had an incestuous relationship, has been remarkably sketchy. Until now.
My book is planned for late October 2014, to celebrate the centennial of Georg's death on November 3, 1914. I plan to issue at least one interactive version of the book on a digital publishing platform that I am building at this moment, with music and with film footage I made on my travels to hotspots in Grete’s life. 

17 May 2013

Happy days with pianist Andrej Hoteev

Last week the St. Petersburg concert pianist Andrej Hoteev flew in from Hamburg, his current residence, to be interviewed and filmed about his friendship with Ben Joppe (1915-2007), artist and private secretary of the orchestra conductor Bernard Haitink, and about all the historical events leading to this friendship. It was a truly inspirational meeting, in romantic surroundings, with an excellent team of professionals: artist Guido Pera, Ben's last close friend; Jeroen Hommels, restorer and dealer of Steinway pianos; Robert van Voren, expert in Russian mental healthcare and professor in Sovietology and Oral History in Kaunas (Lithuania) and Tbilisi (Georgia); and Vincent Nijman and Fuji Rademaker, a swell camera team. We also made a history tour to Ben Joppe's house, still intact in Zeeland, where Andrej could see the painting he first saw during his visit to Ben's apartment in the 1990's, above the Steendrukkerij Amsterdam. Which is where I met Ben, during my job as the gallery assistant. History can move in strange circles.

07 March 2013

'Character is destiny' - Piet Mondrian and his horoscope

Recently the Netherlands Institute for Art History acquired the Harry Holtzman Estate on Piet Mondrian. Among the very few documents Mondrian preserved until his death is an interesting one: the horoscope Mondrian had drawn for him late 1911-early 1912.

Already in 1993-1994, as I was working on the exhibition Piet Mondrian 1892-1914. The Amsterdam Years in the Amsterdam City Archives – now housed in the building designed by Mondrian’s co-theosophist Karel de Bazel – I had several talks with my colleague Robert Welsh about the horoscope. I wondered which insights Mondrian had drawn from it, concerning his personality and his career. Judging from the vast network I uncovered during my investigations, it had become clear that Mondrian was not the stiff, introverted man he has always been judged to be. A better characterization would be: a solitary person among his fellow people, someone who weaved in and out of social circles in a receptive and playful, but at the same time reserved, independent and reflexive way. ‘Piet, now you see him, now you don’t’, was the jokey description of him at gallery openings in Paris.

Yesterday, on 7 March 2013, the birthday of Mondrian, the website www.mondriaan.nl was launched. Posthumously Mondrian received an impressive and modern birthday present. In another way Mondrian himself celebrated his birthday on 7 March 1908 by treating himself to the lecture Rudolf Steiner gave in Amsterdam. He kept the Dutch transcription of Steiner’s lectures all his life, together with his horoscope. Apparently they meant much to him.

07 December 2012

Edwin Lutyens, Charles Bressey and my mother



In one of my previous blogs I mentioned the suffragist Lady Emily Lutyens. Emily was née Bulwer Lytton, daughter of the Viceroy of India Robert, and wife of one of the most prominent architects of her time, Edwin Lutyens. Edwin became famous as a country-house architect, but even more so as the architect of New Delhi, a job which he got through his father-in-law of course. Emily became a member of the Theosophical Society in 1910. As an upper-class lady she became a pillar in the financial and social support of the Society. 

Theosophical connections or influence do not interest me much this time, however. I am more interested in the architect Edwin himself and his connections. Because these eventually, in a wide arch and only indirectly, come back to my own family. More precisely: my mother. It is too amusing a story not to tell, with an unusual twist, interesting historical dimensions and even a connection with art! It also serves to tell how someone can strike a deep note within someone else, without ever hearing how effective the strike had been.

06 October 2012

A theosophical chemist and a touchy art collector. Hermann Hille vs. Albert C. Barnes



This story begins with the German organic chemist Hermann Hille. Hermann was born on June 7, 1871 in Mölln, Northern Germany, the city where the famous prankster Till Eulenspiegel presumably died in 1350. The young Hermann studied in Würzburg and received his PhD in 1900 in Heidelberg for his mere 42-page study Ueber das primäre und sekundäre symmetrische Hydrazid der Propionsäure und Valeriansäure. The title sounds as if the 29-year old Hermann was a bright young guy in his field. That is why he was soon recruited by a young American chemist, Albert Coombs Barnes, who lured him into an adventure in the USA. It was to be a great adventure.

19 July 2012

The suffragette and the Dodge heiress at The Art Archives



Muriel and Gilbert on their honeymoon, 1891.
Countess Muriel De La Warr, nee Brassey (1872-1930), became a member of The Theosophical Society as a convinced and active suffragette. She did not pride herself on her progressive work and her financing of the movement, according to a close friend, the Christian Socialist George Lansbury. Lansbury was one of the founders of the Daily Herald and a fervent supporter of women’s rights. His campaigns were largely funded by Muriel. George had been a railway contractor before his political career, just as Muriel’s grandfather had been, Thomas Brassey (1805-1870). He laid the railways throughout the whole of the British Empire. And had as a result become unfathomably rich. But this was not enough for Muriel. She wanted to have the title of a countess. Therefore Muriel married Gilbert Sackville, 8th Earl De La Warr (pronounced as: Delaware) in 1891. Gilbert belonged to the oldest of English upper-class families. However, his family’s fortunes had dwindled, and he needed money. Muriel had enough of the stuff.

04 April 2012

The Victory Boogie Woogie - a corpse dissected


Last week I received a review copy from the Amsterdam University Press: a new book on Piet Mondrian, Inside Out Victory Boogie Woogie, edited by Maarten van Bommel, Hans Janssen and Ron Spronk. Mondrian started on the painting Victory Boogie Woogie in 1942, but it stayed unfinished because of his death in February 1944. The painting was bought in 1998 from the collector Samuel Irving Newhouse at a whopping price of 82 million Guilders (approx. 37 million Euro’s) through a gift of the Dutch National Bank to commemorate the introduction of the Euro in the Netherlands. The acquisition caused a public outrage, and even the House of Representatives raised questions about the way it was acquired. But now the painting is on victorious display in the Gemeentemuseum of the Hague, and is by now a prominent attraction of the museum.

26 March 2012

ORF Sendung 'Schwarze Löcher der Wissenschaftskultur - die magische und technische Evidenz der Medien'


Hören Sie die Ö1 Sendung "Dimensionen – die Welt der Wissenschaft" zum Thema "Schwarze Löcher der Wissenschaftskultur. Die magische und technische Evidenz von Medien" von Gudrun Braunsperger vom Dienstag, 14. Februar 2012 um 19.05 Uhr in oe1.ORF.at. Die Sendung ist hier im Audiostream abhörbar bis dem 22. Juni 2012.

Ich danke Dr. Gudrun Braunsperger and Dr. Franz Tomandl, Chef-Redaktor of 'Dimensionen - die Welt der Wissenschaft' herzlich für diese spezielle Genehmigung!

In December 2010 the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) in Vienna hosted a conference 'Touché. Die magische und technische Evidenz der Medien', to which Bax Art contributed. Reporter Dr. Gudrun Braunsperger of the Austrian ORF produced the radio program 'Schwarze Löcher der Wissenschaftskultur' in the section 'Dimensionen - die Welt der Wissenschaft'. It was broadcasted on February 14, at 19.05 hrs at oe1.ORF.at. The audiostream is freely accessible here until June 22, 2012. 

Many thanks to Dr. Gudrun Braunsperger and Dr. Franz Tomandl, Editor-in-chief of 'Dimensionen - die Welt der Wissenschaft' for this special permission!

News and recent activities - Newsletter March 2012


In December 2011 the IFK in Vienna hosted a conference 'Touché. Die magische und technische Evidenz der Medien', to which Bax Art contributed. Gudrun Braunsperger of the Austrian ORF produced the radio program 'Schwarze Löcher der Wissenschaftskultur' in the section 'Dimensionen - die Welt der Wissenschaft'. It was broadcasted on February 14, at 19.05 hrs at oe1.ORF.at.
Bax Art received special permission from ORF to give you free access to the audiostream until June 22.


The opening of the Ben Joppe exhibition, performed by the designer Wim Crouwel, was a great success. A few hundred fans attended the opening with performances by the Amsterdam Chamber Theatre and Rusalki Quartet and with superb sushi from Yatta Sushi. Full report is given on the Ben Joppe Facebook page

The intelligent, beautiful and utterly professional social media expert Jennifer Delano brought Ben Joppe back to life through Facebook and Twitter.
Discover how she crept into the skin of Ben Joppe and created a host of fans!


Jan Stap published a book on 'Mondrian the man'. Not his art, but his character and social life is the main focus, with totally new information on Mondrian's youth in Winterswijk.
Jan Stap donated his documentation and images exclusively to TheArtArchives for study by others. Many thanks! The files will be uploaded soon.


TheArtArchives recently posted a new portion of the membership list of the Theosophical Society. Now the period 1875-1915 is available, covering nearly 58.000 members. A valuable source for genealogy, art history and social history!

05 March 2012

Membership list Theosophical Society online at TheArtArchives

On January 1, 1915 the Theosophical Society registered its 57.762th member at the headquarters in Adyar, India.The popularity of the society had increased immensely. More people joined the society in this decade compared to the 30-year period 1875-1905.
Many new countries are now represented, e.g. Hungary, Finland, Cuba, Egypt, Tasmania, Mauritius, Russia, South-Africa, Greece, Turkey. And the first Japanese member registered.
All 57.761 members can now be studied at TheArtArchives
The list shows a colorful bunch of people: Karl Wolfskehl, Piet Mondrian, Yiddu Krishnamurti, Christian Morgenstern, Fritz von Herzmanovsky, Ada Fuller, Emily Lutyens, Ely Star, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Marie Langen-von Strachwitz, Countess Maria Radziwill, Baroness Maya Knoop, Henri Soubeyran de Saint-Prix and Prince Mohamed Riza Khan.
Behind every name is a story, sometimes with a surprising twist. Today the story of the Lithuanian Count Maurycy Prozor

03 March 2012

The story of Count Prozor

On January 1, 1915 the Theosophical Society registered its 57.762th member at the headquarters in Adyar, India.The popularity of the society had increased immensely. More people joined the society in this decade, compared to the 30-year period 1875-1905.
All 57.761 members can now be studied at TheArtArchives!

The list shows a colorful bunch op people: Karl Wolfskehl, Piet Mondrian, Yiddu Krishnamurti, Christian Morgenstern, Fritz von Herzmanovsky, Ada Fuller, Emily Lutyens, Ely Star, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Marie Langen-von Strachwitz, Countess Maria Radziwill, Henri Soubeyran de Saint-Prix and Prince Mohamed Riza Khan.
Behind every name is a story, sometimes with a surprising twist.
Today the story of the Lithuanian Count Maurycy Prozor.