Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2004 awarded to Daan van Golden
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art 2004 (EUR 50,000) to Daan van Golden 'for his versatile output as an artist and his ability to place art in a new context, time and again'.
Daan van Golden has been working as an artist for over forty years, a period of major change in the world of modern art. Van Golden's response to that change has been both exciting and complex. Younger generations of artists particularly appreciate the extraordinary way in which he presents his paintings, photographs and other works in installations and publications, which then become works of art in themselves.
Van Golden's earliest works were abstract-expressionist in nature. In 1963, while in Japan, he embarked on a radical change in style and began a series of painstaking depictions of textile and wrapping paper patterns in enamel paint. His use of existing commercial products betrays the influence of pop art, then in its ascendancy, but in Van Golden's hands such references take on a quality of timeless elegance. His work thereafter uses a highly diverse range of images, drawing on both high and popular culture. Van Golden often sees images within images; in Pollock (1991), for example, he enlarges a detail of an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock to suggest an animal figure. His photographs, frequently taken during his travels, also contain many autobiographical references, for example the series documenting his daughter Diana's life from infant to adult.
In 1968, Van Golden was invited to exhibit at Documenta 4 in Kassel, where he combined existing and new paintings to produce an intriguing installation. He repeated this approach at subsequent exhibitions, but he also produced work in situ. During the Century 87 exhibition in 1987, Van Golden covered the paths of the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam with blue gravel, inspired by Mexico's Agua Azul riverine landscape. In the mid-1990s he redesigned parts of the inner and outer courtyards of the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.
Daan van Golden (born in Rotterdam in 1936) lives and works in Schiedam, the Netherlands. After at-tending technical school, he enrolled at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Technical Sciences, where he specialised in painting and took classes in graphic techniques. He also worked as a window dresser for De Bijenkorf, an exclusive chain of department stores. He spent 1963 to 1965 in Japan and has travelled widely since then, with long sojourns in such places as Morocco, India, Indonesia, and North and South America. His travels have found their expression in his work.
There have been two major solo exhibitions of Daan van Golden's work, one organised by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in 1982 (Daan van Golden - 1963-1982) and the other by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1991 (Daan van Golden - Works 1962-1991). Van Golden was one of the artists featured in the Dutch pavilion at the 1999 Venice Biennial. Solo exhibitions have been organised in Geneva, Dijon, Paris and Göteborg. Van Golden's work can also be viewed regularly at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer in Antwerp.
The Heineken Prize for Art
The Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art was awarded for the first time in 1988. Previous winners include Aernout Mik for video art (2002), Guido Geelen for ceramics (2000) and Marrie Bot for photography (1990). The jury (Henk van Os, chair, Carel Blotkamp, Ed Taverne and Ilja Veldman) is awarding the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art to Daan van Golden for his entire oeuvre.
Unlike the other Heineken Prizes, the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art is awarded by a jury which is independent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Although a number of jury members are also members of the Academy, they are acting in a private capacity.
The five Heineken Prizes for science, scholarship and art are presented every other year during a special session of the Academy. This year the presentation will take place on Friday 1 October at the Beurs van Berlage Building in Amsterdam.
KNAW
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