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East West Foundation (EWF)
| A short overview
This text gives a concise overview
of the East West Foundation. It tells about board and advisers, subsidizers,
former projects, aims, origin, method of working, plans and aes-thetic
viewpoints. The EWF was founded in 1996 in the old Dutch university city
Leiden.
Former subsidizers and sponsors:
Anjerfonds
Zuid-Holland; Dienst Cultuur en Educatie gemeente Leiden; Ministerie van Cultuur
Iran; Ned. Commissie voor Duurzame Ontwikkeling; Ned. Ambassade Damascus; Prins
Claus Fonds; Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Zuid-Holland; Stichting Doen; VSB
Fonds; VSB Fonds Den Haag en O., Ned. Ambassade in Vietnam.
Former
EWF-exhibition projects
Apart from some smaller shows the projects
concerned:
-1997 ‘Free scope on Chinese tradition’, retrospective in 3
locations in Leiden and 1 in Antwerp of the Malayan-Chinese painter Chung Chen
Sun
- 2001 ‘A new look at Iran’, a selection of some 90 works of 18 Iranian
artists in The Pieterskerk and in Galerie Amber Leiden and in Pulchri Studio in
The Hague.
- 2002 ‘Dena’ about 80 works of 12 Iranian female painters in
Galerie Amber and Caro Art Gallery, Leiden, and in the Haagse Kunstkring in The
Hague
- 2002/2003, ‘Syria Now’, about 80 works of 8 Syrian artists in Art
gallery Caro and Galerie Amber, Leiden, and the Publiekscentrum Beeldende Kunst
in Enschede
- 2003/2004, ‘Vietnam Today’, about 100 works of 10 Vietnamese artists in Art Gallery Caro and Galerie Amber in Leiden.
Galerie Amber, EWF office and secretariat
Galerie Amber, founded in 1988, exhibited from the beginning works of modern Asian artists: Japan, China, Vietnam, India, Malaysia. Often the preparation of Amber shows required disproportionate expenses, efforts and working time. In 1994 Amber organized in the ‘Old Church’ in Amsterdam an
exhibition which with a quotation of Kipling was called ‘Meeting of the Twain’
[East and West]. In addition of 50 old kakemono the gallery showed more than two
hundred works of contemporary artists from East and West.
In order to
prevent such risky adventures as well as to facilitate activities which exceed
the scale of an average gallery the EWF formed itself around Amber as an
independent non profit body, an intermediary organization between artists from
Asia and exhibition places in or near to The Netherlands. Galerie Amber is
functioning as the EWF executive body. The statute of the foundation, however,
guarantees that in financial decisions a majority is needed of the members, who
don’t have a connection with Galerie Amber.
About EWF exhibition
projects
If the EWF finds subsidizers and sponsors the money is used
for orientation and selection visits abroad, for insured transport of artists
and their works, for publicity, and for special printing matters. It also looks
on a correct approach and treatment of artists who from far away have an
insufficient idea of what could happen with their creations. Usually an
EWF-project contains works of more than one artist and is shown on more than one
location. These galleries and other exhibition places pay for their own regular
expenses: printed invitations, press reports, reception, insurance and
supervision.
In all the EWF projects a hard condition is that the
selection of works and artists can take place in complete independence. In order
to accentuate resemblances in the family of men, from politically contested
countries the EWF doesn’t shun showing the other side.
Although foreign
artists if possible are offered visits to museums, academies, galleries and
modern Dutch artists, until now the aspect of exchange, bringing art and artists
from West to East didn’t receive much time and attention. A current plan,
however, is to compose an overview of modern Dutch paintings inspired by the
landscape and to organize a museum and/or sales exhibition project that can
travel through the Middle and the Far East.
Plans
+ Since a
long period the EWF board is planning and preparing a project with paintings
from Vietnam. Especially the youngest generation will receive attention,
although works of already internationally successful artists will be given a
place.
+ With regard to the Middle East the EWF is preparing with the help of
its adviser Ali Talib a project of Iraqi painting.
+ Another project will
concern a selection of paintings made by Palestinian as well as Israelian
artists.
Esthetical considerations
In origin the preference
of the EWF- board went out to rather meditative, contemplative art from the Far
East. Surrealism, heavy expressionism, pop art and the exposure of the ego
didn’t fit in this conception. More and more, however, the Foundation wants to
show the diversity and the artistic qualities of Fine Art in a country or a
region, whatever this might imply.
Although in the last two decades all
over the world Fine Art as an unwilled result of globalization became more and
more similar, the EWF likes to recognize, to be remembered of the smell, the
taste, the sounds of a region, to find in a work of art traces of an artist’s
roots. What not faded in our perception was the inclination to avoid art that’s
only ‘global’, made by a ‘nowhere man’ from a ‘no man’s land’. On the contrary,
far from a denial of origins, a meeting of East and West is interesting, if it
is an integra-tion in which distinctive qualities can be preserved. It may be
clear that the EWF wants to stay away far from cheap decorative images and
commercial misuse of folklore. We like it, however, to deduce from a work of art
notions about its origin, its cultural background.
In another context we
would like to give also some statements about the art market, that’s still
dominated by the West; at first by Europe and in these days more and more by
America.
Let’s finish revealing an old characteristic of East, West and
Middle East. It will not explain everything but it can offer a general, often
useful handle. In spite of all globali-zation the spectator has still a kind of
treble tool: line, shade and a combination of both. The origin of Chinese and
Japanese painting lies in its adored meeting of poetry and painting in lines:
Calligraphy. From this linear ‘point’ of departure the Far Eastern painter
starts. [The word for painting is in Indonesia ‘seni lukis’: the fineness of the
line] In the West architecture with its shades is called the ‘mother of the
arts’. In the European tradition – middle-ages, renaissance, baroque,
romanticism, realism and again in modern art the shade dominates.
In
between West and Far East is the Persian and Arabian Middle east. With as a
quite own dimension we find here the deep and intensive colors, but beside an
own rich tradition of calligraphy we find here also a strong architecture: line
and shade together.
Leiden, June 2003
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