Wouter Davidts
Wouter Davidts lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. He teaches at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning and the Department of Art, Music and Theatre Studies of Ghent University (UGent), as well as a yearly course at the Drama Department of the Royal Conservatory Antwerp.
Between 2003 and 2008 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University, where he obtained a PhD on museum architecture in 2003. He was a British Academy research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London (2006), research fellow at the Research Group of Visual Arts, Academie voor Kunst en Vormgeving|St Joost, Avans Hogeschool (2007-2008), and a visiting research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2008). From 2009 until 2012 he was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at VU University in Amsterdam.
In 2015 he has been awarded the Eduardo Chillida Professorship at the Art History Institute of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 2016 he was a Visiting Fellow at ATCH (Architecture Theory Criticism History) research centre of the School of Architecture, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
He is the author of Triple Bond, a selection of essays on art, architecture and the museum (Valiz, 2017) and Bouwen voor de kunst? Museumarchitectuur van Centre Pompidou tot Tate Modern (A&S/books, 2006). He has published on the museum, contemporary art and architecture in journals such as Afterall, Archis, De Witte Raaf, Footprint, Kritische Berichten, Metropolis M, OASE and Parachute, and in books and exhibition catalogues. His exhibition reviews have appeared a.o. in Artforum, Camera Austria, Sculpture and OPEN. .
Currently he is working on a book-length project on size and scale in postwar art, entitled Larger than the Body: Size and Scale in Postwar American Art, for which he received a 2015 Terra Foundation for American Art International Research Travel Grant.
He edited The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work (Valiz, 2009; with Kim Paice), CRACK: Koen van den Broek (Valiz, 2010), Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space (Valiz, 2012; with Guy Châtel & Stefaan Vervoort), and most recently, Philippe Vandenberg: Absence Etc. (Hauser & Wirth Pubishers, 2017).
He curated Philippe Van Snick. Undisclosed Recipients at BK SM in Mechelen (2006; with Hilde Van Gelder), Beginners & Begetters at Extra City in Antwerp (2007), Abstract USA 1958–1968. In the Galleries at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede (2010), Alentour in the Gallery Micheline Szwajcer in Antwerp (2012), Friends and Neighbors in the new studio space of Koen van den Broek (2013), Orban Space: Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office at Stroom Den Haag (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort) and Extra City Antwerp (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort), The Corner Show (Fall 2015, Extra City Antwerp; with Mihnea Mircan and Philip Metten), and After Scale Model: Dwelling in the Work of James Casebere (2016, BOZAR, Brussels).
contact: wouter.davidts@ugent.be
Address: Antwerp, Belgium
Between 2003 and 2008 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University, where he obtained a PhD on museum architecture in 2003. He was a British Academy research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London (2006), research fellow at the Research Group of Visual Arts, Academie voor Kunst en Vormgeving|St Joost, Avans Hogeschool (2007-2008), and a visiting research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2008). From 2009 until 2012 he was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at VU University in Amsterdam.
In 2015 he has been awarded the Eduardo Chillida Professorship at the Art History Institute of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 2016 he was a Visiting Fellow at ATCH (Architecture Theory Criticism History) research centre of the School of Architecture, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
He is the author of Triple Bond, a selection of essays on art, architecture and the museum (Valiz, 2017) and Bouwen voor de kunst? Museumarchitectuur van Centre Pompidou tot Tate Modern (A&S/books, 2006). He has published on the museum, contemporary art and architecture in journals such as Afterall, Archis, De Witte Raaf, Footprint, Kritische Berichten, Metropolis M, OASE and Parachute, and in books and exhibition catalogues. His exhibition reviews have appeared a.o. in Artforum, Camera Austria, Sculpture and OPEN. .
Currently he is working on a book-length project on size and scale in postwar art, entitled Larger than the Body: Size and Scale in Postwar American Art, for which he received a 2015 Terra Foundation for American Art International Research Travel Grant.
He edited The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work (Valiz, 2009; with Kim Paice), CRACK: Koen van den Broek (Valiz, 2010), Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space (Valiz, 2012; with Guy Châtel & Stefaan Vervoort), and most recently, Philippe Vandenberg: Absence Etc. (Hauser & Wirth Pubishers, 2017).
He curated Philippe Van Snick. Undisclosed Recipients at BK SM in Mechelen (2006; with Hilde Van Gelder), Beginners & Begetters at Extra City in Antwerp (2007), Abstract USA 1958–1968. In the Galleries at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede (2010), Alentour in the Gallery Micheline Szwajcer in Antwerp (2012), Friends and Neighbors in the new studio space of Koen van den Broek (2013), Orban Space: Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office at Stroom Den Haag (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort) and Extra City Antwerp (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort), The Corner Show (Fall 2015, Extra City Antwerp; with Mihnea Mircan and Philip Metten), and After Scale Model: Dwelling in the Work of James Casebere (2016, BOZAR, Brussels).
contact: wouter.davidts@ugent.be
Address: Antwerp, Belgium
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That is, not only. While the fourteen essays gathered in this
volume focus on the architecture of museums built over
the past five decades, they also concentrate on larger developments
in art within that same timeframe. Likewise Triple
Bond is not exclusively about art and architecture either.
Even though it deals with the dialogue between the disciplines
and practices of art and architecture, it contemplates
just as much the changes within that very institution
where the dialogue has been taking place most intensely:
the museum.
With this collection of essays Wouter Davidts advances
the tenet that art, architecture, and the museum are engaged
in a complex yet inevitably historical relationship with
one another, that is, they are triply bound to each other.
The book is divided into four parts: Platforms, Artists,
Buildings, and Exhibitions, and contains case studies of
the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Temporary
Contemporary, p.s. 1, as well as the Antwerp Museum
aan de Stroom (mas). It offers in-depth analyses of the
understanding and use of museum and exhibition space by
such widely acknowledged artists as Marcel Broodthaers,
Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Finally, it critically assesses contemporary responses to the
spaces of the museum by the artist collective superflex at
the Van Abbemuseum and by the assorted artists participating
in the Unilever Series at Tate Modern.
Absence, etc.
The first monograph on Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg since his death in 2009, this book offers a rich and novel entry to his variegated oeuvre. Conceived of as a chronological portfolio of Vandenberg’s paintings and drawings, this lavishly illustrated book invites the reader to discover the artist’s adventurous and vacillating career, as he regularly shifted directions and took stylistic and formal detours, from figurative expression to lyrical abstraction, graffiti-like and comics-informed figuration to monochromes, and finally resorting to word- and text-based paintings.
Edited and with an introduction by Wouter Davidts, ‘Philippe Vandenberg: Absence, etc.’ contains an essay by leading art historian David Anfam, the last interview with Vandenberg by the artist Ronny Delrue, and a seminar discussion with Jo Applin, Anna Dezeuze, Maarten Liefooghe, Raphäel Pirenne, Merel van Tilburg, and John C. Welchman held at the studio of the artist in 2016.
Edited by Wouter Davidts
Text by Wouter Davidts and David Anfam
Interview between Ronny Delrue and Philippe Vandenberg, and transcriptions of a seminar between Jo Applin, Anna Dezeuze, Maarten Liefooghe, Raphäel Pirenne, Merel van Tilburg, and John C. Welchman
Book design: Huber-Sterzinger, Vera Kaspar
Language: English
Softcover
290 × 230 mm
252 pages
978 3 906915 04 3
The bookproposes a conceptual topography, articulated upon seven lemmas: imitation, architecture, sculpture, mobility, scale, depiction and manifesto. A portrait, a catalogue of the works, exhibitions and writings (1967-2011), as well as an exchange about the future prospects of T.O.P. office complete this unique and groundbreaking volume.
With contributions by Maarten Delbeke (NL/BE), Aglaia Konrad (AUT/BE), Teresa Stoppani (K), Kersten Geers (BE), Felicity D. Scott (US), Luc Deleu (BE), John Macarthur (AU), Marjolijn Dijkman (NL), Guy Châtel (BE), Metahaven (NL), Stefaan Vervoort (BE), Manfred Pernice (DE), Wouter Davidts (BE), Koenraad Dedobbeleer & Kris Kimpe (BE), and Isabelle De Smet & Steven van den Bergh (BE).
Editors: Wouter Davidts & Kim Paice
With contributions by Wouter Davidts, Julia Gelshorn, MaryJo Marks, Kim Paice, Kirsten Swenson, Morgan Thomas, Philip Ursprung, Jon Wood.
Designed by Metahaven, Amsterdam
A wide range of contributors has been invited to discuss particular topics within the work of van den Broek, based on their proper backgrounds and expertise as writers, academics and artists: the legacy of abstract painting (Andrew Renton, Goldsmiths, London), the collaboration with John Baldessari (John Welchman, University of California, San Diego), film as a source of inspiration (Merel van Tilburg, Université de Génève), the role and meaning of photography (Dirk Lauwaert, Brussels), exhibition strategies (Liesbeth Bik en Jos Van der Pol, Rotterdam) and the representation of landscape and architecture (Wouter Davidts, VU University Amsterdam).
The book is compiled by Wouter Davidts and designed by Metahaven (Amsterdam).
Publisher: Valiz, Amsterdam (www.valiz.nl) and Lannoo, Tielt (www.lannoo.be)
Out of Print since 2011.
See also:
www.valiz.nl
www.koenvandenbroek.org
Bouwen voor de Kunst? both weakens and nuances this statement. I argue that the common tendency to conceive of museums primarily as buildings immediately reduces the issue of museum architecture to the relation of art to architecture, negates the complexity of the museum’s architectural programme and underestimates the role of the institutional interface between the two disciplines.
The chapters do not offer an architecture-critical discussion of recent museums, but an architecture- and art-theoretical examination of the museum institution. The statement that museums need to be built for art is assessed by an in-depth analysis of a series of artistic practices that have led a critical investigation of art’s place in the museum (Minimal art, Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark and the Alternative Spaces Movement). The resulting research into the spatial and architectural preoccupations of these artists then serves as a theoretical framework for an analysis of the shift in architectural programme between the Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. Davidts reveals that this shift – between the built to the reconverted factory – leads to crucial changes in the translation of the institutional program of the museum of contemporary art – the relentless aspiration to act as a site of artistic production – into the architectural brief.
In Bouwen voor de Kunst? I demonstrate that the museum never delivers a home for art, but a stage on which where artworks are granted the possibiltiy to lead another life than that of their so-called authentic moment of production, to gain meaning elsewhere.
Bouwen voor de kunst? is the book-version of my PhD (GHent University, 2003).
Paperback.
Nearly two decades later Davidson’s shrewd question demands for critical reconsideration, if not in the least since the facts seem to have proven her wrong. In the past 15 years of its existence Tate Modern has internationally established itself as the most popular museum of modern and contemporary art, attracting the largest crowds ever seen worldwide. Despite the many skeptical, if not outright negative, reception by professionals of the new building and the inaugural collection display respectively, visitors have flooded Tate Modern’s spaces – amounting to a stellar 5,7 million visitors last year. The reconversion of the Bankside Power Station may not have been the most visionary project in either architectural or institutional terms – it ultimately recuperated the critical occupation of raw spaces devised by artists in the 1960s as a mere cosmetic display strategy of alterity – it did however emerge as one of the most prosperous projects in civic terms – unlike any other the museum has managed to draw in a public of different ages, distinctive cultural upbringing, and diverse ethnic backgrounds.
This essay attempts to reformulate Davidson’s question in the light of the current Transforming Tate Modern project, the long-awaited extension of the museum by Herzog & de Meuron. Where then should the primary challenges in terms of architecture for the ‘new’ museum for the 21st century be situated? What part of the architectural brief truly summons architecture today? Is it the gallery space, which needs to accommodate and display the arts and artists, or rather the social space, which is expected to welcome and activate the visitors and the public at large? Or could it be a mixture of both?
To this end it is mandatory to recalibrate the terms upon which current and future museum buildings projects can be assessed. With the advent of Tate Modern at the start of the 21st century the conditions have radically altered. Or even boldly stated, Tate Modern played a major role in altering those conditions. The traditional museum program of collecting, studying and publicly displaying artefacts has lost pride of place. The scholarly tenet of the museum has become far from obsolete, but it does have to contend with a rapidly expanding social vocation of public education and popular leisure. Ever more museum institutions have to fulfil both duties. Fathomably the museum designs have to follow suit.
This essay aims to evaluate the consequences of this seismic shift in in institutional policy and management for architecture. How does it affect the classical adagio that ‘museums should be built for the arts’? What is the position carved out by the Transforming Tate Modern project? How well does the building expedite the institution in confronting the demands of the 21st century?
Proceeding from the surprising omission of significant archival material on LeWitt’s relationship with the institution, this essay questions the project’s acclaimed critical engagement with the preservation and fabrication of collective cultural memory in the contemporary museum.
That is, not only. While the fourteen essays gathered in this
volume focus on the architecture of museums built over
the past five decades, they also concentrate on larger developments
in art within that same timeframe. Likewise Triple
Bond is not exclusively about art and architecture either.
Even though it deals with the dialogue between the disciplines
and practices of art and architecture, it contemplates
just as much the changes within that very institution
where the dialogue has been taking place most intensely:
the museum.
With this collection of essays Wouter Davidts advances
the tenet that art, architecture, and the museum are engaged
in a complex yet inevitably historical relationship with
one another, that is, they are triply bound to each other.
The book is divided into four parts: Platforms, Artists,
Buildings, and Exhibitions, and contains case studies of
the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Temporary
Contemporary, p.s. 1, as well as the Antwerp Museum
aan de Stroom (mas). It offers in-depth analyses of the
understanding and use of museum and exhibition space by
such widely acknowledged artists as Marcel Broodthaers,
Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Finally, it critically assesses contemporary responses to the
spaces of the museum by the artist collective superflex at
the Van Abbemuseum and by the assorted artists participating
in the Unilever Series at Tate Modern.
Absence, etc.
The first monograph on Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg since his death in 2009, this book offers a rich and novel entry to his variegated oeuvre. Conceived of as a chronological portfolio of Vandenberg’s paintings and drawings, this lavishly illustrated book invites the reader to discover the artist’s adventurous and vacillating career, as he regularly shifted directions and took stylistic and formal detours, from figurative expression to lyrical abstraction, graffiti-like and comics-informed figuration to monochromes, and finally resorting to word- and text-based paintings.
Edited and with an introduction by Wouter Davidts, ‘Philippe Vandenberg: Absence, etc.’ contains an essay by leading art historian David Anfam, the last interview with Vandenberg by the artist Ronny Delrue, and a seminar discussion with Jo Applin, Anna Dezeuze, Maarten Liefooghe, Raphäel Pirenne, Merel van Tilburg, and John C. Welchman held at the studio of the artist in 2016.
Edited by Wouter Davidts
Text by Wouter Davidts and David Anfam
Interview between Ronny Delrue and Philippe Vandenberg, and transcriptions of a seminar between Jo Applin, Anna Dezeuze, Maarten Liefooghe, Raphäel Pirenne, Merel van Tilburg, and John C. Welchman
Book design: Huber-Sterzinger, Vera Kaspar
Language: English
Softcover
290 × 230 mm
252 pages
978 3 906915 04 3
The bookproposes a conceptual topography, articulated upon seven lemmas: imitation, architecture, sculpture, mobility, scale, depiction and manifesto. A portrait, a catalogue of the works, exhibitions and writings (1967-2011), as well as an exchange about the future prospects of T.O.P. office complete this unique and groundbreaking volume.
With contributions by Maarten Delbeke (NL/BE), Aglaia Konrad (AUT/BE), Teresa Stoppani (K), Kersten Geers (BE), Felicity D. Scott (US), Luc Deleu (BE), John Macarthur (AU), Marjolijn Dijkman (NL), Guy Châtel (BE), Metahaven (NL), Stefaan Vervoort (BE), Manfred Pernice (DE), Wouter Davidts (BE), Koenraad Dedobbeleer & Kris Kimpe (BE), and Isabelle De Smet & Steven van den Bergh (BE).
Editors: Wouter Davidts & Kim Paice
With contributions by Wouter Davidts, Julia Gelshorn, MaryJo Marks, Kim Paice, Kirsten Swenson, Morgan Thomas, Philip Ursprung, Jon Wood.
Designed by Metahaven, Amsterdam
A wide range of contributors has been invited to discuss particular topics within the work of van den Broek, based on their proper backgrounds and expertise as writers, academics and artists: the legacy of abstract painting (Andrew Renton, Goldsmiths, London), the collaboration with John Baldessari (John Welchman, University of California, San Diego), film as a source of inspiration (Merel van Tilburg, Université de Génève), the role and meaning of photography (Dirk Lauwaert, Brussels), exhibition strategies (Liesbeth Bik en Jos Van der Pol, Rotterdam) and the representation of landscape and architecture (Wouter Davidts, VU University Amsterdam).
The book is compiled by Wouter Davidts and designed by Metahaven (Amsterdam).
Publisher: Valiz, Amsterdam (www.valiz.nl) and Lannoo, Tielt (www.lannoo.be)
Out of Print since 2011.
See also:
www.valiz.nl
www.koenvandenbroek.org
Bouwen voor de Kunst? both weakens and nuances this statement. I argue that the common tendency to conceive of museums primarily as buildings immediately reduces the issue of museum architecture to the relation of art to architecture, negates the complexity of the museum’s architectural programme and underestimates the role of the institutional interface between the two disciplines.
The chapters do not offer an architecture-critical discussion of recent museums, but an architecture- and art-theoretical examination of the museum institution. The statement that museums need to be built for art is assessed by an in-depth analysis of a series of artistic practices that have led a critical investigation of art’s place in the museum (Minimal art, Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark and the Alternative Spaces Movement). The resulting research into the spatial and architectural preoccupations of these artists then serves as a theoretical framework for an analysis of the shift in architectural programme between the Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. Davidts reveals that this shift – between the built to the reconverted factory – leads to crucial changes in the translation of the institutional program of the museum of contemporary art – the relentless aspiration to act as a site of artistic production – into the architectural brief.
In Bouwen voor de Kunst? I demonstrate that the museum never delivers a home for art, but a stage on which where artworks are granted the possibiltiy to lead another life than that of their so-called authentic moment of production, to gain meaning elsewhere.
Bouwen voor de kunst? is the book-version of my PhD (GHent University, 2003).
Paperback.
Nearly two decades later Davidson’s shrewd question demands for critical reconsideration, if not in the least since the facts seem to have proven her wrong. In the past 15 years of its existence Tate Modern has internationally established itself as the most popular museum of modern and contemporary art, attracting the largest crowds ever seen worldwide. Despite the many skeptical, if not outright negative, reception by professionals of the new building and the inaugural collection display respectively, visitors have flooded Tate Modern’s spaces – amounting to a stellar 5,7 million visitors last year. The reconversion of the Bankside Power Station may not have been the most visionary project in either architectural or institutional terms – it ultimately recuperated the critical occupation of raw spaces devised by artists in the 1960s as a mere cosmetic display strategy of alterity – it did however emerge as one of the most prosperous projects in civic terms – unlike any other the museum has managed to draw in a public of different ages, distinctive cultural upbringing, and diverse ethnic backgrounds.
This essay attempts to reformulate Davidson’s question in the light of the current Transforming Tate Modern project, the long-awaited extension of the museum by Herzog & de Meuron. Where then should the primary challenges in terms of architecture for the ‘new’ museum for the 21st century be situated? What part of the architectural brief truly summons architecture today? Is it the gallery space, which needs to accommodate and display the arts and artists, or rather the social space, which is expected to welcome and activate the visitors and the public at large? Or could it be a mixture of both?
To this end it is mandatory to recalibrate the terms upon which current and future museum buildings projects can be assessed. With the advent of Tate Modern at the start of the 21st century the conditions have radically altered. Or even boldly stated, Tate Modern played a major role in altering those conditions. The traditional museum program of collecting, studying and publicly displaying artefacts has lost pride of place. The scholarly tenet of the museum has become far from obsolete, but it does have to contend with a rapidly expanding social vocation of public education and popular leisure. Ever more museum institutions have to fulfil both duties. Fathomably the museum designs have to follow suit.
This essay aims to evaluate the consequences of this seismic shift in in institutional policy and management for architecture. How does it affect the classical adagio that ‘museums should be built for the arts’? What is the position carved out by the Transforming Tate Modern project? How well does the building expedite the institution in confronting the demands of the 21st century?
Proceeding from the surprising omission of significant archival material on LeWitt’s relationship with the institution, this essay questions the project’s acclaimed critical engagement with the preservation and fabrication of collective cultural memory in the contemporary museum.
Proceeding from the surprising omission of significant archival material on LeWitt’s relationship with the institution, this paper will question the project’s acclaimed critical engagement with the preservation and fabrication of collective cultural memory in the contemporary museum.
In this lecture I will focus on an extensive body of sculptural projects and installations which Deleu started in the fall of 1980 and which he has consistently labelled as ‘lessons in scale and perspective’. In an interview in 1987, Deleu stated that this decision was fuelled by his desire to work with ‘two typical (...) and rather formal notions in architecture’. This turn to formalism was made consciously, he argued, since his work prior to 1980 was always termed ‘political.’
In his early career Deleu gained fame as the enfant terrible, the mandatory paper architect of the Belgian architectural community. With imaginative projects and conceptual proposals, most of which received significant critical acclaim within the art world, Deleu took up position against the self-indulgent and hypocritical nature of the disciplines of architecture and urban planning in general, and against the institutionalization and bureaucratic nature of the architectural profession in particular.
In my lecture I will argue that the lessons in scale and perspective can be put on a direct par with the ‘pamphletary’ works of the previous decade as they shift the overt dissidence of the architect’s activist work towards a critical revision of the scope and modes of address of architectural design. Paradoxically, this polemical endeavor first and foremost took place within the secluded realm of art.