CoBrA (1948—51) was a Copenhagen / Brussels / Amsterdam art collective whose manifest revolved around the liberation from the rigidity of art and life in drab, post-war Europe. Their spontaneous primal iconography and graffiti allowed them to not only regain the pleasure of painting, but also forge a new connection to colour and material. Especially the Dutch artists involved – Corneille, Appel, Lucebert, Constant – looked at the way children respond to the act of creation resulting in easy to comprehend semi-abstract paintings, sculptures and poems. The moronic “my child can paint that” that people still associate with modernist art can be traced back to (deliberately) misinterpreting these artists' objectives.

“Ik schilder als een barbaar van deze barbaarse tijd.”

– Karel Appel

After CoBrA broke up, Appel started treating his canvas not as something that merely props up an image, but as part of the artwork itself. Working in layers of paint and other media, with any tool at hand, he'd build a sculptural object that incorporates the movement of both artist and material. In order to film De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel, he cut a hole in the canvas through which the camera captures the physicality of the action and the emotional involvement of the artist.

 

For this film, and Karel Appel, Componist by photographer Ed van der Elsken (1961), Appel (in collaboration with Frits Weiland) composed tape loops to create a wall of sound complementing the image.

In the summer of 1945, the people of a small Japanese village find a Black American helicopter pilot in one of their traps and lock him in the communal storeroom. While the war continues and the villagers wait for orders from above, the man – for the townspeople, his presence, this allegory – becomes something else.

“Your keeping this animal has meant all of us suffer!”

飼育 shares more than a few themes with Đorđe Kadijević's Празник from 1967. The war's the same, any war is, and the Chetniks too capture a Black American pilot. Again, the villagers seem to share a folie, a madness, rooted in an unshaken belief – call it tradition or shared illusions foolishness or hope.

A car accident.

An escape of sorts, in love and lust.

“He puts his cheek to the wall. With a kiss he licks the vertical surface and the greedy plaster sucks in his saliva. Then a shower of kisses.”

– Jean Genet, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1942/43)

“Even you, Ear, can't listen in the toilet!”

– Ludvik

“I'll take you to the horses. I'll take you to the Moon.”

– former NASA employee talking to his granddaughter

Auld Lang Syne is sung on Burns Night (Scotland)

“On old long syne my Jo, On old long syne, That thou canst never once reflect, On old long syne”

– Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne (1788)

“War is declared! Down with monitors and punishment! Long live rebellion! Liberty or death! Hoist our flag on the school roof! Stand firm with us tomorrow! We'll bombard them with rotten old books, dirty tin cans, smelly boots and all the ammo piled up in the attic! We'll fight those old goats on commemoration day! Onward!”

– Tabard, one of the students