We've got MORE!
Discover 140 wonderful, fascinating and striking artworks in our renewed collection display. Museum MORE first opened its doors in 2015, with a founding collection of some 900 works. Over the past decade, more than 300 works have been added through acquisitions, donations and long-term loans. The museum is also home to works that have rarely or never been exhibited, as the collection is much larger than the available gallery space. This exhibition introduces visitors to a wide selection of recent acquisitions and works from storage, shown alongside highlights that are almost permanently on view.
Journey through eight themes
The new presentation invites you to criss-cross through time across eight themes. Some are based on the depicted subject, while others are more associative or intuitive in nature. All 140 works align with Museum MORE’s collection criteria: they are rooted in the visible reality and created by artists who were (or are) active in the Netherlands between 1900 and today.
Inner world
The inner human world, with all its shifting moods, is a recurring theme in MORE’s collection. With their gigantic nude self-portraits in chalk on cheese-cloth, Lise Lou Sore explores the experience of extreme emotion – feelings that are universally recognisable, yet feel profoundly solitary when lived through. A hyperrealistic painting by Maudy Alferink tempts us with the colourful clothing of the portrayed girl, but what does the work tell us about her self-image and state of mind?
Abstract realism
Is a realistic image always immediately recognisable? At first glance, Raquel Maulwurf’s large charcoal drawing appears to be a play of random lines and patches. But nothing could be further from the truth: the title Agent Orange refers to the defoliant used during the Vietnam War (1955–1975). The pattern is based on satellite images of spray planes flying in formation. Theo van Amstel offers a lighter composition – a rhythmic interplay of turquoise and white, light and shadow. The small pencil drawing by David Haines is at once hyperrealistic, abstract and conceptual: he arranged the pills that his mother took towards the end of her life as verse.
They made it
We show self-portraits by a large number of artists from our collection. They made the works, but did they also ‘make it’ in their field? Some, such as Charley Toorop and Carel Willink, and contemporary artists like Levi van Veluw and Philip Akkerman, are well-known names, who have made a living from their art. Others never truly broke through, or have only recently been (re)discovered. For us as a museum, they are all equally important – because without them, we would not exist. After all, without artists there is no museum.
(Snow) landscapes and white
Jan Mankes’ Row of Trees and Charley Toorop’s Beemster, Flowering Tree are two of the most beloved paintings in our collection. Carel Willink and Wim Schuhmacher – of whom MORE holds an exceptional number of works – also frequently painted (urban) landscapes. Until recently, our collection contained few works depicting landscapes or nature. That changed with acquisitions such as Ruud van Empel’s photo collage featuring cow parsley. In several of our artworks, the ‘colour’ white also takes centre stage: the white of blossom, the white of snow, or white as a luminous contrast to darkness.
Street and consumption
The street, packaging and waste, (over)consumption and the food industry, wealth and poverty, social inequality and the mobile home of a homeless person: shopping trolleys represent much more than a trip to the supermarket. The artists duo J&B uses three polystyrene trolleys to reflect on social issues with materials ‘from the street’, such as bin bags, pizza boxes and polystyrene. For some, the street is a place to hurry through on the way to work, for others, its a place for thrills at the funfair, while for yet another, it’s a place to find food or clients.
Still life
Still life enjoyed unprecedented popularity among Realist artists in the 1920s to 1940s. MORE’s collection therefore unsurprisingly contains a large number of still lifes: glassware, pots, pans, flowers, books, fruit and many eggs, but also dead animals or skulls, often with an artfully draped cloth or pile of papers. These carefully balanced compositions demonstrate the artist’s skill in rendering different materials, such as the glossy surface of glass. While still lifes are traditionally paintings, you can also see contemporary three-dimensional still lifes today – sometimes carrying the same symbolic meaning as a century ago: momento mori, but also carpe diem.
Relationships
Whether it’s a relationship with family or children, a loved one or spouse, friends or colleagues: relationships are essential to our existence. They bring joy, warmth, balance and security – but also doubt, irritation and sadness when a relationship ends, or when the desire for one remains unfulfilled. How do artists capture this complexity? Sometimes with irony or detachment, sometimes tenderly or exuberantly. Jans Muskee devoted himself to the human figure; sculptor Johan Polet pursued robust intimacy.
Nudes
Art history abounds with nudes. For centuries, these were mainly graceful female figures, framed within Biblical or mythological scenes. From the late 19th century onwards, we also encounter nudes – both male and female – as bathers in or beside the water. The modern realist works in MORE’s collection show nudes in many forms. But when do we perceive nudity as truly naked, and where do we draw the line between acceptable or pleasurable nudity and that which feels uncomfortable or even provocative? We often view nudity in art differently to nudity in daily life. How do gender, age, pose, facial expression and context influence our perception of the naked body?
