THE ART OF PETER SPAANS by Carl E. Hazlewood for the book In Marble Hill (1993)

'Architecture is the expression of the true nature of societies, as physiognomy is the expression of the nature of individuals etc' Georges Bataille.

The multi-media project 'In Marble Hill', by Peter Spaans' is an expression of absolute restraint and intellectual rigor. With this work, the artist strives to integrate formalist clarity and beauty into an everyday context.
In addition, he engages a range of creative strategies to investigate the possibility for a social use, late in the century, of a modernist approach to art particularly as it relates to the documentary and purely aesthetic functions of photography. Now, with art in the United States yielding uneasily to the insistent pressures of real human experience and the urgency of multiple American dreams and nightmares, this is probably the most difficult time to see and appreciate the affective qualities of Peter Spaans' reticent work.
His activity as sculptor and painter, emerging as it does out of European modernism, still seeks a route to ideal order through faith in an irreducible, essentially abstract form.
At the turn of the century transcendence in social and spiritual terms seemed achievable by means of aesthetic action carried out individually or by organized groups.
Around 1915, the Russian artist Malevich, influenced by Cubism and Italian Futurism, developed a style he called Suprematism. His intention was to create a pure art, expressed in geometric terms, that could function as a visual equivalent to the harmony and order of modern industrial society and its complementary technology.
About the same time, in the Netherlands, the 'De Stijl' group was formed whose members included Dutch painters and architects Theo van Doesburg, J.J. Oud, Bart van der Leck, and Piet Mondrian. Members of De Stijl believed their system of artmaking provided an organizing principle; an exemplary model that could govern many areas of life. The large themes and utopian dreams of authoritarian modernism would die hard in the aftermath of World War II and various other dystopian nightmares.
But aspects of philosophic ideas and stylistic influences from this time still provide fertile ground for artists working today. Like the members of De Stijl, or even the Russian Constructivists, SpaansÍ artistic interests are inclusive. A prevailing formal, and one might even say, ethical structure unifies the diverse aspects of his artmaking which at any time may include painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, video, books, photography or installation.

Born 1953, in Weesp, The Netherlands, Peter Spaans graduated from the Art School of Arnhem. He embarked on an active career of painting, creative actions and installations, often in tandem with other artists. He travelled widely, showing work in the Netherlands, Germany, New York, New Jersey, and California. Spaans took advantage of these visits, especially to Berlin and New York, to walk through the towns photographing the common spaces one finds in every big city. 'As I walk around alone in the city, I feel invisible, separate from the world I take pieces from that world as photographs. in the studio I discover new lines, structures, relationships.

Three books were published as a result of his journeys: 'Berlin Diary' (1982), 'Works Of A City' (1983), 'New York From The Yards' (1986).
He shares with his fellow countryman, artist Fons Brasser, an intrinsic artistry and systematic approach to the selection and treatment of subject-matter. Brasser also makes photographs in black and white of subjects that interest him, such as all the S-bann railroad stations in Berlin, or the interiors of water towers in the Netherlands. Spaans' involvement in cooperative projects resulted in the creation of 'Waterzoon', a collaborative association, formed with painter, Bert Wils in 1989. While continuing to paint and pursue independent projects, their merged sensibilities in Waterzoon have evolved a distinctive identity of its own; one that is subtly different in conceptual strengths than that of either artist alone. 'Waterzoon' is expansive and installation oriented.

But for Spaans as an individual, the city has been an essential and continuing motif for both his painting and photography. In paintings and sculptures the contours and specific shapes of big city architecture are refined into taut compositions of shifting, translucent color planes, or fashioned into hard edged, resolutely minimal shapes photographs focus on the quotidian aspects of the city. Shot straight on, circulatory systems like railway storage yards, city bridges, utilitarian buildings, store fronts, and undistinguished apartment buildings are not exactly picturesque.
But these photos gain an aesthetic life as the ordinary is objectified through the artists intense, clear-eyed gaze. The documentary context is subsumed by structuring aspects of form which function like the controlling grid of Mondrian or the layout of a city plan. Actual human presence is minimal in the pictures. But the social body is evident in the very structures which are designed to control and regulate.
When we look at vast public housing, whether it is located in the Bronx or Berlin, we do not have to see people to understand how poverty determines the design (or vice versa). After years of looking into the face of the city, Peter Spaans finally brought his keen sense of observation to bear on the visages of some very special people.
Marble Hill Senior Citizen Center in the Bronx, New York, is a place where neighborhood elderly people go to get involved in cultural activity, or just to socialize. Their faces radiate the same time-worn strength that is communicated by Spaans' photographs of fragile-looking old bridges or buildings that are solid but exhausted by use. It is easy to see why Spaans was intrigued by these individuals.
Here too, the artist's approach to portraiture is straightforward and unsentimental, with each subject presented in the same way, direct, and facing the viewer. This brings into sharper focus any similarities and differences between one person and the next.
The Marble Hill community, a microcosm of New York, reflects the multi-culture at large. Here are Euro-Americans, Chinese, African-Americans, Jews, and people of Caribbean and Latin American origin, all with stories to tell.

At the moment, cultural productions in America have taken on an activist stance; art about social change and transformation, art involved in issues of cultural politics or the race/gender dialectic, is what currently attracts attention, both positive and negative. Peter Spaans' response is more Mondrian-like in its transcendental approach. He says, 'I always want to go to the essence of things this is important for me. It makes things clearer by abstracting them. I know that the work demands more and more, but it also encourages new questions, from me and from the people who see it.'
It is the artist's willingness to pose difficult questions about vision, his refusal to compromise what he calls 'the hidden adventure' in his work which makes an encounter with it such a rewarding experience for this viewer. New York 1993' (Text from the book, 'In Marble Hill')
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