Een Van Gogh aan de muur

While a newspaper announcement didn’t provoke many reactions, a call on Dutch television—which had only two channels to choose from in the 1970s—found hundreds and hundreds of people willing to talk to Digna Sinke about the reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s Caféterras bij nacht (Terrace at Night) hanging on the wall of their respective living spaces and how they experience it daily. “Everybody is their own favourite art critic,” says Sinke. As a child, Sinke visited the Kröller Müller Museum near Arnhem with her parents. The van Gogh postcards she chose at the end of that visit were neatly placed in a scrapbook by her father with notes added to them: why did you choose this one, why do you particularly like this painting? Copying her father’s approach from back then, the result is a sometimes hilarious, but always empathic look at a cross section of the Dutch public and their interiors, each talking about their copy as if it is the original painting. Produced for Jan Venema’s legendary television series Beeldspraak that offered filmmakers a chance to make often experimental films about art, EEN VAN GOGH AAN DE MUUR was The Netherlands’ (documentary) entry to the Prix ltalia in 1978. (Gerwin Tamsma)

In the presence of Digna Sinke and Gerwin Tamsma (Curator).
With STADRAND (LOST & FOUND) and GROETEN UIT ZONNEMAIRE.

Digna Sinke (selection): GROETEN UIT ZONNEMAIRE (1972), DE STILLE OCEAAN (1984), BELLE VAN ZUYLEN (1993), Tiengemeten Project (2001–2006), WEEMOED EN WILDERNIS (2010), AFTER THE TONE (2014), UNDER THE SURFACE (2016), BEWAREN / KEEPING & SAVING (2018), ZOET & ZOUT (2019), GRENZEN (2020), HEMELSLEUTEL (2024)