Rode toren, zwart vlak 1994

Harrie Gerritz made this print, 'Rode Toren, Zwart Vlak', meaning 'Red Tower, Black Plane,' in 1994. Though abstract, we can see in this artwork a playful deconstruction of familiar architectural forms. It takes as its subject a red tower, but renders it with childlike simplicity as a red line connecting a yellow block to a black square. This was created at a time when Dutch art institutions were reassessing their relationship to international modernism. We might ask: is this a self-conscious attempt to get back to basics? Or is this a more critical statement about the role of art in society? Does it critique the institutions of art? To understand this work better, we could investigate the history of Dutch art education and the debates around abstraction at that time. Context, after all, is key to unlocking the meaning of even the most abstract art.