Colorfields

 

Studio portret van een Dajak vrouw uit Borneo/Jaap Kunst

I'm Dutch, and like other Western European countries the Netherlands was also a colonial force in the early 20th century, and of course, like those other European countries, some compatriots were ethnomusicologists as well. The best known Dutch ethnomusicologist is Jaap Kunst, who specialized in Indonesian gamelan music. He actually coined the term ethnomusicology. He became curator of the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam, an institution distinct from the Tropenmuseum of Amsterdam. On the right is a portrait of Kunst blowing a conch shell and on the left a Dayak woman with a drum from a photograph from the Tropenmuseum collection. Kunst recorded in Indonesia but his best known contribution to ethnographic records was as curator: Indonesian Music which was volume 7 from the Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, a series edited by Alan Lomax. The recordings on the record were made by J. Hobbel, Andre Dupeyrat, Bernard Ijzerdraad and others. (The name Bernard Ijzerdraad rings familiar in my head because of the cartoon character Phil Ijzerdraad, a lanky bandit who featured in a Lucky Luke cartoon—friends said he looked like me.) The recording of rice song by a Dayak woman that features in the Top 100 was made by J. Hobbel on the island of Borneo. You may have noticed that the last ten or so paintings were done on a ground of four colored rectangles. This is my foray, like I did for the Top 100 2018, into the world of abstract art and color theory. Below are a few 'colorfield' paintings. Enjoy.