The text below is part of a lecture, held by William Moritz at the 9th Society for
Animation Studies Conference, Utrecht, 1997.
.................
.................
Two of the best absolute filmmakers of the day come from our host country The Netherlands,
which has a strong tradition favoring abstract art, including a pioneer 1931 book
De Absolute Film by Menno ter Braak, and an early abstract film by Willem Bon
Kleur en Vormafwisseling op choo-choo Jazz (Color and Form changing to choo-choo Jazz, CA 1933)
-- quite aside from the De Stijl heritage.
The modern Dutch master Bart Vegter's 1987 Four Moves actually extends the primary
balances of Mondrian into a new area, with its serene overlapping transparency that seems like four hundred moves
while retaining a pure simplicity.
Vegter's Night-Light creates a fierce tension with negative space, the black
and red wedges describing in violent movements a soft circle that doesn't quite exist.
And Vegter's 1994 computer grapic Space-Modulation uses
a great economy to produce a thrilling sensation of spatial presence and movement.
Joost Rekveld has made some 20 films and installation performances, including a figurative
computer animation. His 1994 No. 3 was created by moving light sources quickly while
the camera's shutter is open, thus painting shapes with light. The 1996 No. 7 consists
entirely of grid patterns stamped directly onto transparent film. The variance of the color
and thichkness of the paint, however, sometimes obscures or softens the rigidity of the
grid, so the film, which lasts more then 30 minutes, provides an exciting tension between
shapes and colors, between hard configuration and soft organic oozes-- a very meditative
experience in the whole.
.................
.................