the making of a reputation

The Making of a Reputation: the Case of Cobra

Nico Laan Like many avant-garde artists also Dutch Cobra members initially met with fierce resistance. But the clamour soon died down and a process of acceptance emerged. The question that this article focuses on is: how can this turn-about be explained? To an-swer this question recent studies on the making of a reputation have been consulted. These studies view criticism as a social phenomenon and they depart from the as-sumption that consensus about the quality of a work of art is reached on the basis of non-intrinsic factors. Each of these factors will be dealt with in this article. The con-clusion is that even if the kind of knowledge that we have at the moment does not allow for any satisfactory or comprehensive answer to this question, it is still possible to give an idea of the direction in which the answer could be found. Outside the Netherlands little is known about the Dutch contribution to the avant-garde. Exceptions are to be found in the areas of architec-ture and painting. Leaving Van Gogh aside for a moment many see him as a precursor of various innovations in the twentieth century these exceptions specifically concern De Stijl and Cobra. The group around De Stijl is the most famous, particularly because of Mondrian, who after his death became one of the icons of the avant-garde. Also those who are unable to read Dutch can access a wide variety of litera-ture about him and other contributors to this magazine. This is much less true for Cobra, especially if we limit ourselves to the Dutch mem-bers of the group. Within the framework of this book this might be a good reason to focus our attention on these artists.

We are then talking about seven painters: Karel Appel, Eugne Brands, Constant, Corneille, Jan Nieuwenhuys, Anton Roos-kens and Theo Wolvecamp. Together they founded the Experimentele Groep (Experimental Group) on 16 July 1948. Shortly after that three writers joined their ranks: Jan G. Elburg, Gerrit Kouwenaar and Lucebert. The group published a magazine - Reflex - that only saw two issues. As a result the group did not go entirely unnoticed but it still led a rather obscure existence until its members joined Cobra.1

Cobra was founded in Paris on 8 September 1948. Members were artists from Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands. Cobra too published a magazine, also called Cobra. The group burst upon the

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public in 1949 in the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam with an exhibi-tion called Exposition Internationale dArt Exprimental. The exhi-bition had hardly been opened when quarrels arose and the Dutch writers left the organization. However, they stayed in touch with the painters and kept on collaborating with them.

In 1951 a second group exhibition was organized and shortly after that Cobra disbanded itself. So the group lasted only a very short time and this may be the reason why it took so long for the name of Cobra to be firmly established in the Netherlands. Critics rather pre-ferred the terms experimentelen (experimenters) or experimen-talisten (experimentalists). They did not use those terms to refer exclusively to the writers and painters that we just mentioned, but also for artists who were supposed to be related to them.2

At the end of the forties and in the early fifties the majority of critics rejected the work of the experimentelen. However, soon after that they were accepted and a short time later again they were seen as the most important representatives of their generation. How can this turnabout be explained? The traditional answer to such a question is that every new style or movement takes some time getting used to, especially so when it concerns art that aims at being innovative. But so the argument runs after a certain period of time the qualities of the new art will become apparent. This is hardly a satisfactory answer. It does not need a great deal of knowledge of the history of art to be able to see that works of art have no intrinsic or fixed value. Qualities are not recognized or discovered: they are ascribed to works of art. Therefore it is not correct to present the change of appreciation for the experimentelen as an inevitable thing. The critics might just as well have stuck to their former rejection. About the experimental writers a study has been written which tries to explain why the critics changed their mind about them, but hardly anything is known about the way they reacted to the paint-ers. Still the turnabout there was equally dramatic. Moreover, it is of-ten claimed that their breakthrough led to a great divide in the Dutch art world with the conservative or figurative side increasingly los-ing territory to the progressive or abstract side.3

So the question how it came about that the Cobra painters were so quickly accepted and respected after having been initially re-jected is also important in a broader context. Since the eighties a num-ber of books and articles have appeared on the making of a reputation

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and these have helped answer this question. Most of them are con-cerned with literature but there are also studies on film, the visual arts and music, which have been extremely useful. What they have in common is that they consider criticism as a social phenomenon and depart from the assumption that consensus about the quality of works of art is reached on the basis of outside factors. The nature of these factors will be discussed below.4 1. Art Criticism around 1950 Hardly anything is known about art criticism in the Netherlands at the time that Cobra existed. The only summary article on this subject runs to only four pages.5 Elsewhere additional information can be found about individual critics or certain subjects that were highly profiled at the time but it does not add up to much. Moreover, the literature that we do have shows a number of shortcomings. For instance, it is usu-ally not very clear on what data these writings are based: did the au-thor systematically peruse daily or weekly papers? Were public col-lections consulted or did the author have access to collections of cut-tings of critics and artists? It seems that the perusal of newspapers was never very popular, which is not surprising as it is extremely time-consuming. Sometimes public collections or collections of cuttings are mentioned but there is never any information about what number of art reviews the writer has considered, about possible gaps, or about the range of newspapers and magazines that were studied.6 Furthermore, these authors seem to be focused on judging the critics. In this connection the influence of the avant-garde is striking: critics are categorized as conservative or progressive depending on their attitude towards certain innovations. Not too much time and effort is spent on subtlety. Categorization often takes place on the ba-sis of a single stance taken towards an event that was only later called historical.7

In these studies the question looms large if the critic belonged to the good or the bad guys and all other questions are ignored. For instance, we hardly get any answers to elementary questions such as: how much space did newspapers allow for art criticism? How many critics were active? What was their background etc., etc.? A first cur-sory look shows us that every daily and weekly newspaper, of some

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sort of stature - also the regional press - employed a critic. This critic did not always exclusively concern himself with the visual arts. Even in the national press we come across critics who had both literature and the visual arts in their portfolio.8

Coverage of the visual arts varied greatly. While some papers (such as Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant and Elseviers Weekblad) had an extensive article at least every week, there were others (such as Trouw), which allowed much less space and sometimes paid no atten-tion to the arts for weeks. The articles almost exclusively covered events such as exhibitions, auctions, anniversaries that took place in the Netherlands. The western part of the country, and more particu-larly Amsterdam, received the most attention. Trips to foreign coun-tries were only made by critics who on average had already shown a greater interest in the visual arts. Most critics were artists themselves.9 The most obvious as-sumption is that one of the reasons for them to start writing critical reviews was the need to have extra earnings. Some were editors on the papers they wrote for but - like today - most of them worked on a free-lance basis. So it is not surprising that some critics wrote for more than one newspaper and that turnover among critics was high. From 1949 to 1956 there were over thirty critics in the Netherlands who wrote about the visual arts, but very few of them were active as such throughout that whole period of time. There are hardly any compilations of critical reviews in this period, so most of them are going yellow in newspaper archives. Only one paper - De Groene Amsterdammer - has digitized its archives, but these are useless for our purposes as digitization stops at 1945. Fortu-nately, there are public collections of art reviews. For Cobra two of these are relevant: that of the Rijksdienst voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) and the one of the Stedelijk Museum of Am-sterdam. The material has been filed in different ways. Only the RKD has files on individual critics but, unfortunately, the contents are very meagre. So we have to make do with the files on Cobra, its individual members and exhibitions of both. Comparing the contents of both files, we notice that none of these collections is complete. Would they be if we added them up? That is hard to say, but searches elsewhere yield few extra reviews.10 So it seems justified to start from the data in these two collections. Of course, existing literature on Cobra has been


taken into account too. Whenever the study of this literature gave rise to any questions or assumptions, these have been checked by system-atically going through a number of newspapers and the critical re-views that were found in this way have been added to the files.

The data that have thus been collected do not make it possible to compare the Dutch Cobra members with their foreign counterparts. Almost without exception critics were only interested in their fellow-countrymen. In fact, even within the group they made a selection. Their attention was almost exclusively focused on three of the seven painters: Appel, Constant and Corneille. 2. Rejected Almost Everywhere When Cobra presented itself in Amsterdam in 1949, the Dutch paint-ers were not completely unknown, as there had been exhibitions be-fore. The biography of Appel gives the impression that he met with resistance right from the start of his career.11 Qualifications that are cited are childish, barbarian and horror of aesthetes. Those quotes are from art reviews which were collected by Appel himself, but the biographer does not use them very systematically, so it is pos-sible that we get a slightly distorted picture, the more so because she also mentions that critics considered Appel a talented painter and ad-mire his courage. When going through the cuttings in the Stedelijk Museum and the RKD about exhibitions of Appel and other Dutch Cobra painters of before 1949, one is struck by the sympathetic attitude of most crit-ics. They are critical, yes, especially when it concerns imitation of ex-amples abroad, but they also often write kind and encouraging words and more than once find them promising. For instance, it is said that Rooskens may well become quite special in a particular genre (Trouw 1.4.1947) and Brands is called an unmistakable talent (De Telegraaf 30.1.1941). Whatever is the case: as soon as Cobra presents itself as a movement in 1949, the general mood is one of rejection. In literature about Cobra hardly any attention is paid to art reviews, but newspaper headlines are cited and these need no further comment: Inarticulate Art. Heydays of Nihilism in the Stedelijk Museum, Unnecessary and Unwanted, Scratching, Blathering, and Daubing in the Stedelijk

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Museum, Madness Elevated to Art.12 What complicates matters is that those headlines do not always refer to the art that was exhibited. A number of those articles concern the commotion that arose during an evening that was organized by the writers of the Experimentele Groep. As a matter of fact, Cobra drew attention from more quarters than art critics alone: also reporters of various newspapers paid atten-tion to the exhibition and it is not always very clear whether we are reading a report, a review or something that wants to combine both. The literature that we have on Cobra claims that there were only two critics who showed some appreciation for the movement: Jan Engelman (the art critic of De Tijd) and Kasper Niehaus (the critic of De Telegraaf).13 A slightly less dramatic presentation of things seems to be in order. In our file of fourteen art reviews we find two other articles that deviate from the general mood. True, the critic of Het Vrije Volk, Bob Buys, is fairly non-committal but he does not think it unsympathetic that the management of the museum allows space to the group of artists. And in De Tijd we find, apart from Engelmans review, also an article signed with M probably written by the sculptor Marius van Beek- in which he literally says: At times their talent is truly remarkable [...], at times they have a fantastic sense of colour (De Tijd 4.11.1949).14 When in 1951, in Luik a second group exhibition was held, the newspapers generally adopted a more moder-ate and appreciative attitude but it would not be correct to assume that the critics had adjusted their judgment. The few articles that appeared in Dutch papers - altogether five - were all written by correspondents or critics for the occasion. For the regular art critics Luik may have been too far away or not important enough. That the general judgment about Cobra - or to be more pre-cise: about the Dutch members thereof - did not really change very quickly, appears from many reviews from the early fifties. A few quotes:

There is no sign of a love of art, nothing of the struggle to penetrate into the spirit of things with oh, so unmanageable material, nothing of the honesty of the real artist who tries to develop the talent that he has been endowed with in the best possible manner (Algemeen Handelsblad 15.9.1951)

Eyes are always the same black dots, legs are stripes, hands empty gloves picked up from the street. All this is surrounded by garish daubs of colour that faintly hint at some sort of form (Haagsche Courant 20.10.1953)


The daubs of ripolin that are to suggest an explosion of the brilliance of a genius, but only serve to fill us with disgust may well be a feature of a world replete with culture, but they lack the disciplined dynamics to turn even this kind of nihilism into a tragic accusation (De Tijd 3.7.1954).

The most negative reaction we find in Algemeen Handelsblad, El-seviers Weekblad, Het Parool and De Waarheid. Critics in these pa-pers say this cannot be called real art and they were not afraid to use words as messy, childish and food for psychiatrists. One re-peatedly comes across the same points of criticism, not only in the papers just mentioned but also elsewhere. First, the objection that what Cobra did, was nothing new and that they simply repeated the experiments of the inter-bellum period. That particular objection has become famous through a headline above an article in which an issue of Reflex was reviewed: Schon dada gewesen.

Artists who present themselves as avant-garde could not be more deeply offended. Still, in the early fifties the Cobra painters never gave any reaction. The writers with whom they were associated, however, did. They did not deny the influence of the historical avant-garde, but at the same time emphasized that their work was the ex-pression of their personal way of dealing with this form of art.15

The second objection that was formulated against Cobra was that the group started from a wrong conception of art. The critics es-pecially disapproved of the importance that the artists attached to spontaneity. In their eyes the making of art required a certain measure of control and command and that is what they missed in the work of the experimental painters.

This objection shows that the critics were familiar with the contents of various articles in Cobra and Reflex in which the painters tried to develop an aesthetic program of their own. A substantial part of the newspaper criticism at the end of the forties and in the early fifties consists of attempts to refute that program. Various critics fought the experimental painters with their own weapons. This is particularly true for their primitivism. If the artists argued that they found their models in the art of children, primitive artists and psy-chiatric patients, the critics compared their art and concluded that the painters were the losing party when compared to the examples they had set themselves:

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They keep running around in circles and this results in the following kind of drawings: little dolls, faces, figurines, moons, air balloons, towers, ships that we really! - have seen before, made by children but then much better and much more spontaneously and unconsciously drawn. For children can ex-press themselves like children and adults will never be able to enter that paradise again (Het Parool 4.10.1951).

The third and last objection that the critics formulated against Cobra actually concerned those who sympathized with them. The argument ran that the artists received protection from a small clique of Am-sterdam socialites. The Director of the Stedelijk Museum of Amster-dam, Sandberg, was their primary target. Many art reviews attack his person and his policy and they accuse him of dictatorial management and unconditionally choosing the side of the avant-garde.16

Indeed Sandberg has been very important for Cobra. He sup-ported the group in every possible way. First, he did so by facilitating and organizing exhibitions. The exhibition of 1949 was not the last. In the years that followed, the work of many Dutch Cobra members was regularly exhibited in the museum. So regular that even one of the few critics who was kindly disposed towards Sandberg once ironically remarked that there were three Constant Painters in the House of the Director, Appel, Constant and Corneille (De Telegraaf 6.12.1952).

Sandberg also gave support by buying their work.17 As the museum had a very modest budget, this kind of support could only be limited. But Sandberg also acted as a consultant to De Bijenkorf and with money of this company he also bought Cobra art, which he then gave to the Stedelijk Museum to use. Furthermore, he commissioned Appel to paint the coffee room and networked for the artists.

Other members of the clique around Cobra are not men-tioned by name by the critics but they must have had in mind various collectors, such as Mr. and Mrs. Visser and Mr. and Mrs. Sanders. It is more difficult to say whether this supposed clique also included art dealers. Most exhibitions of the Cobra painters were one time only. Only Martinet & Michels and Le Canard were particularly interested in modern art but not exclusively in Cobra.18

Sandberg regularly visited both art galleries and in 1954 he asked Van Loenen Martinet if he was prepared to become Keeper of the Prints. Piet Sanders was legal counselor to Sandberg. Martin Vis-ser worked for De Bijenkorf. It is not difficult to see that the existence of such contacts and relations gave art critics cause to speak of a


clique around Cobra and that they objected to developments in the world of art that they considered dangerous. As they were almost unanimous in their rejection, they were in a very strong position and in the early fifties there seemed to be little future for the Dutch Cobra painters. 3. Change of Judgment of Leading Critics? In 1955 Appel got an exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum of Amster-dam followed by Corneille. Moreover, in 1956 the works of both were on show in the Stedelijk Museum of Schiedam. This museum used to be a historical cabinet but had become interested in modern art, in Cobra in particular. A study of the reviews of these exhibitions show that the attitude towards the Dutch Cobra painters is changing. There is still a lot of disapproval, yes. There are still critics who have little sympathy for them or even claim that their work does not deserve the name of art, but their numbers are dwindling. That change becomes particularly clear when we see that of the four papers who used to lead the attack, three now show themselves to be kindly disposed towards Appel and/or Corneille.19 This is rather a surprising development considering the almost general rejection of a few years earlier. When we compare the ex-perimental painters with their writer colleagues we notice that the mood can change even more quickly as the writers had already be-come generally accepted. Appel c.s. needed to be slightly more patient but what we see is that various art critics already provide for the future by describing Cobra as an historic movement and qualifying some of its members as artists who have demonstrated their talents. When Ap-pel and Corneile are criticized at all, the critique often concerns their current work: their earlier work, particularly that of the start of Cobra is more often praised.20

How can this change in appreciation be explained? According to the so-called institutional approach in the study of arts and literature, critics are avid readers of other critics reviews and take good note of statements made by their colleagues. These serve to test their own judgments that cannot be checked in any other way. Also by taking into account what other critics say, it is possible

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for a critic to diminish his feelings of uncertainty and there is a great deal of uncertainty when it concerns modern art.21 It is this kind of conduct that explains that judgments of critics gradually converge over time. This process is called orchestration, a term which is derived from the sociologist Bourdieu, who is the founding father of the institutional approach. Though the fine-tuning among critics does not result from any specific rules, it still seems to be imposed upon them. For as more and more art critics agree on the importance of a certain artist or group of artists, there is a growing tendency among those who originally thought differently to conform to this growing consensus. This does not mean there are no exceptions. Art critics are always competing for respect for their opinions and want to impose their own judgments of taste. They will look for opportunities to dis-tinguish themselves. The most appropriate way to do so is to dis-cover artists, i.e.: to be the first to identify the special qualities of a writer or a painter. This is the way to become a leading critic - some-one other people look for to help them formulate their own judgments. So consensus may originate in the judgment of a single critic. It certainly helps when such a critic already is considered an authority and writes for an important paper, for then he will the more readily be listened to. But it might also be possible for a young critic with a modest position to get his colleagues to agree with him and thus bring about a change of appreciation. In order to determine whether the turnabout in the case of Co-bra can be explained by means of the idea of orchestration it seems sensible to first discuss the older critics and then the new generation. To the group of older critics belong Jan Engelman, W. Jos de Gruyter, Kasper Niehaus and Cornelis Veth. The moment that Cobra was founded they had been active for many decades and in the course of the years had established a reputation. In the interbellum period they had more than once used their reputation and position to promote cer-tain artists. Was the breakthrough of the Dutch Cobra painters also the result of such an action? In other words: did they - or did any of them - succeed in convincing their younger colleagues of the qualities of Cobra, aided by the authority they possessed? In one case this is highly unlikely. About Veth it is said that already before the Second World War he was very conservative in his judgments and that his frame of reference had been formed by the art


of half a century before.22 Moreover our collection contains only one review of his hand. Engelman too seems not a likely candidate. One often comes across remarks to the effect that he had some difficulty connecting up with post-war innovations particularly with experimental writers and painters.23 Still, it was said earlier that he was one of the few who wrote a sympathetic review about the Cobra exhibition of 1949. Was this review an exception? No. In 1951 he wrote an article in which he called Appel a talented man, a born painter, a promise:

This becomes clear from almost indefinable things in surface divisions, col-our combinations, the stroke of the brush and that what one hesitates to call the touch (but still is). Of the savages that started a few years ago, he is the most remarkable, the most important. I am curious to know what he will develop into when this Sturm und Drang period is over (De Tijd 26.9.1951).

So Engelman is not just a straightforward conservative. However, there is no evidence that he ever made an effort to actively promote Cobra. In as far as he ever did his best to promote any artist, these were the same as he used to protect before.24

W. Jos de Gruyter seems to be the person we are looking for. He is well-known for being one of the strongest advocates of the avant-garde and one of the first in the Netherlands who wrote a book which chronicled the innovations in twentieth century art. He also shared with Cobra an interest in primitive art. From the thirties on-wards he regularly wrote about this kind of art and compared it with that of the European avant-garde. Still, he did not do much to promote Cobra: he was more interested in Ouborg, a painter who had been in-vited to join the Experimentele Groep but had declined the invitation. On various occasions he expressed his preference for this painter and he also did so in his rewritten version of his book on European art of 1954. The final chapter of this book deals with abstract and experi-mental art. It is true that he starts his discussion on this kind of art with Appel c.s but he leaves the highest praise for Ouborg, who ac-cording to him, is partly related to the Amsterdam painters and is de-scribed by him as the most surprising of all Dutchmen who work from similar artistic assumptions.25 We then come to the last of the generation of older critics: Kasper Niehaus. We know him already as one of the few who in 1949 wrote sympathetically about Cobra. It is said that in the thirties he be-

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came more and more categorical in his disapproval of the innovations in art but after the war he showed more sympathy especially to-wards younger artists.26 We also know that he maintained very good relations with Sandberg, who considered him - together with De Gruyter- as the only critic who knew his job.27 We also come across his name in Cobra 4, which served as a covering booklet for the exhi-bition in 1949. Besides reproductions of the work of Cobra painters, this issue contains reproductions of two peintres du dimanche hol-landaise, which are said to be from the collection of Niehaus. This makes one curious to know more. The files of the RKD and the Stedelijk Museum together contain four reviews written by Niehaus. As there was reason to assume that he played a role in the breakthrough of the Dutch Cobra painters, it seemed worthwhile to check existing file collections to see if he wrote anything else about Cobra until his retirement from the paper he worked for (in 1956). A systematic check of the newspaper ledgers yielded eleven more arti-cles. However, none of these are reviews of exhibitions of (members) of Cobra - that is probably the reason why they have not been in-cluded. Partly they are articles about other subjects or other artists with side remarks about Cobra. For instance, about the art collection of the Director of the Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Hannema he writes:

This man who thirsts for beauty even owns an Appel (Karel)! So he does not lack the insight that beauty or truth of the past is not essentially dif-ferent from that of the present (De Telegraaf 11.9.1952).

In a later article dealing with an exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam he defends Appel against the accusation that he would be a coarse painter and he calls the use of colours in one his paintings French-refined (De Telegraaf 7.5.1955). But even more important than these articles, there are others in which Niehaus defines his position with respect to modern art. In one of these articles he praises Sandberg, in two he discusses post-war Dutch art and in five others he reacts to statements of other critics.28 Especially the last five articles are interesting, as they show that Nie-haus regularly feels called upon to defend modern art. He did so just as passionately as De Gruyter but had to admit that his current convic-tions were slightly different from those before the war. He explained this as follows:


A truly modern art did not really exist at the time in our country and it exists now. For me: I am very pleased and am proud of that (De Telegraaf 1.11.1952).

Headings such as New wave of vitality since the war and Dutch art is certainly alive and kicking show that Niehaus sincerely welcomed the latest developments with pleasure. The foundation of the Experi-mentele Groep and later Cobra were part of these developments. Nie-haus often wrote about the painters of both groups and always with appreciation. His admiration was perhaps most explicitly worded in the next passage:

Averse to the refined paintings with the subtle nuances of the impressionists and fauves they returned to the basic principles, they rediscovered the pure means of art and gave us the beautiful blues, reds and yellows: for them too barbarism is rejuvenation. It may be true that for many people their modernism is negro new, their paintings may remind some of the frescoes of the snake charmers of Tanganyika rather than of expressions of the Euro-pean mind. Still it would be foolish to deny that they are talented and have vitality (De Telegraaf 12.9.1953)

That Niehaus defended the Dutch Cobra painters will not have gone unnoticed among his colleagues. He was not alone. That becomes clear when we shift our attention from the older generation critics to the newcomers, i.e. to those who just before the war or - in most cases - in the years that followed started as art critics. This group consists of about thirty people. They were not all active at the same time. Some stopped their activities very soon, others stayed on for a longer period of time but only few of them can be compared to De Gruyter and Nie-haus in the sense that they wrote for one or more papers for decades on end.

It would be impossible to deal with all thirty of them in the same way as we did with the older generation. It is also unnecessary. If we want to determine who of these newcomers wanted to build a reputation by making a striking and innovative choice, only a few of them are really important. First we will discuss Bob Buys and Marius van Beek. Of the former we said earlier that he did not think it unsympathetic that the Stedelijk Museum offered Cobra exhibition space. The files of the RKD and the Stedelijk Museum altogether include five reviews of

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Buys. They are from 1949, 1954, 1955 and 1956. Although most of these appeared at a rather late date they do not show unreserved ap-preciation. For instance in 1956 he states that Corneille repeats him-self too much. Buys also keeps his distance from Cobra so he can hardly have been the one who persuaded his colleagues to change their judgment. Neither is Marius van Beek the man we are looking for. We know him from three art reviews: one from 1949, one from 1955 and one from 1956. Two of these are favourable. But Van Beeks very modest position makes it unlikely that his judgment was taken much note of. That is not true for Cees Doelman, who wrote both for Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant en De Groene Amsterdammer. Both papers paid a lot of attention to the visual arts. Doelman also had other channels through which he could express his points of view. For years he was a member of the Advisory Board of Contour: a yearly exhibition, organ-ized by museum Het Prinsenhof, which aimed at giving a survey of frontline artists i.e. artists whose work is prominent at the moment and which shows the greatest potential for the near future.29

Doelman is said to have been an admirer of Cobra.30 So it is worth investigating if he was the one who together with Niehaus managed to convince his colleagues of the merits of the Dutch Cobra painters. In order to find out a systematic study was made of the back volumes of two of the papers to which he contributed up to 1956. The first thing we find is that Doelman was not always an admirer of Co-bra. In 1949 he was just as unfavourably disposed as the majority of his colleagues and he called the exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum a torture of beauty (De Groene Amsterdammer 12.11.1949). From 1952 onwards Doelman started thinking differently. In that year he wrote three articles about Cobra, one of which was on the occasion of the Contour of that year, which showed Appel and Corneille for the first time. Though still not quite won over, his atti-tude had clearly changed. For instance, he praised Appel for his col-our wizardry and was pleased with the development he saw in the work of Constant.31 In later articles his reservations have completely disappeared as is shown by the passage below which is devoted to Appel:

His art is the immediate reflection of intensely felt emotions and experi-ences and when expressing these in his art by means of his materials and


colours, this strong painters temperament is carried into a state of rapture. Moreover, he surprises us again and again with his pure instinct for visual expression with his dynamic, uncommonly forceful language of colours and the expressive value of structure (Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant 23.4.1955).

Doelmans colleagues will certainly have taken note of these judg-ments, the more so as he played a rather important role in the world of modern art and, among other things, was a member of the commit-tee that decided on the Dutch contribution to the Binnale in Venice in 1954. Among the group of those who were selected were Appel and Corneille. 4. Other Factors Is there a complete and satisfactory answer to the question how and why the appreciation of Cobra changed? No, it is not as simple as that. First, it is difficult to assess the influence that Doelman and Niehaus possibly exercised. Critics prefer not to refer to each other. Neither do we come across critics who explicitly revoke earlier judgments and explain why they changed their mind. After some time we hardly ever hear that Appel c.s. copy the innovations of the pre-war artists or that children and psychiatric patients are better painters but none of the reviewers feels the need to explicitly dissociate themselves from these objections. It is not difficult to see why critics behave as they do because they would put their authority at risk if they changed their mind too often and too radically and when they do, it is in their own interest to do so as quietly as possible. It is usually their opponents or artists that suffered at the hands of the critics who draw attention to changes of judgment. For instance, the experimental writers made fun of critics who first rejected them and later praised them.32 Their painter col-leagues had no comments. Only two art historians made years later ironical remarks about critics whose caterpillars of venom gradually metamorphosed into butterflies of admiration.33 In the absence of explanations and references we have to make do with less explicit, more subtle signals when trying to estab-lish the influence of Doelman and Niehaus. In the analyses of the studies that were consulted for this article a reasonable case is made for the possibility to show up the workings of influence by identifying

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the adoption of certain ideas and associated vocabulary. This is not an easy task in our case. For what strikes us is that repeated attempts of Doelman to give the Cobra painters a historical place by calling them expressionists - quite the usual thing nowadays - were ignored by his colleagues. But they do often use the word expression. Further-more, many critics - like Doelman - seem to take it for granted that the work of Appel c.s. is the immediate reflection of intensely felt emo-tions and experiences. But does this idea originate with Doelman? They may just as well have derived the idea from the artists them-selves. Similarly there is uncertainty about other elements in the criti-cal reviews of those days. For instance, from 1952 onwards Niehaus regularly refers to Appel as the Appelles of the experimentelen. Has this repeated reference resulted in the judgment that Appel was the most important painter? And can the distinction that is generally made between Appel and Corneille be traced back to an early review in which Niehaus writes about the bold, strong Appel and the quiet Corneille (De Telegraaf 12.9.1953)? Even if these questions could be answered affirmatively, we still have no explanation for the change in appreciation. Doelman and Niehaus may have initiated that change but they did not direct it. Fre-quent changes of critics played an important role in the acceptance of Cobra. From 1953 on various papers engaged new critics and every new critic was almost invariably more kindly disposed towards Cobra than his predecessor.34 Unfortunately, hardly anything is known about the reasons for these changes. It would be especially interesting to know if this was the result of any policy and if the editors or the man-agement deliberately aimed at embarking on a new course. We know of an example in the area of literary criticism, where one of the fiercest opponents of the experimental writers - Hendrik de Vries - was told by the editors of the paper he worked for, to leave reviews of the work of younger writers to a colleague who was especially appointed for the task. The readers of the paper were informed that someone had been chosen who was not of the same generation but close enough to these young writers and their work, to be able to look at and judge their work from their point of view (Vrij Nederland 4.41953). The new critic was editor of a literary magazine that had chosen the side of the experimental writers. Shortly after


that one of those writers - Gerrit Kouwenaar - came to work for that same paper. This example makes clear that consensus does not only arise when critics adjust their judgment to each other: it may also be partly created by editorial boards. To be able to determine if this is not only true for experimental literature but also for experimental art, we would need to have access to editorial archives. At the moment we know of only one paper that they deliberately looked for a critic with progressive views on the visual arts.35 The emergence of consensus can further be influenced by art-ists, directors of museums, collectors or owners of art galleries. Espe-cially artists are often very influential. From various studies it appears that art critics, essay writers and academic researchers alike consider artists as authorities - first in the area of their own work but also in a broader sense - and therefore tend to be guided by them.36 In the case of Cobra we know that various members were intensively involved in the creation of an image around the group but then we are talking about a time that comes after the period we are concerned with in this article.37 Little is known about contacts between Cobra and critics in the fifties.

Much more is known about the role that directors of museums played in the breakthrough of Cobra. We already discussed the activi-ties of Sandberg. Opposition against the course he adopted gradually diminished in the middle of the fifties. The fact that at that time not only the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam but also that of Schiedam and the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven had chosen the side of Co-bra will have played a role.38 Besides it will not have escaped the crit-ics notice that attempts were made in the world of the museums to give Cobra a firm place in the history of art. In 1955 two surveys of Dutch art appeared. One of these was written by the Director of the Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller, Ham-macher. In the last chapter, devoted to the post-war period, he pays attention to Appel, Constant and Corneille. He was not enamoured by any of them, but he did think that they were interesting from a histori-cal perspective. The second survey, to which a great many people con-tributed, went back to the sixteenth century. For our purposes only the chapter on Painting in the Twentieth Century is of interest. It is written by Knuttel, former Director of the Gemeentemuseum of The Hague. In his discussion of Cobra he too limited himself to Appel,

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Constant and Corneille. But compared to his colleague of the Krller Mller he was much more appreciative.39 Just as in the case of Doelman and Niehaus it is difficult to formulate firm statements on the influence of these kinds of actions. What is certain is that they contributed to improving the climate around experimental and other modern artists. In this connection it is relevant to point out that there were close contacts between critics and museums. Some like De Gruyter became directors of muse-ums and others like Doelman collaborated with them.40 As the Dutch Cobra painters were never exclusively tied up with any one particular art gallery, the influence of the art dealers can never have been great and the possible influence of collectors has never been researched. Finally, we need to say something about quite a different kind of influence, namely from abroad. In the course of the twentieth century art criticism has increasingly become an interna-tional affair and that has an effect on the way consensus arises, if only because the national discussion is often strongly dominated by judg-ments which originated elsewhere. In the case of the Dutch Cobra painters foreign countries started to play a role when Appel, Constant and Corneille left for Paris in 1950. From that moment on they made an important part of their career abroad. The Dutch newspapers informed their readers of the triumphs of these painters. In the files of the RKD we regularly come across cuttings with news about exhibitions abroad and awards that were won. Appels career in particular was very successful. He soon had exhibitions in Paris and Brussels, Martha Graham bought his work and in 1954 he received an award at the Binnale in Venice.

Naturally Dutch sympathizers made the most of these suc-cesses. Niehaus, for instance, devotes an article to the Binnale award in which he subtly pointed out that this prophet of experimentalism was honoured abroad and that foreign critics thought much more highly of him than critics used to do in his own country (De Telegraaf 3.8.1954). At first opponents of Appel shrugged their shoulders and made sneering remarks but in the long run it was hard to keep up that attitude and foreign praise inevitably started to influence the judg-ments of Dutch critics. So all in all it is rather a complicated business to try to explain the growing consensus about the qualities of the Dutch Cobra painters.


We can only indicate the general direction in which the answer to this intriguing question can be found. Furthermore, our investigation has taught us three lessons. First, clear criteria are needed for the analysis and assessment of re-views. At the moment this is done rather intuitively, as it is often dif-ficult enough to establish whether a given judgment is positive, nega-tive or neutral. It would also help if we had clear criteria to establish the influence of leading critics. And finally, there should be more clar-ity about the interaction of factors that determine reputations for only this would enable us to offer more than the kind of inventories such as are given above. 5. The Fate of the Loner The conclusion stands but the story is not finished yet. There is one loose end to be tied up which may teach us something about the way criticism works. We stopped in the middle of the fifties. In the years that followed the opponents of the Dutch Cobra painters were not quite defeated. Particularly the critic of Het Parool - Prange - put up a stubborn resistance against these and other forms of modern art. Sometimes he sounded tired. He then wrote that he had already put forward his objections so many times and had demonstrated that all this could not really be taken for art (Het Parool 27.7.1957). But he never lost courage because he considered it the duty of a critic who loves art to speak out when he is a witness to a further degeneration (Het Parool 13.11.1957). A few years earlier this was quite a respectable opinion, shared by almost all his colleagues. But some were no longer active and in the meantime others had partly or completely changed their mind. As a result Prange lost his authority. It is the critics fate that he can only prove himself through his colleagues. If they agree with him, he is right. If for any longer period of time his judgment differs from that of others - or the majority - doubt will arise as to his powers of discretion and people will start wondering if he is the right man for the job. Eventually Prange had only one ally. He was Niehaus suc-cessor: Hans Engelman, a nephew of Jan. His appointment shows that the remarks we made about the improved climate around the Dutch

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Cobra painters need some modification. Whereas all the newly hired critics had more appreciation for them than their predecessors and that in one case we are certain that the editors approved of this, it was of all papers the very newspaper that Niehaus had worked for which took on someone who did not want to have anything to do with Cobra. We do not know if this was a matter of policy but it is clear that with Engelman we are back to where we started. Not only his judgments and his arguments are echoes of the kind of criticism of the late forties and early fifties, even the very tone is of that time. For in-stance he accuses Appel of forced lawlessness, he criticized the hollowness and poverty of his forms and was irritated by the nihilis-tic refusal to take anything whatsoever seriously (De Telegraaf 3.12.55 and 6.2.58). Engelmans support was not enough to save Prange. In the second half of the fifties he was increasingly considered a case. Col-leagues avoided him; at meetings and varnishing parties he stood alone. He also suffered as an artist: according to his biographer no museum bought his work anymore, because the critic had written the artist out of existence.41 In 1957 Prange published a small book in which he summa-rized his objections against innovations in the visual arts. He dis-cussed the Cobra painters only indirectly but that did not mean that he was kind. He derided their love of the art of children and mental de-fectives and illustrated his point by putting pictures of works of art next to pictures of children, remarking that the similarities were strik-ing and the child outpainted the artist.42 His book caused some stir in editorial rooms of Het Parool. Various members of the Stichtingsbes-tuur (Board of Foundation) had more than once expressed their dis-pleasure about Prange. When the book was scathingly criticized - a review written by Doelman - one of them informed the Board that they wanted to reconsider position of the critic. You know that we have been warning for years, he wrote to the General Manager, that our newspaper adheres to a policy that is the opposite of progres-sive.43

The writer of that letter was Piet Sanders. We know him al-ready as a Cobra collector and legal counselor to Sandberg. In the small world that was interested in modern art in the fifties, he was a man of substance. As legal advisor he was a member of the purchase committee of the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. Besides that he


was on committees and boards of the Museum Boymans -Van Beun-ingen, Rijksmuseum Krller- Mller and the Stedelijk Museum of Schiedam. Also as a result of his influence the latter museum had started to buy work of the Dutch Cobra painters.44 The chief editor of Het Parool supported their critic so Prange kept his job. However, the paper started looking for someone who could take over some of Pranges responsibilities a construc-tion which, we saw, was used before in connection with experimen-tal literature. Various names circulated among which was the name of Jaff, the Deputy Director of the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam and those of two experimental writers. But it all came to nothing. A number of years later it was the readers who protested. They thought it was absolutely outrageous that anyone with such con-servative ideas wrote for a progressive newspaper. But nothing changed because the chief editor ignored this criticism. Eventually Prange left of his own accord, in 1962. That was the year in which Sandberg organized his last summer exhibition titled: The Dutch Contribution to International Developments since 1945. And it is this very exhibition that is generally supposed to have propelled Cobra up the ladder of international art and to have given the movement canonical status.45 Notes 1 See for an extensive description of the history of both the Experimentele Groep and Cobra Stokvis 2001. 2 This applies among others to Gerrit Benner and Piet Ouborg. 3 See for a description of the emergence of the division in Dutch sculpture Teeuwisse 2004. See for critical reactions to the experimental writers De Jager 1992. 4 See among others DeNora 1995, Janssen 1994, Kapsis 1992, Mulkay/Chaplin 1982, Van Rees 1987 and Schwartz 1988. 5 Wintgens 1987. 6 For instance this applies to the use that Van Houts 2000 makes of Appels collection of cuttings.

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7 This even applies to an extremely thorough study such as that of Van Adrichem 2001. 8 Examples are Harry Prenen (Elseviers Weekblad, de Volkskrant), Gabril Smit (de Volkskrant) and Jan Engelman (De Tijd). 9 This applies to among others Bob Buys, Johan Dijkstra, Jan Engelman, Otto B. de Kat, Wim Kersten, George Lampe, Kasper Niehaus, Gabril Smit and Charles Wen-tinck. 10 For instance, of the Cobra exhibition of 1949 only one review was found which is missing in both collections, namely that of Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant. 11 Van Houts 2000 (chapter 4, 5, 6). 12 Stokvis 2001: 251ff. 13 Stokvis 2001: 287n 190. 14 According to Schrama (1966: 448) Van Beek was responsible for the layout and editor for the visual arts of De Tijd from 1945 to 1959 and after that contributed arti-cles till 1974. 15 Laan 2005. 16 Wintgens 1984. 17 See Roodenburg-Schadd 1999, 2002. 18 See Gubbels 1999 (chapter 2) for the art trade at the end of the forties and the early fifties. Information about collectors can be found in Steenbergen 2002. The term modern art is put between quotes because it has ideological connotations. See Laan 1994. 19 See Algemeen Handelsblad 20.12.1955 and 19.6.1956, Elseviers Weekblad 10.12.1955 and De Waarheid 18.6.1956. 20 See for instance Algemeen Handelsblad 19.6.1956, Haagsch Dagblad 31.12.1955 and Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant 22.12.1955 21 Janssen 1994, Van Rees 1987. For the uncertainty in judging modern art see Oosterbaan Martinus 1990 (chapter 1). 22 Van Adrichem 2001: 251. 23 Feikema/Koot/Lucas 2000, Fens 2000.


24 Examples are Pyke Koch and Hendrik Wiegersma. 25 De Gruyter 1954: 273. See for De Gruyter and the avant-garde Van Adrichem 2001: 223. See for his primitivism Laan 2000: 103f. 26 Roodenburg-Schadd 1999: 70. 27 Leeuw-Marcar 1981: 153f. 28 See De Telegraaf 3.5.1952, 1.11.1952, 11.11.1952, 22.11.1952, 12.9.1953, 17.4.1954, 24.4.1954 and 7.8.1954. 29 Cat. exhibition Contour onzer beeldende kunsten 1951. Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft. 30 Van Adrichem 2001: 376f. For Doelmans taste see also Jansen 1986. 31 See Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant 9.2.1952, 25.2.1952 and 15.11.1952. 32 Laan 2005. 33 Emmens/De Jongh 1981: 121. 34 This applies for instance to Hans Redeker (who joined Algemeen Handelsblad in 1953), George Lampe (who in the same year joined Vrij Nederland) and Lambert Tegenbosch (who since 1955 worked for de Volkskrant). 35 This applies to De Linie which in 1955 chose Ko Sarneel as a successor to Geurt Brinkgreve (Boersema 1978: 329f). 36 See for the influence of the artist apart from the studies mentioned in note 4 also Greenfeld 1989, Laan 2005 and Tempel 1999. 37 Birtwistle 1998. 38 For Cobra purchases of Museum Van Abbe see Pingen 2002: 29. 39 Hammacher 1955: 168ff, Knuttel 1955: 51ff. 40 From 1955 Doelman had been on the Advisory Committee of Museum Van Abbe (Pingen 2002: 26). 41 Rothuizen 1983. 42 Prange 1957.

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43 Mulder/Koedijk 1996: 382ff. 44 Both the managerial positions of Sanders and his collection are discussed in Steen-bergen 2002. 45 Roodenburg-Schadd 2002: 19. Bibliography Adrichem, J. van 2001 De ontvangst van de moderne kunst in Nederland, 1910-2000. Pi-

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the making of a reputation

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