{"id":1060,"date":"2011-01-23T20:45:21","date_gmt":"2011-01-23T20:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2011-01-23T20:45:21","modified_gmt":"2011-01-23T20:45:21","slug":"tinkebell-a-brush-with-contemporary-art-in-the-netherlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/tinkebell-a-brush-with-contemporary-art-in-the-netherlands\/","title":{"rendered":"Tinkebell: A brush with contemporary art in the Netherlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past week, a new editorial by Rutger Ponzen in de Volkstrant<\/em><\/a> revisited the Tinkebell phenomenon.\u00a0 I\u2019d never heard of her before, but she\u2019s a Dutch artist (Tinkebell is, predictably, her pseudonym; her real name is Katinka Simonse) who has made herself famous (at least in Holland) by making art about animals that has tended toward the shocking.\u00a0 In 2004, she euthanized her dying cat, skinned it herself, and made a handbag.\u00a0 In 2008, she created an installation called \u201cSAVE THE PETS\u201d which consisted of many hamsters rolling around in Chinese-manufactured hamster balls.<\/p>\n

Both projects received a huge amount of negative attention; indeed, a newer project of hers has been to identify many of the anonymous Internet correspondents who repeatedly sent her death threats.\u00a0 She has published their identities and their communications in a book — Dearest Tinkebell<\/em>. \u00a0As you\u2019ll see if you listen to her talk about both the hamsters and the cat bag in the clips below, the main thrust behind her work seems to be the idea that those who find her art cruel are fundamentally hypocritical, since there is tremendous animal cruelty at work in the day-to-day mass consumption of food, etc.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BYYrsSc6sj4&feature=related<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ugS6TQYUb2Q&feature=related<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the questions posed by Ponzen\u2019s Volkskrant<\/em> piece is whether Tinkebell\u2019s work should be categorized as \u201cart,\u201d provocative though it may be.\u00a0 That argument, of course, is as old as the hills \u2013 or, at least, as old as the urinal.\u00a0 (In fact, one of my favorite lines from Ponzen\u2019s piece asks whether you can giet als kunstenaar een limonadeflesje leeg in de Noordzee. <\/em>I tried to find out whether this was a reference to a real-life project, or just a product of his whimsy.\u00a0 I sort of hope it is the latter.)<\/p>\n

In any case, art is as art does \u2013 and Tinkebell makes a lot of art.\u00a0 Her website<\/a> is full of powerful political punches worth taking a look at.\u00a0 The tone of her work \u2013 sort of a sinister girliness \u2013 is a little uncomfortable.\u00a0 But maybe that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past week, a new editorial by Rutger Ponzen in de Volkstrant revisited the Tinkebell phenomenon.\u00a0 I\u2019d never heard of her before, but she\u2019s a Dutch artist (Tinkebell is, predictably, her pseudonym; her real name is Katinka Simonse) who has made herself famous (at least in Holland) by making art about animals that has tended…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3590],"tags":[13445,13447,13446,13444],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-dutch-language","tag-katinka-simonse","tag-rutger-ponzen","tag-save-the-pets","tag-tinkebell"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1062,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/1062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}