from Topos European Landscape Magazine,
3d issue 1993, 'Lucien den Arend:
Landscape as Project'
Ursula Poblotzki
'The artistic development of Lucien den Arend, a Dutch sculptor and artist who
takes the landscape into remarkable consideration in his environmental projects,
began with painting from nature - or even perhaps with the shelters he made
himself of flexible willow rods as a child. On turning to sculpture in the
sixties, he not only made objects out of bronze, steel and other classical
materials but also began to incorporate elements that he found in his immediate
surroundings in his work, leading on to a development towards his present-day
landscape projects.
Den Arend calls his work geometrically abstract, and it is clear that
mathematics and a conceptual approach play an important role in it. He is not so
much concerned with the final result as with the actual working with materials,
with the constructive phase itself. As he wrote in 1988, "i study delineation of
form, from the inside outwards: transdimensionally. legible form. delineation of
space. scientifically." The years that den Arend spent in the USA as a child and
student helped him gain a distanced approach to The Netherlands, his native
country, and enabled him to recognize the particular character and potential of
its landscape and traditions. As far as his work was concerned, he was aware,
however, that he would have to take a different approach in the Dutch landscape,
one that clearly bears the mark of man's ordering hand, than in a "natural"
situation, where an object of art immediately stands out. He realized he would
have to relate his work to other designed forms and that it would have to be
extremely forceful in character if it were to gain the same evocation as in a
natural setting. This could be achieved, in his opinion, through greater
analysis of scale; after all, in a desert a car is as spectacular as a Boeing
747.
Den Arend takes the materials he uses from the surroundings of a given project.
Concrete and steel predominate in his technical objects, while earth, trees,
lawns, water are used and given new meaning in his landscape works. He is very
fond of trees, such as pollard willows, whose rods will immediately take root
once they are struck into the earth and which regularly change in appearance in
accordance with the osiery tradition. Another tree he likes to work with is the
linden tree, which is traditionally found in front of farmhouses in The
Netherlands, where it is planted parallel to the facade in numbers in two or
three, its trunks banded white with lime.
Unlike town and open space planners, den Arend does not seek to create
interesting or beneficial effects with the natural elements he uses; rather his
main concern is with evoking the unexpected, and thus he gives hills, shrub
plantings, reservoirs and canals the form of curves, semicircles, squares, lines
and grids - an exercise in practical geometry. Indeed, he set up a foundation in
the small town of Barendrecht in homage to the painter Pieter Janszoon Saenredam
(1597-1665), whose objective and scrupulously precise depiction of architecture
he admires, coupling it with a project that links mathematics and landscape
culture, Japanese inspiration and Dutch tradition at the same time.
The project is to be as transitional in character as both Dutch osier
cultivation, where the pollard willows are replaced when they fall apart once
they get old, and the Grand Shrine of Ise in Japan, where a new shrine is set up
every 20 years in replacement of the old one, which is demolished. In this
respect den Arend took one of the reservoirs used in The Netherlands to help
regulate the water level and changed its quasi-organic shape to a rectangular
one, providing it at the same time with 16 by 16 rows of willow branches in
memory of the days when osier beds played an important role in the reclamation
of land. Once the branches have grown into mature trees, their closely set
trunks will be evocative of the interior of a crypt. In June 1997, the 400th
anniversary of the artist's birth, and every twelve and a half years after that,
this "interior" is to be whitewashed to increase the association with
Saenredam's Calvinistic church interiors. The foundation that den Arend has set
up is to ensure that this regular ceremony is continued after his death.
Some of his projects seem to have been inspired by constructive principles and
it is no coincidence that one of his most spectacular objects, semicircular
earth work is named Homage to El Lissitzky. Moreover, a bridge that den Arend
erected over the Dirksland Canal stands like a constructivist composition in the
landscape, as was indeed his intention: "The bridge had to be constructed of
elementary forms perpendicular to each other. An orthogonal formation of
concrete planes forms the bridge in such a way that it detaches itself from the
landscape and becomes an entity; a landmark rather than a conventional bridge.
With color I emphasized the separate planes." Den Arend also planted parallel
rows of Italian poplars at a sharp angle to the road that crosses the bridge,
creating an interesting time and space effect for passing motorists. Setting up
rows of trees parallel to the highway, in comparison, would only have
accentuated its invasion of the countryside. As it is, it is the bridge which is
to stand out - and, given the conceptual approach that led to its construction,
will provide the landscape with an enriching element.
Art in the landscape is public in the best sense of the word. It reaches far
more people than the usual works that hang in living rooms or museums.
Landscapes and urban open spaces belong to us all, and landscape projects are
works of art that can be experienced by everyone, every day. Moreover, projects
that include trees are able to grow with the people and age with them.'
