Noise!

In its Hal location on Haarlem’s Grote Markt, the refurbished Frans Hals Museum proudly presents the international group exhibition Noise! Frans Hals, Otherwise (September 29, 2018–January 27, 2019). Frans Hals broke the representational conventions of portraiture. Reviving Hals’ actions against the protocols of his time, the exhibition brings together contemporary artworks that similarly play with, and speculate on, the notion of portraiture and its meaning today.

Frans Hals, Otherwise
The 17th century painter Frans Hals had a unique approach to portraiture. His paintings convey a painterly technique that was rougher, sketchier and freer than that of his contemporaries, suggesting an unprecedented sense of liveliness. Indeed, Hals’ innovation does not only pertain to the style of his paintings, but also to their content. As well as depicting wealthy members of society, Hals also introduced people of lower social standings into his portrait paintings—such as a gypsy girl, a person who was mentally ill, fisher children. With his innovative approach, Hals thus posed the question anew of who could become the subject of a portrait, and how they could be depicted.

Noise!
Taking these aspects of Hals’ work as points of departure, the exhibition Noise! Frans Hals, Otherwise brings together contemporary artworks that similarly challenge the notion of portraiture. Across four chapters—Liveliness, Expectations, Infiltration and Noise—the relation of these works to topics such as representation, identity and agency within contemporary visual culture is developed, while the works themselves, along with selected works by Hals, grow progressively noisier. By drawing on caricature, irony and the grotesque, and by conjuring images both utopian and dystopian, these artists explore the formal, cultural and political possibilities of portraiture in our time, marked by deepening inequalities and a return to forcefully demarcated identities.

In an age of social media—with its profile pictures and selfies—the question as to how we visually represent ourselves is inherently bound to anything we say online. Speaking up, moreover, has become an imperative in today’s polarised climate, which demands we draw clear lines in the sand as we weaponise what we find most distinctive about ourselves. In this climate, the notions of identity and its representation have once again taken centre stage. Reflecting on this condition, the exhibition explores the possibilities and forms of portraiture that go against the grain of our time by questioning entrenched expectations, habits and assumptions.

Exhibition
For each chapter of the exhibition, a reproduction of a specific Frans Hals piece forms the point of departure. The presentation combines important works from the contemporary art collection of the Frans Hals Museum—by artists such as Sarah Lucas, Pilvi Takala and Gillian Wearing—with works by other contemporary artists.

The paintings by Nicole Eisenman, Justin John Greene and Jacqueline De Jong in the first part of the exhibition (Liveliness) relate to the sense of movement and animation Hals’ paintings convey, while translating it to social-utopian scenarios. Many of Hals’ group portraits are reminiscent of snapshots. Moving on from these animated works, the next section of the exhibition (Expectations) presents artworks that raise questions connected to issues of representation. Hals posed the question anew of who could become the subject of a portrait, and how they could be depicted. The works by artists such as Xinyi Cheng and Hamishi Farah relate to similar issues: who is allowed to represent whom and how? The next section, Infiltration, shows the work of Sarah Lucas, among others. Just as Hals, the artist added herself to a group portrait. While Hals allegedly painted his own image among Officers and Sergeants of the St George Civic Guard (1639), Lucas added her name to a group photo of the Arsenal Football Club. The exhibition culminates with Hals’ Shrovetide Revellers (approx. 1616-1617), the painting in which the kind of “noise” that Hals introduced into the genre of portraiture is probably best visible, as it combines a number of those elements of Hals’ painting that went against the grain of art at the time. This last part of the exhibition shows works by artists such as Kiki Kogelnik, Siebren Versteeg and Özgür Kar.

With:
Anna-Sophie Berger (Austria), Vittorio Brodmann (Switzerland), Xinyi Cheng (China), Stephan Dillemuth (Germany), Nicole Eisenman (USA), Hamishi Farah (Somalia), Justin John Greene (USA), Ivy Haldeman (USA), Tom Humphreys (Great Britain), Jacqueline De Jong (Netherlands), Özgür Kar (Turkey), Kiki Kogelnik (Austria), Sarah Lucas (Great Britain), Perri MacKenzie (Great Britain), Alan Michael (Great Britain), Jill Mulleady (Uruguay), Simphiwe Ndzube (Zambia), Josip Novosel (Croatia), HC Playner (Austria), Pilvi Takala (Finland), Siebren Versteeg (Netherlands) and Gillian Wearing (Great Britain).

The exhibition Noise! is curated by Melanie Bühler. This is her first exhibition since she assumed her function as contemporary art curator at the Frans Hals Museum. In 2016 the museum presented Inflected Objects #2 Circulation – Mise en Séance, an exhibition Bühler curated for the museum as a guest curator.

Frans Hals and the Moderns
Concurrently with Noise! Frans Hals, Otherwise, the ground-breaking exhibition Frans Hals and the Moderns. Hals meets Manet, Singer Sargent, Van Gogh will be on view at Frans Hals Museum’s Hof location. This blockbuster exhibition shows Frans Hals’ immense impact on some of the most influential painters of the 19th century.