Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists

20. CHANCE & CHANGE: herman de vries

223 20 CHANCE & CHANGE herman de vries herman de vries’ sense of a transcendent unity is both mystical and functional. Texts of Zen Buddhism and the Hindu verses of the Upanishads influenced his early artworks. In 1959 he made his first white painting. Typically this resulted more from de vries’ reading of philosophy and mysticism than the happenings of the artistic avant garde in Europe. Trained as a scientist, de vries continued through the 1960s to work as a researcher at the Institute of Applied Biology in Nature in Arnhem, a post he held until 1968. His artistic output in the 1960s existed entirely separately from his scientific work, although randomness and chance, which appeared as a major theme in his art, would have been encountered in the use of random number tables and the statistical design of biological experiments. de vries’ belief in the capacity of art to communicate and his sense of objectivity led him to abandon the use of capital letters in his writing over a period of forty-five years. herman de vries’ texts are never capitalized, as he seeks to avoid any hierarchy of words, language, and structure. In 1988 de vries published a book titled flora incorporate. Each page gave the name of a plant species that he had eaten as food or taken as tea, medicine, or drug. The book listed 484 plant species. As de vries comments: “taking in our food is participating in the unity of existence, the world.” His installations often have a scientific or objective aspect to them and involve collecting elements or objects or plants. More recently, de vries has presented a design for the development of the Weeribben nature reserve in the northwest Dutch province of Overijssel, a project de vries views as an integration of various scientific disciplines, concrete art, and philosophy. JG Moving from botany into art at the age of forty is quite a transformation. What drove you to get into art making? hdv in fact I started painting and drawing as early as 1953, about a year after beginning work for the plant protection service. i did research work on the biology and geographic distribution of mice and rats and their extermination 224 20.1 herman de vries. the witness, 1991. Trunk of an olive tree, 220 cm. Parc de l’Espace de l’Art Concret, Mouans-Sartoux. Photo: Jean Brasille. Courtesy of the artist. 225 20.2 herman de vries. ambulo ergo sum (a phrase from the philosopher and mathematician Gassendi). Detail from sanctuaire de roche-rousse. Alpes de Provence, Digne. Photo: Nadine Passamar Homez. Courtesy of the artist. chance & change 226 there and was not satisfied with my scientific work. i felt it was incomplete in its approach toward reality. my first art work was spontaneous abstract painting , later informal. JG The white paintings you began making in 1959 are very minimalist, not expressionist, and more purist in inspiration. Was this series a way of bridging the transformation into artmaking and out of science, and a way of discovering some essence? Did philosophy play a role in bringing you to this way of making art? hdv under the influence of suzuki’s books on zen buddhism i reduced the color and expressivity more and more until I came to empty white paintings without any form, but i followed different tracks in my early work. so from about 1954 or 1955 i also made collages. the beginnings of these were original: my fascination with the fragments that remained of advertisement walls in paris. i was later influenced by the works of kurt schwitters, always playing with used, thrown away, weathered parts of reality, found on roadsides, litter in the forest, and so on. there was a strong trend toward reevaluating things which lost all value: “what is rubbish?” JG You also created works that involve a musical component. hdv yes. it began in 1962 and ’63 with bird voices, recorded with a large one hundred centimeter parabole microphone i borrowed from the institute of applied biological research in nature. in the morning at about 4:30 am i would record them in a place with many gardens, bordering a large forest region. it was in fact a kind of z e r o work—no composition, no selection—just recordings . these recordings were reality-music: natura artis magistra, a title derived from...