Kaleidoscope

by Mark Stevens

In Western society, art is often treated as a competition. Did Ingres or Delacroix first plant his flag on the Parisian mountaintop? Did Courbet race past them both? Who won Matisse Picasso, the huge exhibit staged in 2003 at the Museum of Modern Art? Was the main man after the war Pollock or de Kooning? This rivalrous perspective never suited Joop Sanders, a highly accomplished painter with a curious, skeptical, and open mind who, while keenly aware of the jostle for position, never tried to create a brand. Sanders was too well read in the history of art merely to chase after the big cats; and he never remained for too long in one style. His changeable practice was conscious and intentional, a way to stay fresh and to transform the evolving traditions of his time into his private “variations on a theme.” In some ways, he reminds me of an artist from before the modern period, when the eye was not always “I.”

With rare exceptions, Sanders could be counted upon to work with circles or the idea of circles; and, of course, with what circles and circular forms suggest to the imagination. (No form has more symbolic meanings.) Broken circles. Partial circles. Expanding circles…

Excerpt from exhibition catalogue, Joop Sanders: The Last Abstract Expressionist, 2025

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Mark Stevens has often written about art. He is the author, with Annalyn Swan, of the biographies de Kooning: An American Master and Francis Bacon: Revelations.