Contemporary art and design
Painting returned, Dutch design and architecture conquered the world, and museums began to examine their colonial legacy.
Around 1980, after a decade of conceptual art, many artists began to paint again. In the Netherlands and Belgium a generation emerged that used painting to examine images from the media, history and politics. Marlene Dumas in Amsterdam and Luc Tuymans in Antwerp became two of the most acclaimed painters in the world. Their pictures are often based on photographs, but they transform them into something uncertain and disquieting. Painting once again became a way of thinking critically about the world.
Belgium developed a lively art scene with museums and curators such as Jan Hoet in Ghent, and artists such as Jan Fabre, Wim Delvoye, Berlinde De Bruyckere and Francis Alÿs made an international breakthrough. In the Netherlands design and architecture became the nation’s new hallmark. Designers in the Droog group and architects such as Rem Koolhaas and MVRDV made Dutch design famous all over the world for its humour, ideas and daring structures. Rotterdam became one of the most talked-about cities for architecture in the world.
The great museums were renewed. The Rijksmuseum reopened in 2013 after ten years of rebuilding, and the Antwerp museum of fine arts in 2022. At the same time both countries began seriously to discuss their colonial legacy. Museums examined how objects from Indonesia, Suriname and the Congo had ended up in their collections, and some have been returned. Artists with roots in the former colonies have gained an increasingly important voice in the art world. Art history is now being written from more perspectives than before. It is a process that is still under way.