‘The art of painting can only be judged properly by those who are themselves artists. For others it's as if it were a foreign language',wrote Albrecht Diirer. 'There's something in that', is Kraaijpoel's reaction in his book De Nieuwe Salon (The New Salon) to the words of this fellow artist long turned to dust. It is typical of the tone in which Kraaijpoel writes of art, that is, in understatement. Some-times it's a shame. Here, for example, you would really expect him to agree wholeheartedly with Diirer.

‘The art of painting can only be judged properly by those who are themselves artists. For others it"s as if it were a foreign language",wrote Albrecht Diirer. "There"s something in that", is Kraaijpoel"s reaction in his book De Nieuwe Salon (The New Salon) to the words of this fellow artist long turned to dust. It is typical of the tone in which Kraaijpoel writes of art, that is, in understatement. Some-times it"s a shame. Here, for example, you would really expect him to agree wholeheartedly with Diirer.

Diirer is not the only one who thinks that only artists have the right to judge art. A few generations later, for example, the paint-er and art critic Joachim yon Sandrart writes,"No one but a per-fect painter can write about the art of painting". I must confess that this same thought crossed my mind the first time I read one of Diederik Kraaijpoel"s articles about painting. What a breath of fresh air! Not only was the tone one of"we artists", more impor-tantly, the things he wrote about work and its creation are infor-mative in a way not usually encountered in otherwise respectable texts by non-artists writing about art. His texts, because of their apparent ordinariness, often reveal more than do erudite or great words from the pens of non-artists.

ERNST VAN DE WETERING

Diederik Kraaijpoel as Artist and Writer

TOINE MOERBEEK

The Danse Macabre of the Clouds

LAURENS BALKEMA

Three Interviews with Diederik Kraaijpoel

INTERVIEW I, NOVEMBER 1985

And to Dust Shall All Return

INTERVIEW II, APRIL 1993

The Art of Painting was not Invented for Nothing

INTERVIEW Ill, MAY 1998

On Fallen Arches

Biography

List of Plates

Drawings

Paintings