Wester txt

Westertower Mural, spraycan on wall, 1992

Mural of a Delftware plate on the wall of a house opposite the Westertower in Amsterdam (2e Leliedwarsstraat)..

The facade of a house at a canal In the shadow of the Westertower opposite the Anne Frankhouse. Kaagman painted a big Delftblue platter containing in the centre a look through on the Westertower. The border of the dish is a Chinese Ming pattern in combination with a mirrored rose.The plate painting paid hommage to the Jordaan quarter with its famous Dutch bluesartists,who sang and cried for the Westertower.

It takes considerable skill, in addition to designing and cutting the stencil, to hold the stencil tight at the surface and spray the paint evenly. Stencils are modern pictographs dealing with issues of contemporary urban life, and yet some of them look as if they could be found in prehistoric caves.

Stencil art Stencil art has indeed a long tradition, but the invention of the spray can gives it new opportunities. Stencils are stylized images. They gain strength from their simplicity because the artists have to reduce their messages to a few elements in order to make them intelligible. They are subtle in their expression, often full of irony and humor. The fact that they give the viewer a puzzle to solve makes them even more provocative.