Allan Jones & Marco Livingstone
Allan Jones, interviewd by Marco Livingstone

Alexander Streitberger
Coup de Fil à Pierre Restany
Marcel Broodthaers and Nouveau Réalisme

Rogier Schumacher
Signing the world.
Pop Art In Museumjournaal

Carl Jacobs
Consuming America.
How Belgian art met and incorporated American Pop.

- Rogier Schumacher
In the early summer of 1965 two simultaneous exhibitions marked the breakthrough of pop art in the Netherlands: Nieuwe realisten (Haags Gemeentemuseum) and American Pop Art (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). Even before the Dutch public could catch a glimpse of the new art in the Hague and Amsterdam Museumjournaal, the magazine issued by the leading Dutch museums of modern art, had already paid quite some attentaion to it. Wim Beeren, editor in chief of the magazine and curator of Nieuwe realisten, presented pop in his contributions to Museumjournaal as the expression of a common attitude towards life, marked by a democratized pattern of culture and a sense of reality dominated by mass media. The works by Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol and others intrigued him, beyond any doubt, because of their unorthodox visual appearance. But at the same time they fascinated him because of the intensified experience of reality they provoked within the viewer and the new perspectives on everyday life they offered.
With his understanding of pop as a contemporary communal art – firmly rooted in, and reflecting on urban society - Beeren´s point of view was a highly pronounced one within the Dutch museum world. By way of his essays in Museumjournaal though, his observations on the new art reached a large audience, whereas his understanding of contemporary avant-garde art inspired a company of younger, progressive museum workers. A short discussion of his ideas will shed light on the earliest reception and image of international pop art in the vanguard within the Dutch art world.