1. 29 July 2006

    Brilliant Orange

    David Winner

    893 days ago

    A look into the synthesis of Dutch culture, football, and design. A few months ago one of the guys at work mentioned it, and when I saw it again mentioned here there was no stopping me telling the friendly librarians to send it my way. Centered around the freestyle, elegant, beautiful style of Netherlands football from the glory days, Winer looks at how that philosophy merges with the rest of the Dutch world. Lots of talk about Soccer and Design, two good hooks for me.

    Pieter Jansz Saenredam (59), post renaissance dutch painter. Wow, find Interior of the Church of St Bavo in Haarlem and take a look at it..

    Hollandse Velden (62), Hans Van der Meer on photography:

    Football is a game of space So why should you leave the space out? Every Monday in the newspapers you see the same stupid, boring close-ups taken from behind the goals with long telephoto lenses which distort the space. Those pictures show you football situations but you have no idea what they mean. Two players fight for the ball. So what? Where on the pitch are they? IN the 1950s, we had different pictures, more interesting photographs of the crowd, wide-angle pictures of the game. The close-ups tell you so little. When the sports photography archives are opened in a hundred years, there will be a whole part of the history of the game missing because all the interesting little things around the pitch were simply not photographed. 64

    You can’t rationalize it. It’s like driving a car. That is also about being part of a system larger then you… the car becomes you. You can only drive it when you don’t know the rules any more, when you forget everything they taught you. Every time you turn a corner, you don’t get out of the car to measure the curves and then get back into the car. You do everything blind because of the system, the road and the other cars, which are part of the system too… And that’s the moment when you are ‘in form’ in both senses. It feels good and there’s this whole hectic feeling of extension into the world this is being “informed.” Lars Spuybroek (architect), 71

    We played with anything as long as it was round – rolled up papers tied with string, anything. Some people’s parents had money and could get hold of a proper ball, but mostly it was tennis balls. You develop great technique like that. The ground was hard, so you didn’t want to fall because it hurt; so you have good balance. And the game was very quick because the hard ground makes the game quicker. No one ever told us how to play. It was all natural. Arnold Muhren, 119

    I’ve always wanted to con kids into playing soccer with a tennis ball, I kick them around my house and play keep away with the dogs using only my feet, and it’s good fun. But something about having fields and goals makes it hard to use tennis balls, and I’ve never even played soccer in the street. Goddamn privilege.

    Brazil, sadly, is no longer swinging and flaming. I see defenders boot the ball away shamelessly. Holland must never play like that. If we did, people would murder me, and they would be right to do so. Guus Hiddink, 149

    Holland v. Italy, Argentia ‘78: Arie Haan 163 (Whenever a specific goal came under discussion, I checked for it on youtube or google video, and it would be there.)

    I think it is very Dutch to look for a simple solution. And the biggest thrill in our work is to find an even simpler solution. That is what we like. In the end the most satisifying solution is the one where you have cleared everything away and there is no solution at all any more but, at the same time, the problem has been solved. That’s the nicest way of doing it. Benthem, 237-8

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