1982-07-11-070a
8 out of 131 images
  • 1982-07-11-070a
  • 1982-07-11-070b
  • 1982-07-11-070c
  • 1982-07-11-070d
  • 1982-07-11-070e
  • 1982-07-11-070f
  • 1982-07-11-070g
  • 1982-07-11-070h
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les très riches heures de herman de vries

catalogue number: hdv 1982.071.3
date created: 1982
classification: photographs
work type: photograph series
medium: 131 black and white photographs taken on the day of his his 51st birthday, 11 July 1982 around Eschenau
dimensions: each photo 12.5 × 17.5 cm
signature and inscriptions:
edition:
current repository: collection herman and susanne de vries (film nr. SW: F-756, F-759, F-762 - F-766)
current repository number:
collecting history:
related works: 1. a comparable set of colour photographs was made (film nr. FN: F-752 - F-755 and F-762)
2. les très riches heures de herman de vries (Seedamm Kulturzentrum - Stiftung Charles & Agnes Vögele : Pfäffikon 2004)
comment:
photo/scan: studio herman de vries/l-cs
rights & reproduction: herman de vries
object label

'les très riches heures de herman de vries' was inspired, conceptually, by the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. The Limbourg brothers' supreme masterpiece of the genre (created between 1411 and 1416 and containing 131 exquisite miniatures) conformed to the conventional form of the book of hours, being a prayer book in which the canonical hours (horae), the Little Office of the Virgin, a calendar of months with appropriate zodiac maps and signs, etc., were elaborately illuminated and illustrated for the delectation of the very rich patron who commissioned it

[...]

de vries's heures are, conversely, those of a single summer day in 1982 spent by the artist - the experiencing subject - in the woods near Eschenau: the work consists of 131 black and white photographs taken of whatever detail of the life around him has caught his attention, a fall of sunlight through leaves, grass stems, a single leaf half-eaten by insects, foliage, the bark of a tree. Without regard to any order of devotions or any systematic relation to the passing of the hours, every exposure catches a trace of the actual light of the day on the reality of a single moment.

[source: Mel Gooding, herman de vries. chance and change (London 2006) 80-82]

exhibition history
1982 'les très riches heures de herman de vries', Galerie Lydia Megert, Bern
published references
text 'les très riches heures de herman de vries', in MW n° 7 (Magazine and Supplement) (MW Press : Noordwijk June 1984) [1-8] and [20]. 8 photographs from 'les très riches heures de herman de vries', a series of 131 photgraphs made on his birthday July 11, 1982. 2000 copies.
catalogue raisonné herman de vries. les livres et les publications : catalogue raisonné (centre des livres d'artistes : Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche 2005) no image repr., 175 (cat. number 59).
monograph Mel Gooding, herman de vries. chance and change (Thames and Hudson : London 2006) images repr. on page 181 (partially), 80-82.