Hans van den Ban "The unknown master"

‘If the essence of a painting is its meaning, where is the painting - hanging on the wall, or in the viewer’s mind? Is it possible to make a painting ‘in the mind’ visible? The videotape De onbekende meester (‘The unknown master’, 1978, 20 minutes, colour, sound) is an attempt to achieve this goal. I compiled a soundtrack on which a number of museum visitors react to the same relatively unfamiliar painting. These reactions, which generally take the form of a description, turn out to supply an entirely different interpretation in each case. They evoke in the viewer a continually changing image in which objective and subjective elements merge to form one new figuration after another.’ (Hans van den Ban, invitation De Appel, October/November 1978.)