Jan Schoonhoven - Beambte 18977

Jan Schoonhoven, it is made clear in this affectionate documentary, was the almost perfect civil servant. For thirty years, he took the same train from his residence Delft to The Hague, where he worked for the PTT. At home, he practised the same meticulousness in his art: white, monochrome reliefs from cardboard and papier-mâché. His reputation grew fast after he had won the second prize at the Art Biennale of Sao Paolo in 1967. Artist friends, his assistant and his son talk about this unfettered representative of the Nul movement, whose creed was 'Nothing is essential'. The portrait is completed with footage from a previous documentary on Schoonhoven, where we see him at his favourite places: working at the living room table and sitting behind a goblet of Dutch gin in the pub. It also includes hallucinatory footage of a party /art project, with which Schoonhoven shocked Holland and particularly his employer: his body was painted while naked. 'As long as I can keep my socks on.