#jagtlust

Peter Vos (1935-2010) The Island Hoopoe, custom made book with drawings for the artist's muse, the Dutch poet Fritzi Harmsen ten Beek. When their relationship ended the distraught artist tore up the book and threw it in the pond of the squatted villa where they were living, but Fritzi fished the pages out and dried them.

Two Hoopoe birds announce themselves at the front door of the villa

They write a note and leave a magical key you can use to fly with a table to the Island Hoopoe on a full moon night.

The table flies away

And breaks at landing

The birds are shown enjoying activities on their island, fine dining among them

Everyone who visited the villa Jagtlust remembered the central window that Fritzi Harmsen ten Beek decorated with thrifted objects and little art works. She created a magical atmosphere, as something out of a fairy tale. But this was also part of her artistic philosophy. She found beauty in small, overlooked things and decay, which she explained with a self invented word:

"In the bathroom I saw a millipede, where such an animal of course doesn't belong, and by the grace of God, that is tenderness, a millipede dividing its already slight shape over all these little feet. Now this is what I call a downlapse (especially considering that almost everyone finds millipedes repulsive).

Downlapses can be written well or badly. The difference between a downlapse and other forms of literary communication is that it needs to hide its poignancy as well as it can, while making the reader's mood susceptible to ideas about the subject that are different or even diametrally opposed to the reader's own way of thinking about it.

You could say that a downlapse should be: a choice of words that puts down a writer's thought in such a way that it breaks down a reader's prejudice."