Mart. Spruijt calendar 1988/89

Justifiable nudity

in:
Items #27, August 1988, p.46

Anyone who has ever taken their car to a garage for repair will have seen – from the corner of their eye – the calendars and posters that provide a tender moment of distraction for diligent mechanics during their short breaks. On such printed matter, scantily clad beauties cherish quality car tires or adornfully praise an unsurpassed lubricant. The civilized Volvo user, who waits until the car has had its fix, contemplates these images smugly but fascinated, and consoles himself with the thought of the great sociologist Norbert Elias, who sees civilization as an ever-evolving process of controlling one's passions.

Concept: Anthon Beeke
Photo: Barend van Herpe
Design: Hard Werken

The latest calendar in the illustrious series by printer Mart. Spruijt has a distinct garage appeal. The combination of female nudity and calendarium has a long tradition, though rarely Salonfähig. The design teams of Studio Dumbar, Anthon Beeke and Hard Werken have attempted to change that by creating a very aesthetic, beautifully crafted and superbly printed calendar on the theme of ‘eroticism.’ The foremen of the aforementioned agencies set the tone in the first week (June 19). The three of them support a girl (co-designer Helen Howard) whose nudity contrasts sharply with the designers' black raincoats and depict three basic attitudes of male sexual desire: Hadders's satrapic gaze, boldly grabbing the girl's buttock; Beeke cupping her breast with the elegance of a seasoned libertine; Dumbar's perfectly Jesuitic pose, whose left hand carelessly, almost surreptitiously touches her crotch.

The calendar offers a wide variety of (mainly) straight male fantasies, from domestic bliss by the fireplace to soft SM. Remarkable are six pages on which Helen Howard (who coordinated the calendar's design) figures in "maximal realizations" of her own erotic fantasies, staged by Hadders and Dumbar respectively, as she notes in the colophon. A choice of photographers have provided the calendar with very tasteful illustrations, justifying overtly erotic connotations with references to Great Artists such as Courbet, Caspar David Friedrich, Felicien Rops, Botticelli, Stravinsky, Strauss and others, listed as sources of inspiration at the back, near the colophon. Not mentioned are two photographers and video artists, whose influence is especially evident in the photographs of Tom van den Haspel and Lex van Pieterson: Lydia Schouten and Tjarda Sixma, both very active in the field of ‘staged photography.’ Shameless quoting is also part of ‘the new Dutch design style’ of which, according to Pieter Brattinga's foreword, this calendar is an example. Be that as it may, the calendar does not look out of place in any postmodern interior. Tasteful.

The real lustful delight, meanwhile, is reserved for designers with a heart for print quality. One of them sighed as he looked with moist eyes at the cover, printed in four-color black: “hot printwork!”

Concept: Helen Howard, Gert Dumbar
Photo: Lex Van Pieterson
Design: Ton van Bragt, Michel de Boer / Studio Dumbar

Updated: 2023