Artistic illustration is the common thread running through the history of Dutch television animation
De Fabeltjeskrant, Alfred Jodocus Kwak and Purno de Purno – entire generations in the Netherlands grew up watching these animated programmes on Dutch television. Dutch animation culture even has a character all of its own, as UvA PhD candidate Grietje Hoogland discovered when she delved into this history for the first time.
The first animations appeared on Dutch television in the 1950s. Was the American animation studio Walt Disney taken as a model?
“Surprisingly, that wasn’t really the case. I also wondered why animation had already existed for some fifty years before it reached Dutch television. And the short answer to that is that the Netherlands simply didn’t have an industry like Hollywood, with large studios where lots of people worked on animations at drawing boards at the same time.”
“And so, in the Netherlands, they illustrated rather than animated, which is less labour-intensive. The Dutch illustrators came from art colleges and were hired by the public broadcaster because of their versatility: they could design logos, create weather maps, and basically anything that needed to be drawn. The illustrators admired the high standard of Hollywood animation but were not particularly influenced by it. They were artistic in their own right and were thus able to add a very distinct artistic value to the programmes they illustrated for Dutch television.”
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What characterises Dutch television animation?
“I find that difficult to say, because it has evolved over time. I looked at the period of Dutch television from 1951 to 1996, and in the early years the illustrators were mainly inspired by Dutch book illustrators, and there was little movement in the animations.”
“In the 1970s – the heyday in terms of artistic freedom for illustrators working for the broadcasters – there was more scope for animation. There were still restrictions; the production process was not allowed to take up too much time, but there were certainly more animated intros and sequences within programmes, such as in De film van Ome Willem, a children’s programme by the Vara.”
“In the late 1980s, the facilities department of the public broadcaster was privatised and the established group of illustrators – who had still learnt to draw for television on the job – suddenly had to start pitching ideas. Many illustrators took early retirement at that time. This opened the field to a new generation of illustrators who had actually studied animation for film and television at art college. New techniques then emerged, such as computer animation and object animation: animation using objects rather than.”
“But the new generation continues to illustrate as well. The history of Dutch television animation is therefore not necessarily a story of stillness giving way to movement, because high-quality artistic illustration remains a constant factor. You can see that in TV programmes such as Jarig, stories by Toon Tellegen with illustrations by Annemarie van Haeringen, and Verhalen van de boze heks, which uses silhouette illustration, actually a very traditional technique.”
For your thesis, you watched nearly six hundred TV programmes. Which is your favourite?
“Personally, I’m a real VPRO kid (Dutch public broadcaster red.), so I do love the rebellious, mischievous and incredibly creative vibe of the 90s. But my favourite programme comes from a different angle. That’s Kleine Isar, an NCRV TV series from the 80s, about the little king Isar who hears that Jesus has been born and wants to play with him. The animation tells the story of Jesus through the eyes of a child, using painted figures propped up on skewers in a layer of polystyrene. The camera moves through this, creating a wonderfully dreamy diorama effect with a watercolour-like quality.”
Do you think artistic illustration will hold its own with the rise of AI?
(Sigh): “Oh, AI. We’ll see. I’d like to be optimistic and say that people will continue to have a desire to create something of their own, something genuine and something with character. So yes, real stories and beautiful artistic images will continue to exist.”
Grietje Hoogland will defend her PhD thesis on Friday 24 April at 4.00 pm on the subject “Drawing for television. Illustration and animation in Dutch public youth television 1951–1996: media technological, financial and cultural influences forming a professional cultural field.” The defence will take place in the Agnietenkapel and admission is free.
