Artist Erik Mattijssen asked patients: where would you most like to be right now?

That morning he walked through an Amsterdam hospital, where he had an appointment with a doctor. He was too early and thought: ‘I’m going to see what’s hanging on the wall here’

Soon he wondered, “Why is it so ugly here, so bad, so weak?” In words he sketches the well-known images, of long corridors, waiting rooms with furniture that is reminiscent of nothing but waiting rooms, with a dried-up plant here and there that clearly does not thrive under a suspended ceiling with fluorescent tubes.

Erik Mattijssen (1957) is a visual artist. That directs his gaze. He says: “I find it incomprehensible: so much nothingness, in an environment where people are at their most vulnerable.”

Mattijssen had carefully asked a nurse, who took a test from him: “Do they also do art in this hospital?” She replied: “Yes, I believe so, but I do not pay attention to it. I have my regular route to my workplace. And other than that, I don’t really look around.”

She mentioned a statue that would be somewhere in the hospital, once donated by a doctor. He went looking for it. He found it, lost in a waiting room, right in front of a blown-up photo of Amsterdam’s Museumplein. “You see those wall-filling photos everywhere. It is the plague of this time. A tulip field here, a village with a church there, and then suddenly the Grand Canyon. There’s no thought behind it. They are random, safe choices; and an underestimation of people who visit a hospital or work there.”

Mattijssen’s works are large and small at the same time, vulnerable in details, exuberant in size. They often cover entire walls. He works on paper, rarely if ever on canvas, with pencil, pastel and gouache. He brings everyday items and figures together in combinations that are both recognizable and alienating. Why is there a hippo hanging on a string above the mantelpiece?

Dolls, toys, animals, groceries gather on and around kitchen tables, in window sills, in shop windows. Those looking for guidance in Mattijssen’s style: something from Henri Matisse and David Hockney shines through.

In recent years, he has been remarkably often commissioned by hospitals. He made works for the Leiden University Medical Center, the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital in Amsterdam and the Isala Hospital in Meppel. A funeral home in Utrecht bought five of his works, believing that narrative art can bring distraction and relief to mourners. He is currently working on an assignment for the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital in Utrecht.

The new Isala hospital to be built in Meppel has an art committee that asked him to think along about the question: how do we create a hospitable atmosphere at the counters of four outpatient clinics? “I like to make my work with a specific place in mind,” says Mattijssen. “This creates cohesion and the space and the work reinforce each other.”

Before Mattijssen started his assignment for the outpatient clinics, he spent a day in waiting rooms in Meppel. He asked patients: ‘Where would you most like to be right now?’ He takes out his smartphone and plays statements he collected. Like, “On the truck, sir”; ‘I would prefer to sit on a terrace now, with a glass of wine, and then watch people, see a lot of people’; and: ‘Walking along a path with cow parsley. I think that’s the most beautiful thing: cow parsley, as a hopeful start of something new. But that is no longer an option for me.’

His works have been hanging in the hospital of Meppel for almost two years. Titles: The caravan, The construction, The hammock and The armchair.

In preparation for his work for the children’s hospital in Utrecht, he sent a letter to children who had been hospitalized, asking: ‘What is not here that you would like to have with you?’ He received dozens of answers: “My whole family,” “Harry Potter’s magic wand,” “A hamster horse,” “A beautiful sunset.” And also: ‘Real pancakes’.

The latter will be the title of the work, which should be completed this fall. As a source of inspiration, he sees a photo from 1925, of a toy stall at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, where the illusionist and filmmaker George Méliès spent his last days.

What do you hope to evoke in people who see your work in a hospital?

“I hope I can stimulate their imagination. Yes, imagination – I think that’s a beautiful, typical Dutch word, more beautiful than the English and French imagination. Generating imagination, that’s what it’s all about. That’s how you resist your senses. I prefer to bring together different images, with which I evoke associations and memories in people, let them come up with ideas, evoke feelings.”

Positive feelings? Happy memories? To what extent can the experience of art help to endure illness?

“A so-called ‘healing environment’ can contribute to this. Much research has been done into the question: can architecture, design and art improve people’s health? The answer is yes, but then all designers and artists really have to work together, with the associated freedom and budgets.”

Mattijssen quotes a metaphor from psychiatrist Dirk de Wachter: “Art is not the icing on the cake; art is the bottom. It is painful that this has to be fought over and over again, especially in public places where art has an indispensable added value.”

“There is beautiful art up for grabs. Colleagues’ best works are stored in depots’

Fought with whom? With managements of hospitals and other healthcare institutions?

“My own experience is positive, in my contacts with curators who are responsible for the art collections here. But they don’t have an easy position, with small budgets, that are in constant danger.”

Healthcare budgets are under constant pressure. How can this be solved?

“The receptiveness to art leaves something to be desired in society as a whole. There is a deeper reason for this: visual and artistic education are virtually absent in secondary education. As a result, art remains marginal for many people.

“And that while great work is up for grabs. You will find great talents among artists who graduate from the academies every year. The best works of colleagues are stored in depots. Gallerists go out of their way to sell work. Yet relatively little of this ends up in healthcare institutions and other public spaces.

“It often also goes wrong with the purchase of art, if too many people are allowed to get involved. Then you get compromises, then it becomes noncommittal. One prefers not to see two empty chairs, because they would symbolize the loss of deceased parents; the other believes that flowers should not hang limply. That way you keep busy and you get nowhere.”

Artists can also be hypersensitive. After all, there is a tension between the wishes of clients and artistic freedom.

“That’s right. But for an artist it is difficult enough to find your own path. This necessary search makes them rather solitary by nature and often too focused on themselves.

“I now like to work on commission, I prefer it more and more. I think it’s great to have real contact with clients: to hear exactly what they have in mind, to investigate how I can convert their ideas and wishes into images.”

Mattijssen talks about his work Life song, which he made in 2017 for a new wing of the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital in Amsterdam. It was also intended as a tribute to the wife of a man who became involved in the expansion plans of the hospital after she had died there. A new department for patient rehabilitation was established.

The artist spoke to the man at length and learned about his family history. The result is a composite work in eleven frames, five and a half meters high and more than four meters wide. An old-fashioned hand sewing machine, a Michelin man, a labrador, a portrait of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, a boulder, a blue gentian and many other objects together tell a story. Whoever looks at the work can give meaning to all these objects and think about how they can relate to each other.

‘An artist should not worry too much about what is appropriate and what is not, otherwise the fun will disappear.’

Every now and then Mattijssen pops into the hospital to see how patients and visitors look at his work. “It moves me when I see someone in pajamas with a dressing gown, with one of those mobile racks hanging IV bottles, standing still to take it all in. I hope that people will really get away from that hospital environment for a while and can think about other, nice things.”

Mattijssen says so – and immediately takes back his words. “Hey no, ‘nice feeling’ – don’t get me started on that myself.”

Because?

“People often say that my work makes them happy, that it makes them happy.”

What is wrong with that?

“In itself nothing. In the end, everyone wants to be happy. But the fact that art can contribute to this is not self-evident for everyone, and is sometimes even a bit suspicious. At the academy I was brought up with the assignment that art should ‘sand’. I used to hate that word myself. I think it’s a well-trodden path. It’s been a long time since beauty was allowed to come first in art. And the fact that as an artist you fulfill the wishes of clients is certainly seen as something from earlier centuries.

“Really, I can really enjoy a work that completely surprises and overwhelms me, where you have no idea what it is about, but is stimulated. As an artist you should not worry too much about what should and what should not be, it should not become too correct, because then the fun will disappear and it will come to a standstill. But I don’t like self-contained art, which is incomprehensible and surrounded by a lot of jargon in the explanation. And you have quite a lot of that.”

Does it feel like a misrepresentation of an artist who makes recognizable, figurative work?

“No not anymore. I was able to develop my own visual language. I know what I want to talk about. Usually I no longer lack self-confidence, but there is a certain contradiction, with the desire to make something attractive on the one hand and the fear that the sting or dissonance will then be missing on the other.

“I once started with graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. I thought, that’s useful. That feeling is strong in me. I want to reach people, bring them together, touch them. I don’t work just for myself. But if you often hear: your work is beautiful, it makes me happy – then that also raises the question for me whether that is enough? Aren’t these emotions too small? Do I dig enough into the deeper layers and questions in life?”

Making people happy in a hospital – that’s not too small an emotion, is it?

“The question has long occupied my mind why sadness, tragedy and drama are regarded as deeper, larger emotions, while happiness and joy are quickly regarded as superficial.”

had a Calvinist upbringing?

“Oh no! From the good sides of the Catholic tradition, my parents gave substance to the concept of charity in all kinds of ways. I got that from home; I come from a warm and safe home.”

So charity is also a motive of their son, the artist?

“Two sides of me are about equally developed. On the one hand, I am autonomous. Nowhere do I feel happier than in my studio. I’ve been in two long-term relationships, but I’ve never lived with anyone. I couldn’t.

“On the other hand, I am caring. I keep a close eye on my family and friends. I am constantly busy with texts and cards for birthdays and deaths – I want to keep track of all that.”

Growing older yourself, perhaps with a need for care – how does that feel?

“That’s not a worrying thought. I don’t have children, but I do have many lovely people around me who would like to push my wheelchair someday, I think. And it feels like a privilege that as an artist I don’t have to worry about getting through my old age. I will continue to draw and paint as long as I am able to do so.”