Naughty by Nature: not because I hate you, Erik van Lieshout

As one of the most acclaimed Dutch artists of the last thirty years, Erik van Lieshout has worked with the best Dutch graphic designers on monographs and exhibition catalogues that have stayed memorable. Among them, the beautiful Rotterdam Zuid — Home, designed by Remco van Bladel in 2014, and the no-less-beautiful The Show Must Ego On, designed by Experimental Jetset in 2016. But many years earlier, in 2002 — one year before he was chosen to represent the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale as part of the group show We Are the World, curated by Rein Wolfs — Erik van Lieshout published his first monograph, Naughty by Nature, not because I hate you, alongside his solo show at the Groninger Museum in Groningen.

Almost forgotten today, this publication, designed by the Rotterdam-based studio 75B, offers an immersive journey through the radical irony of Van Lieshout’s work and deliberately plays with its amateurish nature. Printed throughout on Chromolux paper, the editorial structure alternates between the extreme brilliance of the coated side, amplified by the bright colours of the images, and the textured greyness of the uncoated side, amplified by the total absence of colour there. Another alternation, just as openly embraced across the pages, is the one between the Dutch text, set in Times and always on the left, and the English text, set in Courier and always on the right.

This sends the reader endlessly back and forth between two editorial spaces, two independent narratives that cross paths but never really speak to one another. A truly radical, raw, chaotic approach that feels so on point with the work of Erik van Lieshout.

The book was published in 2002 to coincide with the exhibition Naughty by Nature, not because I hate you by Erik van Lieshout at the Groninger Museum in Groningen, which ran from 27 April to 8 September 2002, and was named one of the Best Dutch Book Designs of 2002 by the Stichting De Best Verzorgde Boeken (awarded in 2003).