60th series of children's stamps 1986 child and culture

You can experience music and literature, apply visual arts such as painting and sculpture, and already perceive (understand) architecture. Afterwards, as a spectator of a painting, sculpture, architecture, song, dance, or literature, you can fully enjoy it. Using the concepts of experiencing, being able to, and perceiving, graphic designer René van Raalte visualizes the 'enjoyment of culture as a child experiences it' in a symbolically abstract manner on three children's stamps.

 

 

 

55 cents: experiencing (enjoying) music and literature

Van Raalte literally visualizes music using sets of five horizontal lines of the musical staff combined with a few curved lines. The experience and/or enjoyment of it is only symbolically expressed in the layered image featuring five figures in the background, who are, so to speak, 'infiltrated' in a figurative sense by the musical notation. The designer also makes use of these horizontal lines to visualize literature. In this context, the lines refer to lines of text on a page of a book.

 

 

The radiant facial expressions of five choir members show in an engaged manner that they are enjoying the singing or music. One can do the same when reading a story or poem.

 

 

65 cents: ability (to apply) of visual arts & architecture

The creation of a painting, sculpture, or building begins with sketching. In the black-and-white photograph, the girl is making a drawing. However, the drawing girl is depicted as left-handed. Perhaps the designer intentionally used a mirror image. In this composition, the drawing activity is given full space and attention. The child on the 1954 children's stamp corresponds in stance, posture, and activity to the 1986 65-cent children's stamp.

 

 

The colorful vertical stripes on the bottom triangle of the stamp refer to the rich use of color in children's drawings. In the colorful stripes, the three main colors red, yellow, and blue (primary colors) are bordered on either side by the secondary colors (purple & orange, orange & green, and green & purple). The diagonal line of the triangle refers to the diagonal lines of perspective drawings.

 

 

75 cents: to understand (comprehend) the performing arts of theatre, song, and dance

The yellow color literally depicts the lighting of stages with lamps and spotlights. Figuratively, the presence of the performing artists' name recognition is highlighted by the barely visible orange contour edge at the front of both silhouettes in combination with the yellow.

Performing arts comprise those forms of art that are performed on a stage in the presence of an audience. These include music, opera, ballet, theatre, circus, and cabaret, among others.
Both artists (are literally connected to each other by the trapezoidal playing surface) enter into contact with each other in a lively manner (through the angled arrangement) by means of the role-play, communicating through the angled setup.

 

 

Stages of various shapes and colors have been depicted in the background of three stamps (Children's Stamp 1964 & both Carré stamps 2012).

 

Children's stamp poster 1986

On the large-format poster for the 1986 children's stamps, fragments of the children's stamp publications are playfully presented in a collage format as a square (with colorful stripes), a triangle, paper with musical notation, and a yellow outline drawing of the photographed boy from the 65-cent children's stamp.

The yellow contour drawing symbolically connects music, literature, theater, sculpture, and architecture into a cultural unity. The same contour drawing is also included in the first-day stamp.

 

 

The Amsterdam Dam stamp, with a painter's palette, mask, quill with inkwell, and harp, was also created as a cultural unity in the same way.