The shortest and nicest route to Stavoren is by water. Not far from the Enkhuizen train station, you can board the ‘Bep Glasius’ three times a day, a slender white ferry that cuts through the waves of the IJsselmeer. On the other side of the lake, we see the Ice Age-created Red Cliff where the Frisians successfully managed to hold off the Dutch in the 14th century. A little later, we sail past a row of coloured houses that are similar to those you see in Scandinav.
As soon as we set foot ashore, the monotonous scaly back of a monstrous fish catches my eye. Walking around it, I look into the huge beast’s wide-open mouth. As if presented with a tasty morsel, water squirts from various places from the cavernous cavity. This is by far the ugliest work of art I have ever seen. Even the Blokker-stores would be embarrassed to sell replicas of this fish. This must be tinkering work by a local artist who was allowed to put up his monstrosity in the harbour square supported by a benevolent population. An obvious reference to the fish that brought back the ring of the Lady of Stavoren, predicting doom for the formerly thriving port city. Whereas, like the mermaid in Copenhagen, the statue of the lady has been kept appropriately modest, the contrast with the hideous glazed cod could not be greater.
Behind the multicoloured houses is an abandoned lawn where we notice a rusty monument. Curious, I read a sign saying that a blockhouse once stood on this spot, whose excavated remains must still be visible. However, the glass plates under which they are located are shattered, so I am denied this glimpse into the Hanseatic city’s rich history.
By now I have heard the name of this place in three variants: Stavoren, Staveren and Starum. ‘How do these relate to each other?’ I ask the employee of the local museum. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been asked that question, but I will look it up for you’ says the lady, who has been volunteering here for several years.
Visiting towns in the area, we come across more curious fountain monuments. In Hindeloopen, we discover a pile of antler-shaped stripped tree trunks from which birds of paradise spray water. In IJlst, a realistically styled flower box obscures the view of a historic sawmill and in Sneek, a peculiar little man is spinning around in front of the Water port.
I learn that the fountains were erected in 2018, when Leeuwarden was European Capital of Culture. Curator and art expert Anna Tilroe was tasked with bringing other cities in the wake of the Frisian capital into the cultural fold as well. Tilroe, who hardly knew Friesland, travelled briskly to the province and was not deterred by tales of the battle of the Red Cliff nor by the killing of Boniface. If only the proposal to install a fountain had been limited to Leeuwarden. After all, Jaume Plensa’s ‘Love’ statue in front of the railway station of the Frisian Capital is beautiful.
Tourists who come to south-west Friesland value tradition. They want an eel sandwich, they take pictures of the houses that still look as they did hundreds of years ago, they prefer to relax in brown pubs where the music of their youth resounds, where Orange cake is served with thick layers of whipped cream and where timeless billiard tables are invitingly displayed.
Fortunately, not all eleven fountains are as hideous as Stavoren’s Fish. Jean-Michel Othoniel’s Oort cloud in Franeker suits the former university town well. It is a tribute to Franeker astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort (1900 – 1992), who was the first to write about the so-called Oort cloud in the outer regions of our solar system. Birthe Leemeijer created an ice fountain in Dokkum, which also does justice to the historical link with the traditional outdoor skating event that connects the 11 Frisian cities: Elfstedentocht.
After watching the documentary Roel van Dalen made about the fountain project, you actually get respect for Anna Tilroe who courageously stood her ground in hostile halls of stubborn Frisians, especially when you consider how action group Kick-Out Black Pete was received in Friesland two years later. The fact that the American, British, Spanish and French artists had to engage with locals themselves felt uncomfortable. It gave the Frisians the idea that anything was still possible. One Workum resident sat down at the drawing table himself and within 20 minutes designed a huge porridge spoon from which its brew would have to run forever.
That international artists were commissioned to make a fountain has been too limiting a factor, which, moreover, has not been thought through well enough. Anna Tilroe must have thought: no one can have anything against a people-friendly fountain. In tropical resorts, fountains can provide cooling in Friesland, they mainly stimulate your bladder. Comedian Jan-Jaap van der Wal rightly remarked in the documentary that thrifty Frisians will never throw coins into a fountain and if anyone would do so, someone else would take them out immediately. In his speech, Van der Wal, who grew up in Leeuwarden, played a nice connecting role between the cultural elite and the down-to-earth Frisians. ‘If the Frisians had had to judge Mondrian’s work beforehand, they would have said: quite nice, but couldn’t you have coloured in those other boxes as well?’
Frisian artist Henk de Boer, who initially had been a member of one of the fountain committees, could no longer stand the state of affairs and, after a successful crowdfunding campaign, decided, with the help of others, to make his own pauper fountain to be placed in the eleven cities in rotation. This fountain also served as a urinal; as soon as it was used as such, the 22 dicks that made up the work started squirting.
However, the Frisian Museum in Leeuwarden turned its nose up at this piece of folk craftsmanship and refused to provide permanent accommodation for the pecker fountain. At the end of the Capital of Culture year, generous donors were allowed to take their own penises home. There, they were given a place behind the windows or in the gardens. As middle fingers to the cultural elite who thought they had to tell Friesland what ‘real art’ should look like.