Following the 80 years war, the seafaring merchants of the Dutch Republic would go on a campaign of successfully establishing trade routes and colonies around the globe. Subsequently, Dutch colonization would generate untold fortune through the exploitation of the resources and people of the global south. This explosion of dutch wealth would spur massive investments and advancements in science, technology, and economic systems, such as the creation of capitalism and the ledger-based currency, the Guilder. It also generated comparable advancements in art and opulence. Out of the Dutch Golden age, we see the emergence of masterworks of art by Vermeer, Franz Hals, and Rembrandt. Works from this time often depict far-off colonies, extravagant tablescapes, exotic botanicals, and wealthy merchant guilds.
It is from the legacy of the Dutch empire that in 1971 Errol Musk, a capitalist emerald mine owner, and Maye Haldeman, a vogue model, would give birth to a son named Elon, in the capital of apartheid South Africa, a former Dutch Colony. Heralded as a self-made billionaire and genius of technological innovation, Elon Musk would go on to revolutionize digital monetary transactions and has set his sights on the colonization of mars.
This talk aims to contextualize Musk's “innovations” and capitalistic ventures against the backdrop of a legacy of Dutch colonialism and to explore the intersection of art, wealth, and, colonization, historically and into the future. Talking points include a primer on Dutch colonialism and the Dutch Golden Age, a discussion of Musk's recent partnership with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to send artists to space, and Musk’s baby mama, the performer Grimes’ foray into NFT’s.
Notes:
“The governor,
John Maurice of Nassau, invited artists and scientists to the colony to help promote Brazil and increase immigration”
“The Dutch period in Brazil was "a historical parenthesis with few lasting traces" in the social sphere.
[33] Dutch artistic production in Brazil, particularly by Albert Eckhout and Frans Post left an important visual record of the local people and places in the early 17th century”
Dutch Brazil. (2022, October 25). In Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Brazil
