You Simply Gotta Know

There was this day Jasper Johns stopped to be a painter for me:

At a retrospective in Cologne Johns presented a series of prints. It was the same outline printed in different colour combinations. Like in a lab he would do them and at the end he presented the one and only solution/print that was right and got framed. My thoughts on walking past this scientific line-up was that as a painter he should have known the right colours and combination from the start.

While I was painting the poster for my school's English drama group's performance of Peter Shaffer's 'The Royal Hunt of the Sun' (I was Felipillo btw), I realised that the colour was not correct - even in the process I told a friend. When the same person went to Aachen to have my original painting colour copied, I got a phone call from her saying that she could copy it but the copy would not be true to the original and she had to select a tint. There were two options and on hearing that one of them was reddish, I immediately told her that I wanted it to have been more red in the first place. On her return presenting the result she commented that the copies were better than the original. My reply was that I had already told her beforehand ;).

Renaissance

 a much wilder time - wild thoughts - wild fights - boundless expressiveness

In-novation rather than advancement

Wouldn't it be great to start afresh, to conquer the world once again, like every generation should?!

Aquarelle

What I've learned to love about watercolour painting is the fact that it's so unforgiving. Every step, every line is there and will remain there, no matter how hard one tries to undo it, thereby rendering this technique presence and actuality, sheer and translucent. Layer by layer, maybe also the closest one can get to a third dimension on a two-dimensional piece of paper ;)!

What Makes Me Me ;)

There are probably a lot of things that make me me, but one I really love is my uncle and his attitude. It was at my aunt's wedding and my uncle, her brother, was alrerady slightly drunk, when we, the children, asked him the following conundrum: "From which glasses may one not drink?" Not really waiting for his reply we all began to scream: "The eyeglasses." He just said: "Well, let's see.", took off his glasses, poured out some wine into one of them and drank it. Point taken ;)!

Why ;)

did I know while reading Chesterton's story 'Tower of Treason' that the strictest character would be the treasonous perpetrator from the moment he was introduced?!

Fond Memories Coming Back

In contrast to yesterday's post I do have some pleasant memories coming back and obviously they are too many to even mention. There is my discovering one of my favourites, Thierry de Cordier and his wonderful mind, or sitting in front of Titian's Assumption of the Virgin after a cleansing rain shower, for the tension in my art class was too much for me to take.


A very private conversation with Luc Wolff, an artist from Luxemburg, on his outpost on Giudecca was great. We talked about his feelings about the curator of the Biennale and I told him that I liked his installation art much better than Anselm Kiefer's paintings. He even presented me with two catalogues and added that tey were not for sale and only nice people would get them for free.

Then there was the attendant at the Argentinian pavillon who regretted, after my inquiring for a catalogue, that there was none. Yet, when I was about to leave he came yelling after me and gave me one of the last copies of a catalogue that was only meant for special guests on the opening night.

The experience I still cherish the most, though at the time it felt pretty odd and weird, was taking my time to travel out to the isle of San Lazzaro degli Armeni to have a look at Atom Egoyan's contribution. What actually tempted me about it, was that Egoyan explored the painter Arshile Gorky and I had read Barnett Newman's tribute to him. The first thing when entering the boat was that the driver on hearing my destination commented that I would not actually like to go there, for transfers were rare and I would have to wait for three hours. I insisted nevertheless. When I was on the island I realised that I was the only person visiting the exhibition. But I was not the only person present because the island is dominated by an Armenian monastery. So somewhere but not visible for me there must have been monks. Odd also the fact that the island is situated inbetween Venice and its beach, the Lido. It was summer and there surely was a lot of traffic on the water, but none would come to this island. Thus I had this otherworldly sensation of being surrounded by people I could not see and being quite remote yet looking out on the busy life - in retrospect a wonderful experience.

Art And Time

I remember a discussion about how to force a spectator to spend preferably more time in front of a work of art. There were the most fantastic suggestions, but eventually nothing can or should force anybody. Later in 1997 in Venice I came across a work of art that actually was designed with this in mind, but then it's probably telling that I do not remember much about the actual sculpture but the fact that every so-and-so many minutes so-and-so many people were admitted into some room for so-and-so many minutes. All the time I was calculating how many people could possibly see this sculpture if the exhibition ran so-and-so long, and of course you could fancy yourself being one of the so-and-so many people on this earth, who had actually seen it. It sort of shortened the time I spent waiting, but once I was admitted these thoughts were so predominant that the actual thing became redundant, or let's say it could not quite live up to the thoughts surrounding it. A clever piece of advertisment though and something that reminded me of wasting time in a theme park ;)!

Either it's in the work itself and the spectator responds to it, or not.