Painting

Painting – When speaking about painting, then Vincent Van Gogh is never far away. Another interesting painter was Paul Klee. He experienced First World War as soldier and upon returning he realized all sense of beauty had been destroyed. He concluded any expression thereof as to how beauty would look like shall be based on memory, and therefore the expression of beauty will by necessity be 'abstract'.

Worringer postulated the thesis at the beginning of the twentieth century that there would be a split in painting styles between Noldes' symbolic expression of spiritual animals and abstract paintings like those of Paul Klee. Hence he called his dissertation about art 'Abstraction and empathy'.

Abstract art was denounced by the Fascists who made the claim this kind of art would be destroying the 'creativity of the people'. It was a way to make sure common people remained in their perception of things at symbolic level and thus would give in to Nazi propaganda.

Painters like Bekemans had to flee. On his way to America, he resorted to the myth of the Argonauts to replicate the experience of having to go into exile. It was not a search for the Golden Fleece he painted but in reality a boat being tossed about by waves to let everyone year for land ust like peace.

After the war, Duchamp with his bottle rack set the tone by asking the question what is really art?

Herbert Distel came along and noted that every artist wants space to express him- or herself, but they never say what size. Thus Herbert Distel went ahead to create the smallest museum of the world. The museum of drawers contains a collection of painters of the sixties and seventies, among them Picasso, Man Ray, Rothko etc. Among them is a work of Beuys. He let a toe nail grow and then send in the cut off nail as his contribution. Like a half sickle of a moon it hangs there in that tiny compartment of the drawer reminding of grandmother's sewing cabinett. Beuys added a letter in which he explained how many socks he ruined while growing that toe nail.

To date there are many more unknown and therefore not recognized painters who resort to abstract Expressionism or some kind of Surrealism while others would follow Matisse and Fauves in search of a symphony of colours in space. The interesting question for the twenty first century is, however, not only the link between painting and installations or video projections, but also what is street art all about. Graffiti is transforming the city into an open gallery. There is plenty of that to be seen in Athens, but not in Valletta, at least not yet. ¹

Jürgen Mittag in his review of the Story of ECoC said that preceding this concept the Council of Europe organized a European exhibition to tell the history of Europe through paintings, and always Turkey objected that the painting by Delacroix would be included. The painting shows the slaughter of Chios and thus reminds what Turkish troops did before departing from Greece in 1821.

There have been in Europe two kinds of exchanges: individual artists travelling to other places and schools of painting being exchanged. For instance, the Raphael school was most influential as painting style.

All these fleeing shadows of history caught on a canvas reflect prevailing conditions. The symbolic representation of power as explained by Michel Foucault in 'les mots et les choses' underlines that the painter can be a witness of history.

Until the Impressionists came along, there were only two subject matters worthy to be painted: portraits and the historical or heroic narrative. No wonder that the Impressionists did not sell at first any of their paintings. The subject matter they dealt with was not recognized.

When it comes to organizing exhibitions of paintings, one thing should be kept in mind. As pointed out by the director of the National Gallery in Berlin, the best way to ruin an artist is to call him a Polish or German artist. It goes without saying that a national identity is more than a subjective one while art has to resist not only how the art market works, but also an easy way to categorize painters and their works as this furthers as much misunderstanding as understanding.

Over and again this type of classification along national lines has been practised by national agencies. Their task is to determine cultural expressions within the narrow confines of the state and thereby seek to uphold national identities, and this despite artists seeking universal expressions. Naturally there are many ways to sidestep this nationalization of the arts, but almost all leading institutions succumb to that and hence contribute much more to the national rather than an open ended narrative.

Hatto Fischer

Athens July 2014

Footnotes:

1For the graffiti scene in Athens see http://poieinkaiprattein.org/beyond-images/graffiti-1/

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