I REALLY LIKE THE VUNERABLE POSITION HE IS IN. ITS RARE FOR AN OLDER, PRESUMABLY DIGNIFIED, PERSON TO BE PUT IN POSITIONS LIKE THIS. I FEEL IT ADDS A LOT TO THE FEELING AND WHAT HIS FACE MAY BE SAYING.
Well, this is something special: A link to a site that shows me in a video talking about my art in front of some huge paintings. [LINK] Not so bad isn’t it?
The videos of you in the studio talking about, and working on, your paintings are very interesting. Indeed, I've often thought it's something we really should be doing here on ap. I'd love to be the one there asking the questions, so that it becomes more of a dialogue between the visitor and artist in his workplace.
Ever thought of doing a masterclass Hanjo? I mean where you have an audience of artists who would like to listen to you as you discuss and teach, and watch while you paint? I'm sure you'd make it a big success. There must be lots of professional/amateur artists over there in Stuttgart who would pay to attend such an event? Why not give it a try? It's the next logical step after your videos, to my mind.
This is a magnificent painting and truly the work of a master. Certainly one of the world's great artworks, I count myself amongst those who believe it to be the greatest. No doubt it resides in the most prestigious museum of this particular artist's country of origin. If I were a citizen of his native land I would demand one day of every year to mark the people's pride in their country's production of such an unique artist of genius. A day of celebration, street parades, fireworks and picnics and of course complete media coverage documenting the works, accomplishments and life of the great man. Perhaps the anniversary of the date of his birth might be appropriate. In any case that's all I have to say on this topic and it's only one man's humble, albeit, expert opinion.
Pondering over my feelings about your paintings, I think I understand why I've been so touched.It's about the naked body...The way you paint nudes...I've always been attracted by nudity either in a sexual meaning or death, (especialy piles of dead bodies in nazi's concentration camps -my father's experience, lots of tales and black and white pictures, included my own phantasmic, morbid ones- and always stayed away from that, like if it was verbotten or useless to show my struggle with flesh, dead or alive. Your "Friday's" series reconciled me with nudity, no sexual connotations or "reclining nudes" so over done, no torture, no death feelings, but life, movement and freedom! Thank you Hanjo.
you master texture, light and size. there is absolutely nothing to add, except that i wish i could get anywhere near to what you achieve in terms of texture, light and size ...
Well , earlier in my life I worked as an an architect. So for many years my drawing work only required small movements of my hands. All the lines not much longer than some centimetres, then adding some small numbers or words for explanation. This work had been very exiting and sometimes stressful but this never showed in the body. Looking at me from behind one could not see if I was drawing at all. I have always suffered from this contradiction: inner turmoil but outer calmness. Later I came to painting by chance and what attracted me most was that here, in the big format, suddenly the inner turmoil was accompanied by quick and mighty movements. The whole body was engaged in the process. And sometimes I even got near physical exhaustion. So this gave me an enormous satisfaction. Painting then was not only a thing invented in my brain and translated into one hand’s minute movements but a thing about me and containing me as a whole.
Thank you very much from the description. Full and interesting answers you said. That is the question why our other figurative? Ie all that you want from within your expression is summarized in the figurative? Am I really love the colors in his paintings are used to cut. The beauty of the landscape figure.
Thank you that I tried to write in Persian language. I've translated your sentences.
I actually wanted to know this very cheerful colors like red and orange and purple with what incentive is put on the figure? Really; for your complete answer.
From the series "At Arm's Length".
Well, this is one of my older paintings as asked for. It's about the picture we have from ourself and that often does not match reality properly
Well Hanjo, I think it's a very interesting work. Certainly your most recent work is much stronger and more masterful and you seem to be on the top of your game however I do like this one too, archectonics and all. You had posted another one that I liked even more but when I came back to comment on it, it was gone. One Question, in both works there is that shift. Do you recall what your reason for it was? Just additional interest or the figure on ground felt too static or what? Just interested. Oh yeah one more thing, forgetting about all formal aspects for a second may I say that I much prefer your choice of models now- a-days.
Well, the shifts ... after my time in New York I was fed up with inventing figures. I thought why invent silly things when nature has such strong objects in store. And I was fed up with theories and concepts and ideologies as well (It was the time the Afganistan war started and the articles in the New York Post made me throw up). So I went back to Germany looking for something very down to earth and looking at things much more precisely and with a humble attitude. That’s why I started with models. In the beginning I did not really know what to do with them. The only thing I knew was: No reclining nudes! So finally I started to explore with me as a model what one can do with such a body. But taking yourself as a model has at least one big problem: You cannot see yourself without the help of a mirror or a camera. So I took my camera in my hand and photographed me from the distance of an arm’s length. That’s why I needed at least two photos to get the whole thing. And putting the parts together showed this funny shifts which I thought I would eliminate while painting. But after a while I thought why eliminate? That’s exactly the way we see ourself: in parts. The picture we have from us is kind of a puzzle. What we think we are looking like, what others see, what the mirror tells us and so on. It’s never objective but broken and makeshift. So I left the shift and showed it in the painting. Well, to cut a long story short, after that experience I knew what to do with a model and so I looked for one. And you are right, Katja for example is a gift from heaven so to say.
Oh, yes. I love the hands. This image is like one of a sculptor who has just finished modeling his clay, which we cannot see because it stands somewhere on the right, outside the painting. Are you becoming even bolder with colour or am I mistaken?
Hi Anne, nice to hear from you. And it is consoling that at least my paintings are doing a good job in telling something helpful about painting or in other words about looking at things properly. Of course my goal is not at all teaching. But when one’s work is able to deliver a message beyond the sheer theme it is more than one can ask for. So thank you for your appreciation.
I would like to dedicate the Woyzeck series to both Karen Kruse and Maria Xagorari. To Karen for it is about nude men, a neutral background, the colouring of the skin, poses that are not from the classical genre etc. To Maria for it’s about gestures connected to the whole body. Gestures that are always part of the body language as a whole including the gaze as well. And it’s about using paint as what it is, a full colour medium. And instead of making lots of words I want to tell them what I have to say regarding all these issues in the language of painting.
Honored. Well I think the gaze in Woyzeck I is the most powerful you have shown us here. Even more powerful than the emotion series. And OK, message recieved. I wish I were able to send such clear messages through my painting.
Hanjo, I have been without internet these past two weeks. Finally, yesterday I could connect myself and the first thing I did was to take a look at your new paintings, see what you were doing, and there it was...like a smash in the face , Sebastian, or the Woyzeck series. As usual I stopped to analyze the physical weight of the figure, the brutal way of using the colour, the gaze the lines in his mouth, his hands ...you’ve surpassed yourself. Here I was struggling to get something out of my works and there you are with another fantastic nude, cant help to hate you sometimes...... Today I read your comment and it made me smile, (thanks for the dedication) although I love to read your comments and your letters I always learn much more from your paintings, thats true; someone said “whatever is clearly thought can be clearly said” well you say it and you can also paint it. ...(and draw it, because your paintings are firmly held by a powerful drawing , like it or not). I am absolutely devoted to your work , you know that, but when I read your comments, which are always interesting, I can’t help thinking ¿ when it comes to art can we really say what to do or how to do it , or where to go? Haven’t we learned with time there are no rules to produce a real work of art? When I see the last Rabbi’s head of Kagan or Maria’s painting’s It makes me SURE there are no rules. He has made an excelent artwork with all those semicircular strokes, that break the face in many facets, as complicated as the person itself, he is inmersed in his time and his society up to the bones, even when working alone he is not by himself. I can feel his fears, his doubts in his paintings and understand them. Maria has something very honest and very earthy about her mysterious paintings (Maria I think your paintings will never send “clear” messages, they are more about the other kind of messages we all have to descifer, which makes them disturbing , enigmatic, they make one feel uneasy ) . There is something that can’t be explained , that cant be measured in an artwork and I think it can appear in any way, when it comes out. Yes your series are about nude men, against neutral backgrounds, ( ¿is that so important?) mine are more about male voluptousness, and incommunication, but ¿ isn’t it all really about ourselves? .
I want to thank both of you for your comments. Very interesting, very serious, very honest and emotional texts. I’m flattered that you took the time. I am aware of the difficulty of using words when it comes to very complex themes. One of the reasons I try to avoid these debates is that my English is much to poor to be used to describe such complicated issues. Maybe I’m even not able to do it in my own language. But I have an awkward feeling with Karen’s question „... can we really say what to do or how to do it?“. So I want to make clear that it is not my intention to tell others how to do their artwork. No way. If you took it this way I am very sorry for to have caused this misunderstanding and have to apologize.
You don’t have to apologize , it isn’t a question only about you, that's why I said “we”, I mean I’m begining to doubt if there is something that can be said to help somebody make a better artwork, because it is so subjetive, so personal, and there are all kinds of approaches to it . I have to say nevertheless that you take the trouble and the time and your energy writing about other peoples artworks, including mine, and I have to thank you for that. Nothing’s worse than silence when it concerns our own work, and I’ve enjoyed your discussions very much (and learned from them too ). Keep on saying what you think about everything , I’ll read it.
Hanjo, in deed, there is no need to apologise. Your way of eliminating narrative interferences of the background in order to enhance the power of bold colour and excellent drawing, your precedent comment on Karen’s work about “after sex” environment, our discussion about Jenny’s Saville grandeur; all this is an excellent opportunity to talk about the importance of what I call the “story told by a painting” (I think, Karen, you might agree to that).
We would all agree with you that Monet’s waterlilies are not about waterlilies at all, as Michelangelo’s affreschi are not about doom’s day. They are about painting. Nevertheless, figurative art in particular, is also about man (meaning human) and his experience. One cannot isolate the painterly properties of, for instance, Jenny’s Saville work from the narrative part of its content. Remember “Reverse”? [LINK] The choice of red as the dominant colour had everything to do with “the story told by the painting”. Look at those lips, they are like the cherries on your cake but they also talk about haemorrhage. Her gaze is penetrating and lusty but she is lying on a morgue’s table. Remember “Matrix”? [LINK] I wouldn’t dare to even begin explaining what this painting is about (it may tell different stories to different people). But when you look at it, the use of colour is not the first thing that comes to your mind. Of course, it is precisely due to the mastery in the use of colour and drawing that this “story” gets through. That is the essence of figurative art generally speaking. You cannot separate the meaning of what is shown from the way it is painted. Even when at times one factor may be more important than the other. If you change the paint part the meaning part changes too.
Karen you say that your paintings are about male voluptuousness and lack of communication and I see what you mean. As you say there is “something in an artwork that cannot be measured and can appear in any way”. If you need a setting for your figures in order to talk about male voluptuousness and lack of communication, you need a setting. Period. If Hanjo needs his plain background, that’s what he needs. If Hillel needs his brushstrokes, his paintings need them. What we are doing here for each other, which I wouldn’t change for the world now that I found you guys, is comment on whether we think this or that element used has added or not to the achievement of what we think our fellow artist’s intentions were. Their intentions not ours. You may argue that we can’t always know their intentions. I would answer that, in my opinion, it is of great help for an artist even to hear that his intentions have been completely misunderstood. It helps you solve things or maybe be set free of certain illusions.
By the way Karen, you can’t imagine how much you have encouraged me by saying my paintings make one feel uneasy. That was exactly my intention in some of them. Thank you.
Hanjo, I would like to add to Karen’s comment, I too am grateful for our discussions here. Before I found you people …“I was in the dark here”! (Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman”, or whatever the film is called in english…)
I.ve been meaning to comment on Hanjo's latest series of paintings and I came across this beautiful conversation. So firstly about the paintings, they're all as handsome as ever. I probably wouldn't have chosen this as my favourite but that's neither here nor there as it does illustrate what can be done with the simplest gesture. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Woyzeck and am assuming it's something literary or a play perhaps and I'd like to know more about it. Please fill me in. Personally I've always liked the two figured paintings. "Knot" particularly stands out. What it is I think is the sexual energy and the time spent pondering the scene. I'm sure the photographs alone would be of interest but it's the artist's intense and obsessive interest in the subject that gives it, at least for me tremendous power. I'm not sure the present topic holds the same interest. Karen's words here describe the attributes of your painting beautifully and also Karen I'd like to thank you for the kind words about my work. It's not unusual that artists dealing with similar concerns should gravitate to each other. What's interesting is where we diverge and that's where the learning comes into it. Whether it shows or not I know that I've learned and been influenced by all of you. There's a cross current of visual communication that goes on here and that's a great gift, sometimes challenging and difficult but always beneficial. By the way Maria, about Paula Rego. Initially I wasn't partial to her work (too much like Balthus, too still, surrealistic, etc.) I've come to like her greatly. I also like Frida Khalo, another artist I couldn't be further from yet they're both honest painters and are somewhere in my mind. Sometimes I sense some Hopper like feeling in Karen's work. It's the light and quiet. I love him. He couldn't paint the human figure but the paintings work. That's all that matters.
Dear Maria, I want to take this medium for answering you for maybe there is someone else interested in reading it. You wrote: „My favourite expression is that of the first one but the colour of the middle one I think is the best.“ I guess everyone differs a bit in what she likes most of a series. Normally I like the last done best. It’s the most recent love so to say. Well in the Anna series I like the second most, the one with the volatile smile. In the latest series it is number three, the one with the open mouth. I think one has to define what it means „to like something best“ for in this case there is a difference between every viewer ... from the ignorant, naive amateur to the well known critic ... and the artist. Exept the artist everyone has to compare what she sees with what she has seen before. So it’s a look back even when the past is just some minutes old. Only the artist compares what she sees with something that she hasn’t seen before. It is the virtual state of what she tries to reach, her imagination, her plan, her goal. So after all those loud expressions, those shoutings and outbursts I wanted to explore the silent ones, the minute ones. And after having seen another corpse two weeks ago with that „uninhabited“ face I wanted to put the finger on the life in it. My goal was to have these moist eyes, moist lips, sensitive and nearly transparent skin and how to find brushstroke metaphors for all this. And compared with my goal the second Anna is nearest and the third Katja. And what I like very much is that this time I didn’t do the shadowy parts just in a darker hue but in a different colour. That makes the whole appearance lighter. This vulnerable rosy tone is exactly what I was looking for. The dark parts in number two, the weeping one, make the skin hard and leathery and this wasn’t my intention. So for me „The Moment III“ is the most perfect painting I’ve ever done.
Dear Hanjo, My saying that I like No II’s colour best meant exactly what I said. I like it more because it is my cup of tea. It is like saying that I like lemon sorbet more than strawberry, which I would also have with pleasure. That’s all. It was not an act of artistic criticism. I like all your work. All of it.
Maybe the reason why I like this one more is exactly the fact that you use a different colour for the shade and not just a darker hue. And if I had to make some criticism, I would say that in my opinion No II is not leathery at all. It just has a different light. The kind of light-and-dark juxtaposition that allows the artist to make bold colour choices. Let me explain myself better: To my eyes, No I is bold with its blue brushstrokes but they seem a little too much to me. A little too many too alike. I am very fond of the brushstrokes though that seem thiner than usual and transparent. No II is bold because it is rich with truth. Look at the shadow on the cheek. Look at how the eyes float borderlineless in a sea of warm light. There are hundreds of different pinks and oranges and brownish greys in there. It is alive. And frankly, I couldn’t tell what her exact feeling is, but after all this orgasmic painting shower, I don’t care much. No III is a little more linear and the colour gives me an impression of impenetrability, at least compared to No II.
See, we have proven that everyone differs a bit in what we see in a work. And maybe we also proved that each and everyone’s plan, each and everyone’s goal interferes inevitably with our judgment of others’ work, even if only slightly.
Now for heaven’s sake take a brake or I will not be able to shake your hand as tight as I would like to in July.
Not at all did I take your choice as a criticism. In contrary I am very happy that you have your own well defined view of things. I just wanted to express why I like number three so very much. Yes and the eyes of number II ... You are right they are the focus besides the teeth. In the German language we have a very beautiful word to describe Katja’s left eye. It is „verschwommen“ meaning something like it is swimming. And indeed it is swimming in tears. By the way: the next days no painting nor building crates or whatever. I go swimming instead for I was told that this would be good for my arm and shoulder and that it will ease my pain.
Dearest Maria, reading our commemts again after years I am ashamed that I deleted the other examples we were talking about so that no one understands what we are talking about. But in a way even without the examples the text is rich vivid and good. So again thanks for your thoughts words and friendship.
hanjo, there was something hidden there that I thought could be said in what I think is my frustration with painting, and it relates to the background in which your bodies pulse. This may give an n absolute difference to the human presence in the spaces of your mind. Can it? Is it a marginal matter or there is a sense in what I observe? is it an occasional solution or is it developing? then I want to confess that in this same feeling the day I saw your works live I felt to get that white paint from the exhibition panels and to throw it over them ,as I was sure that their shout would pierce and come through it anyway!
It seems like you are getting ready to allow some narration into your work. Am I right? After having seen Paula Rego narration is not a demon for me any more. All the contrary.
Well Maria, with narration it’s a bit as Hillel described it for seeing figures in every pattern. We have a tendency to see a narration in every combination of figures. Put a woman and a man together in a picture and there is a story immediately. This for example is what Eric Fischl does. What I do not like in this method is that those stories emerging from such a combination are mostly stereotypes. And I am not interested in stereotypes. So of course there is some kind of story in this painting as well but the story depends on the viewer. Such kind of story you can even find in a portrait or a stillife. What Paula does is quite another thing. And of course it’s not forbidden to tell a story in a painting. Don’t worry about that. I would have liked to show another oil painting which might have looked much more narrative to you. Unfortunately John-Paul took away the delete function and I will not upload any new work if I do not have the possibility to delete something. For I have no interest in creating a mass grave of artworks on this site.
As I see it you have painted here two REAL women, and as you have done before, taking reality and cutting a piece of it for us, you seem to tell us; stop and look at real life ! , the way I look at it, with curiosity, and respect and trying to grasp every bit of it ! the result is impressive . The bigger woman being so powerful that she alone could make the painting work. Her robust and magnificent body, absolutely exposed but not helpless, her gaze, her attitude, makes the other woman light and superficial. The marks in her abdomen, as that of a pregnant woman, seem to say, I carry the weight of life , you can lean on me like she does, I´m the earth. Worked in subtle differences of whites, your normal brilliant and contrasting colours pushed into the background this time, not to interfere with their world, it IS a change, not that I want you to forget your colours, but it IS different. I think the story is not in the painting, but in the way you look at things. It reminds me of Annie and Alice, (Lucien Freud) but here the relation between them is not evident, and I would quote Robert Hughes when writing about Freud : "the strangeness of his paintings comes in large part from the circumstances of their makings: they bypass decorum while fiercely preserving respect".
You are absolutely right, it is true that the story narrated by painting when there aren’t any precise symbols used, depends very much on the viewer. Stereotype interpretations cannot be avoided though, even one likes it or not. For example, people may see a pregnant woman depicted as mother earth or, as well, one imprisoned by pregnancy in contrast to a thin carefree girl while others may see a social comment on homosexual couples having children, while, at the same time, others might open discussions about the image of female body as it is seen and manipulated by contemporary visual culture or plastic surgery in a men’s world and so on and so forth to the end of time. Endless numbers of pages have been written providing controversial interpretations on figurative works of art while the artist’s intention was much more evident than this. It is extremely easy when analyzing a visual text in terms of meaning, to end up with evidence of exactly the meaning one expects to find or is likely to accept regardless the artist’s intentions.
Hanjo, narrative or not it's a good solid work and I certainly concur with your reasoning for not uploading any new work without the right to delete them. That's the same reason I will not allow The Prado, The British Museum, MoMA, The Tate, et al, to acquire any of my work, although they're all clamoring for a piece, all I ask is for them to give it back when I'm tired of it being there.
Sometime we all might be tired of this site. But taking one’s time and reading the comments one has to admit that there is no website about art with such rich harvest of meaning and truth.
Well my dear, come to Stuttgart, go to the Galéo café and have a closer look at it. But be aware that the young people that are frequently visiting this place find paintings like this disgusting. So we are in a situation like at the end of the 19th century when life and reality were disgusting as well. Times they are changing but sometimes not that very much.
I can't believe what you are doing!This is such strong work.The little blue spot over the eyebrow and the patgh of cool light green onthe right side of the head are great!
Well Costantino, you really take commenting serious. And john-Paul will be happy. That’s not bad. Okay, you see this painting as a kind of crucifiction. Oh oh, that sounds strange to me and is far away from what I had in mind. But of course one can see it this way, no doubt about that. So at least it’s interesting what comes out when paintings are talking about themselves.
Ok, now I am worried. I can perfectly see what Eva means and this makes me wonder. Why do we all think of death first? We know very well that there is no such thing as an innocent eye for a painter. The question is would we have interpreted this work the way we did if we hadn't seen "Tabletop 1" first? Or if we weren't familiar with Jenny Savile's figures on surgery or morgue tables? Or is it that we have lost the Peter Pan inside?
Well, I guess I need help. Today I wanted to simply cross Artprocess Boulevard but there’s no chance. It’s such an incredible traffic out here that it’s almost impossible to see the other side of the street. The artist’s entries come zoing zoing zoing in such a speed that you cannot even count the numbers of it. Why are these crazy artists overrunning this pretty boulevard with such a mass of entries, comments, essays etcetera etcetera? Do they have no other work to do, I mean painting for example? And it’s not only that they write down this huge amount of stuff, we have to read it all ... but when? I would like to have this broad and beautiful boulevard with the illustrious name Artprocess to be much more peaceful. I would like to have pigeons sitting on it with their lovely bill and coo and some nice flowers coming through the cracks so that an old and infirm artist like me can shuffle along on it with my crutches with no fear at all of being brutally overrun within seconds. So please please do me the favour and slow down with all this hectic commenting and posting. One entry a year would be enough wouldn’t it?
That reminds me of when I first met my wife. I spoke to her almost nonstop for two weeks - until I ran out of things to say. I'd said it all basically, and hadn't anything left to offer. That was 20 years ago, and we've hardly had a conversation since. One entry a year would be just too much in that case.
Do you think that perhaps we're arriving at a similar deadlock here at ap?
whow, strange story. But don’t worry JP, we are living in a fully motorized civilisation and people don’t even buy cigarettes from the automat next door without using their car. And don’t forget the infamous Kagan gang that rules the streets. It can’t take so long and they’ll show up in their huge oversized black leather jackets and baggy trousers (you know, crotch ten cms below the knee and buttocks half visible) to make the traffic even more speedy. So your wife and I will hardly find a calm place somewhere under a nearby tree to put our folding chairs in the shadow and drink our tea from a thermos flask shaking our heads over this mess and every now and then utter a „hmm“ or „umm“ for talking is quite impossible in this horrible noise. I mean you should have known for a boulevard never is a dead end isn’t it?
don't boulevards have shadows where people just stand around ,looking,trying to avoid the sun and it is so hot that they prefer to simply lay low and wait and see?i must say you guys are sometimes intimidating
Well Fotini, I have a grandson, two and a half years old and very very sweet. When visiting him we have lots of fun playing football, what he loves, looking at picture books for hours, going to the city farm watching animals etcera. So we have a wonderful time together and it’s so nice to hear him talk in three languages at the same time. But I only see him four times a year for he lives in London and I live in Stuttgart. And for he cannot read letters we try to communicate via the phone. So everything seems to be perfect. But when his mom tells him that I am on the phone he comes running and takes the receiver with exitement ... and listens to my voice. He’s never saying a word, never, he’s only listening and sometimes nodding his head no matter how often my daughter tells him that he should better speak to me.
Silence can be suffocating, and it can also be comfortable, in your grandson's case it is full of excitement and happiness and it is evident that he has no doubt you understand what he is saying without a word. (which is probably true) What I feel here, in Artprocess, is someone’s special absence, and silence. One of our best authoritative voices, and I wouldn’t really call it authoritative but understanding and friendly voices. Here there is a saying “ No es mas grande el que más espacio ocupa , sino el que mas vacío deja cuando se va”.
Hanjo I think you're onto something very interesting. I really like this painting and your latest upload "the woodcut print... hey what happened to it, it was here yesterday. I didn't have time to comment but intended to do so today, I found it to be refreshing and complimentary to the paintings. In these times (actually in all times but particularly these difficult financial times) limited edition multiples of any kind will serve an artist well and attract dealers. Sometimes an artist can scare off a dealer by being too prolific. The galleries simply find it it very difficult to place large paintings. Yet a signed limited edition of 25 -50 prints at a reasonable price sells easily and will pay the rent. And if an artist can produce smaller scale multiples and even control the means of production themselves as I assumed you did with that woodcut all the better. I didn't get a chance to really study it but I was impressed by the line (theories be damned, lines have meaning) and it was well done. I think you may have used a soldering iron to burn the line or was it a Dremel tool? The drawing was three frames of human leg parts and feet.
As for this painting you've arrived at an excellent and honest painting topic and even better, a very personal one, your own mortality and descent into decrepitude (I know the feeling). Somehow I don't think that it's that great a departure from your overall body of work which, at least to me has been about the pathetic fragility of the human body, its vulnerable flesh and brittle breakable bones but using yourself as a model takes real courage.
One or two large paintings, three or four smaller ones and a few limited edition prints of knotted joints, arthritic limbs, naturals roots and gnarled horseradishes, it's a blockbuster show just right for times... the whole world crumbling to shit.
As for all the talk of quiet boulevards, the irony and humour wasn't lost on me. Thanks for directing traffic and policing the neighbourhood, at least that notorious gang hasn't been out on the street wreaking havoc and disturbing the peace. They're probably serving time in some prison or other but no doubt they'll be back sooner or later and then all hell will break loose.
Is everybody asleep in this web? dead? I haven’t read an interesting comment in months, nothing….. I mean I know that two or three of the usual writers have good reasons for not doing it, (including myself) but is it all sustained by four or five persons?? No one else has anything to say? Are you all mute?? I think the act of commenting a work of art is a healthy exercise for it forces you to forget your own work and try to understand other’s, understand or judge or dislike or whatever, or just look at it for more than say.. 10 seconds. Are we all, artists, (whatever that word really means..) so self-centered?
When I saw that Hanjo had posted this painting I waited to see if it made anyone react, positive or negatively, but it was just lost in the usual silence. Of course there are things in Art Process that have to be received with silence, (that’s the best one can give them!), just out of pure respect and tact for others, but this is not the case. At least for me, the painting was worth stopping and looking at it more than twice. Even though the nude can be perfectly read, the fetal crouched body has an animal character about it. Helpless, exposed, as a piece of meat, it’s protruding ankles are painfully red, as if stripped of their skin. Their rigid posture sticking out from the soft body reminded me of a slaughterhouse. Something has occurred , and the viewer is the only witness in the scene, for there seems to be no other way out, the only witness or maybe the only executioner. Maybe this possibility, as absurd and unreal as it can be, is the reason of the unpleasant uneasiness it left in my nerves. It is not an easy painting, just show it around and see the reactions. But for sure it is not a painting that can be ignored.
When I met Maria the other week at her studio-log she said something about application of paint like that she found out a new method of doing it. But for it’s not possible to ask on studio-log what she meant with this remark I still wonder what funny things she has found out. Does it mean that she now uses her fingers instead of brushes? Or Spatulas? Or does she do it like Mr. Pollock? No no no you can forget about that. Thanks heaven that would not work with Maria. Or is she going to nail the paint onto the canvas or does she use tape? Ever since I cannot think of anything else.
Well, but this is not the reason I’m writing here. It has been sooo silence for weeks or even month that I thought there must be something wrong with my ears. And indeed people had to repeat what they said to me very often and the words I used over the day were mostly „I beg your pardon“ and „what did you say“? So finally I got a hearing aid, one for each ear (very very expensive oh oh). Okay, so when I left the shop where I got them I was shocked about how loud the world actually was. Such an incredible noise. Well but now I’m sitting here in front of my computer hacking this in to test the new equipment. Maybe, so I do hope, maybe I can hear some faint murmuring at least. Maybe I even can understand some words. I mean these hearing aids are absolutely state of the arts ... I swear (or can see it on the bill) so there must be something to detect with them. But to be honest until now I haven’t been successful, not at all. Okay, I know that many people have lots of problems at the moment, financial, psychological, artistic etc. etc. and they might not be in the right mood of talking so much, with me included, but I thought that maybe at least I could make out some faint groaning or wailing ...
On the other hand, could it be possible that this website got transmogrified into some mole world? And everyone is silently digging through the place sniffing at this, nibbling at that, but pssssst no word not even a tone. Just shuffling through the dark tunnels blind and mute ... not such a nice idea isn’t it?
Or what would be worse in times where enlightment bashing seems to come more and more into fashion and people turn to questionable sects instead or even the traditional churches. Perhaps this site turned into a monastery without letting me know. A Trappist cloister where it’s absolutely forbidden by punishment of eternal burning in hell to say anything. So I really do hope that we are not trapped in what one could call the Trappist order of St Artprocess.
I actually had to look up the word transmogrified,now I know it.Like most people I have been looking in on AP but time is short and my mind has been wondering,too difficult to focus.I was taken back by the force of your comment Karen but people can look at works they admire again and again in silence.This piece by Hanjo is so eloquent that I am at a loss for words to comment upon it. So here I am murmuring Hanjo in fright while staring at the red blood heels of your figure.
Of course, Fotini, we all look in silence again and again, but this web was different because there was a REAL communication between some artists , … and although I have to say that I miss some in particular, I have to admit that I kind of like the idea of forming part of the Trappist Order of St. Artprocess, I can imagine myself wondering through its cloisters talking soto voce about this or that painting, under the great excitement of being in danger of eternal burning with other colleagues… let's create the order!
Mmmmm I like this little mole gathering indeed I do. And I like that Fotini came along, too. Well Maria, you are not the only one, absolutely not but ... I’m the artist and I can’t help to be a very brutal guy and absolutely without any mercy with paintings I am not satisfied with. On the other hand you have a mighty companion, my wife! So I will give it a chance and at least postpone that act of destruction. Maybe I’ll even send you a high resolution image of the delinquent in an e-mail so you can study carefully what’s wrong with it. Oh oh Karen, seems that you are a very naughty girl aren’t you? Playing with hellfire ts ts ts. That I guess must be your Spanish temperament. But let me think it over and perhaps I’ll have a brief correspondence with Mr. Rat, the present pope, in our Bavarian dialect, making sure that hellfire is guaranteed so you can have the thrill you need.
Oh yes, I forgot to say hello to J-P who ... I’m quite sure ... is peeping from behind the curtain. And I have to say that I liked your postcard a lot and am pondering on if I should have this kind of Irish breakfast you proposed. But to be honest I should have it together with you. So I have to find a way of making that possible. And by the way ... my wife likes your work! Isn’t that good news?
I'm so glad that you have broken your vow of silence, especially because although some of us are silent, we like to listen.
The other day I read a few words of Richter I would like to share with you although I´m sure you already know them:
"One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is idiocy. "
But also I think it is very important to communicate with those who feel the same passion...So welcome to the order of St. ArtProcess!
I'm afraid brother Hanjo has retired to his room, probably to meditate why his bright red heels are frequently read as bloody heels, (I thought the same thing), or maybe the hearing aids are not that good after all……(by the way when are you going to tell us about your discoveries María?)
Psssssst Brothers and Sisters (whisper whisper) I had to read philosophical texts all day long, Adorno, Foucault, Deleuze, Flusser and got so angry and upset that I had to cool down in my beloved bathtub. It sounds crazy but indeed you can cool down in hot water, really and truly! Now, five minutes ago, I climbed out of it and now my bloodpressure is very low so I have to sit down. Well, I do like that there is another spanish artist around even though the name is pretty much cryptic (but why not have a cryptic name in the vicinity of a crypta). Well, but what you have quoted about passion and commitment is absolutely true. Otherwise one ends up with „kreissparkassentauglicher Kunst“ what means art that fits into a regional savings bank. And isn’t it funny what loooong words we can build in German? But in the end it’s shorter than the English sentence. Okay guys, I have to sleep a bit (let’s call it „meditate“ that sounds better in a monastery).
Okay, back to seriousness. Of course it doesn’t matter for an artist if someone „likes“ her painting or not. It might be nice to hear such a thing from someone that is dear to her and it even might be encouraging, but in the end she has to follow her intention and has to be very strict as well. No favours and no compromises! In the recent four paintings, beginning with „Threefold Black“ I tried to depict the body as a very vulnerable and therefore very precious container. And this body-container is in a state of retraction, the way many animals do. Hedgehogs for example or spiders both making a ball out of themselves when trying to protect their body. Becoming older it seems to me that when you should describe a young body it would be all about movement, speed, strength etc. and all of it shown and concentrated in the extemities, strong and taut and beautiful and full of energy. In contrast the old body, I have the feeling, is concentrated in the torso. Arms and legs become more and more weak and thin, ugly and immovable. The trunk increases in volume and weight and sometimes it’s difficult to balance and carry it through the day. Life seems to concentrate in that trunk, in that container. Whereas arms and legs seem to be mere mechanical structures to move or lift this container, the trunk itself gives the impression of a kind of balloon. An envelope filled with liquids of different kind with a tendency of becoming shapeless. An object resembling the look of the intestines, soft and full. And obviously the skin of this envelope is very much in danger of being pierced and all that liquid runs out. The liquid that contains your life. So you have to shield it with a barrier out of arms and legs. So this may explain why I am satisfied with a painting like „Reverse“ and not at all satisfied with a painting like „Curtain“ which in my opinion has not much to do with all this and is just something like a costume party.
what interests me about this painting and I find daring is all the black space ,heavy,weighing upon the figure,the mass of the body,which if you look at it quickly have to think''what is this?'' and then you see the feet.the negative playing against the positive shape ,the economy in color,the light blues whispering on the trunk of the body,the brightness of the skin are some of the things I look at when I look at the painting.
I apologize for making use of philosophical words –I see that nothing, as cryptic as it might be, escapes the Abbot. Long time ago philosophers also warmed my mind and I had to use hot water ... to free myself??!
Today I read Baudrillard when he says that "we see Art proliferate everywhere, and even faster on Art discourse. But in its own genius, its adventure, its power of illusion, its ability of denial of reality and of opposing reality with another scenario in which things obey a superior rule; a transcendent figure in which beings, as lines and colours on a canvas, could lose their meaning, and surpass or exceed their own end and in an impulse of seduction, attain its own ideal form, even at risk of their own destruction, in this sense, I say, Art has disappeared"…
…and I don’t even feel like ranting against it, as Hughes does. I just feel that I have nothing to do with it.
Now that I think I'm cured, I see philosophy as a large garden in which you will always find deadly herbs, but also the healthiest ones to cure any illness. So I choose the words of an apocryphal Nietzsche, when he says: "The great aim of art is to shake the imagination with the strength of a soul that does not admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world." Benjamin said "the intention kills truth" and therefore I return to painting that is my truth and I apologize again for the philosophical wordiness.
I think it does not matter if the red heels look like blood -would be worse if it were interpreted as red socks :). In fact this picture immediately reminded me of the famous bloody head by Jenny Saville. However, I believe that there is too much red in that area, what could break the composition.
However I must say that I really like this painting.
What has become strange is art. And it might be harder than ever to define what art really is. But what one can definitely say is that painting has gone, for painting is much much more than adding some paint to a canvas. Saint Sorolla knows what I am talking about. And next time in Madrid I will sacrifice my tears at his altar. . .
Dear Hanjo Look at exactly the same painting. Very warm and cheerful colors (red and purple) and cold colors (blue). What these colors with a thought or idea is put on the figure?
It is better to write clearly. I'm in love with these paintings.
Well, the most primitive view is to think people have black or white skin. That is ideology. An superficial view is that skin looks brown or rosy. One has to take some time and really look at skin. Then you will see that there are all hues of colour in it. So what I do is just to make this a little bit more visible.
Well, some weeks ago I got this letter from an art critic from Pasadena, California, that I thought might be of some interest for some more people as myself. So I want to use this beautiful but unfortunately seldom used forum to show the letter around. Here it comes:
Dear Hanjo, I feel so very strongly about your work that I would be happy to simply give you my critical opinions. I am working on a concept for a book I would like to present to the publisher - a book I have been wanting to write for some time now and I want to make you a significant part of that book,so committing my thoughts to paper would be a running start on that. I'm deeply interested in the way you and other artists approach the integument - in a way that honors the passage of time yet makes the body sensuous in its own corpulent, sagging way. I am so tired to seeing the models as anorexic, or overwrought muscular beings - that seems artificial and something that must be constantly tended and altered by diet and lotions/potions, gym work, cosmetic surgical alteration. I believe beauty comes with a sense of history, that time massages the harsh corners into soft and voluptuous curves. That 'flawless complexions' look like mannequin droids - no sense of the patina age embraces the skin the body, the soul, the psychology of what the world looks like through learned, if somewhat wrinkled and weakened eyes. Your paintings to me share those fleeting moments of angst that flitter past our eyes, forcing us to cope, and eventually allowing us to accept that life is a circle from birth to death. Babies are basically fatty blobs of indeterminate tissue with innocent but uninformed faces - faces and extremity movements that are searching for definement, for mature genetic form. Somewhere in the middle of that circle we become youth and then young adult 'beauties', receptacles for attracting and procreating: the hormone levels falter and age and experience and simply time prefers gravity to dance. What you have found is a manner in which to view the generosity of individualism, the wear and tear of getting past young adult with all the life bruises that journey creates. Youths and young adults may look at us in our fifties, sixties, seventies and feel repulsion - knowing that this is their own destiny, a destiny they view as wretched, ugly, disgusting and for many of them in their monomaniacal way, avoidable (miracle drugs, surgical excisions, combating the thinning of the epidermis and dermis and erasing the dyschromia that the sun that once gave them elegant tanned bodies to love leaves them with blotches and actinic cum senile keratoses). I see in your paintings not containers of tissue but monuments of life experience. Who is to decide that 'Rosemary and Thyme' are not beautiful women, unafraid to allow us to see their entire bodies. 'Threefold Black' is so rich in tangible tactile flesh that makes me want to be held by this person. I absolutely LOVE with great passion your painting 'Arms and Legs' - I have never seen a painting that so beautifully expresses the passion of intercourse - the bodies are like one octipoid mass of sexual lust and satisfaction, so intertwined and so much a part of the bliss of sex that the two are like one noisy sweaty space-defying driven animal. I love 'Transport', and 'Fermata', paintings that honor the way the unhurried eye perceives the totality of a body, gradually and sensually, and the colors of the flesh you paint here are thunderously dramatic and rushing with blood, trying hard to do what once was a simple movement until gravity and the cascade of corpulence reminded (or forced) us to be slow. 'Lateral' is another painting that allows my eyes to explore the tones and torsions of skin distended by light striking a bald head, a submental space that is full of extra shadow from time (and the incidental glory of the use of a green background that offers such resonating reflections and absorptions of the shadow of the head. 'Swirl' is such a magnificent composition, one that divides the background in a sort of homage to Francis Bacon but is the setting for what feels to me like a man sliding/?pushed? along a slick surface, the added corpulence not an impediment to the action. And yet while I love the older model paintings I find the painting of 'Red Bucket Watching' and 'Lisa' that to me represent that turning point of the young adult before morphing into the complexities of age. One of the major things that draws me to your painting is the size of the paintings. They are enormous when I see the photos of you standing by them - as in 'Inbetween' et al. For the rest of my response I must say that much of it s simply visceral. I want to stand in front of these paintings, not moving, for hours on end and drink in all the glory of pigment and brush technique and agony and ecstasy. Sometimes verbal responses to paintings take months to develop - first they must be incorporated into the psyche where they will take up permanent residence and then find their way into cerebral pathways that can be expressed. At this point in time I can only say that I love your art. In time I'll be able to put that visceral response into better words. I hope I have offered you something in this missive. Grady
Thanks for posting that here Hanjo. I'm sure I represent all at ap who know you, to say how happy I am that you receive such well-merited recognition, and hope that the writer succeeds with his plan for eventual publication.
For more than 40 years Karl has been my closest friend. He once was my professor in architecture and later became my friend and in the course of time even a kind of father figure for me. He died 2006, two weeks prior to his 100th anniversary, and I am still miss him badly. So yesterday I took my time to paint him after a photograph I took when he was at the age of 93.
Hanjo - now that some of us have gotten to know, respect, and feel, in some way, close to you, I'm sure we would like to understand Karl's qualities - that made him become your closest friend (and possibly give you a small opportunity for some little tribute to your erstwhile professor). Many thanks.
I missed your contributions in AP, but I see that was worth waiting.
Thank you very much for sharing with us your Karl´s picture. It is a face that conveys great energy. It is very strong in their facial features and at the same time very fragile in the brightness of his eyes. For its emotional intensity it recalls the portraits by Van Gogh.
I agree with John-Paul that it is a picture of someone who we would wish to have met.
I could not find a better example to illustrate my comment to the picture by Alejandro Cabezas. If our painting is not an expression tool then it will become just a game, a show of empty virtuosity. Thanks a lot.
Hello dear. We have long talked about criticism and being honest and so on. Most of the examples of honest negative opinions we have expressed have been addressed to people we haven’t met in person and some times I think we sort of didn’t dare do it with our friends.
Ok, this introduction was because I really want to tell you that I don’t like this painting. It looks like you have really been lazy here. Too many areas painted with the same patches of colour as if it didn’t matter what colours were used. Sorry XXS but the comparison with Van Gogh was a little too hasty. And we can discuss it if you like. Honestly my friend I think you have much better work than this. Beware of technical effects taking over painting.
There I said it.
P.S. Guys do we really care about a sitter’s qualities when we look at a painting?
Well my dear, let me start with a preamble, too. I do appreciate your honesty, I really do, for that’s the fundament of any talk that matters. And I do appreciate that you do not sit in the background thinking this or that for yourself but standing here and speak it out aloud. That’s indeed a very good thing and a very curageous one as well. Why? I guess that the reason that we do this honest criticizing so very seldom if ever isn’t only to be shy of hurting the other one but also to be afraid of getting back a punch on one’s own nose.
Okay then, first of all it’s perfectly in order if you don’t like the painting in question. And it’s only natural that you have your reasons for this discontent. But now that you offered some of them let me ask you a few questions. So what are you criticizing? Laziness in the first place. Then that too many areas have the same patches of colour. And you add: “as if it didn’t matter what colours were used”. This is an argument I do not understand. From where do you know which colours are appropriate for this very face? Do you really think that there should have been more blue in it or a greenish hue in some parts or some more yellow? Have you ever seen the model’s face? And what do you think is the reason that makes us paint a portrait? To please an audience? To deliver the perfect example in painting theory? And what is painting theory anyway? What’s the right way of painting? Can you tell me that?
Well, I prefer to have a personal reason for to paint a particular portrait for I usually don’t do it as a commission. And the only thing I am interested in when doing it is to catch as much as possible of the personality of the sitter or what the sitter means to me or just what interests me in this head or its facial expression. And in this moment I’m not at all interested in questions like if it has something to do with van Gogh or whomever else or if there are better paintings I have done etc. etc. And by the way, isn’t it very different what different people find better or best?
To end with, I do not understand what you mean with “technical effects taking over painting”. What’s painting for you? And do you think that everybody has to follow your understanding of painting for not to be accused of mere technical effects? Well, and how comes that you think that “a sitter’s qualities” doesn’t matter that much in a portrait? Is the combination of different colours and they way how they are applied to the canvas the only thing that matters out of all in a portrait? Okay, now it’s your turn.
I have to disagree with you Maria, in the first place, I do recall writing a negative comment on paintings I didn’t like, and saying why, in this webpage, in particular to Hanjo and to Hillel. Two persons I consider very good friends of mine, and whom I admire profoundly. Writing about an artwork is always risky, art is such a subjective matter…there are too many things in it that cannot be explained with reason. Of course there is composition, brush work, plasticity in the use of colors, etc, but we all know that there are things beyond that, that can be seen but cannot be easily explained. I have to be absolutely sure about a friend, to really make a negative comment to his work, I would try to avoid it with a stranger. So answering your last question, well not that we as observers can judge a painting by the qualities of the sitter, but we can get a good idea of them and of how the painter reacts to them, (which is also interesting). As a painter, to me, it does matter, in the sense that the more the face expresses the more I get involved in it. I easily get bored of a shallow face. Most of the portraits I admire have this psychological insight , the painter “sees” more than just a surface, more than just the hues in the skin, and somehow manages to tell us something about that human being, without words. Sometimes the artist strives to depict just the opposite, a lack of expression and individuality but then what we see is a mask or a kind of frozen sphinx. This portrait is far from being a sphinx, one can easily read a tinge of disappointment in the old man who’s inner strength still refuses to go, the skull is powerful, the eyes intelligent, his gaze drifts inside his thoughts, or memories. . I cannot understand the word “lazy” referring to anything in it. I got used to enlarging the images very much in order to really “see” the brush work and the movement of the hand in Hanjo’s paintings, because they are usually very big, and if you take a close look at it you will see an incredibly vital activity and tension, patches of colors that explode in different directions like fireworks and that nevertheless construct not only the boney structure but also the psychology of the human being he was so fond of. I love color, and it drives me crazy when painting, but the plasticity of the portrait not always depends on the number of hues, and if you take a look at Van Goghs self portraits, you will see that some are made with a great variety of colors and hues, but some aren’t. Not that I’m comparing anything, but maybe this portrait just didn’t need all those colors we usually expect in a Hanjo Schmidt. To me the portrait not only has Hanjo’s usual imprint, in the vehement brush work, and in the way it irradiates energy, but it is also a good study of expression in which he shows a profound human insight. For me, this is important.
I will soon answer my friends, with details on what I said about this painting. I just have to take a short trip and when I am back I will tell you all about what I have in mind. love to all.
Based on your words in the comment, I get the idea that you don't find it important that the painter has an emotive connection with the motive. Van Gogh had it- you will agree. Excuse me if I've gone back to use the name of Van Gogh in vain.
You are free to think as you want, without a doubt, the contemporary art won the right of the artists to dictate their own rules. Of course I will wait for your return and will be happy to discuss our points of view with a non-dogmatic and open mind. Wouldn't it be great if we could do it having a beer in the Populart??
John-Paul, to answer your question I will quote from a story by J.D. Salinger Karl would have liked.
Duke Mu of Chin said to Po Lo: “You are now advanced in years. Is there any member of your family whom I could employ to look for horses in your stead?” Po Lo replied: “A good horse can be picked out by its general build and appearance. But the superlative horse — one that raises no dust and leaves no tracks — is something evanescent and fleeting, elusive as thin air. The talents of my sons lie on a lower plane altogether; they can tell a good horse when they see one, but they cannot tell a superlative horse. I have a friend, however, one Chiu-fang Kao, a hawker of fuel and vegetables, who in things appertaining to horses is nowise my inferior. Pray see him.” Duke Mu did so, and subsequently dispatched him on the quest for a steed. Three months later, he returned with the news that he had found one. “It is now in Shach’iu” he added. “What kind of a horse is it?” asked the Duke. “Oh, it is a dun-colored mare,” was the reply. However, someone being sent to fetch it, the animal turned out to be a coal-black stallion! Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo. “That friend of yours,” he said, “whom I commissioned to look for a horse, has made a fine mess of it. Why, he cannot even distinguish a beast’s color or sex! What on earth can he know about horses?” Po Lo heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “Has he really got as far as that?” he cried. “Ah, then he is worth ten thousand of me put together. There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses.” When the horse arrived, it turned out indeed to be a superlative animal.
The other day I found a text by German painter Johannes Grützke that describes perfectly what I think painting is for me. And for I like this description so much I translated it into what I think might be taken for English while trying to keep some of his personal style of writing. Okay, this way all of you can read it. It goes like this:
At the beginning there is the sight. In the eye the sight becomes an impression and goes throught the eye in the head, from there in the arm that holds the brush and takes it down like a seismograph so it becomes the expression. That would be fine!
In the brain the impression is object to several influences. It gets “enriched” with orders, criteria, judgements and wrong corrections. The brain knows better than the eye, it thinks. The brain isn’t willing to believe some things the eye sees. The brain has prejudices. It doesn’t like some things. The brain doesn’t see what the eye does. The brain orders the eye to see what it ought to see for the eye is the slave of the brain not the other way round.
The painter now has nothing else to do as to clean the impression from those falsifications the brain added to it. The painter wants to preserve and express the true and independent impression. He wants to paint what he sees and not what he ought to see. He wants to dedicate himself to the sight without brainly reservations. He wants the sight pure and not as the authority of his brain permits it to be.
The painter has to make it plain to the brain that its definitions reduce and that they are limited. And that in the case of and for the purpose of true depiction these limitations must be recognized and overcome. Perhaps the whole system of definitions must be teared down.
That’s hard work. Tough struggle! Unfortunately it’s only going step by step not in one rush for the brain does not let itself be deprived of power voluntarily. It fights back, sometimes with all refinements.
The bad thing is that out of principle the impression cannot bypass the brain for the tool eye only functions sensible through the brain’s ability to read. The brain needs the eye for it’s own orientation to serve the body for that’s the reason the body has a brain.
The painter however has an extensive interest, a curiosity, that goes beyond the function of his body. His eye shall see more than the body needs. This is what the eye does first of all though. The sight is pure and the impression shall be pure as well.
The painter has to convince his brain to reduce the necessities of its system to the function of the body only. For instance to keep balance, to notice that it is darkening soon or that a hostile dog is approaching.
When this was successful everything is won. Now the eye is seeing only. It sees that in front of it a brightness is becoming darker at its right side (it’s a wall of the room with a shadow on it), further right there comes a rosy brightness that changes with dark red darknesses (an ear) green-yellow brightnesses (shaved beard and cheek bone) rosy darknesses, above yellow brightness etc. (in short, it may be a head in a room.) Now the eye doesn’t recognize but only see. The brain contains itself and has given up to identify and to interpret. Now the eye follows the things gaze by gaze. It follows the folds of the cartilage in their elegant bending in the same speed as the brush at the arm can take it down. The observation is dedicated. It lives from its intensity. What’s taken down is reference of what’s observed.
Fifteenth of April. That’s spring season, blossom season, mating season whatever. Everything is growing and bursting out and exiting etcetera. Well, I’m curious to see what this season is doing with our good old artprocess. So don’t be shy and post post post . . .
Well, since we were talking about details in the recent seascape of Karen and I said that I did not mind the lack of it in a reproduction of a portrait or body . . . Here is a detail of the pubics of the pregnant woman in Rosemary and Thyme (number 10 in the portfolio) and of course it shows another level of richness of colour. And in the image on the next page, in magnifying the detail one can clearly see what’s missing in an average reproduction.
Well, the faces. When painting the Skin Series it striked me that somehow the face is treated too prominent. In our clothed society every expression is encumbered with the face. So it is mainly over represented when it comes to reading a person. At the same time the body is gravely underrepresented. But I learned with the Skin Series that the body, and with this I do not only mean the so called body language but also its shape and structure as well, tells quite an interesting story. This is one thing. The other thing is that the face of naked people is favored taken as an alibi. So one looks at the nakedness, pleased, but pretends that the more interesting object is the face of course. That's hypocrisy, isn't it? So here with this painting it is about nakedness. It’s the theme. Not only nakedness by chance as in most of the so called nude paintings but as a purpose to enjoy what the body is to lovers. So everybody is allowed to freely just look at the naked bodies without having to comment about the interesting faces as an excuse. Well my dear John-Paul this painting unfoetunately is not a quotation or an allusion of the Arnolfini wedding or a wedding at all, smirking or not. I'm still pondering on the appropriate title but this painting could as well be called "Homesick".
Well if there is any rendition JP I couldn’t say whose is it, for both are holding their own pleasure in their hands. I don’t think it is a question of surrender, the image for me is a kind of homage to pleasure and honesty. Two bodies, not exactly from the Vogue, quite plain and normal in their “more than real” proportions, are seen in daylight. Each one is holding his/her lovers sexual charms, while they look at each other fascinated, in a mirror, or so I imagine. They adopt no flattering posture, no soft lights, they have no need for it. Her rotund body firmly planted in the earth, stands out in the daylight boldly, exposing a white skin that one can easily imagine fresh or even a bit cold. Boldly she holds her lovers sex in her hand, for the mirror or for us to see. She is direct and resolute. On the other hand, her partner, takes her breast in an unstable posture, and despite his sturdy body, seems to dissolve with the background , specially from his knees downwards, his connection to earth a bit faded. His presence a little cloudy compared to her brightness. He seems to hold on to her while she seems to lead him, by the only part of his body that is perfectly defined, his sex. Maybe faces would have told us the story more precisely. I prefer to imagine it as a playful intimate moment between two lovers enjoying each other’s body, fascinated by their reflected image and the mysterious force that lies in the lover’s sex. Who hasn't experienced that fascination?
Oh oh, I guess here we have a misunderstanding initiated by a so called „False Friend“. The English term rendition, according to my dictionary, means something like a performance, showing something, while the Spanish word rendición means submission. But nevertheless, thank you Karen, for having such a close look at this painting and finding such beautiful words for its description. And you are completely right in finding that it has nothing to do with any kind of submission or surrender exept to love and joy.
You're absolutely right, I should have realized it when using the word "surrender", anyway thanks for the correction. In case you're still pondering I vote for "Homesick"..
I too have to congratulate Karen on her critique of this work. She describes a situation where the woman is the active element in the painting, and the man, in shadow, seemingly left to be tugged along behind and providing "companionship". It's clearly a Hanjo feminist artwork. Chapeau! (to you both).
Every now and then painters get an e-mail from an unknown person offering to buy a painting.
I think it’s not exaggerated to state that in 99,99% of all cases this turns out to be a fraudulent action. It goes like this: The artist is made believe that a certain Person from a place abroad, will buy an expensive painting from him or her. Very early in the correspondence it’s all about the money transfer. The painter then gets a cheque that is about two or three thousand Euros higher than the artist's fee. From this combined sum the artist is asked to deduct his or her fee and to transfer the rest to the "shipper" that in all of those cases is provided by the customer. While the cheque is still in the process of examination by the artist’s bank the painter is asked to pay the shipper in advance for to start the collection of the painting. The account of the alleged "shipper" mostly belongs to a private person. Later it will turn out that the cheque is a bounced cheque only and the artist is deprived this way of the amount of the shipper's fee.
Well, I could easily produce a list with all the suspicious signs in such a correspondence or show, how a real art buyer would act in such a case. But of course I do not want to involuntary write a manual for potential impostors of what to avoid in such an e-mail or how to improve it in telling him how a real buyer would act or behave instead. Okay, I could make it a workshop with minimum 25 subscribers and a fee for each of them of 10,000 Euros ha ha ha. Okay, back to serious.
The problem however is not how perfect the impostor acts or how many suspicious hints are in such e-mails. The problem is a psychological one that lies in the human nature.
The average artist, and that is over 75% of them is more or less poor and constantly lacks money for to buy the needed materials, pay for the studio rent and so on. So the prospect of making a big deal automatically starts what we call hope. Hope triggers a kind of blindness against things or facts that would diminish hope. So the more in need an artist is the stronger is the hope factor and the more perfect the blindness towards reality and the weaker the ability to judge. So anyone not involved would see clearly what is going on, whereas the artist in hope does not, or better, does not want to see. This is the danger that might even let clever persons step in the trap.
So let’s cut a longer story short in summing up as follows: When someone from abroad offers to buy a work of art, provides a shipping opportunity and a combined fee with you to pay the shipper, then HANDS OFF !
Hi new to the art world regards selling my work, thanks its something that I would not know about. It has made me more aware of what is going on in the art world.
The painting that you have done is good, it is difficult to get good features in the portrait.
I'm always very curious to see when I receive that email saying Hanjo has uploaded a new image... This time a head study in blue: does this mark a departure from flesh tones for you? What was your motivation for this work Hanjo? Eyes and mouth shut possibly mean you don't want any reading of emotion or expression, so for me colour is your dominant theme here.
"... I'm always very curious to see when I receive that email saying Hanjo has uploaded a new image... This time a head study in blue: does this mark a departure from flesh tones for you? What was your motivation for this work Hanjo? Eyes and mouth shut possibly mean you don't want any reading of emotion or expression, so for me colour is your dominant theme here."..
Well my dear, as you know I’m coming from sculpture. So a head for me isn’t just a face. And a face isn’t just a smiling surface as one could get the impression of from most of the photographs we are confronted with. It’s a three dimensional object in the first place. And as such it’s very interesting and beautiful. And when you stretch your face the structure of the skull comes out more clearly or pronounced. We all have the experience that when one gets older the flesh and skin becomes more saggy and so starts hiding this structure. Doing a little bit of face gymnastic helps to reveal it again. This is the basis.
The second thing is that one can do many different things with one’s face, at least I can. So this is a study of what a face is up to beyond the usual photo smile and before entering into the state of a grimace. The position shown in my painting Tabletop [LINK], for example, requires such a face. And in the end it’s another page in the heavy book of facial expressions that tells the story of life.
Since in particular Monet undertook it to study light and its changing, we know more precisely that the colour of an object depends on what the lighting circumstances are. For instance when you look out of the window later in the day while behind you in the room there is artificial light, the colour of your skin comes out exactly as shown in this painting. Colour is an illusion the light produces, technically spoken. So as always in my painting everything comes out of observing reality, only a little bit exaggerated sometimes, for to make it clear. There is no invention in it, nothing that comes out of fantasy, no ‚just for the fun of it’.
We are living on this earth since a few million years and up to now we only know very little about how this world and life on it really functions. For as a mankind we are exessively addicted to our own imagination and fantasy and to making things up, but not so fond of looking at things precisely and without fear, not really, but we should.
Hanjo ! my goodness you scared me ! First time I saw this I thought it was the face of a dead man. Second time I look at it . . . again it’s scary . . . . . third time . . . I got it ! : it’s a clown . . . . then reading what it is . . . . congratulations ! it’s a question of the expression of what comes before . . . just for the fun of it . . . without fear. Bravo !
Well Kristina, that’s very very nice to hear from you. So you are still on the boat . . . or at least back on it again. What a nice surprise. And don’t be scared, death people look quite different. But I see that such an expression can be mistaken. Nowadays in our part of the world we are not so very familiar with it, death no longer seems part of the concept here. But of course it’s still around as usual. And will be of course up to all eternity . . . Thank for commenting.
The head of a man with mouth and eyes shut.
well, the last three paintings are parts of a triptych. But it should exhibited in a room with Number three opposite to the entrance and number two on the left wall and Number one on the right one. So the viewer will be kind of surrounded by them.
And these are the small versions of the final ones which each will be 190 cm wide and 230 cm high.
That room you describe sounds like an artist's dream - the perfect exhibition opportunity. I'm wondering why you've chosen these images in particular to command that space? You've discussed the 3-dimensionality of the head but, in my view, by sucking in and tightening the telling wrinkles, you lose the character of the person, and instead they become death masks. Twilight as in the approach of darkness, nearing the end, and by the overpowering dimensions you're going to use - it's pointless to resist.
On the other hand, these paintings remind me a little of a fellow countryman of yours (from the same region as you), a sculptor from another era Franz Messerschmidt. Were you influenced by his work?
Well, the perfect exhibition opportunity. That’s what we are working on for our show in October 2013 here in Stuttgart. We that is two other artists and me. So it will be a group show of our big formats. And as you guessed already it is meant to overwhelm. So saying it’s pointless to resist is a good description indeed.
As to the character of a person. I doubt that one can deduce the “real” character of a person from looking at a picture showing a so called relaxed face only, like in a passport photography. The face is our most excellent communication and expression tool. And it tells most precisely about your character when in motion. I once made the experience of having a pen friend with whom I had exchanged dozens of photos already but when we finally met in the flesh I could hardly recognize this friend. So in short, only when you have seen many of the possible expressions a face can make you might give an expertise about a character that has some foundation in it.
It’s a bit strange that normally we seem to be satisfied with so little diversification in expression. When it comes to age it looks as if we only know two sorts of it, young and old. But actually we are changing all the time. So neither young nor old is a very precise description. Monet spent almost all of his career in trying to catch and depict the change of the light in the course of the day. And something similar Turner was after.
Theoreticaly you could spend your whole career the same way with depicting only one single face in all its different expressions. And I’m not exactly talking about the extremes, the grimasses, Messerschmidt dealt with. I’m not after grimasses. I’m after expressions. So I worked on anger already, on disappointment, attention etc. Well, and now it’s seems to be about a kind of retreat into oneself. Something that Melville described as “the intense concentration of self in the immensity”. So for to answer your question: No, I was not influenced by Messerschmidt even though I think that he undertook a fascinating and very outstanding or singular task with his heads.
Every now and then I like to have visitors in my studio. In particular if they are of this kind. So today half of the Club of Madrid had lots of fun. Thank you Maria. And thank you John-Paul for having given us the opportunity that this friendship could begin years ago.
Ha ha! That lady in the photograph doesn't look AT ALL convinced! Even she is questioning your choice of death masks for that gorgeous exhibition space? So nice to see Maria out-and-about. Please ask her why we've not had the privilege of sharing in what she's working on for such a long time now. Notwithstanding, my compliments - you're both looking good, strong and healthy. Now isn't it about time the (complete) Club of Madrid considered doing a group show in Stuttgart?
What a surprise! almost all the members of the club having a meeting! Maria is not really convinced... but I like it! What a pleasure to meet again! I bet you had fun! Next one in Madrid please!
Well, that Maria is not convinced is not her statement but J-P's assumption. She herself did say nothing in that direction. We didn't even talk about that case. Maybe she will when she joins the discussion when being at home again. But I don't think so. What we talked about instead was ArtProcess and the merits of our doubtful friend. And that we want to revive the discussion culture on this fabulous website. The very best in the whole World Wide Web when it comes to talking about art and its making. Okay, I have to sleep now!
For the curious, here's what I can find on the Club of Madrid [LINK]. So have a nice trip home to Maria, and sweet dreams (of giant paintings) to Hanjo. And thanks for the words of encouragement, it's all due to you artists who provide whatever interest exists here, so many thanks especially to those who return to comment on their own works, and on those of their fellow artists.
Hey guys! Well, yes! After fast thinking we both decided that there is no place like HOME. So, after a few years' journey out in the open sea, it is high time we gathered back around the fire to tell our stories and adventures. (Did I mention I had to go through a snow storm to get to Hanjo's studio?)
I have been told there are some new, exciting features in the Studio Log which I will soon set myself to discover.
By the way, too bad I didn't shoot any photos of me and our dear Elena Habicher in Zurich...
this is the big version after the study of a head in blue.
Well, I'm a bit tired now from jumping all the time to reach the top of the painting with my brush.
I find this type of photo of the artist and the artwork very interesting, not just to have an appreciation of the dimensions and the colour of the painting, but the human interest of the creator and how he or she presents the persona of the artist. Here's another similar image by the artist Ben Stack on the other side of the world in Australia [LINK]. I wonder how we could encourage more artists to upload a photo of themselves in their studio with their work? Hanjo (or Ben), I'd love to know if you have any comments on how you present *yourself* here, and is this an area worth exploring? I'm thinking about the clichéd idea of the artist as a loner, misunderstood perhaps unappreciated, yet (romantically) heroically determined to continue with the task. Is there any use in discussing this topic?
Gehäuse, a housing, a core, an enclosure, a shell, a casing. Seen this way the head, the skull, whose outside is the face, is the most important house and home of the self. And this shell, this core, represents more than anything the mystery of the self. More than the communicating mode of the open eyes, the open mouth, the open face with its mimic.
In German we call a very difficult question, a poser or stumper, a hard nut, not easy or even impossible to crack. There is no way to find out or get an answer. So in front of such head, closed as a shell, we have to be silent for it becomes mere guessing to speculate about what goes on inside.
The pondering on what goes on inside this case started years ago with looking at my mothers face, with not finding any answer. Alzheimer's had sealed this precious housing and thrown the key away. So in the end it needed my painting her face to at least coming a little bit closer. Without knowing though but with feeling and scenting.
. . . on our neverending way through unsafe fields, as usual not clad appropriate and with only makeshift weapons at hand but at least upright, me and myself came along these pale ruins that on a closer view seem to be so familiar. So Los Caminantes, as we are called, take a rest inbetween all these memories. We have passed so many broken things. Everything is fading away or falling apart just like this place. The once so famous boulevard is hardly visible by now, covered with high grass, bushes and even trees that come out of the manyfold cracks. With the breeze there comes a hint of Patricia’s so very beautiful coarse voice, laughing. A constant whisper filling the air slowly repeats the melodious and wise texts of Karen again and again while somewhere in the distance the fata morgana of Maria appears, lifting her index finger, telling us what to do first, second, third . . . and look here, at the wall, I don’t believe it, there’s still hanging a rest of a poster showing the amazing face of Rabbi Hillel . . .
. . . But then I woke up and, there he is, life! Hillel with a painting of his studio.
Here, dear John-Paul, you can see the dream put into reality. This is the wall I was thinking of and the press cheered on it. And it wasn't even so difficult . . .
Dear John-Paul, after a long time of absence I thought about coming back to good old art process. So in the next days I will upload some of the new works. I hope it's okay with you. Best regards and I hope you are well!
Hey Hanjo! It's been ages! Great to see you about these parts again. Hope you're well and have been doing lots of super paintings. It's a coincidence that you call by now as just a short time ago I got in touch with Hillel about resuscitating AP after years of silence. Naturally he grumbled but, in doing so, did give me the necessary moral support to make me think about embarking upon a complete re-design and re-think of AP. It'll be APDR (ArtProcess Done Right) this time haha. Anyway, as a proof of concept, I'm planning to start with an idea of his of many years ago - an artist interview section. It'll take a few months to complete and test I reckon, and then hopefully you'll accept an invitation to be interviewed? I look forward to read about what you've been up to these past years.
As for myself, I've quit the dishwashing job and have returned to Ireland to live alone in a tumbledown thatched cottage - it's a bit of a challenge to say the least, but I've a lot more time now to dedicate working on a new version of ArtProcess, and to mess around with doing some arty stuff myself.
Once again, welcome back - hopefully you'll get some response also from the old gang that'll momentarily breathe a bit of life back into the decrepit corpse of this old site.
Hello Hanjo, Paul is doing a great job building the interview application nere on Artprocess, I think it will attract much attention if enough people get to know about it. By the way your work is great. I'm watching the series Westworld at the moment about a playtown filled with humanoid simulacrums that guests get to abuse in any way they please. Whats interesting about it from a visual perspective is the emphasis on the human form and your paintings reminded me of similar preoccupations. There is something disturbingly intimate yet distant about them, I like the tension.
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13 Sep 07 15:49
I REALLY LIKE THE VUNERABLE POSITION HE IS IN. ITS RARE FOR AN OLDER, PRESUMABLY DIGNIFIED, PERSON TO BE PUT IN POSITIONS LIKE THIS. I FEEL IT ADDS A LOT TO THE FEELING AND WHAT HIS FACE MAY BE SAYING.
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14 Nov 07 09:07
Hello.
I would like your comments on my sculptures.
I admire your work very
Visit my studio log
giovanna colomba
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24 Feb 09 18:37
beautiful work... would love to see it in person.
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29 Sep 10 00:34
Well, this is something special: A link to a site that shows me in a video talking about my art in front of some huge paintings. [LINK]
Not so bad isn’t it?
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06 Oct 10 19:54
The videos of you in the studio talking about, and working on, your paintings are very interesting. Indeed, I've often thought it's something we really should be doing here on ap. I'd love to be the one there asking the questions, so that it becomes more of a dialogue between the visitor and artist in his workplace.
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10 Oct 10 08:57
Ever thought of doing a masterclass Hanjo? I mean where you have an audience of artists who would like to listen to you as you discuss and teach, and watch while you paint? I'm sure you'd make it a big success. There must be lots of professional/amateur artists over there in Stuttgart who would pay to attend such an event? Why not give it a try? It's the next logical step after your videos, to my mind.
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24 Apr 11 21:58
Your paintings really happy and a variety of colors. Beautiful
diagonal
From the series Faces
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03 Nov 06 10:21
what a brilliant painter/artist your are!breathtaking! congratulations for your work!
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08 Apr 07 16:35
such expression...fantastic.
combination of the two
from the series Friday Afternoon
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22 Feb 07 18:21
i have put a link to your website on my website because i think your art is amazing and beautiful
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18 Oct 07 01:49
This is a magnificent painting and truly the work of a master. Certainly one of the world's great artworks, I count myself amongst those who believe it to be the greatest. No doubt it resides in the most prestigious museum of this particular artist's country of origin. If I were a citizen of his native land I would demand one day of every year to mark the people's pride in their country's production of such an unique artist of genius. A day of celebration, street parades, fireworks and picnics and of course complete media coverage documenting the works, accomplishments and life of the great man. Perhaps the anniversary of the date of his birth might be appropriate. In any case that's all I have to say on this topic and it's only one man's humble, albeit, expert opinion.
with painter
from the series Faces, just to show the dimension
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23 May 06 05:00
Pondering over my feelings about your paintings, I think I understand why I've been so touched.It's about the naked body...The way you paint nudes...I've always been attracted by nudity either in a sexual meaning or death, (especialy piles of dead bodies in nazi's concentration camps -my father's experience, lots of tales and black and white pictures, included my own phantasmic, morbid ones- and always stayed away from that, like if it was verbotten or useless to show my struggle with flesh, dead or alive.
Your "Friday's" series reconciled me with nudity, no sexual connotations or "reclining nudes" so over done, no torture, no death feelings, but life, movement and freedom!
Thank you Hanjo.
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07 May 07 01:56
It's very nice to see your work on the real size.
Wowsome!
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12 Sep 07 22:55
you master texture, light and size. there is absolutely nothing to add, except that i wish i could get anywhere near to what you achieve in terms of texture, light and size ...
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08 Jan 08 18:52
I think this is an amazing painting. Inspiring.
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04 Dec 09 21:24
I found you on a link somewhere....the work is second to none, you give us all something to aspire too
jb
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24 Apr 11 21:54
I enjoyed many of your works. The question occurred to me: Why are things so big?
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25 Apr 11 08:41
Well , earlier in my life I worked as an an architect. So for many years my drawing work only required small movements of my hands. All the lines not much longer than some centimetres, then adding some small numbers or words for explanation. This work had been very exiting and sometimes stressful but this never showed in the body. Looking at me from behind one could not see if I was drawing at all. I have always suffered from this contradiction: inner turmoil but outer calmness. Later I came to painting by chance and what attracted me most was that here, in the big format, suddenly the inner turmoil was accompanied by quick and mighty movements. The whole body was engaged in the process. And sometimes I even got near physical exhaustion. So this gave me an enormous satisfaction. Painting then was not only a thing invented in my brain and translated into one hand’s minute movements but a thing about me and containing me as a whole.
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25 Apr 11 09:14
Thank you very much from the description. Full and interesting answers you said. That is the question why our other figurative?
Ie all that you want from within your expression is summarized in the figurative?
Am I really love the colors in his paintings are used to cut. The beauty of the landscape figure.
Thank you
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26 Apr 11 12:21
عزیز زهرا،
اگر ش�
ا استفاده از برنا�
ه ترج�
ه.
را تنها بسیار کوتاه و بسیار ساده است
احکا�
.
در غیر این صورت کار ن�
ی کند.
ح
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26 Apr 11 14:55
hi Dear Hanjo
Thank you that I tried to write in Persian language. I've translated your sentences.
I actually wanted to know this very cheerful colors like red and orange and purple with what incentive is put on the figure?
Really; for your complete answer.
King Lear
From the series "At Arm's Length". Well, this is one of my older paintings as asked for. It's about the picture we have from ourself and that often does not match reality properly
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13 Oct 06 21:42
Well Hanjo, I think it's a very interesting work. Certainly your most recent work is much stronger and more masterful and you seem to be on the top of your game however I do like this one too, archectonics and all. You had posted another one that I liked even more but when I came back to comment on it, it was gone.
One Question, in both works there is that shift. Do you recall what your reason for it was? Just additional interest or the figure on ground felt too static or what? Just interested. Oh yeah one more thing, forgetting about all formal aspects for a second may I say that I much prefer your choice of models now- a-days.
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13 Oct 06 22:22
Well, the shifts ... after my time in New York I was fed up with inventing figures. I thought why invent silly things when nature has such strong objects in store. And I was fed up with theories and concepts and ideologies as well (It was the time the Afganistan war started and the articles in the New York Post made me throw up). So I went back to Germany looking for something very down to earth and looking at things much more precisely and with a humble attitude. That’s why I started with models. In the beginning I did not really know what to do with them. The only thing I knew was: No reclining nudes! So finally I started to explore with me as a model what one can do with such a body. But taking yourself as a model has at least one big problem: You cannot see yourself without the help of a mirror or a camera. So I took my camera in my hand and photographed me from the distance of an arm’s length. That’s why I needed at least two photos to get the whole thing. And putting the parts together showed this funny shifts which I thought I would eliminate while painting. But after a while I thought why eliminate? That’s exactly the way we see ourself: in parts. The picture we have from us is kind of a puzzle. What we think we are looking like, what others see, what the mirror tells us and so on. It’s never objective but broken and makeshift. So I left the shift and showed it in the painting.
Well, to cut a long story short, after that experience I knew what to do with a model and so I looked for one. And you are right, Katja for example is a gift from heaven so to say.
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08 Jan 08 18:57
Hanjo, I've learned a lot from your explanation. Thank you.
Woyzeck
Sebastian is my favorite actor for the role of Buechner's Woyzeck
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29 Jan 07 19:21
Oh, yes. I love the hands. This image is like one of a sculptor who has just finished modeling his clay, which we cannot see because it stands somewhere on the right, outside the painting. Are you becoming even bolder with colour or am I mistaken?
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08 Jan 08 19:00
Hanjo what a tutor you are. You have taught me so much in this painting.
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09 Jan 08 16:52
Hi Anne, nice to hear from you. And it is consoling that at least my paintings are doing a good job in telling something helpful about painting or in other words about looking at things properly. Of course my goal is not at all teaching. But when one’s work is able to deliver a message beyond the sheer theme it is more than one can ask for. So thank you for your appreciation.
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10 Jan 08 12:08
First and foremost it's a wonderful painting!
the wall
from the Woyzeck series
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29 Jan 07 16:42
I would like to dedicate the Woyzeck series to both Karen Kruse and Maria Xagorari. To Karen for it is about nude men, a neutral background, the colouring of the skin, poses that are not from the classical genre etc. To Maria for it’s about gestures connected to the whole body. Gestures that are always part of the body language as a whole including the gaze as well. And it’s about using paint as what it is, a full colour medium. And instead of making lots of words I want to tell them what I have to say regarding all these issues in the language of painting.
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29 Jan 07 19:55
Honored. Well I think the gaze in Woyzeck I is the most powerful you have shown us here. Even more powerful than the emotion series. And OK, message recieved. I wish I were able to send such clear messages through my painting.
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02 Feb 07 11:07
Hanjo, I have been without internet these past two weeks. Finally, yesterday I could connect myself and the first thing I did was to take a look at your new paintings, see what you were doing, and there it was...like a smash in the face , Sebastian, or the Woyzeck series. As usual I stopped to analyze the physical weight of the figure, the brutal way of using the colour, the gaze the lines in his mouth, his hands ...you’ve surpassed yourself. Here I was struggling to get something out of my works and there you are with another fantastic nude, cant help to hate you sometimes......
Today I read your comment and it made me smile, (thanks for the dedication) although I love to read your comments and your letters I always learn much more from your paintings, thats true; someone said “whatever is clearly thought can be clearly said” well you say it and you can also paint it. ...(and draw it, because your paintings are firmly held by a powerful drawing , like it or not).
I am absolutely devoted to your work , you know that, but when I read your comments, which are always interesting, I can’t help thinking ¿ when it comes to art can we really say what to do or how to do it , or where to go? Haven’t we learned with time there are no rules to produce a real work of art?
When I see the last Rabbi’s head of Kagan or Maria’s painting’s It makes me SURE there are no rules. He has made an excelent artwork with all those semicircular strokes, that break the face in many facets, as complicated as the person itself, he is inmersed in his time and his society up to the bones, even when working alone he is not by himself. I can feel his fears, his doubts in his paintings and understand them. Maria has something very honest and very earthy about her mysterious paintings (Maria I think your paintings will never send “clear” messages, they are more about the other kind of messages we all have to descifer, which makes them disturbing , enigmatic, they make one feel uneasy ) . There is something that can’t be explained , that cant be measured in an artwork and I think it can appear in any way, when it comes out.
Yes your series are about nude men, against neutral backgrounds, ( ¿is that so important?) mine are more about male voluptousness, and incommunication, but
¿ isn’t it all really about ourselves? .
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03 Feb 07 00:52
I want to thank both of you for your comments. Very interesting, very serious, very honest and emotional texts. I’m flattered that you took the time.
I am aware of the difficulty of using words when it comes to very complex themes. One of the reasons I try to avoid these debates is that my English is much to poor to be used to describe such complicated issues. Maybe I’m even not able to do it in my own language. But I have an awkward feeling with Karen’s question „... can we really say what to do or how to do it?“. So I want to make clear that it is not my intention to tell others how to do their artwork. No way. If you took it this way I am very sorry for to have caused this misunderstanding and have to apologize.
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03 Feb 07 17:03
You don’t have to apologize , it isn’t a question only about you, that's why I said “we”, I mean I’m begining to doubt if there is something that can be said to help somebody make a better artwork, because it is so subjetive, so personal, and there are all kinds of approaches to it . I have to say nevertheless that you take the trouble and the time and your energy writing about other peoples artworks, including mine, and I have to thank you for that. Nothing’s worse than silence when it concerns our own work, and I’ve enjoyed your discussions very much (and learned from them too ). Keep on saying what you think about everything , I’ll read it.
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04 Feb 07 14:41
Hanjo, in deed, there is no need to apologise. Your way of eliminating narrative interferences of the background in order to enhance the power of bold colour and excellent drawing, your precedent comment on Karen’s work about “after sex” environment, our discussion about Jenny’s Saville grandeur; all this is an excellent opportunity to talk about the importance of what I call the “story told by a painting” (I think, Karen, you might agree to that).
We would all agree with you that Monet’s waterlilies are not about waterlilies at all, as Michelangelo’s affreschi are not about doom’s day. They are about painting. Nevertheless, figurative art in particular, is also about man (meaning human) and his experience. One cannot isolate the painterly properties of, for instance, Jenny’s Saville work from the narrative part of its content.
Remember “Reverse”? [LINK] The choice of red as the dominant colour had everything to do with “the story told by the painting”. Look at those lips, they are like the cherries on your cake but they also talk about haemorrhage. Her gaze is penetrating and lusty but she is lying on a morgue’s table.
Remember “Matrix”? [LINK]
I wouldn’t dare to even begin explaining what this painting is about (it may tell different stories to different people). But when you look at it, the use of colour is not the first thing that comes to your mind. Of course, it is precisely due to the mastery in the use of colour and drawing that this “story” gets through. That is the essence of figurative art generally speaking. You cannot separate the meaning of what is shown from the way it is painted. Even when at times one factor may be more important than the other. If you change the paint part the meaning part changes too.
Karen you say that your paintings are about male voluptuousness and lack of communication and I see what you mean. As you say there is “something in an artwork that cannot be measured and can appear in any way”. If you need a setting for your figures in order to talk about male voluptuousness and lack of communication, you need a setting. Period. If Hanjo needs his plain background, that’s what he needs. If Hillel needs his brushstrokes, his paintings need them. What we are doing here for each other, which I wouldn’t change for the world now that I found you guys, is comment on whether we think this or that element used has added or not to the achievement of what we think our fellow artist’s intentions were. Their intentions not ours. You may argue that we can’t always know their intentions. I would answer that, in my opinion, it is of great help for an artist even to hear that his intentions have been completely misunderstood. It helps you solve things or maybe be set free of certain illusions.
By the way Karen, you can’t imagine how much you have encouraged me by saying my paintings make one feel uneasy. That was exactly my intention in some of them. Thank you.
Hanjo, I would like to add to Karen’s comment, I too am grateful for our discussions here. Before I found you people …“I was in the dark here”!
(Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman”, or whatever the film is called in english…)
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04 Feb 07 15:13
Karen and Hanjo, I would be interested to know what each of you thinks of Paula Rego's work. Especially her Dancing Ostriches series
[LINK]http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/paula_rego.htm[/LINK]
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23 Feb 07 02:10
I.ve been meaning to comment on Hanjo's latest series of paintings and I came across this beautiful conversation. So firstly about the paintings, they're all as handsome as ever. I probably wouldn't have chosen this as my favourite but that's neither here nor there as it does illustrate what can be done with the simplest gesture. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Woyzeck and am assuming it's something literary or a play perhaps and I'd like to know more about it. Please fill me in.
Personally I've always liked the two figured paintings. "Knot" particularly stands out. What it is I think is the sexual energy and the time spent pondering the scene. I'm sure the photographs alone would be of interest but it's the artist's intense and obsessive interest in the subject that gives it, at least for me tremendous power. I'm not sure the present topic holds the same interest.
Karen's words here describe the attributes of your painting beautifully and also Karen I'd like to thank you for the kind words about my work. It's not unusual that artists dealing with similar concerns should gravitate to each other. What's interesting is where we diverge and that's where the learning comes into it. Whether it shows or not I know that I've learned and been influenced by all of you. There's a cross current of visual communication that goes on here and that's a great gift, sometimes challenging and difficult but always beneficial.
By the way Maria, about Paula Rego. Initially I wasn't partial to her work (too much like Balthus, too still, surrealistic, etc.) I've come to like her greatly. I also like Frida Khalo, another artist I couldn't be further from yet they're both honest painters and are somewhere in my mind. Sometimes I sense some Hopper like feeling in Karen's work. It's the light and quiet. I love him. He couldn't paint the human figure but the paintings work. That's all that matters.
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17 Oct 08 09:46
Powerfull!The man is tryng to get a exit point .Pure existentialism . Regards . Canonico Costantino
Supermarket C
The third one of the triplet.
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26 Apr 07 15:50
Dear Maria, I want to take this medium for answering you for maybe there is someone else interested in reading it.
You wrote: „My favourite expression is that of the first one but the colour of the middle one I think is the best.“ I guess everyone differs a bit in what she likes most of a series. Normally I like the last done best. It’s the most recent love so to say. Well in the Anna series I like the second most, the one with the volatile smile. In the latest series it is number three, the one with the open mouth. I think one has to define what it means „to like something best“ for in this case there is a difference between every viewer ... from the ignorant, naive amateur to the well known critic ... and the artist. Exept the artist everyone has to compare what she sees with what she has seen before. So it’s a look back even when the past is just some minutes old. Only the artist compares what she sees with something that she hasn’t seen before. It is the virtual state of what she tries to reach, her imagination, her plan, her goal.
So after all those loud expressions, those shoutings and outbursts I wanted to explore the silent ones, the minute ones. And after having seen another corpse two weeks ago with that „uninhabited“ face I wanted to put the finger on the life in it. My goal was to have these moist eyes, moist lips, sensitive and nearly transparent skin and how to find brushstroke metaphors for all this. And compared with my goal the second Anna is nearest and the third Katja. And what I like very much is that this time I didn’t do the shadowy parts just in a darker hue but in a different colour. That makes the whole appearance lighter. This vulnerable rosy tone is exactly what I was looking for. The dark parts in number two, the weeping one, make the skin hard and leathery and this wasn’t my intention. So for me „The Moment III“ is the most perfect painting I’ve ever done.
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26 Apr 07 17:31
Dear Hanjo,
My saying that I like No II’s colour best meant exactly what I said. I like it more because it is my cup of tea. It is like saying that I like lemon sorbet more than strawberry, which I would also have with pleasure. That’s all.
It was not an act of artistic criticism. I like all your work. All of it.
Maybe the reason why I like this one more is exactly the fact that you use a different colour for the shade and not just a darker hue. And if I had to make some criticism, I would say that in my opinion No II is not leathery at all. It just has a different light. The kind of light-and-dark juxtaposition that allows the artist to make bold colour choices. Let me explain myself better:
To my eyes,
No I is bold with its blue brushstrokes but they seem a little too much to me. A little too many too alike. I am very fond of the brushstrokes though that seem thiner than usual and transparent.
No II is bold because it is rich with truth. Look at the shadow on the cheek. Look at how the eyes float borderlineless in a sea of warm light. There are hundreds of different pinks and oranges and brownish greys in there. It is alive. And frankly, I couldn’t tell what her exact feeling is, but after all this orgasmic painting shower, I don’t care much.
No III is a little more linear and the colour gives me an impression of impenetrability, at least compared to No II.
See, we have proven that everyone differs a bit in what we see in a work. And maybe we also proved that each and everyone’s plan, each and everyone’s goal interferes inevitably with our judgment of others’ work, even if only slightly.
Now for heaven’s sake take a brake or I will not be able to shake your hand as tight as I would like to in July.
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26 Apr 07 18:21
Not at all did I take your choice as a criticism. In contrary I am very happy that you have your own well defined view of things. I just wanted to express why I like number three so very much. Yes and the eyes of number II ... You are right they are the focus besides the teeth. In the German language we have a very beautiful word to describe Katja’s left eye. It is „verschwommen“ meaning something like it is swimming. And indeed it is swimming in tears. By the way: the next days no painting nor building crates or whatever. I go swimming instead for I was told that this would be good for my arm and shoulder and that it will ease my pain.
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27 Feb 10 20:27
Dearest Maria, reading our commemts again after years I am ashamed that I deleted the other examples we were talking about so that no one understands what we are talking about. But in a way even without the examples the text is rich vivid and good. So again thanks for your thoughts words and friendship.
wet paint
trying to get rid of to much accuracy
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19 Jul 07 09:55
YES! Time for change has come. I expect to see new, interesting elements in most of our works.
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06 Aug 07 17:53
hanjo, there was something hidden there that I thought could be said in what I think is my frustration with painting, and it relates to the background in which your bodies pulse. This may give an n absolute difference to the human presence in the spaces of your mind. Can it? Is it a marginal matter or there is a sense in what I observe? is it an occasional solution or is it developing? then I want to confess that in this same feeling the day I saw your works live I felt to get that white paint from the exhibition panels and to throw it over them ,as I was sure that their shout would pierce and come through it anyway!
Rosemary and Thyme
Oil on canvas
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12 Jan 08 20:24
It seems like you are getting ready to allow some narration into your work. Am I right?
After having seen Paula Rego narration is not a demon for me any more. All the contrary.
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13 Jan 08 03:40
Well Maria, with narration it’s a bit as Hillel described it for seeing figures in every pattern. We have a tendency to see a narration in every combination of figures. Put a woman and a man together in a picture and there is a story immediately. This for example is what Eric Fischl does. What I do not like in this method is that those stories emerging from such a combination are mostly stereotypes. And I am not interested in stereotypes. So of course there is some kind of story in this painting as well but the story depends on the viewer. Such kind of story you can even find in a portrait or a stillife. What Paula does is quite another thing. And of course it’s not forbidden to tell a story in a painting. Don’t worry about that.
I would have liked to show another oil painting which might have looked much more narrative to you. Unfortunately John-Paul took away the delete function and I will not upload any new work if I do not have the possibility to delete something. For I have no interest in creating a mass grave of artworks on this site.
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13 Jan 08 17:39
As I see it you have painted here two REAL women, and as you have done before, taking reality and cutting a piece of it for us, you seem to tell us; stop and look at real life ! , the way I look at it, with curiosity, and respect and trying to grasp every bit of it ! the result is impressive . The bigger woman being so powerful that she alone could make the painting work. Her robust and magnificent body, absolutely exposed but not helpless, her gaze, her attitude, makes the other woman light and superficial. The marks in her abdomen, as that of a pregnant woman, seem to say, I carry the weight of life , you can lean on me like she does, I´m the earth. Worked in subtle differences of whites, your normal brilliant and contrasting colours pushed into the background this time, not to interfere with their world, it IS a change, not that I want you to forget your colours, but it IS different. I think the story is not in the painting, but in the way you look at things. It reminds me of Annie and Alice, (Lucien Freud) but here the relation between them is not evident, and I would quote Robert Hughes when writing about Freud : "the strangeness of his paintings comes in large part from the circumstances of their makings: they bypass decorum while fiercely preserving respect".
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13 Jan 08 19:21
You are absolutely right, it is true that the story narrated by painting when there aren’t any precise symbols used, depends very much on the viewer. Stereotype interpretations cannot be avoided though, even one likes it or not. For example, people may see a pregnant woman depicted as mother earth or, as well, one imprisoned by pregnancy in contrast to a thin carefree girl while others may see a social comment on homosexual couples having children, while, at the same time, others might open discussions about the image of female body as it is seen and manipulated by contemporary visual culture or plastic surgery in a men’s world and so on and so forth to the end of time. Endless numbers of pages have been written providing controversial interpretations on figurative works of art while the artist’s intention was much more evident than this. It is extremely easy when analyzing a visual text in terms of meaning, to end up with evidence of exactly the meaning one expects to find or is likely to accept regardless the artist’s intentions.
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15 Jan 08 18:32
Hanjo, narrative or not it's a good solid work and I certainly concur with your reasoning for not uploading any new work without the right to delete them. That's the same reason I will not allow The Prado, The British Museum, MoMA, The Tate, et al, to acquire any of my work, although they're all clamoring for a piece, all I ask is for them to give it back when I'm tired of it being there.
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15 Dec 08 06:48
crazy techniq & beauty.full
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27 Feb 10 20:35
Sometime we all might be tired of this site. But taking one’s time and reading the comments one has to admit that there is no website about art with such rich harvest of meaning and truth.
Tabletop
Head
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04 May 08 20:08
I can't stop looking at this head!
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04 Jun 08 07:52
I honestly think this is the best painting you have ever done so far. No kidding. I wish I could see the real thing.
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27 Feb 10 20:40
Well my dear, come to Stuttgart, go to the Galéo café and have a closer look at it. But be aware that the young people that are frequently visiting this place find paintings like this disgusting. So we are in a situation like at the end of the 19th century when life and reality were disgusting as well. Times they are changing but sometimes not that very much.
Glacier
another head
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16 Jun 08 21:02
I can't believe what you are doing!This is such strong work.The little blue spot over the eyebrow and the patgh of cool light green onthe right side of the head are great!
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17 Oct 08 09:50
As an horizontal crucifixion !Splendid!Regards . Canonico Costantino
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27 Oct 08 16:42
Well Costantino, you really take commenting serious. And john-Paul will be happy. That’s not bad. Okay, you see this painting as a kind of crucifiction. Oh oh, that sounds strange to me and is far away from what I had in mind. But of course one can see it this way, no doubt about that. So at least it’s interesting what comes out when paintings are talking about themselves.
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30 Mar 09 19:24
He is ready to breathe and seems exchausted after swimming(!) let's say.But maybe I take too far what I thought at first.
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30 Mar 09 19:55
Ok, now I am worried. I can perfectly see what Eva means and this makes me wonder. Why do we all think of death first? We know very well that there is no such thing as an innocent eye for a painter. The question is would we have interpreted this work the way we did if we hadn't seen "Tabletop 1" first? Or if we weren't familiar with Jenny Savile's figures on surgery or morgue tables?
Or is it that we have lost the Peter Pan inside?
White Shirt
face.
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09 Mar 09 12:29
Well, I guess I need help. Today I wanted to simply cross Artprocess Boulevard but there’s no chance. It’s such an incredible traffic out here that it’s almost impossible to see the other side of the street. The artist’s entries come zoing zoing zoing in such a speed that you cannot even count the numbers of it. Why are these crazy artists overrunning this pretty boulevard with such a mass of entries, comments, essays etcetera etcetera? Do they have no other work to do, I mean painting for example? And it’s not only that they write down this huge amount of stuff, we have to read it all ... but when?
I would like to have this broad and beautiful boulevard with the illustrious name Artprocess to be much more peaceful. I would like to have pigeons sitting on it with their lovely bill and coo and some nice flowers coming through the cracks so that an old and infirm artist like me can shuffle along on it with my crutches with no fear at all of being brutally overrun within seconds. So please please do me the favour and slow down with all this hectic commenting and posting. One entry a year would be enough wouldn’t it?
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09 Mar 09 18:05
That reminds me of when I first met my wife. I spoke to her almost nonstop for two weeks - until I ran out of things to say. I'd said it all basically, and hadn't anything left to offer. That was 20 years ago, and we've hardly had a conversation since. One entry a year would be just too much in that case.
Do you think that perhaps we're arriving at a similar deadlock here at ap?
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09 Mar 09 20:09
whow, strange story. But don’t worry JP, we are living in a fully motorized civilisation and people don’t even buy cigarettes from the automat next door without using their car. And don’t forget the infamous Kagan gang that rules the streets. It can’t take so long and they’ll show up in their huge oversized black leather jackets and baggy trousers (you know, crotch ten cms below the knee and buttocks half visible) to make the traffic even more speedy. So your wife and I will hardly find a calm place somewhere under a nearby tree to put our folding chairs in the shadow and drink our tea from a thermos flask shaking our heads over this mess and every now and then utter a „hmm“ or „umm“ for talking is quite impossible in this horrible noise. I mean you should have known for a boulevard never is a dead end isn’t it?
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09 Mar 09 21:16
don't boulevards have shadows where people just stand around ,looking,trying to avoid the sun and it is so hot that they prefer to simply lay low and wait and see?i must say you guys are sometimes intimidating
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09 Mar 09 21:50
Well Fotini, I have a grandson, two and a half years old and very very sweet. When visiting him we have lots of fun playing football, what he loves, looking at picture books for hours, going to the city farm watching animals etcera. So we have a wonderful time together and it’s so nice to hear him talk in three languages at the same time. But I only see him four times a year for he lives in London and I live in Stuttgart. And for he cannot read letters we try to communicate via the phone. So everything seems to be perfect. But when his mom tells him that I am on the phone he comes running and takes the receiver with exitement ... and listens to my voice. He’s never saying a word, never, he’s only listening and sometimes nodding his head no matter how often my daughter tells him that he should better speak to me.
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09 Mar 09 22:51
Silence can be suffocating, and it can also be comfortable, in your grandson's case it is full of excitement and happiness and it is evident that he has no doubt you understand what he is saying without a word. (which is probably true)
What I feel here, in Artprocess, is someone’s special absence, and silence. One of our best authoritative voices, and I wouldn’t really call it authoritative but understanding and friendly voices. Here there is a saying “ No es mas grande el que más espacio ocupa , sino el que mas vacío deja cuando se va”.
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10 Mar 09 17:56
Hanjo I think you're onto something very interesting. I really like this painting and your latest upload "the woodcut print... hey what happened to it, it was here yesterday. I didn't have time to comment but intended to do so today, I found it to be refreshing and complimentary to the paintings. In these times (actually in all times but particularly these difficult financial times) limited edition multiples of any kind will serve an artist well and attract dealers. Sometimes an artist can scare off a dealer by being too prolific. The galleries simply find it it very difficult to place large paintings. Yet a signed limited edition of 25 -50 prints at a reasonable price sells easily and will pay the rent. And if an artist can produce smaller scale multiples and even control the means of production themselves as I assumed you did with that woodcut all the better. I didn't get a chance to really study it but I was impressed by the line (theories be damned, lines have meaning) and it was well done. I think you may have used a soldering iron to burn the line or was it a Dremel tool? The drawing was three frames of human leg parts and feet.
As for this painting you've arrived at an excellent and honest painting topic and even better, a very personal one, your own mortality and descent into decrepitude (I know the feeling). Somehow I don't think that it's that great a departure from your overall body of work which, at least to me has been about the pathetic fragility of the human body, its vulnerable flesh and brittle breakable bones but using yourself as a model takes real courage.
One or two large paintings, three or four smaller ones and a few limited edition prints of knotted joints, arthritic limbs, naturals roots and gnarled horseradishes, it's a blockbuster show just right for times... the whole world crumbling to shit.
As for all the talk of quiet boulevards, the irony and humour wasn't lost on me. Thanks for directing traffic and policing the neighbourhood, at least that notorious gang hasn't been out on the street wreaking havoc and disturbing the peace. They're probably serving time in some prison or other but no doubt they'll be back sooner or later and then all hell will break loose.
Threefold Black
okay,okay, don't worry
Fermata
okay,okay, don't worry
Transport
okay,okay, don't worry
Reverse
something for the eyes
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25 Oct 09 19:56
Is everybody asleep in this web? dead? I haven’t read an interesting comment in months, nothing….. I mean I know that two or three of the usual writers have good reasons for not doing it, (including myself) but is it all sustained by four or five persons?? No one else has anything to say? Are you all mute?? I think the act of commenting a work of art is a healthy exercise for it forces you to forget your own work and try to understand other’s, understand or judge or dislike or whatever, or just look at it for more than say.. 10 seconds. Are we all, artists, (whatever that word really means..) so self-centered?
When I saw that Hanjo had posted this painting I waited to see if it made anyone react, positive or negatively, but it was just lost in the usual silence. Of course there are things in Art Process that have to be received with silence, (that’s the best one can give them!), just out of pure respect and tact for others, but this is not the case. At least for me, the painting was worth stopping and looking at it more than twice. Even though the nude can be perfectly read, the fetal crouched body has an animal character about it. Helpless, exposed, as a piece of meat, it’s protruding ankles are painfully red, as if stripped of their skin. Their rigid posture sticking out from the soft body reminded me of a slaughterhouse. Something has occurred , and the viewer is the only witness in the scene, for there seems to be no other way out, the only witness or maybe the only executioner. Maybe this possibility, as absurd and unreal as it can be, is the reason of the unpleasant uneasiness it left in my nerves. It is not an easy painting, just show it around and see the reactions. But for sure it is not a painting that can be ignored.
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06 Nov 09 11:06
When I met Maria the other week at her studio-log she said something about application of paint like that she found out a new method of doing it. But for it’s not possible to ask on studio-log what she meant with this remark I still wonder what funny things she has found out. Does it mean that she now uses her fingers instead of brushes? Or Spatulas? Or does she do it like Mr. Pollock? No no no you can forget about that. Thanks heaven that would not work with Maria. Or is she going to nail the paint onto the canvas or does she use tape? Ever since I cannot think of anything else.
Well, but this is not the reason I’m writing here. It has been sooo silence for weeks or even month that I thought there must be something wrong with my ears. And indeed people had to repeat what they said to me very often and the words I used over the day were mostly „I beg your pardon“ and „what did you say“? So finally I got a hearing aid, one for each ear (very very expensive oh oh). Okay, so when I left the shop where I got them I was shocked about how loud the world actually was. Such an incredible noise. Well but now I’m sitting here in front of my computer hacking this in to test the new equipment. Maybe, so I do hope, maybe I can hear some faint murmuring at least. Maybe I even can understand some words. I mean these hearing aids are absolutely state of the arts ... I swear (or can see it on the bill) so there must be something to detect with them. But to be honest until now I haven’t been successful, not at all. Okay, I know that many people have lots of problems at the moment, financial, psychological, artistic etc. etc. and they might not be in the right mood of talking so much, with me included, but I thought that maybe at least I could make out some faint groaning or wailing ...
On the other hand, could it be possible that this website got transmogrified into some mole world? And everyone is silently digging through the place sniffing at this, nibbling at that, but pssssst no word not even a tone. Just shuffling through the dark tunnels blind and mute ... not such a nice idea isn’t it?
Or what would be worse in times where enlightment bashing seems to come more and more into fashion and people turn to questionable sects instead or even the traditional churches. Perhaps this site turned into a monastery without letting me know. A Trappist cloister where it’s absolutely forbidden by punishment of eternal burning in hell to say anything. So I really do hope that we are not trapped in what one could call the Trappist order of St Artprocess.
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06 Nov 09 17:54
I actually had to look up the word transmogrified,now I know it.Like most people I have been looking in on AP but time is short and my mind has been wondering,too difficult to focus.I was taken back by the force of your comment Karen but people can look at works they admire again and again in silence.This piece by Hanjo is so eloquent that I am at a loss for words to comment upon it.
So here I am murmuring Hanjo in fright while staring at the red blood heels of your figure.
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06 Nov 09 20:40
There was one more painting uploaded between this and the triptych (or was it after this?). What happened to it?
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06 Nov 09 20:48
The painting you mentioned was taken away for I wasn’t satisfied with it. So it’s a candidate for to be painted over.
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06 Nov 09 21:11
No... I would be disapointed. Actually, for some reason I don't remember well I liked it more than this one.
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06 Nov 09 21:34
Of course, Fotini, we all look in silence again and again, but this web was different because there was a REAL communication between some artists , … and although I have to say that I miss some in particular, I have to admit that I kind of like the idea of forming part of the Trappist Order of St. Artprocess, I can imagine myself wondering through its cloisters talking soto voce about this or that painting, under the great excitement of being in danger of eternal burning with other colleagues… let's create the order!
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06 Nov 09 22:25
Mmmmm I like this little mole gathering indeed I do. And I like that Fotini came along, too. Well Maria, you are not the only one, absolutely not but ... I’m the artist and I can’t help to be a very brutal guy and absolutely without any mercy with paintings I am not satisfied with. On the other hand you have a mighty companion, my wife! So I will give it a chance and at least postpone that act of destruction. Maybe I’ll even send you a high resolution image of the delinquent in an e-mail so you can study carefully what’s wrong with it.
Oh oh Karen, seems that you are a very naughty girl aren’t you? Playing with hellfire ts ts ts. That I guess must be your Spanish temperament. But let me think it over and perhaps I’ll have a brief correspondence with Mr. Rat, the present pope, in our Bavarian dialect, making sure that hellfire is guaranteed so you can have the thrill you need.
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06 Nov 09 22:33
Oh yes, I forgot to say hello to J-P who ... I’m quite sure ... is peeping from behind the curtain. And I have to say that I liked your postcard a lot and am pondering on if I should have this kind of Irish breakfast you proposed. But to be honest I should have it together with you. So I have to find a way of making that possible. And by the way ... my wife likes your work! Isn’t that good news?
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07 Nov 09 15:56
So, where is this high resolution image? May I have it please?
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07 Nov 09 19:59
I'm so glad that you have broken your vow of silence, especially because although some of us are silent, we like to listen.
The other day I read a few words of Richter I would like to share with you although I´m sure you already know them:
"One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is idiocy. "
But also I think it is very important to communicate with those who feel the same passion...So welcome to the order of St. ArtProcess!
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07 Nov 09 19:59
I'm afraid brother Hanjo has retired to his room, probably to meditate why his bright red heels are frequently read as bloody heels, (I thought the same thing), or maybe the hearing aids are not that good after all……(by the way when are you going to tell us about your discoveries María?)
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07 Nov 09 21:06
Psssssst Brothers and Sisters (whisper whisper) I had to read philosophical texts all day long, Adorno, Foucault, Deleuze, Flusser and got so angry and upset that I had to cool down in my beloved bathtub. It sounds crazy but indeed you can cool down in hot water, really and truly! Now, five minutes ago, I climbed out of it and now my bloodpressure is very low so I have to sit down. Well, I do like that there is another spanish artist around even though the name is pretty much cryptic (but why not have a cryptic name in the vicinity of a crypta).
Well, but what you have quoted about passion and commitment is absolutely true. Otherwise one ends up with „kreissparkassentauglicher Kunst“ what means art that fits into a regional savings bank. And isn’t it funny what loooong words we can build in German? But in the end it’s shorter than the English sentence. Okay guys, I have to sleep a bit (let’s call it „meditate“ that sounds better in a monastery).
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08 Nov 09 17:44
Okay, back to seriousness. Of course it doesn’t matter for an artist if someone „likes“ her painting or not. It might be nice to hear such a thing from someone that is dear to her and it even might be encouraging, but in the end she has to follow her intention and has to be very strict as well. No favours and no compromises!
In the recent four paintings, beginning with „Threefold Black“ I tried to depict the body as a very vulnerable and therefore very precious container. And this body-container is in a state of retraction, the way many animals do. Hedgehogs for example or spiders both making a ball out of themselves when trying to protect their body.
Becoming older it seems to me that when you should describe a young body it would be all about movement, speed, strength etc. and all of it shown and concentrated in the extemities, strong and taut and beautiful and full of energy. In contrast the old body, I have the feeling, is concentrated in the torso. Arms and legs become more and more weak and thin, ugly and immovable. The trunk increases in volume and weight and sometimes it’s difficult to balance and carry it through the day. Life seems to concentrate in that trunk, in that container. Whereas arms and legs seem to be mere mechanical structures to move or lift this container, the trunk itself gives the impression of a kind of balloon. An envelope filled with liquids of different kind with a tendency of becoming shapeless. An object resembling the look of the intestines, soft and full. And obviously the skin of this envelope is very much in danger of being pierced and all that liquid runs out. The liquid that contains your life. So you have to shield it with a barrier out of arms and legs.
So this may explain why I am satisfied with a painting like „Reverse“ and not at all satisfied with a painting like „Curtain“ which in my opinion has not much to do with all this and is just something like a costume party.
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08 Nov 09 19:58
what interests me about this painting and I find daring is all the black space ,heavy,weighing upon the figure,the mass of the body,which if you look at it quickly have to think''what is this?'' and then you see the feet.the negative playing against the positive shape ,the economy in color,the light blues whispering on the trunk of the body,the brightness of the skin are some of the things I look at when I look at the painting.
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08 Nov 09 20:37
I apologize for making use of philosophical words –I see that nothing, as cryptic as it might be, escapes the Abbot.
Long time ago philosophers also warmed my mind and I had to use hot water ... to free myself??!
Today I read Baudrillard when he says that "we see Art proliferate everywhere, and even faster on Art discourse. But in its own genius, its adventure, its power of illusion, its ability of denial of reality and of opposing reality with another scenario in which things obey a superior rule; a transcendent figure in which beings, as lines and colours on a canvas, could lose their meaning, and surpass or exceed their own end and in an impulse of seduction, attain its own ideal form, even at risk of their own destruction, in this sense, I say, Art has disappeared"…
…and I don’t even feel like ranting against it, as Hughes does. I just feel that I have nothing to do with it.
Now that I think I'm cured, I see philosophy as a large garden in which you will always find deadly herbs, but also the healthiest ones to cure any illness. So I choose the words of an apocryphal Nietzsche, when he says: "The great aim of art is to shake the imagination with the strength of a soul that does not admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world."
Benjamin said "the intention kills truth" and therefore I return to painting that is my truth and I apologize again for the philosophical wordiness.
I think it does not matter if the red heels look like blood -would be worse if it were interpreted as red socks :). In fact this picture immediately reminded me of the famous bloody head by Jenny Saville. However, I believe that there is too much red in that area, what could break the composition.
However I must say that I really like this painting.
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27 Feb 10 20:58
What has become strange is art. And it might be harder than ever to define what art really is. But what one can definitely say is that painting has gone, for painting is much much more than adding some paint to a canvas. Saint Sorolla knows what I am talking about. And next time in Madrid I will sacrifice my tears at his altar. . .
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26 Apr 11 15:02
Dear Hanjo
Look at exactly the same painting. Very warm and cheerful colors (red and purple) and cold colors (blue). What these colors with a thought or idea is put on the figure?
It is better to write clearly. I'm in love with these paintings.
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26 Apr 11 16:19
Well, the most primitive view is to think people have black or white skin. That is ideology. An superficial view is that skin looks brown or rosy. One has to take some time and really look at skin. Then you will see that there are all hues of colour in it. So what I do is just to make this a little bit more visible.
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26 Apr 11 16:30
Excellent. Thank you from the description ..
Time to end months of my university semester exam.I Much like a large figure do painting .
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24 May 11 07:30
Bacon again?
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05 Nov 11 09:11
Well, some weeks ago I got this letter from an art critic from Pasadena, California, that I thought might be of some interest for some more people as myself. So I want to use this beautiful but unfortunately seldom used forum to show the letter around. Here it comes:
Dear Hanjo,
I feel so very strongly about your work that I would be happy to simply give you my critical opinions. I am working on a concept for a book I would like to present to the publisher - a book I have been wanting to write for some time now and I want to make you a significant part of that book,so committing my thoughts to paper would be a running start on that. I'm deeply interested in the way you and other artists approach the integument - in a way that honors the passage of time yet makes the body sensuous in its own corpulent, sagging way. I am so tired to seeing the models as anorexic, or overwrought muscular beings - that seems artificial and something that must be constantly tended and altered by diet and lotions/potions, gym work, cosmetic surgical alteration. I believe beauty comes with a sense of history, that time massages the harsh corners into soft and voluptuous curves. That 'flawless complexions' look like mannequin droids - no sense of the patina age embraces the skin the body, the soul, the psychology of what the world looks like through learned, if somewhat wrinkled and weakened eyes. Your paintings to me share those fleeting moments of angst that flitter past our eyes, forcing us to cope, and eventually allowing us to accept that life is a circle from birth to death. Babies are basically fatty blobs of indeterminate tissue with innocent but uninformed faces - faces and extremity movements that are searching for definement, for mature genetic form.
Somewhere in the middle of that circle we become youth and then young adult 'beauties', receptacles for attracting and procreating: the hormone levels falter and age and experience and simply time prefers gravity to dance. What you have found is a manner in which to view the generosity of individualism, the wear and tear of getting past young adult with all the life bruises that journey creates. Youths and young adults may look at us in our fifties, sixties, seventies and feel repulsion - knowing that this is their own destiny, a destiny they view as wretched, ugly, disgusting and for many of them in their monomaniacal way, avoidable (miracle drugs, surgical excisions, combating the thinning of the epidermis and dermis and erasing the dyschromia that the sun that once gave them elegant tanned bodies to love leaves them with blotches and actinic cum senile keratoses). I see in your paintings not containers of tissue but monuments of life experience. Who is to decide that 'Rosemary and Thyme' are not beautiful women, unafraid to allow us to see their entire bodies. 'Threefold Black' is so rich in tangible tactile flesh that makes me want to be held by this person. I absolutely LOVE with great passion your painting 'Arms and Legs' - I have never seen a painting that so beautifully expresses the passion of intercourse - the bodies are like one octipoid mass of sexual lust and satisfaction, so intertwined and so much a part of the bliss of sex that the two are like one noisy sweaty space-defying driven animal. I love 'Transport', and 'Fermata', paintings that honor the way the unhurried eye perceives the totality of a body, gradually and sensually, and the colors of the flesh you paint here are thunderously dramatic and rushing with blood, trying hard to do what once was a simple movement until gravity and the cascade of corpulence reminded (or forced) us to be slow. 'Lateral' is another painting that allows my eyes to explore the tones and torsions of skin distended by light striking a bald head, a submental space that is full of extra shadow from time (and the incidental glory of the use of a green background that offers such resonating reflections and absorptions of the shadow of the head. 'Swirl' is such a magnificent composition, one that divides the background in a sort of homage to Francis Bacon but is the setting for what feels to me like a man sliding/?pushed? along a slick surface, the added corpulence not an impediment to the action.
And yet while I love the older model paintings I find the painting of 'Red Bucket Watching' and 'Lisa' that to me represent that turning point of the young adult before morphing into the complexities of age. One of the major things that draws me to your painting is the size of the paintings. They are enormous when I see the photos of you standing by them - as in 'Inbetween' et al. For the rest of my response I must say that much of it s simply visceral. I want to stand in front of these paintings, not moving, for hours on end and drink in all the glory of pigment and brush technique and agony and ecstasy. Sometimes verbal responses to paintings take months to develop - first they must be incorporated into the psyche where they will take up permanent residence and then find their way into cerebral pathways that can be expressed.
At this point in time I can only say that I love your art. In time I'll be able to put that visceral response into better words. I hope I have offered you something in this missive.
Grady
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06 Nov 11 22:49
Thanks for posting that here Hanjo. I'm sure I represent all at ap who know you, to say how happy I am that you receive such well-merited recognition, and hope that the writer succeeds with his plan for eventual publication.
Karl
Portrait
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08 May 10 14:50
For more than 40 years Karl has been my closest friend. He once was my professor in architecture and later became my friend and in the course of time even a kind of father figure for me. He died 2006, two weeks prior to his 100th anniversary, and I am still miss him badly. So yesterday I took my time to paint him after a photograph I took when he was at the age of 93.
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08 May 10 16:53
Hanjo - now that some of us have gotten to know, respect, and feel, in some way, close to you, I'm sure we would like to understand Karl's qualities - that made him become your closest friend (and possibly give you a small opportunity for some little tribute to your erstwhile professor). Many thanks.
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09 May 10 20:41
I missed your contributions in AP, but I see that was worth waiting.
Thank you very much for sharing with us your Karl´s picture. It is a face that conveys great energy. It is very strong in their facial features and at the same time very fragile in the brightness of his eyes. For its emotional intensity it recalls the portraits by Van Gogh.
I agree with John-Paul that it is a picture of someone who we would wish to have met.
I could not find a better example to illustrate my comment to the picture by Alejandro Cabezas. If our painting is not an expression tool then it will become just a game, a show of empty virtuosity. Thanks a lot.
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11 May 10 20:15
Hello dear. We have long talked about criticism and being honest and so on. Most of the examples of honest negative opinions we have expressed have been addressed to people we haven’t met in person and some times I think we sort of didn’t dare do it with our friends.
Ok, this introduction was because I really want to tell you that I don’t like this painting. It looks like you have really been lazy here. Too many areas painted with the same patches of colour as if it didn’t matter what colours were used. Sorry XXS but the comparison with Van Gogh was a little too hasty. And we can discuss it if you like. Honestly my friend I think you have much better work than this. Beware of technical effects taking over painting.
There I said it.
P.S. Guys do we really care about a sitter’s qualities when we look at a painting?
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12 May 10 00:33
Well my dear, let me start with a preamble, too. I do appreciate your honesty, I really do, for that’s the fundament of any talk that matters. And I do appreciate that you do not sit in the background thinking this or that for yourself but standing here and speak it out aloud. That’s indeed a very good thing and a very curageous one as well. Why? I guess that the reason that we do this honest criticizing so very seldom if ever isn’t only to be shy of hurting the other one but also to be afraid of getting back a punch on one’s own nose.
Okay then, first of all it’s perfectly in order if you don’t like the painting in question. And it’s only natural that you have your reasons for this discontent. But now that you offered some of them let me ask you a few questions. So what are you criticizing? Laziness in the first place. Then that too many areas have the same patches of colour. And you add: “as if it didn’t matter what colours were used”. This is an argument I do not understand. From where do you know which colours are appropriate for this very face? Do you really think that there should have been more blue in it or a greenish hue in some parts or some more yellow? Have you ever seen the model’s face? And what do you think is the reason that makes us paint a portrait? To please an audience? To deliver the perfect example in painting theory? And what is painting theory anyway? What’s the right way of painting? Can you tell me that?
Well, I prefer to have a personal reason for to paint a particular portrait for I usually don’t do it as a commission. And the only thing I am interested in when doing it is to catch as much as possible of the personality of the sitter or what the sitter means to me or just what interests me in this head or its facial expression. And in this moment I’m not at all interested in questions like if it has something to do with van Gogh or whomever else or if there are better paintings I have done etc. etc. And by the way, isn’t it very different what different people find better or best?
To end with, I do not understand what you mean with “technical effects taking over painting”. What’s painting for you? And do you think that everybody has to follow your understanding of painting for not to be accused of mere technical effects? Well, and how comes that you think that “a sitter’s qualities” doesn’t matter that much in a portrait? Is the combination of different colours and they way how they are applied to the canvas the only thing that matters out of all in a portrait? Okay, now it’s your turn.
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14 May 10 00:07
I have to disagree with you Maria, in the first place, I do recall writing a negative comment on paintings I didn’t like, and saying why, in this webpage, in particular to Hanjo and to Hillel. Two persons I consider very good friends of mine, and whom I admire profoundly.
Writing about an artwork is always risky, art is such a subjective matter…there are too many things in it that cannot be explained with reason. Of course there is composition, brush work, plasticity in the use of colors, etc, but we all know that there are things beyond that, that can be seen but cannot be easily explained. I have to be absolutely sure about a friend, to really make a negative comment to his work, I would try to avoid it with a stranger.
So answering your last question, well not that we as observers can judge a painting by the qualities of the sitter, but we can get a good idea of them and of how the painter reacts to them, (which is also interesting). As a painter, to me, it does matter, in the sense that the more the face expresses the more I get involved in it. I easily get bored of a shallow face. Most of the portraits I admire have this psychological insight , the painter “sees” more than just a surface, more than just the hues in the skin, and somehow manages to tell us something about that human being, without words. Sometimes the artist strives to depict just the opposite, a lack of expression and individuality but then what we see is a mask or a kind of frozen sphinx.
This portrait is far from being a sphinx, one can easily read a tinge of disappointment in the old man who’s inner strength still refuses to go, the skull is powerful, the eyes intelligent, his gaze drifts inside his thoughts, or memories. . I cannot understand the word “lazy” referring to anything in it. I got used to enlarging the images very much in order to really “see” the brush work and the movement of the hand in Hanjo’s paintings, because they are usually very big, and if you take a close look at it you will see an incredibly vital activity and tension, patches of colors that explode in different directions like fireworks and that nevertheless construct not only the boney structure but also the psychology of the human being he was so fond of. I love color, and it drives me crazy when painting, but the plasticity of the portrait not always depends on the number of hues, and if you take a look at Van Goghs self portraits, you will see that some are made with a great variety of colors and hues, but some aren’t. Not that I’m comparing anything, but maybe this portrait just didn’t need all those colors we usually expect in a Hanjo Schmidt. To me the portrait not only has Hanjo’s usual imprint, in the vehement brush work, and in the way it irradiates energy, but it is also a good study of expression in which he shows a profound human insight. For me, this is important.
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14 May 10 08:43
I will soon answer my friends, with details on what I said about this painting. I just have to take a short trip and when I am back I will tell you all about what I have in mind. love to all.
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14 May 10 14:27
Dear Maria,
Based on your words in the comment, I get the idea that you don't find it important that the painter has an emotive connection with the motive. Van Gogh had it- you will agree. Excuse me if I've gone back to use the name of Van Gogh in vain.
You are free to think as you want, without a doubt, the contemporary art won the right of the artists to dictate their own rules. Of course I will wait for your return and will be happy to discuss our points of view with a non-dogmatic and open mind. Wouldn't it be great if we could do it having a beer in the Populart??
kisses,
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16 May 10 15:14
John-Paul, to answer your question I will quote from a story by J.D. Salinger Karl would have liked.
Duke Mu of Chin said to Po Lo: “You are now advanced in years. Is there any member of your family whom I could employ to look for horses in your stead?” Po Lo replied: “A good horse can be picked out by its general build and appearance. But the superlative horse — one that raises no dust and leaves no tracks — is something evanescent and fleeting, elusive as thin air. The talents of my sons lie on a lower plane altogether; they can tell a good horse when they see one, but they cannot tell a superlative horse. I have a friend, however, one Chiu-fang Kao, a hawker of fuel and vegetables, who in things appertaining to horses is nowise my inferior. Pray see him.” Duke Mu did so, and subsequently dispatched him on the quest for a steed. Three months later, he returned with the news that he had found one. “It is now in Shach’iu” he added. “What kind of a horse is it?” asked the Duke. “Oh, it is a dun-colored mare,” was the reply. However, someone being sent to fetch it, the animal turned out to be a coal-black stallion! Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo. “That friend of yours,” he said, “whom I commissioned to look for a horse, has made a fine mess of it. Why, he cannot even distinguish a beast’s color or sex! What on earth can he know about horses?” Po Lo heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “Has he really got as far as that?” he cried. “Ah, then he is worth ten thousand of me put together. There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses.” When the horse arrived, it turned out indeed to be a superlative animal.
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02 Jun 10 16:52
The other day I found a text by German painter Johannes Grützke that describes perfectly what I think painting is for me. And for I like this description so much I translated it into what I think might be taken for English while trying to keep some of his personal style of writing. Okay, this way all of you can read it. It goes like this:
At the beginning there is the sight. In the eye the sight becomes an impression and goes throught the eye in the head, from there in the arm that holds the brush and takes it down like a seismograph so it becomes the expression. That would be fine!
In the brain the impression is object to several influences. It gets “enriched” with orders, criteria, judgements and wrong corrections. The brain knows better than the eye, it thinks. The brain isn’t willing to believe some things the eye sees. The brain has prejudices. It doesn’t like some things. The brain doesn’t see what the eye does. The brain orders the eye to see what it ought to see for the eye is the slave of the brain not the other way round.
The painter now has nothing else to do as to clean the impression from those falsifications the brain added to it. The painter wants to preserve and express the true and independent impression. He wants to paint what he sees and not what he ought to see. He wants to dedicate himself to the sight without brainly reservations. He wants the sight pure and not as the authority of his brain permits it to be.
The painter has to make it plain to the brain that its definitions reduce and that they are limited. And that in the case of and for the purpose of true depiction these limitations must be recognized and overcome. Perhaps the whole system of definitions must be teared down.
That’s hard work. Tough struggle! Unfortunately it’s only going step by step not in one rush for the brain does not let itself be deprived of power voluntarily. It fights back, sometimes with all refinements.
The bad thing is that out of principle the impression cannot bypass the brain for the tool eye only functions sensible through the brain’s ability to read. The brain needs the eye for it’s own orientation to serve the body for that’s the reason the body has a brain.
The painter however has an extensive interest, a curiosity, that goes beyond the function of his body. His eye shall see more than the body needs. This is what the eye does first of all though. The sight is pure and the impression shall be pure as well.
The painter has to convince his brain to reduce the necessities of its system to the function of the body only. For instance to keep balance, to notice that it is darkening soon or that a hostile dog is approaching.
When this was successful everything is won. Now the eye is seeing only. It sees that in front of it a brightness is becoming darker at its right side (it’s a wall of the room with a shadow on it), further right there comes a rosy brightness that changes with dark red darknesses (an ear) green-yellow brightnesses (shaved beard and cheek bone) rosy darknesses, above yellow brightness etc. (in short, it may be a head in a room.) Now the eye doesn’t recognize but only see. The brain contains itself and has given up to identify and to interpret. Now the eye follows the things gaze by gaze. It follows the folds of the cartilage in their elegant bending in the same speed as the brush at the arm can take it down. The observation is dedicated. It lives from its intensity. What’s taken down is reference of what’s observed.
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02 Jan 11 17:29
I saw the works of Hanjo allready earlier and I am glad to discover them here on ArtProcess.
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15 Aug 12 20:01
I'm a fan!!
arms and legs
well,arms and legs, as the title says.
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15 Apr 11 18:09
Fifteenth of April. That’s spring season, blossom season, mating season whatever. Everything is growing and bursting out and exiting etcetera. Well, I’m curious to see what this season is doing with our good old artprocess. So don’t be shy and post post post . . .
de Falleiro
here's another version of the singer
detail
just for the record
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14 Nov 11 02:28
Well, since we were talking about details in the recent seascape of Karen and I said that I did not mind the lack of it in a reproduction of a portrait or body . . .
Here is a detail of the pubics of the pregnant woman in Rosemary and Thyme (number 10 in the portfolio) and of course it shows another level of richness of colour. And in the image on the next page, in magnifying the detail one can clearly see what’s missing in an average reproduction.
magnifying
just for the record
Here we go round
Triptych
Bread & Butter
mainly about the creamy color of skin
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15 Jun 12 13:13
This makes me think of a quirky rendition of a latter-day Arnolfini wedding.
Though I can't help wondering what are the expressions on their faces.
Hanjo, I presume you've not included them to avoid inclination to narrative?
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15 Jun 12 17:45
Well, the faces. When painting the Skin Series it striked me that somehow the face is treated too prominent. In our clothed society every expression is encumbered with the face. So it is mainly over represented when it comes to reading a person. At the same time the body is gravely underrepresented. But I learned with the Skin Series that the body, and with this I do not only mean the so called body language but also its shape and structure as well, tells quite an interesting story. This is one thing. The other thing is that the face of naked people is favored taken as an alibi. So one looks at the nakedness, pleased, but pretends that the more interesting object is the face of course. That's hypocrisy, isn't it? So here with this painting it is about nakedness. It’s the theme. Not only nakedness by chance as in most of the so called nude paintings but as a purpose to enjoy what the body is to lovers. So everybody is allowed to freely just look at the naked bodies without having to comment about the interesting faces as an excuse.
Well my dear John-Paul this painting unfoetunately is not a quotation or an allusion of the Arnolfini wedding or a wedding at all, smirking or not. I'm still pondering on the appropriate title but this painting could as well be called "Homesick".
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18 Jun 12 12:13
Well if there is any rendition JP I couldn’t say whose is it, for both are holding their own pleasure in their hands.
I don’t think it is a question of surrender, the image for me is a kind of homage to pleasure and honesty. Two bodies, not exactly from the Vogue, quite plain and normal in their “more than real” proportions, are seen in daylight. Each one is holding his/her lovers sexual charms, while they look at each other fascinated, in a mirror, or so I imagine.
They adopt no flattering posture, no soft lights, they have no need for it.
Her rotund body firmly planted in the earth, stands out in the daylight boldly, exposing a white skin that one can easily imagine fresh or even a bit cold. Boldly she holds her lovers sex in her hand, for the mirror or for us to see. She is direct and resolute. On the other hand, her partner, takes her breast in an unstable posture, and despite his sturdy body, seems to dissolve with the background , specially from his knees downwards, his connection to earth a bit faded. His presence a little cloudy compared to her brightness. He seems to hold on to her while she seems to lead him, by the only part of his body that is perfectly defined, his sex. Maybe faces would have told us the story more precisely. I prefer to imagine it as a playful intimate moment between two lovers enjoying each other’s body, fascinated by their reflected image and the mysterious force that lies in the lover’s sex. Who hasn't experienced that fascination?
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18 Jun 12 12:55
Oh oh, I guess here we have a misunderstanding initiated by a so called „False Friend“.
The English term rendition, according to my dictionary, means something like a performance, showing something, while the Spanish word rendición means submission.
But nevertheless, thank you Karen, for having such a close look at this painting and finding such beautiful words for its description. And you are completely right in finding that it has nothing to do with any kind of submission or surrender exept to love and joy.
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18 Jun 12 14:23
You're absolutely right, I should have realized it when using the word "surrender", anyway thanks for the correction. In case you're still pondering I vote for "Homesick"..
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30 Oct 12 11:20
I too have to congratulate Karen on her critique of this work. She describes a situation where the woman is the active element in the painting, and the man, in shadow, seemingly left to be tugged along behind and providing "companionship". It's clearly a Hanjo feminist artwork. Chapeau! (to you both).
Hannah
oh, portraits again . . .
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27 Sep 12 14:33
Well, I will use this space for a Fraud Alert
Every now and then painters get an e-mail from an unknown person offering to buy a painting.
I think it’s not exaggerated to state that in 99,99% of all cases this turns out to be a fraudulent action. It goes like this: The artist is made believe that a certain Person from a place abroad, will buy an expensive painting from him or her. Very early in the correspondence it’s all about the money transfer. The painter then gets a cheque that is about two or three thousand Euros higher than the artist's fee. From this combined sum the artist is asked to deduct his or her fee and to transfer the rest to the "shipper" that in all of those cases is provided by the customer. While the cheque is still in the process of examination by the artist’s bank the painter is asked to pay the shipper in advance for to start the collection of the painting. The account of the alleged "shipper" mostly belongs to a private person. Later it will turn out that the cheque is a bounced cheque only and the artist is deprived this way of the amount of the shipper's fee.
Well, I could easily produce a list with all the suspicious signs in such a correspondence or show, how a real art buyer would act in such a case. But of course I do not want to involuntary write a manual for potential impostors of what to avoid in such an e-mail or how to improve it in telling him how a real buyer would act or behave instead. Okay, I could make it a workshop with minimum 25 subscribers and a fee for each of them of 10,000 Euros ha ha ha. Okay, back to serious.
The problem however is not how perfect the impostor acts or how many suspicious hints are in such e-mails. The problem is a psychological one that lies in the human nature.
The average artist, and that is over 75% of them is more or less poor and constantly lacks money for to buy the needed materials, pay for the studio rent and so on. So the prospect of making a big deal automatically starts what we call hope. Hope triggers a kind of blindness against things or facts that would diminish hope. So the more in need an artist is the stronger is the hope factor and the more perfect the blindness towards reality and the weaker the ability to judge. So anyone not involved would see clearly what is going on, whereas the artist in hope does not, or better, does not want to see. This is the danger that might even let clever persons step in the trap.
So let’s cut a longer story short in summing up as follows:
When someone from abroad offers to buy a work of art, provides a shipping opportunity and a combined fee with you to pay the shipper, then HANDS OFF !
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29 Sep 12 12:24
Hi new to the art world regards selling my work, thanks its something that I would not know about. It has made me more aware of what is going on in the art world.
The painting that you have done is good, it is difficult to get good features in the portrait.
Study of a Head in Blue
The head of a man with mouth and eyes shut.
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10 Jan 13 06:07
I'm always very curious to see when I receive that email saying Hanjo has uploaded a new image...
This time a head study in blue: does this mark a departure from flesh tones for you?
What was your motivation for this work Hanjo? Eyes and mouth shut possibly mean you don't want any reading of emotion or expression, so for me colour is your dominant theme here.
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10 Jan 13 08:57
"... I'm always very curious to see when I receive that email saying Hanjo has uploaded a new image... This time a head study in blue: does this mark a departure from flesh tones for you? What was your motivation for this work Hanjo? Eyes and mouth shut possibly mean you don't want any reading of emotion or expression, so for me colour is your dominant theme here."..
Well my dear, as you know I’m coming from sculpture. So a head for me isn’t just a face. And a face isn’t just a smiling surface as one could get the impression of from most of the photographs we are confronted with. It’s a three dimensional object in the first place. And as such it’s very interesting and beautiful. And when you stretch your face the structure of the skull comes out more clearly or pronounced. We all have the experience that when one gets older the flesh and skin becomes more saggy and so starts hiding this structure. Doing a little bit of face gymnastic helps to reveal it again. This is the basis.
The second thing is that one can do many different things with one’s face, at least I can. So this is a study of what a face is up to beyond the usual photo smile and before entering into the state of a grimace. The position shown in my painting Tabletop [LINK], for example, requires such a face. And in the end it’s another page in the heavy book of facial expressions that tells the story of life.
Since in particular Monet undertook it to study light and its changing, we know more precisely that the colour of an object depends on what the lighting circumstances are. For instance when you look out of the window later in the day while behind you in the room there is artificial light, the colour of your skin comes out exactly as shown in this painting. Colour is an illusion the light produces, technically spoken. So as always in my painting everything comes out of observing reality, only a little bit exaggerated sometimes, for to make it clear. There is no invention in it, nothing that comes out of fantasy, no ‚just for the fun of it’.
We are living on this earth since a few million years and up to now we only know very little about how this world and life on it really functions. For as a mankind we are exessively addicted to our own imagination and fantasy and to making things up, but not so fond of looking at things precisely and without fear, not really, but we should.
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11 Jan 13 13:32
Hanjo ! my goodness you scared me ! First time I saw this I thought it was the face of a dead man. Second time I look at it . . . again it’s scary . . . . . third time . . . I got it ! : it’s a clown . . . . then reading what it is . . . . congratulations ! it’s a question of the expression of what comes before . . . just for the fun of it . . . without fear. Bravo !
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11 Jan 13 13:52
Well Kristina, that’s very very nice to hear from you. So you are still on the boat . . . or at least back on it again. What a nice surprise.
And don’t be scared, death people look quite different. But I see that such an expression can be mistaken. Nowadays in our part of the world we are not so very familiar with it, death no longer seems part of the concept here. But of course it’s still around as usual. And will be of course up to all eternity . . .
Thank for commenting.
Study of a Head in Red
The head of a man with mouth and eyes shut.
Study of a Pale Head
The head of a man with mouth and eyes shut. well, the last three paintings are parts of a triptych. But it should exhibited in a room with Number three opposite to the entrance and number two on the left wall and Number one on the right one. So the viewer will be kind of surrounded by them. And these are the small versions of the final ones which each will be 190 cm wide and 230 cm high.
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05 Feb 13 05:52
That room you describe sounds like an artist's dream - the perfect exhibition opportunity. I'm wondering why you've chosen these images in particular to command that space? You've discussed the 3-dimensionality of the head but, in my view, by sucking in and tightening the telling wrinkles, you lose the character of the person, and instead they become death masks. Twilight as in the approach of darkness, nearing the end, and by the overpowering dimensions you're going to use - it's pointless to resist.
On the other hand, these paintings remind me a little of a fellow countryman of yours (from the same region as you), a sculptor from another era Franz Messerschmidt. Were you influenced by his work?
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05 Feb 13 10:36
Well, the perfect exhibition opportunity. That’s what we are working on for our show in October 2013 here in Stuttgart. We that is two other artists and me. So it will be a group show of our big formats. And as you guessed already it is meant to overwhelm. So saying it’s pointless to resist is a good description indeed.
As to the character of a person. I doubt that one can deduce the “real” character of a person from looking at a picture showing a so called relaxed face only, like in a passport photography. The face is our most excellent communication and expression tool. And it tells most precisely about your character when in motion. I once made the experience of having a pen friend with whom I had exchanged dozens of photos already but when we finally met in the flesh I could hardly recognize this friend. So in short, only when you have seen many of the possible expressions a face can make you might give an expertise about a character that has some foundation in it.
It’s a bit strange that normally we seem to be satisfied with so little diversification in expression. When it comes to age it looks as if we only know two sorts of it, young and old. But actually we are changing all the time. So neither young nor old is a very precise description. Monet spent almost all of his career in trying to catch and depict the change of the light in the course of the day. And something similar Turner was after.
Theoreticaly you could spend your whole career the same way with depicting only one single face in all its different expressions. And I’m not exactly talking about the extremes, the grimasses, Messerschmidt dealt with. I’m not after grimasses. I’m after expressions. So I worked on anger already, on disappointment, attention etc. Well, and now it’s seems to be about a kind of retreat into oneself. Something that Melville described as “the intense concentration of self in the immensity”. So for to answer your question: No, I was not influenced by Messerschmidt even though I think that he undertook a fascinating and very outstanding or singular task with his heads.
Visitor
Every now and then I like to have visitors in my studio. In particular if they are of this kind. So today half of the Club of Madrid had lots of fun. Thank you Maria. And thank you John-Paul for having given us the opportunity that this friendship could begin years ago.
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05 Feb 13 18:15
Ha ha! That lady in the photograph doesn't look AT ALL convinced! Even she is questioning your choice of death masks for that gorgeous exhibition space? So nice to see Maria out-and-about. Please ask her why we've not had the privilege of sharing in what she's working on for such a long time now.
Notwithstanding, my compliments - you're both looking good, strong and healthy.
Now isn't it about time the (complete) Club of Madrid considered doing a group show in Stuttgart?
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05 Feb 13 20:25
What a surprise! almost all the members of the club having a meeting!
Maria is not really convinced... but I like it! What a pleasure to meet again! I bet you had fun! Next one in Madrid please!
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05 Feb 13 23:53
Well, that Maria is not convinced is not her statement but J-P's assumption. She herself did say nothing in that direction. We didn't even talk about that case. Maybe she will when she joins the discussion when being at home again. But I don't think so.
What we talked about instead was ArtProcess and the merits of our doubtful friend. And that we want to revive the discussion culture on this fabulous website. The very best in the whole World Wide Web when it comes to talking about art and its making.
Okay, I have to sleep now!
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06 Feb 13 08:19
For the curious, here's what I can find on the Club of Madrid [LINK].
So have a nice trip home to Maria, and sweet dreams (of giant paintings) to Hanjo.
And thanks for the words of encouragement, it's all due to you artists who provide whatever interest exists here, so many thanks especially to those who return to comment on their own works, and on those of their fellow artists.
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07 Feb 13 17:29
Hey guys! Well, yes! After fast thinking we both decided that there is no place like HOME. So, after a few years' journey out in the open sea, it is high time we gathered back around the fire to tell our stories and adventures. (Did I mention I had to go through a snow storm to get to Hanjo's studio?)
I have been told there are some new, exciting features in the Studio Log which I will soon set myself to discover.
By the way, too bad I didn't shoot any photos of me and our dear Elena Habicher in Zurich...
"Gehäuse" in Front of Yellow
this is the big version after the study of a head in blue. Well, I'm a bit tired now from jumping all the time to reach the top of the painting with my brush.
"Gehäuse" in Front of Green
The project is thriving
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23 Feb 13 19:32
I find this type of photo of the artist and the artwork very interesting, not just to have an appreciation of the dimensions and the colour of the painting, but the human interest of the creator and how he or she presents the persona of the artist. Here's another similar image by the artist Ben Stack on the other side of the world in Australia [LINK].
I wonder how we could encourage more artists to upload a photo of themselves in their studio with their work?
Hanjo (or Ben), I'd love to know if you have any comments on how you present *yourself* here, and is this an area worth exploring?
I'm thinking about the clichéd idea of the artist as a loner, misunderstood perhaps unappreciated, yet (romantically) heroically determined to continue with the task. Is there any use in discussing this topic?
"Gehäuse" in Front of Blue
A man's head with closed eyes and closed mouth.
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02 Mar 13 15:52
Gehäuse, a housing, a core, an enclosure, a shell, a casing. Seen this way the head, the skull, whose outside is the face, is the most important house and home of the self. And this shell, this core, represents more than anything the mystery of the self. More than the communicating mode of the open eyes, the open mouth, the open face with its mimic.
In German we call a very difficult question, a poser or stumper, a hard nut, not easy or even impossible to crack. There is no way to find out or get an answer. So in front of such head, closed as a shell, we have to be silent for it becomes mere guessing to speculate about what goes on inside.
The pondering on what goes on inside this case started years ago with looking at my mothers face, with not finding any answer. Alzheimer's had sealed this precious housing and thrown the key away. So in the end it needed my painting her face to at least coming a little bit closer. Without knowing though but with feeling and scenting.
On The Road
see comment
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07 Apr 13 11:12
. . . on our neverending way through unsafe fields, as usual not clad appropriate and with only makeshift weapons at hand but at least upright, me and myself came along these pale ruins that on a closer view seem to be so familiar.
So Los Caminantes, as we are called, take a rest inbetween all these memories. We have passed so many broken things. Everything is fading away or falling apart just like this place. The once so famous boulevard is hardly visible by now, covered with high grass, bushes and even trees that come out of the manyfold cracks.
With the breeze there comes a hint of Patricia’s so very beautiful coarse voice, laughing. A constant whisper filling the air slowly repeats the melodious and wise texts of Karen again and again while somewhere in the distance the fata morgana of Maria appears, lifting her index finger, telling us what to do first, second, third . . . and look here, at the wall, I don’t believe it, there’s still hanging a rest of a poster showing the amazing face of Rabbi Hillel . . .
. . . But then I woke up and, there he is, life! Hillel with a painting of his studio.
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07 Apr 13 12:19
oh oh, it's a hoarse voice, not a coarse one, sorry, sorry, sorry . . .
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08 Apr 13 15:33
This has some african tribal touch ....
from the museum
This is a photograph from the current exhibition showing "Gehäuse II".
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26 Aug 13 15:58
Here, dear John-Paul, you can see the dream put into reality. This is the wall I was thinking of and the press cheered on it. And it wasn't even so difficult . . .
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26 Aug 13 17:08
Super news Hanjo! Congratulations on a job well done and much merited positive reaction to the show.
Gehäuse
Grand Show April 2018
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25 Apr 18 10:09
Dear John-Paul, after a long time of absence I thought about coming back to good old art process. So in the next days I will upload some of the new works. I hope it's okay with you. Best regards and I hope you are well!
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25 Apr 18 21:29
Hey Hanjo! It's been ages! Great to see you about these parts again. Hope you're well and have been doing lots of super paintings.
It's a coincidence that you call by now as just a short time ago I got in touch with Hillel about resuscitating AP after years of silence. Naturally he grumbled but, in doing so, did give me the necessary moral support to make me think about embarking upon a complete re-design and re-think of AP. It'll be APDR (ArtProcess Done Right) this time haha.
Anyway, as a proof of concept, I'm planning to start with an idea of his of many years ago - an artist interview section. It'll take a few months to complete and test I reckon, and then hopefully you'll accept an invitation to be interviewed?
I look forward to read about what you've been up to these past years.
As for myself, I've quit the dishwashing job and have returned to Ireland to live alone in a tumbledown thatched cottage - it's a bit of a challenge to say the least, but I've a lot more time now to dedicate working on a new version of ArtProcess, and to mess around with doing some arty stuff myself.
Once again, welcome back - hopefully you'll get some response also from the old gang that'll momentarily breathe a bit of life back into the decrepit corpse of this old site.
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26 Apr 18 01:12
Hello Hanjo,
Paul is doing a great job building the interview application nere on Artprocess, I think it will attract much attention if enough people get to know about it.
By the way your work is great. I'm watching the series Westworld at the moment about a playtown filled with humanoid simulacrums that guests get to abuse in any way they please. Whats interesting about it from a visual perspective is the emphasis on the human form and your paintings reminded me of similar preoccupations. There is something disturbingly intimate yet distant about them, I like the tension.
Gehäuse
Grand show April 2018
Devil with Weltschmerz
The actress Sandra Gerling as Mephisto in "Faust", Stuttgart 2018
coming closer
Face study