I was at the opening of the exhibition ’Long Live Rembrandt’ at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. A self-portrait of mine is on show. All works have something in common with Rembrandt as has mine. It is the theme of the exhibition.

What is the link concerning my sketch and him?

I could have gone for a portrait with some piece of Baroque clothing around the neck, I could have copied a work of his with contemporary people, but I went another way. No cheap tricks please! No 'hiding behind' the great master!

SELF-PORTRAITS: Art is about emotions. For me great artists transmit not so much how the world should be. They show how the world for them is, how they stand in it in a solid, poetic, intelligent and interesting way. If you have read my blogs, you have noticed that I feel connected with Rembrandt, especially his late works.

Artists at this level wear their souls out on their skin.

Goya (the late works) shows horror, Velazquez dignity, Picasso gluttony and so on. I looked at a random series of self-portraits.  

There were so many more to choose from, maybe I will dedicate a blog to this subject one day.

What I saw was that there are not many that show the same expression as the Rembrandt ones made at the end of his life. With the climbing of years he moved more and more into a realm of tenderness, vulnerability, humanism, doubt and humility.

This way of seeing the world is precious to me. I can connect to it well.

INFLUENCE: I must have seen the ‘Nightwatch’ for the first time when I was 10 years old. My mother took me to the museum.

I had dreams of becoming a veterinarian, firefighter as any little boy does. From my boy-perspective I could not understand that the guy in the black suit was the boss and not the one standing next to him in the bright yellow. That was who I wanted to be!

And the best painting was the one with the swan, not a Rembrandt…

Time went by. I went to two art academies in Amsterdam and then off to Italy for 3 years. One of the books I bought in Firenze was about Rembrandt. And that was not to cure my homesick feelings. 

My view on life was enriched by new layers. Some fascinations pass by and some stay. Frank Auerbachs works were a guide for me for some years (see image: left Auerbach, right me), I tried to drown in the German Expressionism, I went abstract, but Rembrandt always stayed just around the corner. And he still lives ‘next door’. I have 10 books about him. Whenever I am in an art bookshop I look if there is one more that I should buy.

In January of this year I was working on a portrait series (see below) and what I often do is to exercise on my own head. I looked for an expression similar to the self-portrait of Rembrandt of the National Gallery in London. It shows a state of mind that clients will want not on their face. It is what I went for on mine. And this self-portrait is now on show in the Rijksmuseum.

Click on the self-portrait to see the image better on the site.

MEMORIES: In his works nostalgia and genius come together. I see myself as a little boy in the big museum, I see myself wonder why he painted a slaughtered bull in the Louvre, I remember the shock of seeing one of the most beautiful female portraits ever made in Washington, I see me for the first time staring at him in the National Gallery. I could continue…

I am 64 years old now. I surpassed Rembrandt by one year.

Isn’t it odd to celebrate someone’s death? Should we dance on his grave? Turn it into a disco party?

Till May 26 you can visit the Max Beckmann exhibition in the Caixa Forum in Barcelona. It is quite a disturbing, dark show.

Beckmann is not as famous as Matisse or Picasso and that is good. The exhibition is never over crowded and some nice works are to be seen. With a limited budget as the Caixa Forum has, it is still possible to show great works.

When entering, the first two images make clear that Beckmann had a solid training; the classical foundation is there. This self-portrait is of a confident artist.

He finishes his studies in 1904. In 1914 World War I breaks out and he enlists. In 1915 he suffers from a nervous breakdown that seems to have changed his look on life forever.

In 1918 Germany enters the crazy post war years.

The people on his paintings become actors on stages. The canvasses are very densely populated. They look like the facades of Gothic churches. Compare this painting with a detail of the façade of the cathedral of Bourges.

More characteristics remind me of Gothic art; he often paints on narrow stretched canvasses. This makes the movement vertical, like the sculptures in their niches on churches or this painting of Adam and Eve by Granach. The people look quite rigid in their movements.

Is this because he was more focused on giving a message then by just showing the beauty and richness of life? In a sense it looks like art from before the Renaissance.

His figures are cut out like the images in leaded windows.

When we talk of the Middle Ages, we often refer to them as the Dark Ages... Between the World Wars Germans lived in a very dark and extreme environment. 

All too breathes an atmosphere of the German expressionist movies like ‘Das Kabinett von Dr. Caligari’ or the opera ‘Der Dreigroschenoper’. 

The feeling of ‘Unheimlich’ (I love this German word, it represents the feeling of creepy, eerie, terrific so well. It has the contrasting word 'home' in it) is always there. 

When he portrays himself it is with a cigarette in the hand and the champagne bottle is nearby, but there seems little to celebrate. Did he ever laugh?

People are caught on the same canvas; they do not really communicate with each other. His clowns and circus scenes show the dark side, never the joy of life. What does the woman show the magician? The magician breaths fire and rings of smoke through which he sticks his fan. The other women is pinned down by three swords... It is a hostile and cold world. 

Is seeing the world as a sad and cruel Merry-go-round his way of staying alive and sane?

In 1937 he has to flee Germany, his work is regarded ‘Entartet’ by the Nazis. He lives in exile in Amsterdam till 1948. He paints many of his famous triptychs.

After WW II he moves to the United States of America, but his black look on life does not change. Still there are knifes everywhere.

At the bottom of this painting there is a monkey looking at his face in the mirror. It has the shape of a vagina… Never his women and sensual images show relief or happiness.

He has a story to tell, but his works do not fall in the trap of propaganda. His message has a personal touch and at the same time is a universal one. By citing Greek mythological figures, he places all in a timeless space. But what remains is this severe Nordic Gothic touch to all. 

The painting above is his last one. On the left there is the painter and his model: a woman with naked breasts and a knife. Why are there so many naked breasts in his paintings? Is it the desire for shelter? Are many of 'his' women Amazons?

As so often you see a ladder in the middle canvas. So many ladders and windows... Do they stand for the desire to escape to a 'higher, different' place? 

On the right canvas an orchestra is playing. The music must be like the one heard in the video below.

Apart from the stories told in his paintings, what puzzles me is how he survived during wartime. Where did he get his materials? How was his life in Amsterdam? He was a famous German artist, but his work was not appreciated there. He sold only one double portrait to the Stedelijk Museum.

But then again; does one buy art during a war? Which place had art in WW II?

I live in peacetime. When in the early 2000's in the Netherlands subsidies were cut to the total minimum, people reacted by citing Churchill when politicians suggested to cut down the money for the arts during WW II: ‘Then what are we fighting for?’

My experience is that nowadays art is not a big thing… Have we artists drifted away? I see much decadent behavior by the 'elite'... And so much indifference, so little knowledge of culture (even amongst many of my so called colleagues)...

And what about me and 'home' in a place so poisened by tragic, mad seperatism? About once every week the circus comes to plaça Sant Jaume, flags and all... Time to paint clowns?

NOSTALGIA

Since long Vuillard’s paintings attract me. Even in my academy years his works fascinated me. When in 1980 I went to Florence I brought a book about him with me. Is it possible that his works ‘remind’ me of my early youth and even before my birth? That period attracts me much.

He was not considered a great revolutionary. Bonnard was more en vogue. Édouard Vuillard painted the life of the ‘well to do bourgeoisie’ in exuberant interiors. Often not too steady in shape/form, but more steady than Bonnard.

My grandfather desired to be a painter (click on the word grandfather to go to the text). The family was against it, so he painted in his spare time. The few photos I have of the 'Sunday artist at work' show interiors that remind me of the ones of Vuillard. They are dark, wallpaper with flower motives and floor lamps covered with scarfs.

Vuillard was the painter of electric light per excellence. He painted coziness, no battle scenes.

The time around my birth seems a careless one. Many 'old' problems look simple or do not matter anymore. In hindsight they always look easy to be solved.

The époque of my young grandfather was one without the atom bomb, polluted environment or the possible creation of an Über Mensch. 

FRANCE

Now I live on the other side of the country, but still it fascinates me. From the Eiffel Tower to the Citroen DS and in between Brigitte Bardot, Juliette Gréco, Edith Piaf, the baguette, French cheese, Beaujolais, you name it... A bottle of wine at dinner was never present during my young years. France was a country of a thousand miracles.

In 1987 I befriended a French couple. Ever since I visit ‘La R...’; a chateau situated an hour and a half south of Paris. The chateau is a paradise. The evil outside world starts or begins at the gate. Within stands the solemn country house with its typical thin French in light green painted shutters. In the house you find old furniture, floor lamps and carpets. Vuillard would have felt at home.
 

photos of 'La R...' and paintings of Vuillard

We all long for that unspoiled spot. At ‘La R...’ I can block out the evil world.

All this may be quite sentimental and not very professional as a reason for liking these paintings.

Over to more technical reasons, let's get 'serious'.

LIGHT

I grave the light of his dim interiors. The paintings of the sun bathed rooms are a real joy too… it is the sensation of light more than the sensation of color.

This leads back to the Baroque. Then the light was used to manipulate the viewer's look. The period, in which Vuillard was active, the electric light was a new invention. Nowhere else it is represented in such a beautiful way.

One can compare the use of light between the Renaissance and the Baroque with that of the Impressionism and his Post-Impressionism.

Left Gerard van Honthorst, right Vuillard

DAILY LIFE

There was a return to a more realistic style. Daily life was shown. The compositions could get quite out of balance. The painting ‘L’Absinth’ by Degas was for me the first example. You sail over the tables towards the main subjects. Did this accentuate that the image was of a randomly observed scene of daily life?

left Degas, right Vuillard

In the works of Vuillard the composition often shows the same quasi inequity. One has the idea that he sits in a corner painting. The represented people are no revolutionaries. They are subsided in every day matters.

Who ever portrayed a dentist in this way? And which dentist has paintings on his walls anymore?

DECORATION AND FORM

A big question is the contrast between form and decorative motives. How to find the right balance between the cut out form and the loose way of letting all overflow in each other.

Vuillard sometimes breaks the image into tiny splinters. The motive of the wallpaper seems more important than the shapes of the separated forms that inhabit the painting. In Matisse’ works you find the same attitude, but everything is rougher and broader painted.

Vuillard goes for domesticity. In my blog of 02-04-2016 I talk about the nudes of Matisse. These women were mainly dressed in an exotic way. They were ladies for the pleasure of the caliph.

Left Vuillard, right Matisse
 

PROUST

Marcel Proust is one of my favorite writers. Vuillard portrayed one of his friends: Anna de Noailles, a lady who as he did, wrote in bed.

Proust wrote about the haute-bourgeoisie…

CONCLUSION

Nowadays I mostly drink Spanish wines, I often listen to the songs of Lucio Dalla and Pino Daniele, I dream of living on Venice and sometimes I even think of moving back to the Netherlands (I partly blame Ramses Shaffy for that), but now and then Vuillard comes knocking at my door… Am I becoming? 

'Les bour-geois c'est comm' les co-chons 
Plus ça de-vient vieux, plus ça de-vient bête, 
Les bour-geois c'est comme les co-chons 
Plus ça de-vient vieux plus ça de-vient...'
 
Knock on the door... (click on the image)

In the blog about New York of last summer I mentioned that this city has the best of both old and new. It really has… It is a center of the arts…

There it happened twice that people mentioned that my art would not fit in certain circles, because it is not ‘modern’. What did that mean?

Here is an attempt to understand what it is about; it ended somewhere else...

First of all it means that the art world is cut up in different territories that have little in common. All have their own way of defining what cutting edge is.

And more specifically concerning my work, if I understand well, it meant that my work refers much to the classical idiom. In my work there are many references to art from before let’s say 1917.

I say 1917: it was the moment when Duchamp exposed the urinal. It caused a shock and ever since in the art world it has been the ultimate one created, a point of no return for some.

Fountain - Duchamp.

1917 was the penultimate year of the First World War. This war shocked the Western world too. One must have had to do with the other.

Before the war there had been a feeling of great optimism. Life would get better thanks to the new inventions and the industrialization. Everything was turned upside down in a happy way.

It was also the period where the bourgeoisie took the lead. New money took over from old money. These nouveau riche were often considered without any cultural schooling.

It may have been a combination of the two: artists looked down upon these new clients and at the same time they rebelled against the old culture that had brought the horror of a war on a scale that was never experienced before.

Much of this art had a positive vibe. New sheets on the bed; open the windows! When I saw this ‘Open window’, painted by Matisse, I had the feeling that his view was not very positive… It was painted in 1914.

The open window - Matisse.

In the end it culminated in exhibiting a urinal.

'Away with the old, we have to revaluate all.' In that moment it may have made sense, but now we are 100 years further…

I was educated in the sixties and seventies of the last century. In this period the United States were considered the future. It was the place where all ‘happened’. Of course this new wave had a lot of success there; it was a young nation. It could see this movement as the origin of an authentic American art (if we neglect the original American culture).

I believed then, that what art should be like was this kind of art. This was the true art, the art that mattered. People should be shaken up, put out of their comfort zone and shown that the world was more than just shaped after their ‘petit bourgeois beauty’ values. Values that artists played with.

WHAAM - Lichtenstein.

It fitted well with the age I had; I was an adolescent.

But I was moved by the classical art too, paintings by Rembrandt, Goya, Velazquez, Caravaggio, and Giotto: you name them; they gave me great pleasure. Could it be, that I recognized in their works the same ‘shock’ value as I found in the ‘modern’ art?

Were these artists in their time the ones who made works of a ‘point of no return’? What was their concern while making these works? How much of it had to do with the moral message and how much with how it was transmitted?

Let’s take the case of Caravaggio. His works shocked many, but it suited the establishment. It showed the spectator what the establishment wanted them to see and belief. Caravaggio was the executor of the message spread by the establishment.

The calling of St. Matthew - Caravaggio.

The church had the message; Caravaggio showed it. That message may have lost its meaning, what is left is the interesting way of how it was transmitted.

What I often see is that the modern artist has become the moralist, the establishment and not just the executor of somebody else’s message. Many times he doesn’t give an interesting twist to what he says.

Take Banksy. Who tells him to paint the subject and the way he does it? The tradition of a certain craftsmanship has been abandoned (or not seen anymore as valuable).

Bansky: nº1.

Maybe it is better to say that the ‘modern’ approach towards the subject of art is often more about a moralistic message than that the work of art is ‘modern’ by the way it is made.

If so, why is that?

Picasso was maybe one of the last to really experiment with how to tell a story. He shocked the world not by what he told but by how. In his work you will find few moral messages that are uncommon. Often he just shows, not lectures.

Les demoiselles d’Avignon - Picasso.

This approach towards the material painters work with maybe ended in the Rothko Chapel. Where to go from there… That Rothko committed suicide seems obvious to me…

What to read in those black paintings, but one’s own thoughts?

Rothko Chapel - Rothko.

The fascination of painting a work that shows an extreme or surprising view on the painted subject, the comparison of the painting and the subject that was the inspiration, has been lost for many.

Is what we mean to say when we say something is ‘modern’, neglecting how to tell a story? Is what we call ‘modern’ art, an object that teaches us how we should live no matter how it is communicated?

A very clear example of this can be found in the work of Jenny Holzer. Her works indicate us how we should approach life; this message is transmitted in a very down to earth uninteresting way.

Jenny Holzer.

I saw an interview with her on BBC television. It was funny to see her questioning the establishment.

Yet she is part of another establishment. Her show was in a famous modern art museum, a safe place to doubt the ruling class. Much art plays the role of a completely harmless clown, amusing the king. She represents for me the perfect example of the ‘petit bourgeois moral’ of the so-called intellectual art elite.

And here a curious thought pops up.

Caravaggio was a great painter, but also a murderer… There are many more examples. Now I am curious about Jenny Holzers life…

Then again, it took me years to understand (for me), that for making great art it is not necessary to be somebody with the best moral. From that moment on I showed little interest in the private life of the artists. It’s the way they shaped the idea that interests me. Holzers work is done in such a mediocre matter of fact way, that only the moralistic lesson could possibly interest me.

god?

Maybe the definition of ‘modern’ has become empty because mostly hanging on morals of this isolated 'art intellectual elite establishment'.

Today the thought that ‘anything goes’ eliminates the shock value. It has all become a joke. The mirror that we have being placed in front of us is embraced immediately. We look at the controversial message as come from the new god and thus it is immediately the rule of the art establishment.

We live in hectic times. God has been declared dead. Long live the new god… We dance and jump around amused...

Maybe I am alone in this, but much of what I saw that is considered ‘modern’, is just a lazy way of dealing with giving shape to a so-called shocking idea. Having ideas is the easiest thing to do. And nowadays it is without any risk.

‘The times are changing…’ The elite has fallen in love with itself.

It has become the speculation object for the ‘happy few’. It has been given value by the art establishment and by doing so; it has lost its shock value.

Too many times I see modern art lovers visiting the museums with the air of ‘I am one of the avant-garde’… an avant-garde of the past, a dead avant-garde… the art shown does not shock, it reaffirms the ‘elite’ of being the ‘elite’.

The last example of this empty moral lesson is the Banksy half destructed work right after it was sold. The establishment was ‘shocked’ for a moment, but almost immediately embraced the moralistic message. Now that work has only gone up in economical value.

Banksy, nº2 and shocked spectator.

And then I remembered that 'modernism' was followed by 'post modernism'…

Works in that style have always looked like Mickey Mouse on holidays at the Acropolis to me. Not the continence but the visualization was altered in an Ikea kind of a way. So 'modern' is not even the last stand for the hipsters… little help!...

Then what is the challenge today?

There is practically no terra incognita left to discover (both the poles were discovered in the early 1900’s, again that period). ‘Go west’ has become an empty phrase. We have painted with butter, chocolate and excrements. When there was nobody to insult or shock anymore, we have insulted ourselves. All has been done. But still what it means to make something beautiful has not been figured out. I have come to the conclusion that if you cannot give the message you want to communicate a painterly interesting twist, you should better shut up. It is time to make ‘poetry’ again, even if this may seem old-fashioned.

All my 40 painting years I have tried to find the key for making a beautiful painting. It may be clear that I haven’t found it yet. I have come to some sweet attempts. What helps is to try to surprise oneself instead of lecturing others, to create beauty made in an existing language, not creating new languages nobody will understand.

I may feel 'a god in the deepest of my thoughts', but I should not forget to entertain and communicate.

This for me is the 'NEW MODERN ART' or better: ‘TIMELESS ART’.

The latest work I feel good about is this self portrait, I look in the mirror and what do I do with that…

a 'questioning me' in the mirror, listening to one of the most beautiful 'non modern' pieces of music ever made...

Lately I have been putting many sketches on my chapter sketchbooks (Click on the word to go to this chapter. Three pages will appear with 24 sketches. Click on one of the three blocks on the bottom right, showing a random selection of 8 each).

The total number is over 390… More will follow.

I have been making drawings in sketch blocks from 1980 on. The first three years I lived in Firenze, Italy.

1980 – 1984: THE BLACK AND WHITE YEARS. 

I had to get used to making sketches in this way. The difference between a loose sketch and one in a book is that the sketch becomes part of a 'dairy'. You cannot tear one out, if it is not good, you keep on seeing it year after year.

I started making them only in black and white with pen and ink, ballpoint or marker.

Many of these sketches are made in a linear style till I found a Japanese ink brush. This brush works like a fountain pen. With it I could also work more with surfaces. I feel more at ease with the brush than with the pencil. My talent lays more in expressing myself through planes than defining through lines.

The challenge is to work direct, not being able to correct much. It is not easy, but every once in a while a good one would come out.

In Firenze I made many sketches of friends during the evenings, maybe because my Italian was not sufficient enough to participate in the discussions about politics and other.

I also used the blocks to figure compositions and ideas out. I found only a few pages where I copied paintings or details of works of great painters.

The oldest sketch on the site is one made while waiting on a friend. It is of the gallery Vittorio Emanuele of Milano. Sometimes it is good that a friend is late… I made it in 1984. I lived in Amsterdam again.

1985 - TODAY: COLOUR AND NEW MATERIALS.

 
I started to work with more materials (pencil, pen and ink, magic marker) and in colour. In 1989 there was breakthrough. I discovered the Uni Posca markers. I used them mixed with other kind of markers. It took me about 7 years to learn how to use these Uni Posca markers to the maximum of their possibilities. Not many people know what they are, so here you can see them on two photos. And there are two of the first sketches made with these markers. 

Now I use them almost always just mixed with pen and ink. They give me the possibility to make little ‘paintings’.

This helps me; on this scale I have to find painterly solutions in the way of how for example Velazquez, the late Rembrandt, the late Goya and Manet did. More names come to my mind; here is a mix of some details of great paintings and some of my interpretations (can you see who is who?). 
 

SUBJECTS AFTER 1985.

Apart from the copying of masters, composition sketches and the occasional pinning down of a memory, many sketches have their story to tell. This change came in 1985. I can now start a sketch without having any idea; just let it come by mindless scribbling.

WHEN I SKETCH.

I have had years that I did not sketch. Why, I don’t know. It is part of the spontaneous way I want things to happen. Sometimes I will pick up a block to stay ‘within the discipline’, but leave the 'serious' paintings alone. Like having a brake from eating oisters by eating candy.

Lately I have picked the blocks up again regularly. It has to be fun; I have no intention selling any. These blocks are my 'dairies', my world apart from the pretentious and money making industry.

The video? It was George Micheal’s protest against the music industry trying to turn him into a slave. But let's not take things too serious... let's dance!

The video brings back memories. It was made in the year I moved to New York. Looking in my blocks I feel nostalgic every now and then. The good old times…

Let’s make nice memories for the future!

This July I was on holidays in New York. This city shows the best of both worlds: modern and classic art. It was paradise.

I had little time. I was there with my daughter and I had no intention to make her hate the arts. So we went to more than just museums (and I loved it, seeing Gala happy is a feast).

Gala in New York.

I have to come back soon. I will lock me up in all these wonderful museums for days.

Now I could only spend one day at the Metropolitan Museum.

I started my visit in the modern art section. Amongst the ‘classics’ there were one Pollock and two De Koonings.

Seeing the one of Pollock was a good introduction, a couple of days later we went to see Pollock's house and studio.

Jackson Pollock, 'Autumn Rhythm (nº 30)'.

Of all the painters of the New York School, I have always been fascinated the most by Willem de Kooning. His works are varied, I sort of feel he covered more grounds than others like Pollock, Newman or Kline. There are more traces to be found of the thousands of years of paintings in his works.

The two De Koonings seem to be in bad shape. He glued newspapers on his canvasses and put on thick layers of paint mixed with probably sand. How to preserve these works for the future may be a hell of a job…

Willem de Kooning, 'Attic' and 'Easter Monday'.

see the details, all those cracks…

details of both works of Willem de Kooning.

I didn’t dare to cough standing nearby (Maybe that’s why there was only one late De Kooning on show in the MOMA?).

A very pleasant surprise was a beautiful painting of Joan Mitchell.

I remember going to an opening of a show in 1992 and finding all the works without spirit or power. Going down in the elevator standing next to her, she looked bored and disillusioned. I wrote her off…

Joan Mitchell, 'Sun Flower'.

This painting was made in 1969 and for me it put her back on the map. It may be that I like it, because I can see the sunflowers in the painting and her moving away from the realistic representation. I love the confrontation between a painting and the subject in the real. The challenge is bigger.

Did she loose interest after many years of painting? Was that what I saw in the elevator?

The 3 paintings of Jennifer Bartlett were a discovery. They are part of a series of 24 paintings called ‘Air: 24 hours’.

Jennifer Bartlett, 'FIVE P.M.'.

I let the Metropolitan explain:

…’This is a work from Bartlett’s ambitious series AIR: 24 Hours, a group of 24 paintings, one for each hour of the day. The cycle documents the passage of time, depicting a different area of the artist’s home and studio in Manhattan. Following a set of self-imposed rules, the paintings share an underlying grid-based structure, the constituent elements of which always add up to the number sixty. Bartlett’s systematic approach is belied by the paintings’ spatial instability, enigmatic character, and absurd, irreconcilable details. Things appear (and re-appear) in these works that defy explanation. Throughout her series, Bartlett makes public some of these most personal aspects of her daily life while retaining a sense of ironic distance and mysterious inaccessibility’...

Maybe because I only saw three, maybe I am not very sensitive, but to me the door to any intimate insight of her life stayed closed. Maybe also because I was more concentrated on what I saw painterly wise.

Quite often I can do better without these texts...

I loved the combination of very stiff painted geometric patterns and the more loosely painted other parts. I have my doubts about the two human figures in the painting 'FIVE A.M.'.

Too bad I could not see the whole series; it might have given me more clues. And too bad the 'ONE A.M.' was not exhibited!

Here are the three I saw:

left to right: 'SEVEN A.M.' - 'FIVE P.M.' - 'FIVE .A.M.'

I visited the museum moving back in time. It made me look at some works from a different point of view. What a beauty is this Turner! 

Note the splash of water on the right. It gives the painting more depth and movement.

Turner, 'Whalers'.

Since I saw the show ‘Late Turner’ in London in 2014, I have become a big fan of his work.

From Turner to Monet is a little step. Monet took a lot from Turner. I take a lot from both…

The painting of Monet (MOMA) and the ones of Pollock (Metropolitan and MOMA) were the ones that kicked in the hardest.

In the last blog I talked about the advantage of the quality of prints, that helps us today, but during this trip I noticed again and again that seeing a work for real is of vital importance. The 'Water lilies' of Monet in the MOMA shows it more than any other.

I seem to circle around the same themes over and over and not even only in this blog (water lilies, water)...

Of that triptych I didn’t make a photo. Taking a photo is an act of stepping out. You preserve it, so later on you can get back to it, instead of forcing yourself the confrontation with the object.

It is impossible to imagine the impact by looking at a photo. This work is maybe even more overwhelming than the canvasses of Pollock. Size plays a crucial role.

I took this image of the net to ‘show’ the work. It triggers my memories of sitting in front of it. It has the effect of the madaleine cake in 'À la recherche du temps perdu'. I hope I have managed to lock up that sensation in my mind for many years.

What struck me was that he made this work in the years 1914-1926 (at least, that is what was written next to the tryptich). And those were partly the years of the First World War, till then the most useless and cruel war ever experienced.

Did he try to create a world of his own in which he could hide?

In the MOMA I felt that the tendence of the latest years is to move away from the eye to the mind. There were many objects on show that as a visual experience were minimal. Much was about what one should think or how one should live, not more than just a comment on life. This art does not appeal to me. I have nothing with artists like Jenny Holzer. It is the new puritanism that I have no connection with. 

This is why I felt more at home at the Metropolitan Museum. Art should for a great deal talk about art. For me an artist has the duty to fill the world with beautiful objects, make this place a better place to live in, not put signs everywhere telling what others do wrong, question without questioning one's own gesture.

If it is all just a comment on the tendences in society in any random form, art becomes more something that should be shown in a church. In a way many museums of modern art seem like churches. And very often the message that is delivered is of such 'elite' shape, that it only is readable for its own 'parish'.

In a sense the 'Water Lilies' can be seen as a comment on the war apart from it being a great work of art. Knowing in which period the works were made, can make you question the idealogical purpose of them. And that for me in a more profound way than just a hang a sign with 'WAR IS BAD'.

The text in the MOMA next to it only refers to Monet's possible desire to move towards abstraction...  

I will come back to all the great art I saw in the next blogs. It was so much... 

It was fireworks! 

4th of July.

These are fortunate times for painters.

I live in Barcelona and that is as far as museums and exhibitions concerned not a very inspiring city.

Luckily I can travel! Flights to for example London cost nothing.

Or I can go the bookshop Central. It is the best art book shop in town (click on 'Central' in grey to go to their site).

The reproductions in books have become amazingly good.

I have a book my grandfather bought at the big Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam in 1969. The book is more a treasure because he bought it, than that I look in it for the reproductions. 

Some time ago I bought this book about Vermeer. See the difference... 

The big question is; do I really see Vermeer’s paintings? The reproductions get quite near to the originals, even though we cannot buy books where the paintings are reproduced in three dimensions. But in a book you do not see the works in the right size and what is missing too is the ritual of going to a museum. It may seem little, but if you have travelled for it, all becomes more of an adventure. When I go to the opera, I put my best clothes on. When I listen to an opera at home, I can be stark naked farting away...

The same counts for seeing works on the Internet. It is great that there is the site Arts and Cuture Google. Click on the grey word to go to this endless collection of wonders. 

We ‘travel’ the world sitting in our chair.

Also I can take photos that are of a reasonably good quality. This can fill the hiatus here and there, created by the lack of fame of a work or dead artist.

There can be a down side to the taking of photos in museums.

Visiting the Louvre I noticed that the alarm constantly went off. Visitors took photos (many selfies) of works and then of the title, bending over the protection line.

Being an ‘elitist’, I favor the thought once expressed by Gianni that there should be two Uffizi museums. One for the tourists, with well made reproductions and one you can only visit if you have passed an exam.

Great side effect is that it gives art students the posibility to study the great masters in a more profound way and even earning money doing so. In that museum there will be no fences nor alarms, the tourists can touch the paintings. There will only be a control at the exit, so they don't rob the place empty.

An exception has to be made for sculpture. In future I expect that you will be able to possess holograms of sculptures. But then you will not be able to touch them, which according to Nat Neujean (read about him in the blog of 06-03-2018) was an important thing to do…

I remember the story of Stravinsky touching the sculptures of Marino Marini at an exhibition (he was not arrested for that crime).

What is the influence of all this on the way we paint? I think for example about what the invention of the tube did to painting. Thanks to that invention painters could go and paint outdoors. 

Every once in a while I like to copy works from reproductions. It is a very good way to learn from the great masters without having to travel the world. My knowledge of art is a lot broader than the one of my grandfater.

Here are some sketches, do you recognize any of them?

It resulted in the series ‘Art Hysteria’. Click on the word to go the the chapter on the site.

It could be a nice extra to the collection of works that a fake museum 'owns'.

Picasso seems to have said that photography liberated painters from the obligation to paint realistic. Reproductions give them the possibility to steal from others.

In the old days things were different. There is the story about the young Mozart visiting the Sistine chapel. Only there one could hear the ‘Miserere’ of Allegri. The pope wanted the music piece exclusively for himself. Only the chapel master of the Vatican had the music score.

Mozart listened to the concert once and wrote the score afterwards. He thought to have made a mistake. He went back, finding out that he hadn’t. And this is how we can enjoy the 'Miserere' everywhere...

I have no photographic memory, so books help. Long live art books with good reproductions!!!

Click on the image below to hear the 'Miserere'.

Some days ago, walking to school with Gala, she came with a worrying remark. She told me that in the year 2100 the Netherlands don’t exist anymore. Because of the melting of Antarctica, the Netherlands will be flooded…

All that water… I am Dutch and I love water. The idea of the sea being around the corner (I live in Barcelona) comforts me.

But it has to behave!

I realized that I have had quite something to do with water lately.

There was the show on Malta.

A perfect wet blue blanket with a creamy yellow island in the middle. I took a lovely boat ride and visited the Saint John Co-Cathedral. For the art experts under you, Caravaggio died on a beach...

Going back a little further in time: there was the Jongkind exhibition in February 2018. I am a big fan of Jongkind. Ever since 1975 I have been searching for a good book about his work and then all of a sudden there was the exhibition in Dordrecht, complete with catalogue.

Dordrecht was a famous city at the end of Nineteenth century. Experts claimed that the light was of great beauty thanks to the presence of water. Turner (another of my favorite painters of water and boats) went there to paint.

Turner

Joseph Beuys mourned over the disappearence of the magic Dutch light, due to the making of polders.

No worries for 2100, dear Joseph…  

Click on Joseph to hear his comment.

Jonkind was a painter of boats and water.

Jonkind

I write this with a glass of wine within reach, liquid is a good inspiration… Jongkind loved wine a little too much…

Did this give his brush strokes that vibrant character? Could be, it is of no importance where the inspiration comes from, as long as the result is good…

In the catalogue I read that Monet said that Jongkind showed him the way. Now one should not always belief what critics write in catalogues. But what is a fact is that for the Impressionists water was a great subject to paint. No solid shape, just colors reflected…

Monet

Me too, I love the reflections on water. I made several paintings of water lilies, this is number two.

Flower 011, oil on canvas, 50 x 180 cm, 2012.

Consequently Venice is one of my favourite places to live. I told friends that on the top of my bucket list there is the wish by a beautiful woman in her gondola to be brought to her palace.

click on the image to read about it.

If you are left without wishes you might as well die. Even in my after life water plays a big role. I told Gala about my wishes concerning my funeral and after life. 

click on the image to go to the text.

Should we change the phrase: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ into ‘Water to water, liquid to liquid’?

I choose for an ‘old’ seascape of mine, my first commission with this subject, to finish off this blog about water. I made it with ‘The Flying Dutchman’ in mind… Roaming the seas till eternity…

Seascape 002, oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm, 2015.

Barcelona, April 28, 2018.

Nat Neujean.

Some time ago I received a mail about the passing away of a great sculptor and great man.

I met Nat Neujean in Firenze in 1982. We met in the house of a mutual friend, Mikolash.

Nat was a older than we were.

Getting to know him was easy. He had an open spirit; he was a curious person. He heard I was a painter and immediately wanted to know about my work.

He was Belgian and spoke Dutch. This helped too.

The first meeting was overwhelming. He was commissioned to make the portrait of Mikolash’ son, Jacopo. The clay came out on the turning table from under the plastic and Nat immediately began to work with a frenetic pace. There was a tunnel between him and Jacopo. Nothing else existed.

One thing I still tell quite often. At a certain point Nat needed a piece of wire. Without hesitation he pulled the telephone wire out of the wall and phone and used it.

This characterized Nat. It showed his sense of practicality, drive and total lack of useless etiquette. As long as it worked, it was good. Reputations meant nothing to him either.

He wanted to help me; he saw something in my work and maybe also my attitude. I was very welcome at his house in Brussels. I think the first time I was guest there, was when Mikolash had a show in Brussels.

Everywhere in his house were his sculptures, always the human figure.

There is more than one sculpture that without any doubt, if ever I will have the money, I will want to possess.

Through him I found a gallery in Brussels and I had some good shows there.

I regard him as a teacher in more than one way. An important lesson I learned was that when you paint human beings bigger than life size, the proportions change. Always make the head, hands and feet smaller. This came in handy when I had the commission for the church in Modena.

Nat told me this when he was working on a big sculpture of two girls. He had first made the sketch, a sculpture of about 50 cm high. Then he made it life size, then the final one, about 4 meters high. I saw all versions in Brussels…

He had a special way of talking, always with a lot of wit, but he would never beat around the bush.

He was a sculpture himself. There was no way of pushing him around. If you shook hands, he decided how strong the handshake was. And it was clear he could crush your hand if he wanted to.

He was Jewish. He had survived the Second World War in an amazing way, but I don’t feel like telling about it here. After the war he made sketches of groups of people who are waiting to be deported. I regard them as one of the many high lights of his oeuvre. He was looking for a place to have them permanently exhibited.

Because my father worked with some influent Jewish people in Amsterdam, he tried to have them exposed there, but because of the veto on the realistic representation of human beings by Jewish laws, he could not help him.

click on the image to go to the site of the museum.

We lost contact. These things happen.

And I don’t know how, but the news came to me of the inauguration of a group of these sculptures in the museum of Mechelen. Finally a group of these deported Jews found a permanent place. I came to the opening and it was a great new encounter. I stayed for a couple of days and we said not to let so much time pass by anymore.

Alas, I have had so many times the desire to see him again, but could not find the moment or occasion. I am too late now.

Thank you for all you showed me, Nat.

Click on these words to go to his site.

I wanted to write this blog about the paintings 'Happy Family', ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Soul Kiss’. They will pass by, but my mind drifted further and further away from these specific paintings to what often happens while working: a radical change in my state of mind. This phenomenon has occurred during my whole painting life, but not always.

Recently I worked on a flower canvas and a large part of the time I can then next to painting, listen to documentaries about art and other.

When I work in this way, I stay quite far from giving space to my subconscious. I reason, I concentrate on the craftsmanship. These paintings are about the beauty of colorful and shiny objects in space. 

Flower 039

Quite often while working, I start to talk to myself about what is good or bad in the work (most of the time I find what I do is not up to my standards). And then unwillingly I start discussing with people that are not present, mostly fellow painters whose work I have no sympathy or respect for. As to juxtapose the good and bad ways of painting…

This is a stupid habit of mine, but I can do little about it. I care about painting. I am a bit a moralist, a characteristic I dislike.

These flower paintings alternate works like 'Happy Family', 'Take off your mask’ and ‘Black Dog’.

And while working on the latter I get into another state of mind. A state of mind that I find essential to experience.

Happy Family, Soul Kiss and Black Dog.

I get into a trance; get more lost in the work itself. I let the painting guide me. Listening to music helps. It has to be music that does not surprise me. It helps me to get into a rhythm, block influences from the outside world.

These paintings are about something more than just challenging my technical skills.

As I have said very often, the best moments in life for me are the moments when I am not there, when I dissolve in the world around me. I leave the moralistic discussions behind.

And then this weird phenomenon occurs. Fallen into this heavenly trance, out of the blue I am struck by a painful memory.

A memory about something stupid or bad that I did in the past.

I have always accepted these moments without asking why they attack me. But lately I wondered why these memories show up.

Not long ago I was put on track, maybe… Somebody mentioned a thought of Jung.

Jung seems to have said that one has to face one’s own demons, accept them. If we don’t realize we are also capable of horrible behavior, there is little hope for us to be good, serene and complete human beings.

When lost in this trance at the most unexpected moments I am being bombarded with the memories of stupid or bad behavior. Might it be that the evil half of me shows up?

I found this sketch in a sketch book of 1997:

‘You cannot do anything other than let your own monster ride along with you on your back, otherwise it will devour you.’

The other text is not of importance now.

I wrote this a long time ago.

I have always tried to stay far from defining making art a therapy, a self-analysis/confrontation, but I cannot escape the thought that this is the cause of my unwanted memories to pop up.

It must have to do with emptying my head. Letting loose and becoming more complete by putting down my defenses, I am confronted with myself more as how I really am, not as that easy going guy.

Maybe this is also why I paint paintings like ‘Black Dog ‘ and ‘Soul Kiss’. I feel the necessity of going there. It is an addiction.

'No mirrors arond, yet... lalala and the second self portrait.'

I try not to be a moralist in the sense that I want to lecture the world. It just so happens that I put my mirrored image in front of other’s people’s faces.

In this same realm of reflections the question arises: Why are most artists much better in painting hell than heaven? Why is painting hell so much more fun? Are we fascinated by our own dark side? Is it a cleaning of the soul?

What may count for me, counts for others as well?

We really love to paint hell…

Here’s Luca Signorelli’s vision. Does the Archangel have a sword or a brush in his hands?

I find solace in the thought that instead of what Hitler did I continue painting.

Why not give all these politicians here a brush?

As dessert, I offer a nice documentary about 'the gates of hell' by Rodin.