Whenever I am in Milan I go to see the portraits of Marino Marini. He is most famous for his sculptures of horses and men on horses, but I am totally addicted to his portraits.

Now they are to be found in the museum of 900, which I find a pity. They used to have their own space (see the black and white photos). It was designed by Arturo Bassi (could not information about him on the net, who can help me out?).

Click on the grey museum of 900 and you will find information about the museum.

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There was never anybody there. When I’d visit a guard used to follow me through the rooms. Like that he made his round accompanied by someone else.

And for years I had fantasies stealing some of the portraits. I even talked about it with a sculptor...

The space where they are now is very, horribly poorly lit, look at the portrait of Henry Moore. How to kill a sculpture… Even the sculpture behind him seems to have a headache… And then the way they are spread all over the space... Could it have been done more tasteless?

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Let’s leave the museum the museum and look at the works.

Besides being art of today, MM's work is deeply rooted in the Etruscan art tradition. He was very concious of where he was born and grown up.

Years ago I fell in love with (this portrait of) the Etruscan Hera-Juno of Falerii.

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It is the simplicity of these sculptures that strikes me. Much of the Etruscan art has nothing to do with the over the top Hellinistic decadence. (It reminds me of why Rembrandt was not popular at the end of his life. The art buyers wanted ‘refined’ stuff. Rich societies often prefer decadent and over the top art). Etruscan art is nothing like that. No pompous detailing, no dramatic poses.

Here are some examples with two sculptures of MM (in color) in between them. Just to show my point. They fit in very well.

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Another aspect of MM’s work that helps me while making my paintings is the balance he found between the finished and unfinished. You have the feeling ‘Marino has just left the building’. He played with the material, lets it talk in its proper language. And it leaves space for the spectator 'to fill in the rest', thus making it more one's own.

The ultimate example is the portrait of Mies van der Rohe.

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It may seem that he did not go for exquisite little detailing, but then have a look at the twinkle in the eye of De Pisis. Unfortunately it gets lost in the new place where it is exposed. I have to do it with the memory.

How to explain the greatness of these portraits? In the end words cannot explain. But if ever you are in Milano, go to see them!

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The video below is a compilage of several of his portraits. Amongst them: Igor Stravinsky, Marc Chagall, Mies van der Rohe, Filippo de Pisis, Carlo Carrà and Henry Miller. Enjoy!  

During my trip through Italy, I visited the museo Castelvecchio in Verona. For the first time in my life I did not look at the artworks. I only looked at the museum. (Click on all the grey names and in a new window you find more information).

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The museum was reorganized and redesigned by Carlo Scarpa between 1958 and 1975. Not an architect unfamiliar to me, but apart from the museo Rovoltella in Trieste, the entrance of the architecture faculty, the Olivetti shop and a bridge in Venice, I had not seen much of his work in real life.

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How do you turn a half destroyed fortress with Gothic elements added into a magic place? There is so much to tell and yet nothing to say. One just has to visit the museum and be overwhelmed by the exquisite taste in detailing, the balance between space and object, the use of materials and the modesty of all.

Well, maybe not really the modesty, as I said, I did not look at the artworks…

He showed that one has never to stop playing. The way he placed the statue of Canalgrande in the void has nothing to do with straightforward logical thinking. It is pure poetry, total madness and at the same time it seems the very best and most beautiful solution. In the video I show a selection of the photos I took.

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Last stop on my trip was Venice. And there I saw the new Gallerie dell’Accademia, recently reorganized by the son of Carlo, Tobia Scarpa. You see very clear the hand of the father.

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To finish it off; I stayed at Sergio Pascolo's place in Venice. And to my very pleasant surprise his architecture studio is in what used to be the studio of Carlo Scarpa!

Enjoy and if you want, you can leave a comment below! 

I finished the painting ‘Au Suivant’ not long ago. It is one of those canvasses that went through a long process before it was done. It belongs in the ‘series’ of ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’, ‘Ecstasy or the Puppeteer’, ‘Shhh’, ‘Setting Sun’ and others.

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I took a canvas called ‘Fist’, that if I remember well I finished in the early nineties. No use being sentimental, I never sold it, looked at it long enough to get bored, so why not use the canvas for a new painting?

The idea for the 'new' canvas was given by the visit with Gala to see the mummy of Cleopatra in the British Museum.

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See below:

Painting finished! I put it on the site and some people loved it. I asked for a title and thank Tove Seeland for having given me the beautiful: ‘All the things we forgot to say to each other’.

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But… something irritated me. I had the feeling that I left it halfway. It was not tight enough and it looked too much like a caricature, a loose statement. It stayed locked away for a couple of months and then I went back to it.

First I changed the laying figure. The space she was laying in was still something of an aquarium, but became darker. And the big head started to breath.

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This way of painting is trial and error. I put a second figure underneath and took away the big head on top (1 in image underneath). The big head had stayed there because I liked it, but never really made sense to me. The breathing did not convince me either. The two figures at the bottom were making a fire. Fire is always good to put in a painting. It is violent and it is light. It made more sense to me...

But then the whole bottom went on fire (2 in image underneath).

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The seated figure on the bottom left stood up and the figure on the bottom right disappeared (3 in image above) and reappeared mounting the laying figure…

Things were starting to fall on their places. I love to play with shadows and the tension they can give (4 and 5).

I gave up the idea of a bright painting and in my over enthusiasm was left with a solid but too monochrome canvas (6: thinking about Mies’ credo: ‘less is more’).

I left it alone for a week and then gave it the last and decicive kick.

Here it is: 'AU SUIVANT'!

click on the image to go to the image on the site to see more details. text continues under image.

The name I stole from the chanson of Jacques Brel. I do not like to explain the meaning of the painting, just read the text of the video…

(This also because a painting 'happens to me' if all goes well, so I do not like to then direct it somewhere I want. I don't give a moral, I show).

We (a group of 5 painters) are talking about organizing a show. In the discussion about how to attract a large crowd, I suggested to have a nude model we could paint during the opening. Three painters are women, so I said, why not take a male and a female model.

I know what I am talking about. In 1998 I made sketches of a nude model during the opening of the galleries of the Spiegelkwartier in Amsterdam. It was a big success.

One of the 5 painters, if I am not mistaken, found it a banal idea. Is it? And who or what is banal? The one who tries to make a beautiful drawing of a beautiful subject, or the person who only comes to see a nude girl/boy?

Ok, you may attract a big crowd and many might just be exited because there is a naked person to be seen, but let’s leave that aside… Making a great drawing can never be banal. All this made me think of painting nudes.

Matisse loved to paint nudes.

What has often wondered me is how people look at his odalisques. He is considered the artist of pleasant images: flowers, intimate family life in bright colors and nude women. All fine with me, but those odalisques…

What was the life of an odalisque about? Weren’t they slaves? Held imprisoned and raped by califs? What was Matisse after, painting women like that?

In 1914 the suffragette Mary Richardson attacked the Rockeby Venus of Velazquez in the National Gallery in London with a meat cleaver out of protest (click on Mary Richardson to read more about her action).

Why hasn’t any feminist destroyed some odalisques of Matisse? In Matisse' case we really talk about the visualization of exploitation of women, not with the Venus of Velazquez. You should choose the right subject...

What to do...as a heterosexual male I do confess; I prefer to paint beautiful naked women over rotten potatoes.

this time I chose a sexy music video, have fun!

Soon it will be Easter. This blog is about the Pietà I made for the Gesù Redentore (church) in Modena, Italy.

I often talk more about the way I paint than what I paint.

This time tough, the message of the painting is of fundamental importance.

Don Marco (then the priest of the parish) insisted on the work to give a positive message. How can one give a positive twist to a Pietà? In the end I found a way.

I had decided to paint a triptych and this gave me the possibility to solve the problem.

I will concentrate on Mary and Jesus.

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The Pietà shows the mourning of Mary over her dead son.

Instead of going for the usual image of Mary having her son on her lap, I chose for the moment just before. Mary walks towards Jesus with her arms open. Jesus sits in the crucifixion position. All came together here.

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A painting is a poetic interpretation of an idea and mine is here:

Mary is the mother of God and all Christians. The time between the death of Jesus and his resurrection one could see as the period that she is pregnant of Christianity.

Jesus blesses the womb of Mary.

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Her face in the shadow shows her mourning. This takes place in the present, but her womb catches the first rays of the birth of Christianity. Voilà... 

Have a great Easter!

The video? 

IL VANGELO SECONDO MATTEO (trailor)

Pier Paolo Pasolini

For me one of the greatest geniuses of cinema.

I feel a fortunate person. I must have met Anna in 1985. For me she was the personification of what she did, an art restorer. She died a year ago, far too young.

With this blog I hope I can preserve the memory of her, ‘to restore her’, bring her to the present.  

She was the director of the 'Istituto Supreriore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro'. She was like an ocean of knowledge.

Thanks to her I got to see the most astonishing artworks from very nearby. 

And she bought work of mine; lecturing me that I had used the wrong materials… 

Amongst the wonders I saw:

The statue of Marco Aurelio while being restored. 

The Foro Romano in the snow

The Santa Maria Antiqua church frescos (it astonished me that the clothes of the person were almost painted in an impressionist way. There you go, Vasari!!! Before the Romanesque period they knew how to paint naturalistic!)

Tiziano's Amore Sacro e Profano * (Anna showed me that the figure on the left is not sitting on the tomb but ‘floating’ in front of it).

*: click on the name to see a video about the painting. 

Carravaggio's Resurazione di Lazzaro *

*: click on the name to see a video about the restauration

And so many more great works... When I was in Rome I always visited her office or a ‘cantiere’. We talked about the works from the different points of view, she as a preserver, me as a painter.

There was more.

She gave me the recipe of bucatini alle sarde and that wonderful very easy to make spaghetti with pecorino stagionato, lots of olive oil and black pepper…

In 2010 I tried to get my project 'Art Hysteria' * off ground. Anna liked it very much (*click on the name and you will see the sketch of the project I made for her with two works she restaured.... Which paintings did I quote?).

We went to the Palazzo Barberini to talk to the director about the project as a possible aid for children to get better introduced to the arts. I still belief it could be a great way to make children really look at art, but as with so many of these initiatives, the times are against it. 

In the palazzo Barberini I saw the Pietro da Cortona fresco with her that I talked about in the last blog… (click on the word grey 'blog' to go to the blog).

When we walked through the garden the trees were blossoming. It is there that I decided to paint flowers.

Rome will never be the same again. 

Let’s go back to the period when the Camera Obscura was a magical aid for painters. Let’s go back to the late Renaissance and Baroque. 

When we look at the paintings with masses of people and animals, we do not realize that these were considered the plus ultra. It is only logical, if you think that those scenes could not be performed in front of a Camera Obscura.

Here is one of the last treasures Anna Marcone ‘gave’ me (click on her name to know more about her, I will dedicate a blog about her soon). She passed away just over a year ago. Maybe that is why I have been thinking much about her these days...

Thanks to her I saw the fresco on the ceiling of palazzo Barberini by Pietro da Cortona… I laid there on a couch for I don’t know how long looking up… To think this painting was made by painters laying on their backs painting in the wet stucco…

Another example? Here is a documentary about how Michelangelo worked. Click on his name to see it. No wonder he was not too happy about painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

With the means we have now, practically all is possible. And even moving!

Ok, you need some money and a crew. But then artists had quite a crew as well. Me, I work alone… Don't expect from me stuff like the video below...

A thing hardly anybody pays attention to, is that in the period before the Renaissance painters were not interested in painting realistic imagery. It was actually sort of forbidden. In the Middle-Ages art was totally conditioned by the following religious idea: the human body was the temple given to men by God and so to recreate a truthful image of it was competing with God. Images of human beings only helped people to understand who the saints were one preached about in the church. Most people could not read.

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Saint Peter to Saint Marc: 'I want that book!'

Only when the idea of a nature that could be manipulated, was given to men by God to explore, the interest in reproducing the world in a realistic became desirable. I think that is why only in 1420 technical means were being used to make realistic images.

Our idea of art history is still very much conditioned by Vasari’s book of the lives of the artists (Vasari was a contemporary of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. He hoped that by describing the lives of famous artists the high quality or the arts could be preserved).

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This has changed now. Our ideas about religion, the place of God in our lives is very different. We hang very much on reason and photography has become a common presence. This influences the way we look art much. Could this have as a result our appreciation of the cold, empty and technical mass-produced works of somebody like Andy Warhol?

I keep on talking about the essence of art lying outside reason. I belief that an artists should always try to improve his craftsmanship. Only through studying hard, chance exists for the mystery to creep in the piece of art one is creating at that moment. Often more by accident than by forcing it.

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'The worst of the worst is still to come.'

Part of the studying is to integrate the use of photography as a means.

Photos can help you when you paint. For years I avoided them, but then I read two books... 

These are two of the most important contemporary books about painting without a shadow of a doubt: ‘Secret Knowledge’ by David Hockney and Philip Steadman’s ‘Vermeer’s Camera’. The books deal with the use of technical means for painting. They talk about the Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida and show that since centuries (long before the projecting of slides on canvasses) artists have used these or similar means to paint in a realistic way.

Artists are often being judged on if they can draw well without the help of such means. These books throw everything upside down.

And then there was the documentary: 'Tim's Vermeer'... (click on the name to go to the trailor).

My education has been about how to draw without these means and to concentrate on depth and more. For the last two items see blog: 7-12-2015: WHY I PAINT BULLS.

I have been very lucky. Why?

Without this battle of years to create space on a flat canvas and having to put all seen in a specific painterly handwriting, I can now use photos as a tool without them overwhelming or dictating me.

‘Only strong legs can carry the weight of luxury‘ is a Dutch saying.

Photorealistic paintings have never interested me, because I find no real challenge in them. One fundamental difference is being neglacted, when painting like a camera: we have two eyes instead of one!

I agree with Picasso when he said that photography has liberated arts from the dictatorship of realistic painting (loosely quoted).

No doubt the explosion of all the different styles like Impressionism, Expressionism, Nubis and Cubism happened in a period when photography became accessible for the big public. Painters just had to come up with a new trick to show that painting is not the same as photography.

P.S.:

I think it is probable that we can go back a lot further with the use of technical means like projection than 1420. A memory I have as a little child:

It is summer; I lay in bed with the curtains closed. Outside it is still light. Between the wall and the curtains there is a narrow strip of light projected on the bedroom ceiling above the curtains. I watch the vague reflections of the cars pass by projected on the ceiling. This is the principle of the camera obscura. The Greek or Romans must have discovered that same effect and curious of representing realistic imagery, they must have made some or other use of it.

I don’t have much time to paint and so this blog is about painting.

Painting with long brushes!

I started to use them in the 80’s after having seen the photo of Matisse drawing. I tried to draw with sticks of a similar length. It does not work for me. With sticks that long all becomes casual. Matisse must have had the strength of a bear. Or maybe he did not mind losing control.

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I heard Velázquez used long brushes too… I have not found proof. Google could not help me. But if my memory still works (turpentine does bad things to the brain), I could buy long brushes named after him in Amsterdam. They were expensive! I solved this by taping sticks to the brushes. Like that I could also find the ideal balance. Balance and length have to do with each other.

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Seeing Velázquez’ ‘Las Meninas’, I wonder how he could paint the top of the canvas with the brushes he holds in his hands.

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I used a table to stand on for several works for the church. Even with long brushes. There were practical problems to be solved. In the lecture I give at the opening I will tell about many, many more.

Not only did I encounter practical problems working on these big size works.

Nat Neujean, a sculptor I met in Italy, told me about the changing of proportions, when one paints a human figure more than life size. 

 (click on his name to go to his site in a new window).

And the handwriting becomes different working big.

I still feel nostalgic about painting the works for the church. I could concentrate fully on my work. It took me 2 years to finish them.

(click on image to open image of Pietà on the site in a new window and text continues under image)

Nowadays I hardly use big brushes anymore. I just walk back and forth to get a good overview. It is good for my physical condition. Unfortunately I don’t paint big canvasses very often.

In the video you see me use them.