It is one of my all time favorite stories. Maybe it is a lie, but who cares.

The great Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai * was 94 years old and dying. He was furious; according to his calculations he still needed 11 years of hard study to be able to make the perfect print. I feel the same.

No worries, I am not dead yet. I have only been painting professionally for about 40 years, so there is still a long road to walk down. One is never too old to learn.

A new window has opened today. A fresh wind blows over my old vineyard.

Painting: seduce chance to perfection a totally controlled work. I am on my way once again…

*: if I am not mistaken his name meant: mad artist.

IMAGES: a cursing old man (sorry, Great Mad Master), the Mountain and a sketch by the Great Mad Master, a painting underway and a happy and slightly infuriated painter.

Lately I have picked landscape painting up again. Why? Apart from the true answer (= I don’t know), there are possible reasons:

• I was deeply impressed by the Turner exhibition in London. It gave me appetite to make some myself.
• I was commissioned a seascape and once I picked up the theme, I wanted to continue.
• I am very interested in creating false depth (the canvas is flat).
• By eliminating a dramatic subject (human being), I can concentrate better on light.

Let’s name some other landscape painters. As I said, I was deeply impressed by the late landscapes of Turner. But there are many more that have been an inspiration for many years: Hercules Seghers, Philips Koninck, Hendrik Weissenbruch, J. H. van Mastenbroek, Monet, Emil Nolde. Just to name a few…

So why then still paint new landscapes, when there are already so many that I like?

Since a couple of weeks we have a young cat. Sometimes the animal drives me crazy. I have to shut her in the kitchen when I work. She is always around me, wants to know what I am doing. I have to avoid her jumping on the palette, grab for my brushes or just sit behind my feet.

I must be gifted with the same kind of irritable characteristic. I want to copy (= learn), interpret and paint my version… I have this desire to make things, not just to observe.

I made 'Black Rain'... 

I love the protest against Renoir (see attachment below: artnet: scroll it down). Not because I am not a big fan of Renoirs late paintings. But because I love that these people do not seem to care about market values or reputations.

In a time where so much seems to be about these two items and not if a work is painted well or a subject has been approached from an interesting angle, it is like a fresh wind blown through a stinking stable. The sad thing is that much of the discussion has slided towards the wrong side, namely just sensation.

In Renoir’s days photography took over a way of representing the real world, so artists were (thankfully) forced to give their works a painterly interesting twist. The explosion of different styles as Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauve, Nubis, and Cubism we can thank to the wide spreading of photography. But it does not mean that all that is not realistically painted is nice. And for me this is the case with the late works of Renoir.

I don’t care that he loved young girls with fat bottoms. As long as he painted them well! And ‘his girls’ look so much like flat sculpted cotton candy. (I realize that I might give some sculptor ideas about a new material. I have seen worse in the Stedelijk Museum (sculptures made out of washing powder)).

In the arts nobody is holy for me. This counts even for some Vermeers. If I would find one I don’t like on a flea market, not knowing it was made by him (so very expensive!!!), I would not buy for 10 euros… And the Renoir in the Courtauld is one I love…

(title of my sketch next to the Renoir: 'SHAKE BEFORE USE (CAREFULLY THOUGH)').

I love to see how others work. It makes me get off my horse and try to get on another one.

I remember changing paintings halfway with Els Janssens during art school classes. I made a total mess of her work. I was unable to enter her color scheme. She was an amazing talent. After the academy I left for Italy and when I came back three years later, she had vanished. Here you see Els (where are you?) and some of her sketches made centuries ago (Gerrit Rietveld Academie, 1980). Next to her: Diego, Giacometti's brother, copied by me. You can find him in one of my art history sketches. Which sketch is it? 

To make a bridge, Giacometti has been falsified many times, I guess. It is not as easy as Warhol (see my last blog and then under: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-VFhb-oxHU minute: 27.00-30.27), but still, a minimal sketch should not be too difficult.

In my sketch-blocks there must be a ‘Giacometti: Man with a Hard Penis’ somewhere or did I give that sketch to my dear friend Bea Meulman? 

Does an artist still need to be alive for making his artwork (did Andy Warhol miss a big chance)?

The question seems more ridiculous than it is.

Some time ago I stumbled on this article:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/09/10/usa-arttheft-california-idINKCN0RA2OI20150910

I had already prepared a blog about Warhol and this shows once more the value of his work as a ‘unique’ series of objects linked to him alone.

Andy Warhol showed that practically everything was worth being interpreted (soup cans, coca cola bottles and later; celebrities, fatal accidents and electric chairs). No worries over composition, color use and other. Technically, he embraced ‘mistakes’. Mass reproduction was essential. He was careful not to show any personal expression. All was gorgeous.

And more, it was of no importance that he made his own work. Probably quite often he did not sign it himself. Many ideas came from his assistants and could be endlessly copied, once made.

A machine can be remade, is not unique. Could it have been Warhol’s possible best ever move to have taken care of his work still being produced by his assistants after his death? I think it is a missed opportunity (and honestly I think there are still many ‘new Warhols’ made; it’s easy money). Out in the open this could have been his last and biggest contribution on how we think about art nowadays.

Let’s all make our own ‘original Warhols’! Everybody is an artist, everything is art.

Look at these five fragments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-VFhb-oxHU

Minute: 27.00 till 30.27.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnhqRiJ4KH8

Minute: 56.10 till 1.04.33.

Minute: 1.08.30 till 1.08.52.

Minute: 1.16.20 till 1.16.43

Minute: 2.28.50 till 2.30.12

In the north many have come back from vacation, schools have started. Here in Spain we happily go on till the beginning or even half of September. So I start with a ‘sunny’ blog.

I love this article. It is fun and gives hope for the old fashioned artist. The one who still wants to make art, not in supermarket quantities and not without technical depth. Food for thought...

About number 6 of the statements: I worked from 1992 till 2008 on and off on the work ‘Setting Sun’…

Yesterday I made a self-portrait. It gives a chance to see how I look at myself. Or better, what I think of/feel about myself.

With my birthday coming up, I question if I will ever see myself as…

It is all in the eyes… I had a good look.

This is why they say that the eyes of the sculptures of  ‘Tell Asmar’ are so big (see image). They are considered to be the windows of the soul.

I kept mine smaller. I should not show too much soul?! Oh well…

It is a small portrait (see on the site: http://www.bertvanzelm.com/object?object=155 ).

I made it with the ‘uni posca markers’. It must have taken me about 12 years to have the markers do what I want. They are not really meant to be used in this way, I guess. I started to use them for making sketches on trips.

In the limitation lays the challenge. I am forced to stretch beyond reach.

All the ‘art history’ sketches are made with them. It unites all the in different styles painted 'originals'.

In the summer period I will not write blogs. Have a nice summer! And let’s meet again in September!

In the blog of June 10, 2015 I talked about what the essence of painting might be.

The question presented itself strongly, while painting mixed media sketches of Gala. Why is that…

Painting her means searching for an interpretation where all the many aspects of me towards her and painting find their place.

For some a totally black or white painted paper might work. Accompanied and explained by a philosophical deep underbuilt text. Something like, ‘…she is everything for me. No other color than black, or white can show the total importance of her existence, no brushstroke can compete with what I feel for her…’ and then some quote of Nietzsche or even better Wittgenstein (about the ladder and the uselessness of even trying to paint her)… Here it is again. It would not be a through paint realized emotion or/and idea, it would be an illustration of an idea with a text explaining all. As how the Dutch expression goes, ‘the child is thrown away with the water of the bathtub’.

I love and want to paint! The great thing about seeing the essence in an other way than going towards a monochrome canvas which is the end of painting, seeing it in this way, it is a continuous and never ending flow of challenges.

In every time period, there are many who think the end of times has arrived. Something fundamental has happened that ends all possibilities to go on. I don’t…

I often compare painting with swimming in a pool. Every once in a while, one touches a side, but that is not the essence of swimming. Touching a side makes you chose where to go to next, hanging on that side makes you stop swimming.

Can I swim? It must be quite an embarrassing sight, the way I move my arms and legs, but still, I prefer that to hanging on a side.

Here is the latest of my sketches of Gala: http://www.bertvanzelm.com/object?object=152

On June 25, 2015 a bull sketch was auctioned. Why do I paint so many bulls?

I became fascinated with bulls thanks to the bullfights in Spain. It made me see the symbolic role that bulls have played all through our civilization for many centuries. This role goes back to the Egyptians and almost all other cultures up to quite recent times. Why?

As I said in the interview with Nicole Millar for the television channel of El Punt/Avui (minute 6.07-8.44), lions are of no use to us, but bulls are.

In circuses there have been shows with lions, tigers, elephants, horses, but never bulls… The bull is unpredictable. Once his mind is set on killing, no one can stop him. This has turned him into the symbol of the divine, unpredictable strength of nature and virility. He is a force to be dealt with.

We forget many symbols that were used in our society for centuries. After the industrial revolution, no king or queen can be put on a horse for a sculpture anymore…

By painting bulls, I reach into that area by giving an image to the divine and mystical side of our live again. Too much is being reasoned away and/or hidden. We often call that civilization; I question that.

We all search for how to lead a meaningful life.

Yet another Bush wants to become president of the USA, cut down taxes, create jobs, maybe find water in California and who knows, start a war somewhere to free some people from some dictator.

My aim is a lot smaller, also because I am not so convinced that I have the solutions for all these problems. For me the meaning lays in bringing a happy daughter to school, turn her into a balanced and positive person and make some canvases dirty in such a way, that it makes me and others happy when we look at them. And all this without damaging to many others…

I really belief in beauty, also beauty created by men. It helps us get through the day, go forward. See that not all is sad.

When I paint I always listen to music. Here is a song that I love and a sketch made after a painting I admire (seen last year with my happy daughter; self-portrait by Carel Fabritius). Paintings like these make me want to paint…