Nothing But Good: May 2015

Monday, 25 May 2015

Uwe Poth / Hieronymus Bosch

Hieronymus Bosch

The Tree-Man

ca.1503-1506

pen and brown ink on paper

27,7 x 21,1 cm

Albertina, Vienna

In the centre of the portrait-format sheet, a tree-man rises above a river. His egg-shaped body, covered in part with bark and/or feathers, supports itself on two crooked, partly hollow tree trunks that at the same time resemble arms, and which are standing in boats as if they were shoes. His head, which is turned back over one shoulder towards the viewer, is crowned by a flat disc carrying an enormous jug. They include at least two men and a woman, and one or two other people. A flag with a crescent moon flies from a long slanting pole, recalling an inn sign. Higher up, an owl perches in the leafless crown of the tree that rises skywards from the giant's left foot. The plants motifs in the drawing can be summed up in terms of 'flourishing/living' versus 'dying'. Near a tall, slender tree in the lower left corner a deer is poised on the sloping bank, opposite a stork standing on one leg on the right. Birds are flying around the middle ground and mobbing an owl on the right. In the background, beneath banks of clouds, a harbour with a large number of boats extends along the irregular shoreline, and several villages or small towns are clustered around church spires.

F. Koreny for Albertina Vienna, inv.no. 7876, 1967

Uwe Poth (DE/NL)

Branchings -Vertakkingen–

2008

oilpaint on photocanvas

210 cm x 130 cm

http://uwepoth.com

The philosophical tree–man + the 3 graces here and now, in the terrestrial world, connecting the 'higher place' (heaven) and the 'low places' (the underworld). A symbol of the reconciliation from contradistinctions.

Uwe Poth, 2015

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Maarten van Soest / Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Mont Sainte-Victoire

ca 1905

oil on canvas

60 x 72 cm

Paul Cézanne was one of the most innovative artists I have ever seen. His own unique style emerged from impressionism, his sensitive touch and beautiful color palette are of a rare quality.

My admiration started at an early age, since the first time I saw his painting 'Mont Sainte-Victoire', ca 1905. This painting had a big impression on me, this was partly because of the amazing colors, but mostly it was the abstraction of the landscape, this was beyond my imagination at that time. The mountain on this painting will become his inspiration and obsession and ultimately his death.

Cézanne painted this when he was 66 years old and he died a year later. He was caught in a storm while he was painting on this mountain. Because of his obsession with paining and this mountain he stayed there to finish the painting, after two hours he decided to go home. On his way back he collapsed and was found hours later, he suffered from hypothermia. The next day he wanted to go back to finish his painting, but half way up the mountain he lost his consciousness. They brought him back to his bed and he never left that bed again. He died a couple of days later.

With the story of his death in the back of my head, it seems to me that Cézanne already painted the storm that would kill him a year later. The dark sky that slowly tries to take over the landscape and wants to swallow the painting. But still there are some sunbeams that cut through the dark sky as if they try to say that there is still a strong force that will try to beat this heavy storm. Unfortunately we know that that force wasn't strong enough.

Years later, when I became a student at the art academy I realized that my own obsession with

abstract art started with this painting by Cézanne. Of course this is still more or less a figurative

painting, but it's far off from being a realistic view of the mountain. Later, after painting merely

pure abstract paintings, I started to incorporate figurative representations of things drawn from the

real world, things like tape and bubble-wrap, in order to make abstract paintings that play with the

associative character of the human brain. This is actually the mirror image of what Cézanne did

when he incorporated abstraction in his paintings, trying to come closer to the expreience of what you

see rather than being just another representation of what already exists.

Maarten van Soest, 2015

'I wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something else'.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)