Mil Ceulemans / Eugène Leroy

Eugène Leroy

Nature morte au pot

ca. 1955

oil on canvas

I chose a work by Eugène Leroy. His quest for color and matter is still very relevant to me (as with a Frank Auerbach or Philip Guston). They are loners who made unique statements. Rather than starting from concepts they started from an inner necessity and a large sense of plasticity.
Of course everything I say is just projection, but you almost feel the loneliness of the painter in front of his canvas. A human whose efforts are ultimately futile but who -despite everything- still makes something thoroughly essential.

Mil Ceulemans, 2013

Mil Ceulemans (BE)

Exception regime

2009-2011

oil, acrylics & spray paint on canvas

50 x 40 cm

www.mrcs.be

Bettie van Haaster / Giotto

Giotto Di Bondone                  

St Francis offers his mantle to a poor man

Upper Church of San Fransesco, Assisi, Italy   

1290-1295 
fresco

Giotto.

Because he is the very first painter I saw in reality which took my breath away. This was in the Scrovegni chapel at Padova, Italy. 

Even so I chose a painting from the Church of St Francis in Assisi, because in this image it’s even more clear how every part of the image works together to envisage the emotion.

It’s one of the scenes of the life of St Francis in the Upper Church in Assisi. In a sequence of 28 panels his life is depicted as told by Bonaventure in 1293. 

This panel shows St Francis offering his mantle to a poor man. The landscape, the sky and the figures all shape up the puzzle called life. All elements in the image are shown in a parallel plane; the gesture of giving is both an image and a story told.

You could call the life of St Francis examplary for the art of Giotto: in all images there is balance of space and shapes which are equal in weight and importance, and in which every detail is part of the bigger miracle.

Of which St Francis speaks as brother sun and sister moon and all our brothers and sisters: sky, clouds, birds, plants, grass and light.

Bettie van Haaster, 2013

Bettie van Haaster (NL) 

Zeilen 

2011 

oil on canvas 

35 x 25 cm  

Sarah Verbeek / Forrest Bess

 

Forrest Bess

Untitled, No. 18

1952

oil on canvas

19 x 26,5 cm

Forrest Bess

The Crowded Mind

1947

oil on canvas
25,4 x 29,8 cm

Sarah Verbeek (NL) (

Z.T.

2012

oil on canvas

50 x 65 cm

www.sarahverbeek.com

Katrien De Blauwer / Sergey Eisenstein

 

Sergey Eisenstein

film Battleship Potemkin

The Odessa Steps Sequence

1925

Eisenstein believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual images. Two or more images edited together create a "tertium quid" (third thing) that makes the whole greater than the sum of its individual parts.
http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/montage/montage-1.html 

Katrien De Blauwer (BE)

Sehnsucht (6) 
2012

found materials

11 x 16 cm 

www.katriendeblauwer.com 

Marc Mulders / Rembrandt

Rembrandt 

The Slaughtered Ox    

1655

oil on canvas 

94 x 69 cm

Neben dem Geschlachteten Ochsen zog Marc Mulders auch noch einige weitere Vorbilder Rembrandts für seine Werke heran, die alle mit dem Thema Tod zu tun haben, darunter Selbstmord der Lukretia von 1664 sowie Selbstporträt mit toter Rohrdommel von ca.1639. Auch von einigen Radierungen war er begeistert, darunter die Drei Kreuze und Ecce Homo.463 Eine intensive Auseinandersetzung fand zudem mit der Anatomie des Dr. Deyman (Abb. 30) von 1656 statt, welche Mulders einige Male als Vorbild für seine eigenen Gemälde heranzog.464 Wie im einleitenden Teil von Kapitel 5 beschrieben, diente ein toter menschlicher Körper, der bei einer Anatomievorführung seziert wurde, nicht nur der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, sondern fungierte darüber hinaus auch als Äquivalent zu traditionellen vanitas-Symbolen in der Kunst und somit als „reales“ memento mori. Insofern kann auch die Leiche in Rembrandts Anatomie des Dr. Deyman in diesem Sinne aufgefasst werden und als solches wird auch Mulders diese verstanden haben.

Alexandra Buchmann, 'Zwischen Emulation und Destruktion', Keulen 2012

Marc Mulders (NL)

Geslachte os naar Rembrandt

1989

oil on canvas

80 x 70 cm

www.marcmulders.com

Thomas Bogaert / JCJ Vanderheyden

JCJ Vanderheyden
Bhutan
2004
photo on canvas


Near the sea, in the mountains or in the woods I seem to forget that there is a world of art, nor do I miss it.
JCJ Vanderheyden

Thomas Bogaert (BE)
Mountain with one car inside
2010
film still and resin on canvas 
40 x 50 x 3 cm
www.thomasbogaert.com

Attila Szűcs / Istvan Farkas

Istvan Farkas 

Woman with glove (portrait of countess Zay) 

1931  

oil on linen

100 x 80 cm

Transparent
It seems to him as if behind the images there is  another one
Or the images flow from one another
Then the world is nothing but an illusion of semi-transparent images
It frightens him
He watches the crosstalk 
But calmed by the endless waves of imageocean 
He is focused and unfocused at the same time
While watching the  monotonous disappearance 
That’s why he is melancholic
Pathos isn’t allowed 
Attila Szűcs, Budapest, 2013-01-31

Attila Szűcs (HU)

Pulling gloves

2011  

oil on canvas

100 x 120 cm

www.szucsattila.hu