Florette Dijkstra / Henri Beyle

 

Stendhal

Pages from Het leven van Henry Brulard (The Life of Henry Brulard)

1980

Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij

translation: C.N. Lijsen

 

 

The French writer Henri Beyle (1783-1842) became known as Stendhal, but used even more pseudonyms during his lifetime, such as Henry Brulard. His book 'The Life of Henry Brulard' (written in 1835-1836, but published much later, in 1890) is a pseudo-autobiography in which Beyle describes his life in great detail. He substantiates his text with maps and all kinds of notes to make the story even more credible. Beyle wrote bare and dry, without using fancy words, because they would only distract from reality. The sole purpose of his writing was to gain self-awareness and understand the meaning of his life. Beyle's realistic writing was not really understood by his contemporaries, except by a few other writers, such as Balzac. 

Beyle's goal-oriented, almost businesslike approach, which was necessary to dissect his own life and understand his actions, moves me. If you engage in such a search, you can actually always continue, because everything you discover offers room for further research. I can imagine that Beyle found more and more data while writing and drawing, making the search endless. Fortunately, he regularly collected his discoveries in the form of books – novels or whatever you should call them. Regrettably they were hardly read. 

My projects often also arise from quests: usually for the work and life of forgotten people. Making drawings helps me to visualize a piece of history or a story and thus to say something about it. In some projects I look back at my own work and try to discover the logic of what I did: does my graduation work has anything to do with what I am doing now? Can I bring back together the paintings I have made and sold by drawing them all? Perhaps it is a desire to keep seeing the drifting, fragmenting life as a natural whole. But perhaps by drawing about it, I always put a layer over reality and get a little further away from it. 

Florette Dijkstra, 2020

Florette Dijkstra

Eindexamenwerk hernomen als tekeningen (Graduation work resumed as drawings)

2018 

pencil on paper

30 x 20 cm (11x)

Florette Dijkstra (NL)

Schilderijen hernomen als tekeningen (Paintings resumed as drawings)

2019-2020 (selection)

pencil on paper

www.florettedijkstra.nl

rk

Femke Dekkers / Paul Cézanne

 

Paul Cézanne

The House of the Hanged Man 

1873

oil on canvas

55 x 66 cm

Musée d'Orsay

 

 

 

One of the things that attract me to the work of Paul Cézanne is the flattening of the pictorial space. 'The House of the Hanged Man' is hard to 'enter' as a viewer, as you bump straight away into walls of paint. "Cézanne organized the picture like stage wings in depth, the horizon high and he indicated the distance through the gradual lightening of the blue. He levels, however, the effect of depth with the sun-lit parts and so largely neutralizes the distance of the various grounds".  

 

Femke Dekkers, 2020

Femke Dekkers (NL)

studio situation (work in progress)

2020 

studio Haagweg Breda (NL)

www.femkedekkers.nl

rk

Phillip Allen / Frans Hals

 

Frans Hals

Banquet of the officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard

1627

oil on canvas

183 x 266,5 cm

Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem NL

 

 

For a number of years now I've been fascinated by Frans Hals collective portraits of Civic Guards etc. These pictorial slices of society I find formally fascinating and never tire looking at them.

 

Phillip Allen, 2020

Phillip Allen (UK)

Deepdrippings (Solar quiet version)

2016

oil on board

153 x 122 cm

www.phillipallenartist.com 

rvv

Michel Hoogervorst / Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

Interior at Paddington 

1951

oil on canvas

152,4 x 114,3 cm

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK

 

 

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real. 

Lucian Freud

 

This painting of Lucian Freud intrigued me when I was young, his whole oeuvre still does.

Michel Hoogervorst, 2020

 

Michel Hoogervorst (NL)

Untitled 

2020

acrylic and fineliner on canvas

220 x 160 cm

www.michelhoogervorst.nl

rk

Marjolein Landman / Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg 

Kite
1963
oil and silkscreen ink on canvas
213,4 x 152,4 cm
The Sonnabend Collection 

Robert Rauschenberg 

Flush
1964
oil and silkscreen ink on canvas
243,8 x 182,9 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art 

Robert Rauschenberg has had an important influence on me as an artist. His history in abstract expressionism, which is strongly reflected in his assemblages, his image construction full of hard cuts and graphic elements, as well as his pop art mentality, are things that I feel very much related to. In addition, he has a breathtaking sense of color and his work always has the right dose of swagger and energy.

Marjolein Landman, 2020

Marjolein Landman
Gill
2019
acrylic, spray paint and oilstick on canvas
220 x 165 cm

Marjolein Landman
Galifo
2020
acrylic, spray paint on canvas
180 x 160 cm 

Marjolein Landman (NL)

work in progress

2020 

www.marjoleinlandman.nl

rk

John Robinson / Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Melancholia 1

1514

24 x 18,5 cm

engraving

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

I have selected the artwork 'Melancholia 1' by Albrecht Dürer. So much has been written about the symbolism and all that stuff, loads of interpretations, loads of works satirizing it too. I think what I liked about this picture - always the keystone for me - was that it looks like a painting made on a planet orbiting a star in a galaxy far far away. I know it's an engraving, that's not the point. In my brain this image lives its own private life. There is so much to forget in the picture, the props, the positions of the objects and so forth. When I'm not looking at it, it lives on in my subconscious, offering all sorts of new images. I love this little engraving because it is a seed constantly spitting out misinterpretations. 

It's always really problematic to use language to ensnare gorgeous enigmas like this picture. So I won't even bother to interpret it with my pithy language skills. 

Like most humans living in the early 21st century my brain doesn't work well. I don't respond to stress well. I'm a terrible partner and friend. I lie to my therapist and feel alienated from an art world which feels like a luxury commodity market. I don't feel like I belong here and often don't want to be bothered while I stay in bed. Robert Burton would probably say that I'm suffering from an imbalance of the humours, a melancholy, by 17th century standards anyway. There are a few images that keep me tethered to life though, especially this one. It is the central gravitational point of the private life of the mind. That great stone with the skull subtly etched into the surface after the angel has spent the whole fucking day making it perfect, makes me feel better about screwing up yet another painting. 

Someone said it was Dürer's spiritual self portrait. I guess he is in drag then, I like that. Maybe it's Dürer's alter ego from that other galaxy, but whatever it is, it seems the closest image of depression - a very exultant life affirming misery full of comets and intensity. My work tries to do that and, like the angel and her downed tools, I manage to fuck things up royally most of the time. This is perhaps what's beautiful now - the misinterpreted life of the mind. 

John Robinson, 2020

John Robinson (UK)

I love you I'm sorry (Te Quiero Lo Siento) 

2016

40 x 50 cm

oil on canvas

www.instagram.com/johnrobinsonpainter
rvv

Anita Groener / Anni Albers

Anni Albers
Drawing from a notebook

not dated
pencil on paper
25,4 × 20 cm
Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, CT, USA

Anni Albers 

Notebook 1970-1980

Publisher: David Zwirner Books

Anni Albers

Typewriter drawing

not dated

Anni Albers

Letter

1980

colour silkscreen

25,5 x 25,5 cm

Thinking and the process of making are deeply connected in Anni Albers work through a profound understanding of materials and techniques. Drawing was vital in her work but was never performed as preliminary sketches for weaving. Through drawing ideas are born. Inception equals promise, it is a territory full of vital potential that fuels the process of becoming [something else]. Like early mornings in the studio. Beginnings signify tentative arrangements, explorative boundaries, open developments, connecting possibilities. 

The connection for me, as an artist, is foremost with Anni’s drawings, with the trajectory of the delicate lines and shapes quavering and pondering across the surface, surging through the artist’s rules and process of control in order to find ultimate harmony and balance. The image, the composition, the whole, an optical, unique and timeless universe, a collection of primary marks, dots and lines, is repeatedly more than its constituent parts. Yet, each fragment retains its own identity, is vibrant and alive. Visually striking, the intricate and exquisite patterns in Anni’s work are idiosyncratic.

The intergenerational relationship between her visual language and mine, especially in the use of lines, points and grids was reaffirmed when I saw her inspirational drawings in the flesh in the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut. It was a privilege to have been given access to the archive of Anni’s drawings in 2010 while working there as an artist in residence. From time to time, on and off but always on cue, Anni Albers’ work endures, she is one of those artists that keep on nurturing me in the studio.

Anita Groener, 2020

Anita Groener

Tolerance

2011

collage on paper

57 x 76,5 cm

Anita Groener

Sketchbook drawing 

2017

10 x 15 cm

Anita Groener (NL/IE)

I Have Spread My Dreams Under Your Feet

2017

polymer gouache on archer paper

57 x 76,5 cm

https://anitagroener.com

rk