Anthony Cudahy / Ingmar Bergman

 

Ingmar Bergman

film Persona

1966

Anthony Cudahy (US)

Untitled

Oil on Canvas

35,6 x 48,3 cm

www.anthonycudahy.com

I think I could turn myself into you. If I made a real effort. I mean inside. You could turn yourself into me just like that.

From film Persona 

Toon Teeken / Broodthaers-El Greco-Van der Weyden

Marcel Broodthaers

Langage de fleurs

1965

wood, paint, plastic

30 cm diameter

El Greco

Laocoön

1608-1614

oil on linen

142 x 193 cm

Rogier van der Weyden

Deposition

ca. 1435-1440

oil on oak panel

220 x 262 cm

In the course of time I have been influenced by different artists from different disciplines: El Greco, Giacometti, Manet, Bonnard, Carpaccio, all the Italian Renaissance, Pierre Boulez, De Chirico, Rothko, Elliott Carter, Hanne Darboven, Teresa de Keersemaeker, Rogier van der Weyden, Monteverdi, Marcel Proust, Marcel Broodthaers, Helmut Lachenmann and many others. I deliberately do not mention them in chronological order. Besides philosophy, my travels in West Afrika, a lot of contemporary music and the daily practice of life, especially El Greco and Marcel Broodthaers have been decisive. From the latter I saw a retrospective in Brussels and there I recognized language as image and image as language. Language as unlimited generator of meaning that also swallows up meaning. Maybe I also saw that very early in El Greco, whose free hand of painting makes the picture appear as readable calligraphy in an abstract, relatively flat space. Early on I called him the first cubist. But I guess the best work I've ever seen is the Deposition by Rogier van der Weyden at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Toon Teeken 2013

 

Toon Teeken (NL)

Being a statue

2011

oil on linen

160 x 200 cm

www.toonteeken.com

Simon Schrikker / Herman Kruyder

Herman Kruyder
De Hond
1934
oil on linen
110 x 122 cm


Despite the rather stylized way of painting it has a raw edge. This could of course be related to the psychological state of the painter. One year after making this painting the painter dies as a result of a previous suicide attempt. Of course, you do not need to know this as a viewer. I think it's a very exciting, dark painting, even without knowing this story. The colors, the bone, the dog with a rope around his neck and his genitals visible to the viewer take you back to the farmyard where Herman and his wife lived in isolation. Over the years I often have been looking at this painting in the Boijmans.

Of course my work is not a literal copy of this work, and as an artist I have many examples. Too much to list here. At the academy I wasn't occupied with figurative painting. In fact I was more interested in paint and its functioning. I still love that, I can sit in my studio for days muddling with paint without anything solid coming out. When I came up with a painting of a deer in a swamp of paint during my follow-up study, it was Emo Verkerk who pointed me to this work of Herman Kruyder. Spontaneously I changed the deer into a Rotweiller. I have the feeling that figurative painting is somewhat out of favour lately. One critic recently called it 'Deer Art'. However, using the subject-matter of the dog, I still think it's very exciting time and time again to seek this specific point where something unexpected happens, with the image, the technique and of course with the viewer. 

Simon Schrikker 2013

Simon Schrikker
untitled
2010
oil on linen
210 x 250 cm
www.simonschrikker.com

Rinus Van de Velde / Ellsworth Kelly

Rinus Van de Velde (BE)
Self-portrait as a young Ellsworth Kelly
2012
charcoal on canvas
270 x 360 cm
rinusvandevelde.com


What you see in this drawing is not me drawing the drawing you are looking at, as you, meta-minded as you probably are, might believe. It is me drawing number 516 of what will be an infinite series of plant studies, a project in which I’m trying to forget the tradition I am part of to enter a realm of pure form. I have surrounded myself with plants and plants only, and I will take care of them until they overgrow me and my language, until there will be nothing but charcoal lines drawn by an automatic hand that doesn’t belong to me anymore. I will live in a world where drawing and nature are the same thing and meta is dead.
Rinus Van de Velde

Seet van Hout / Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke

Chinesisches Meer

1983

violet pigment, synthetic enamel on canvas

180 x 150 cm

Nicht allein dass er Materialien kombiniert, die für ihn in dieser Mischung bislang unerprobt sind: Bleimennige als Untermalung, violettes Pigment und Öl; er traktiert sie auch derart, dass die Grenzen des Kontrollierbaren bewusst überschritten werden. In dieser Weise wird der Zufall erneut eingespielt.

Martin Hentschel – Katalog : Sigmar Polke, Die drei Lügen der Malerei

Not just that he combined materials in mixtures that he had never tried before: red lead underpainting, violet pigment and oil paint: in addition he now also maltreated them to the extent that he consciously overstepped the limits of control. Thus chance was again incorporated into the works.

Martin Hentschel - Catalogue: Sigmar Polke, The Three Lies of Painting

 

Seet van Hout (NL) 

Black Iris

2013

acrylic and embroidery on canvas

200 x 150 cm

www.nouvellesimages.nl

Lisa Couwenbergh / Hugo van der Goes

Hugo van der Goes

Portinari Triptych

1475

oil on panel

253 x 586 cm

Hugo van der Goes

Portinari Triptych

detail (right panel)

Hugo van der Goes is one of my favorite painters, as well as Rogier van der Weyden, Max Beckmann, Hans Memling, Lucien Freud, Ferdinand Hodler, Dirk Bouts, Grünewald, El Greco, Ghirlandaio, Lucas Cranach, Mantegna, Holbein, Philips Koninck, Fouquet, Clara Peeters, Zurbarán, Giorgio de Chirico, Vermeer, Mondrian, Fra Angelico, Caspar David Friedrich, Philip Guston, Georf Flegel, Balthasar van der Ast, etc, etc.

 
On the side panel of the Portinari Triptych by Hugo van der Goes in the Uffizi in Florence, you see the saints Margaret and Mary Magdalene. Smaller portrayed are Maria Portinari, the wife of the one who commissioned the triptych, with her daughter Margaret. Between mother and daughter, a huge monster emerges. Curiously enough, in most descriptions of the painting that monster is not noticed. It looks much like a toad. Toads were granted magical powers. St Margaret would have been swallowed by a monster and then spewed out again. That symbolizes the power of overcoming the darkness of the subconscious.
 
My painting 'The Cabinet' is also populated with monsters. They have no symbolic meaning, but they arose while painting, from the subconscious.

Lisa Couwenbergh, 2013

Lisa Couwenbergh (NL)
The Cabinet
2012
acrylic on canvas
260 x 235 cm
www.lisacouwenbergh.com

Gideon Rubin / Manet

Manet

Olympia

1863

oil on canvas

130,5 x 190 cm

"...you would hardly believe, my dear fellow, how difficult it is to clap a solitary figure on a canvas and to concentrate the entire interest on that one solitary figure without it ceasing to be lively and full" 

Manet in a letter to Proust, 1880

Gideon Rubin (IL/UK)

Untitled (Yellow Bed)

2012

oil on linen

30 x 35 cm

www.gideonrubin.com