Painted pictures

compositions How I, a painter of today,
see lb Geertsen's art

Artikel bragt i bogen til udstillingen i Nikolai Udstillingsbygning, 2003

ISBN: 0-87-888-6080-9

 

lb Geertsen paints pictures that are in balance­ they consist of coloured, well‑demarcated, clear surfaces, as if they were made of pieces cut from sheets of coloured paper, laid, displaced and rotated relative to each other on the surface until a balance is obtained‑a carefully composed bal­ance. It becomes a classical balance between straight and curved and round forms on a square or rectangular field, depending on the form of the canvas (although it should be noted that Geertsen has also painted a few non‑rectangular paintings, for instance, as exhibited in "Linien II,” in 1948). Geertsen's earliest paintings lead our thoughts towards Immanuel Ibsen and, in particular, to a now almost‑forgotten painter, Borge L. Knudsen. An unsurprising facet of this is the thread that extends from Geertsen's early works to his later works, which strive to achieve the balance that these painters attained in their arrangements of pitchers, boxes, pipes, etc., by incessantly painting, filling, scraping and repainting*. But in contrast to Knudsen and Ibsen, Geertsen's later compositions are decided before they are painted. We can see that lines and the edges of areas have been sketched on the canvas in pencil, and that the sur­faces and fields are consequently rather uniform and anonymously filled in with colour. However, his paintings contain a hint of vitality which reveals that they are not simply enlarged or copied to size from carefully planned sketches. Geertsen's paintings are made on the canvas, despite the sketches and careful preparation**. When I ‑one of the younger painters of today­see them, Geertsen's paintings become pictures of the sheets of paper that bear his sketches. Geertsen's pictures are painted, and they become pictures of surfaces applied layer on layer, because the surfaces are not made of anything tangible, they are not made of paper cut‑outs, or tape, or coloured sheets of plastic or drawing pins. The paint is used to reproduce, not as a tangible mass, spread like asphalt on a road. It is not applied in layers‑as real layers of paint applied one on top of the other‑even though we might be tempted to think so from a distance. There is a significant difference between this tech­nique and the way in which younger generations paint today. For younger artists, who are working in an extension of the projects of Geertsen and others, their execution has another immediacy. If we want surfaces today, which (perhaps according to a precise composition) relate, rotate, shift in relation to each other, etc., we do it directly‑we use pieces of paper, we cut up plastic folders, we tape or pin them directly to the surface to give form and colour to the final work, without the least concern for the informality or banality of the materials. Why sketch and then paint an always imprecise line or surface, when a piece of coloured tape applied directly to the surface can give greater precision and still attain a tangible reality in place of the sketch's pictoriality?  And if we use paint today, we use it ”concretely,” as a real mate­rial, as a mass with body, and the edges resulting from the individual layers laid one over the other (cf. the paintings of English artist Ian Dawenport, Danish artist Ellen Hyllemose or objects by the Austrian, Beat Zoderer). Younger artists work with fewer intervening stages between the final work and the underlying idea (or sketch), and many of us are enormously concerned with directness in the execution and the resulting surface, with or without edges. I think that many of today's painters would con­sider an auxiliary pencil line (which refers to a painstaking sketch) a trifle grubby in a final paint­ing. They could possibly accept an ”ugly” line sketched with a ball‑point pen, but a pencil? Never! When they want a clear figure or pattern on the surface, today's painters steal/borrow a simple artisan's method of making the motif directly on the wallpaper or wall itself, such as when Bodil Nielsen rolls, paints or dabs over a stencil, or Christoffer Wool (USA) uses a special artisan's paint roller, which leaves a patterned imprint. Today, we like the feeling of ”work exe­cuted in haste,” the directness of execution of which closely resembles the work of an artisan or of industrial manufacturing. Industrial manufacturing methods are by no means foreign to Geertsen, but he holds the cate­gories apart, and his industrial work is concerned with design products, such as plates, tea services, etc. Each of his paintings and series thereof exhibit as unique works an individual meticulous­ness and formality‑his perspective on everyday and industrial materials, as well as industry‑like methods of production, differs from what we find today. Geertsen's paintings are executed in oil paints, as an expression of the material he has known since he first exhibited 65 years ago. It is difficult to imagine his works executed in such artificial sub­stances as acrylic and plastic wall paint, or his mobiles with sheets of plastic instead of painted metal plate. Geertsen's painting can appear to lack spontaneity and to be uninterested in romantic content or in ”the error,< sought after and aesthetisised by cer­tain of today's painters in their trashy projects (cf. John Kørner, Tal R., et al.). Geertsen paints right up to his sketched lines as accurately as is possible with a handheld paint­brush. His execution seems anonymous, although not mechanical or exactly as if painted by an arti­san or according to a line defined with adhesive tape. His painting lacks the mechanical precision of minimalism, but then Geertsen's goals are not the minimalist goals of achieving works of art purged of all traces of the artist's personality. It is not Donald Judd projects that Geertsen has in mind, and his figures (the so‑called ”tear‑drop«) and his hand‑painted and sketched methods are extremely personal. Contributory factors to this are the pencil lines, which give his paintings the impression of being pieced together. This effect that can also be seen in his mobiles, where the plates are mounted with ”stitches” of steel wire (i.e., not soldered together), and they are always assembled (frequently in systems) from several parts with the aid of metal muffs and special, »Geertsensian« links.

 

The surface ‑ figurations

There is an ambiguity in the comparison between Geertsen's apparently specific and formal plan­ning of the form of a work and the final artistic design and sense of intimacy aroused by his paint­ings and mobiles. This ambiguous abstraction, which is so typical of Geertsen, also emerges in such titles as Diskussion (”Discussion«), Samtale ("Conversation«), Tegn (”Sign") or Grønt Rum (”Green Space«). Titles, which can obviously refer to completely formal relationships, but which also in the very highest degree give rise to associations to more interpersonal relationships. Despite the apparently pure formality of the form, I have always considered Geertsen's paintings as figures in a pictorial space. What others have called the ”tear‑drop,” Geertsen much more formally calls a ”circle‑square.” He has described how the circle‑square emerged in his spontaneous painting from the amalgamation of a circle and a triangle, which was introduced as a standardised form in his art through the form of an egg. In later works, the tear‑drop becomes fur­ther standardised, which Geertsen describes as fol­lows: »I draw the round form with corners (a circle inscribed in a square, from which I remove three of the corners).” The tear‑drop or, as we could call it, Geertsen's logotype, for which he is so renowned, is never suspended (as far as I am aware), it is always rotated so that we see almost anything but a drop. But then I have always seen a bird's head, as a whole, Dadaist figure in a restricted pictorial space (or perhaps even a nest). I want to state that Geertsen's works are not wholly abstract or concrete. They have a delightful openness, and they never force specific associa­tions on the observer‑there is space for the observer to be together with the works. There is, however, nature in Geertsen's works, and to that extent they do demand associations on the part of the observer. My association to the bird's head is reinforced when I look at his early works in this exhibition. Geertsen's development has proceeded slowly and thoroughly over many years, from the time when, as a gardener's apprentice, he studied a figurative and naturally‑inspired world of images, when he passed through spontaneous painting to construc­tive surface and colour composition in what some have called consistent, pure, concrete art. His paintings rest in themselves, follow their own built‑in rules and legalities, as concrete art shall, but the naturally‑inspired references are not lost, regardless of whether we call the circle‑square a tear‑drop, a bird's head or a leaf.

 

The edge ‑ work

Although unframed, his paintings are still particu­larly well‑bounded by virtue of their composition and its relationship to the edges of the picture. They are not paintings that give the impression of being parts of larger pictures and still less, of the exhibition wall. Geertsen's paintings do not con­tinue far beyond their edges. His paintings are figures/motifs/compositions on canvas. For those of today's painters whose interests are similar to Geertsen's, the canvas, plate, surface, etc., on which they work is not merely the bearer of the picture‑ it is something quite different; a thing or object in its own right and, in a far higher degree, the work itself (or part thereof). Thus, the picture approaches the object and the installa­tions of latter years, to become a part of the space in which they stand, hang or are otherwise exhib­ited. Geertsen's paintings are created to hang as well­defined works, with their own integrity, on the »white« wall in white space. This is not in itself particularly remarkable, but if we consider today's painting, which in part uses an idiom, or formal language that can be found in an extension of concrete painting, it becomes obvious that there is a focus on its installation in the specific exhibition space. We don't simply hang works in white space today, we ”install” them. It is, however, noteworthy that Geertsen comes very close to today's thing‑like painting with an ”installation‑like work” (as he calls it himself) created for an exhibition at the Arhus Museum of Art in 1970. This work consists of monochromatic, non‑rectangular plates, which are joined together to form long two‑coloured rectangles and which are, in turn, assembled into larger figures, like pieces of a (jigsaw) puzzle. The design of this work is very close to many younger artists' interest in the physical and sculptural aspects of painting and in the painterly aspects of sculpture.

 

Painting ‑ sculpture ‑ motion

Geertsen's sculptures are composed in the same way as his paintings. Geertsen describes the process as follows: ”Later in 1949 I worked with metal plates on which I sketched various forms. When the forms had attained a mutual balance, I cut them out and bent them in different directions, so that they became sculptures without pedestals, for instance, approaches contemporary thinking and ways of making sculpture and paintings. The unique thing about Geertsen is the way in which his sculptures develop as physical imple­mentations of the imagery of his paintings. We never lose the feeling that the paintings are the basis and form (mould) for his sculptures. I do not, however, see it as sculpture that approaches painting (although possibly three­dimensional drawing). Geertsen's mobiles and box sculptures are so unconditionally sculptures, although made by a painter (which is quite apparent), that they do not appear to question the boundary between painting and sculpture. In Geertsen's work, this boundary is definitive, unarguable and declared. This ability to implement the imagery of his paint­ing as tangible things/objects and intrinsically to maintain the boundary and form between sculp­ture and painting is extremely relevant in a discus­sion of contemporary painting.

Contemporary boundaries of painting‑sculpture ”Status of the object today< The object or the thing is central to a large part of today's art and, not least, today's painting. It is quite evident that today's painting is different from earlier painting. Painting has of course been influenced by the past 20 years' predominance of video, installation and sculpture. Much new painting has an object character or adopts a stance on being an object. Many of today's sculptures work towards the object and, not least, towards any painterly side and quality therein. It is an oversimplification to say that the bound­aries between painting and sculpture are gone­enormous amounts of art have been created with the acceptance of these boundaries as utterly obvious and unarguable. The fact that great quan­tities of art have also been created across those boundaries or have questioned them is not to say that the boundaries have gone ‑ rather, it says that the boundaries between painting and sculp­ture, etc., are more central than ever, and it is not unusual for entire projects to be concerned with, based on and adopt a position on precisely this question.

The boundaries between and the ideas behind sculpture and painting are affected; we are more concerned with these boundaries today than ever and we work with them. However, today these boundaries are treated with the informality and self‑evidency of a generation who never participated in the battle over ”the last painting,” etc. Our generation considers it self‑evident that sculp­ture can be mounted on walls, can be flat, can be built directly without moulds, can be painted and can be composed according to something like a painterly method. Although not unlimited, that which we perceive as painting is still a very broad field. Thus, a paint­ing can be a wall object made of spray‑painted metal rails in several layers and built up like one of Mondrian's compositions, or a heap of small, patched‑together pieces of painted wood and sticks by Beat Zoderer. On the other hand an almost identical (physically, at least) flat object by English artist Eric Bainbridge, built up from small pieces of wood largely according to the same principles of compo­sition, is perceived as a materialised Mondrian painting, although it is evidently a non‑painting and much closer to sculpture.

This perception of a work as being (closer to) sculpture or painting is difficult to describe, but still worth the effort. Bainbridge's objects are con­structively built up in fields, from materials more solid than painted pieces of wood. As is typical of our time, they are made of used, cheap, industrial materials, in the form of veneered chipboard, e.g., from a cheap wardrobe. The imitated materials, which in this case pretend to be solid wood, are materials typical of our homes and everyday life ‑real life, if you like. This means that when the remains of the old wardrobe are used in ”sculp­ture,”we all immediately recognise them as the ”real thing” ‑the objects that are so familiar from the kitchen and IKEA. And this material is in no way manipulated in the work, itself; it is what it appears to be‑a cheap and ugly material, which becomes beautiful in Bainbridge's sculptures. The same thing is happening today in painting, although on painting's own premises. The procedure and process are central, and are a part of the finished work and its character of painting, sculpture, etc. The history of the work is visible; we can see how it is made with an open­ness to what is happening, and it is done without the work losing its integrity and character. The work, a painting if you like, must have the human touch, must be able to stand on its own two feet and must have its own authority, as do Geertsen's paintings. The history of the work can also be seen in Geertsen's painting; we can see how the work is built up, although I do not think that the process was central to him in the same way as it is to those of today's younger artists, who are interested in large, simple surfaces. The formal (and painterly) form and composition, the balance, are the cen­tral issues for Geertsen.