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A Game of Memory |
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For Barbara In this Game of Memory each picture stands for a story from our lives. It was originally conceived as a desk calendar for the year 2011 and hence had some 54 pictures arranged in seemingly no obvious order – like the cards of a memory game. The challenge is to recall the story. Because these stories are known only to Barbara and me, I will retell some of them here. For example: Since 1972 Kandinsky's Composition VII - of which five versions hang in the Lenbachhaus in München – had occupied me. Were they arbitrary jumbles of forms? After carefully comparing the different versions and Kandinsky's drawings, it became evident that he had planned every curlicue, and nothing was left to chance! And then Barbara noticed that when listening to Miles Davies, she saw Kandinsky's abstract paintings before her eyes.... In 1999 I visited New York, and Cornelius took me to a neuro-psychology lecture at Columbia whose speaker expostulated the thesis that Kandinsky was a synesthete, a person who sees abstract pictures when he heard music! The painting of the luscious Modigliani nude at MOMA started a search for more of his nudes resulting in Barbara's Museum website. His most elegant nude eluded me. She appeared in Modigliani picture books, but no one could tell me which museum owned her. Finally Barbara found that she was in private hands. She became the image of Alexandra in my novel, and is known now under that name. In 2002 Barbara began to give guided tours at the House Museum of the Weisman Foundation. During the the six years she worked there, she fell in love with modern painting and took me to many galleries and modern museums in LA, in New York, München, Cologne, Amsterdam, Den Hague, Brussels, Madrid, and Geretsried. While I “discovered” Bosch, Piero della Francesca, Gozzoli, Potormo, and Rembrandt's graphic work, the great surprises of the last years go back to her fascination with contemporary art. - The overwhelming “Beckmann in Amsterdam” exhibition in Müchen and the twelve “Wald” abstracts by Gerhard Richter at the Getty in 2007 will remain the high-lights of our explorations. There are far too many such memories to do them justice. When collecting a fundus of images I found more paintings associated with stories I had half forgotten. One of them is El Greco's ecstatic religious cycle in the Prado in Madrid. The museum was under reconstruction and a dozen of them were hanging in one small room. They are narrow but each 3-meter high, larger than the Richter s, and they are oppressively dark and overpowering. Barbara spent over an hour among them, while I hunted down Bosch's “Garden of Earthly Delights” - a full-size copy of its center panel hangs over my bed like a thanka sown by Barbara.... Pacific Palisades, Christmas 2010
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Vassily Kandinsky at the Lenbachhaus in München |
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Vassili Kandinsky, Composition VII, fourth stage, 1913, Lenbachhaus, München In
1971-72 I took a leave of absence with the children in München.
I did research at the Max-Planck Institute in Garching and on the
week-ends we explored museums and Bavarian Baroque churches. The
Lenbachhaus became our favorite, and Kandinsky's paintings my
challenge. A time of many discoveries for all four of us. Susanne,
especially, has remained half a Bavarian ever since.
Amedeo Modigliani's Nudes |
After graduating in Berkeley Cornelius began graduate studies at Yale in 1989. I visited him there and we spent a couple of days in New York. Whenever we have been in New York we visited MOMA for a few hours. In time this sensual nude assumed an importance. Wouldn't it be beautiful to meet the other Modigliani nudes? My search took several years...
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Amedeo Modigliani, Nude Lying on her Left Side, private collection ...and eventually, in 1995, I discovered this Modigliani and adopted her as my “Georgian grandmother” Alexandra Dadiani! |
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For years we fantasized about retiring in München. When I did retire under unpleasant circumstances at Aerospace in 1993, Barbara arranged to rent a house in München during January-April 1994. It was not a success – München was too dark, too expensive, and I couldn't adapt to the polite German society. We escaped for a three-week trip to Rome at Easter 1994 including a week's stay in Venice. Where we both fell in love with this Giorgione at the Academia.
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Piero della
Francesca, The Resurrection, 1465, Civic Museum, San Sepolcro,
Tuscany
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The renovated
Brancacci Capella, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence |
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Masaccio, The Tribute Money, 1426, Capella Brancacci, Florence, 1994
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Paolo Uccello,
The Great Flood, 1447-48, Santa Maria Novella, Florence |
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El Greco
(Domenikos Theokopulos), The Nativity and The Baptism, (1577-79),
Prado, Madrid |
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El Greco
(Domenikos Theokopulos), The Crucifixion and Pentecost, (1577-79),
Prado, Madrid |
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Hieronymus Bosch,
The Garden of Earthly Delights, (1567-1580), Prado
Laura Hernandez's “Omnia” at MoLAA Long Beach 1998-99 |
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Laura Hernandez, Omnia, Five Papier-mâché heads and many large canvasses. Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, 1998 Marcus Hermans, who was visiting us, is seen admiring one of the paintings. On that day I took a full roll of Kodak-Chrome slides sitting with a mono-pod on the floor. When I digitized the slides 5 years later, I became curious of what had happened to Laura since. A protracted search involving several people in the US, Mexico, and the wife of a former boyfriend of hers in Holland finally produced an e-mail address in Mexico City... I sent her my slides and encouraged her to set up her own website. Laura was overwhelmingly grateful. Little did I know then what had happened to the Omnia collection -- The container with the paper-maché heads and all paintings were stolen in Bremerhaven on their way back to Mexico. My pictures are the only leftover. Conjecture has it that they may be illegally in private hands in Russia. Eventually we met in Los Angeles at our house in 2005. She has become one of our most enthusiastic and faithful friends.
In 2006 she appeared once again in Los Angeles and brought me this watercolor as a present. It has no title, and she would not explain the people. Obviously there is more to the story of Laura Hernandez. It now hangs over Marga's chest.
The
Great Museum Tour September 2001 For September 2001 I had worked out a tour of eleven Northern European museums in Holland, Belgium and Germany. There were four reasons for this trip: a large Bosch exhibition and a Shostakovitch opera performance in Rotterdam, an invitation to Marcus' parents' 50th wedding anniversary, and the wish for a longer visit with Marc and Monique. Marc offered to drive us through Holland and Brabant. They picked us up at Düsseldorf airport and drove us home to Heerlen, from where we visited the Maastricht Bonnefanten Museum as a warm-up. Marc had arranged for us to use the apartment of friends in Amsterdam, which served as our base. He drove us to Rotterdam, The Hague, Haarlem, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, from where we took the train to Brussels. As it would happen, we were in Amsterdam on the fateful day of 9/11/01.
Hieronymus Bosch in Rotterdam 2001 |
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Hieronymus
Bosch, Sicut erat in Diebus Noe, 1415 (restored 1998) Museum
Boijmans and Van Beuningen, Rotterdam A badly needed restoration of these four panels prompted the museum to engage Prof. Paul Klein, a German dendrochronology expert, to determine the age of the wood planks it is painted on. Contrary to over half of Bosch's other paintings the four panels were pronounced authentic. Thereupon the museum decided to host a large exhibition of Bosch's newly dated paintings. To most visitors the exhibition was a disappointment. Not being rich the Boijmans had to show copies or recently demoted paintings. The art-historians saw themselves being embarrassed by Klein's decouvrage (they still have not revised their catalogs). To me it became a subject of months of research. I even got into hot water with some Bosch expert at Bonn University. My paper was rejected, and I decided to “publish” my labors on my website, where you also find the story in these four panels.
Rembrandt's Graphics at the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam I had seen the museums of Amsterdam in 1979: the Reijksmuseum, Staedelijk, and the Van Gogh. There were no surprises. But the Rembrandthuis, where he had lived and his graphics were new. Graphics doesn't reproduce well. |
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Rembrandt, Christ Preaching, Rembrandthuis
The early Mondrian in The Hague |
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In the Hague we met with Gabriella, a friend of some years, born in Berlin in 1943 to a Georgian father and a Dutch mother. She took us to the Gemeente Museum, where we discovered the pre-WW I paintings of Mondrian: Highly spiritual, they became special treasures for Barbara.
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James Ensor in Antwerp |
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We
stayed at a cheap, little hotel in the Jewish quarter of Antwerp
and watched the shuffling during day and night of wizened old men
and children. Better than on Manhattan's Lower East Side this
experience helped me to envision Rembrandt and Bosch in their
time. - Marcus didn't care for Antwerp, he considered it
right-wing, to the point of being Nazi fascist....
Paul Delvaux and Magritte in Brussels |
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Paul Delvaux, L'Hiver ou la Ville enfoulie, 1958, Musee Royaux Moderne, Brussels We explored Brussels by ourselves. Marc and Monique had to be back at work. - After plowing through the plush exhibits at the Musee Royaux we discovered a subterranean tunnel to its modern branch – and Delvaux. Barbara liked the above wintery scene, I was more intrigued by the mannerist enigma below |
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Paul Delvaux, Rendezvous d'Epheses, 1942, Musee Royaux Moderne, Bruxxels
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Rene Magritte, La Moisson, 1943, Musee Royaux Moderne, Bruxxels And then Barbara to her delight discovered several Magrittes. This is maybe the strangest, but the others were well-known and their reproductions wanting. We spent another few days with Marc and Monique in Heerlen to attend his parent's anniversary – an elegant dinner in a restaurant in the country – where we met all of their relatives and became close friends with his mother, Edith the Nachteule (because she suffers from insomnia, she always calls at 3 am their time). A wonderful woman loved equally by both of us.
William Turner at the Museum Folkwang in Essen Eventually we went by train to Hagen to meet Christine and Rudolf Scharlau. They had a surprise for us, there was a large Turner exhibition at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, would we join them? We did and reveled for half-a-day in English Romanticism.... What an entirely unexpected change! |
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William Turner, The House of Parliament Burning,1835, Tate Modern, London |
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William Turner, The Good Ship Temerain Being Towed to her Last Berth, 1838, National Gallery, London
The Gemälde Gallerie in Berlin Three days we stayed with Klaus and Lilo Lattmann in Hamburg and then took the fast train to Berlin. There we visited Evelyn and Dieter Gross and the two sisters Daub (Irmgard Hammer's nieces) and spent only one more late last night in the completely empty Gemälde Gallerie at the Potsdamer Platz. |
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Hieronymus Bosch,
St. John on Patmos, winter 1496-97, Gemälde Gallerie,
Berlin
Florence and Tuscany 2002 Encouraged by the success of the Museum Tour I carefully planned a Tour of the Toscana. I had been there three times and two more times with Barbara and we still had seen only parts of it. Cornelius had studied Renaissance art at Berkeley and together with Barbara had explored more of this beguiling country. Knowing that there would be no modern art in Tuscany, I worked on catching up with Cornelius before we set out in a car rented in Pistoia. The following pictures cover only part of what we saw. More can be found on my website.
.....Florence |
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Duccio, Ruccelai
Madonna, 1285, Uffici Florence The Rucellai Madonna is a seminal painting of the Florentine Renaissance. Duccio's client was a modern man. By comparison his Sienese works are in the old-fashioned Byzantine style. Siena was a conservative place, and he was its greatest master, e.g., see his Maesta of 1308 further down. |
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Masaccio, San
Giovenale Triptych, 1422, Uffici, Florence This triptych, Masaccio's earliest painting, was only discovered in a village church in 1961 and has recently been restored. It represents a revolution in Florentine painting. Look at the village bumpkin with the thumb in his mouth and the daring colors, not to mention the perspective rendering. A comparison of the two altar pieces shows the advances of Florentine painting in the intervening 120 years.
Gozzoli at the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi in Florence |
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The Cappella dei Magi in the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi, Florence, Frescoes by Jacopo Gozzoli, 1459 We had never explored the palazzi, partly because of their steep admission. This one, recently restored, came highly recommended. The marble intaglios of the cappella had existed for some time, when the painterly story-teller Gozzoli had been engaged to decorate is with a cycle showing all the rich and famous members of the Ricardi family. He chose to depict them in three versions of the annual Epiphany procession. The old King, the middle King and the young King, followed by their young and beautiful children. Three most festive walls – the high point of our visit. |
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Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Middle King, 1459 The Middle King is a portrait of the Byzantine Emperor Kommenos, who had been staying in Florence seeking support to defend Constantinople from the Turks. An exotic oriental personage, he had attracted much attention but little funds. |
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Barbara's Lieblinge, a prince and a young man with a red hat.
Jacopo Potormo in Santa Felicita, Florence |
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Having been primed to Potormo, I found this enigmatic painting by him in the Uffici, which otherwise struck us as boring this time.
Duccio in Siena |
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Duccio, the Maesta, 1308, l'Opere del Duomo, Siena As a city Siena is more beguiling than commercialized Florence. We had been there several times but never in l'Opere del Duomo, where we sat an hour in front of this splendidly displayed Duccio.
Cimabue in Assisi |
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Cimabue, The Crucifixion, 1283, Upper Church, Assisi Assisi had been the victim of one of my persistent prejudices: too many pilgrims and the cult of St. Francis. It was Sherwin Amimoto, who had been there a few years earlier and who convinced me that it was “the birth-place of the original Christian hippiedom”. And indeed San Francesco surprised us as one of the great repositories of Tuscan fresco painting. This badly damaged Cimabue stayed in my mind. The turbulence in its scenes and the gestures of the excited masses on the right remind me of Georgian frescoes of the same time – e.g., in Ateni.
Piero della Francesca in Arezzo and Urbino |
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Piero della Francesca, The Legend of the True Cross, Cappella Maggiore, San Francesco, Arezzo, 1452-1456 There may be no modern paintings in Tuscany, but della Francesca makes up for that. After San Sepolcro we began a regular hunt for him, and the cycle in Arezzo contains probably his most mature paintings. Here only the “Legend of the True Cross” is strange, the scenes depict more or less familiar themes from the Old Testament. |
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Piero della Frencesca, The Queen of Sheba meeting King Solomon, Cappella Maggiore, San Francesco, Arezzo, 1452-1456 |
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Piero della Frencesca, the Flagellation of Christ, 1460, Museo Civico, Urbino We had time and Barbara drove tirelessly all the way to Urbino, where della Francesca worked for some time, during which he devoted himself to mathematics and perspective. This explains in part this curious painting, in which the Emperor of Constantinople again makes an appearance. In his time della Francesca was primarily known for his mathematical treatises - his astringent paintings had to wait for the 20th century to be appreciated.
Barbara as Docent at the Weisman Foundation 2002-2008 |
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Weisman Foundation, entrance hall to the House Museum In 2001 Barbara gave up, as too strenuous, years of escorting bus-loads of German tourists across the West. For a while she trained to become a “docent” at LACMA, but then found a friend in Billie, the widow of Frederick Weisman and the head of his foundation. Billie was looking for a guide, a docent, to take visitors through her house museum. The group of docents there and the museum staff turned out to be equally congenial. Barbara threw herself into contemporary art at the Weismans' library, and soon became one of their best interprets of the Weisman's idiosyncratic art holdings. She worked there for six fulfilling years, a good time for both of us.
Rome and Sicily 2003 In July 2000 Cornelius and Anne-Cecile Trillat got married and in September 2002 Ulysse was born in New York. After two post-doctoral years at Columbia, Cornelius was unexpectedly offered a position of group-leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo outside Rome, Italy, and they had moved to Rome after Christmas 2002. We longed to see them and flew to Rome, rented a car, and drove all the way to and around Sicily. |
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Michelangelo, Ceiling of the Cappella Sistina, Vatican, Rome, 1577-1580, (restored 1984-1994) Being completely absorbed by Ulysse and a party on occasion of our three birthdays (R, U+C) we went to Rome only once to be herded through the restored Sistina. Notwithstanding the intimidating crowd, it was worth it, alone the colors.
The Museum in Paestum |
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Lucanian Tomb of the Diver, 4th cent BC, Museum in Paestum I had seen the Greek temples of Paestum before, but the Mussolini-style museum was only opened later. A treasure house of recent excavations among them a beautiful collection of Luacanian tombs, richly painted boxes. The Tomb of the Diver being the most memorable.
Villa Romana del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Sicily |
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The African Hunt, Floor mosaic in the Roman Imperial Villa Casale, 4th cent AD, Piazza Armerina, Sicily Another surprise was the Villa Casale in the hills south of Enna. I tried to photograph the over 60-meter-long floor mosaic of the emperor hunting in North Africa, in pieces of course. Unfortunately perspective distortions made a single stitched image (like that of the ceiling of the Sistina) impossible. Contemporary with the Ravenna mosaics their quality and craftsmanship is remarkable.
Cappella Palatina Palermo |
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Cappella Palatina, 1130, Palace of Norman King Roger II, Palermo And 600 years later mosaic art was still very high, even if now the craftsmen had to be brought from Constantinople: A Golden Cave! A reminder that a cooperation between Muslim Arabs, Christians, and Normans can produce spectacular architecture.
München Christmas 2007 Jutta Micheuz was getting married on the last day of 2007. There was no question, we would be there. Fate intervened. Barbara flew first to spend some time with the 94-year-old Marga in Tübingen. When I met her at our Hotel am Markt in München, I found her barely able to walk. She had fallen and had slightly dislocated her pelvis. I dragged her to the Schwabing hospital, x-rays were taken, the doctor could not find the cause. She lived on pain-killers. We told Jutta that Barbara was unable to make the long train journey to Basel. Barbara was confined to her hotel bed, and I went alone on the 24th to Irmgard von Neurath's Christmas and on the 25th to the Keilmann's. Carolyn helped us to re-book our flights – thank God we had a travel insurance. Heavily drugged with Tramadol – prescribed by a wonderful Palestinian doctor who came to the hotel - we flew home on the 29th of December. A more careful examination at Kaiser showed the dislocation and the doctor prescribed physical therapy. Susanne flew in on short notice to help, and Barbara very slowly recovered - until on January 28 she took Jürgen and Irene Grosskreutz on a tour of the Weisman, followed three days later by a 10-day visit of Peter and Anneli Schmidt. - Dear Barbara....
Yet somehow we managed to see four museums in München: the renovated Alte Pinakothek, a Kapoor exhibition in the Haus der Kunst, the Buchheim Museum in Geretsried, and an overwhelming “Beckmann in Amsterdam” show in the Museum der Modernen.
Alte Pinakothek The Alte Pinakothek had just reopened after extensive renovations. It is my museum not for Barbara. |
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Titian (Tiziano Vecelli), Emperor Karl V, 1548, Alte Pinakothek, München I took many photos of my favorite paintings like this splendid Titian portrait |
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Peter Paul
Rubens, the Apocalyptic Madonna, 1520s, Alte Pinakothek, München
....and
finally a photo of this huge Rubens retable, which one cannot find
in any book on the painter
Pinakothek der Modernen The permanent collection of the new Pinakothek der Modernen exhibits mainly well-established painters of the last century. Interesting but no longer exciting. A truly contemporary museum (Brandhorst) will open in 2008-09. |
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Emil Nolde, Dance around the Golden Calf, 1910 Here Nolde took the first price – largely because of his brilliant colors.
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Emil Nolde, Young Woman Surrounded by Old Men, 1921
Museum Buchheim Geretsried On a bright winter day Carolyn drove us to Geretsried on the Starnberger See, where the author of the film “Das Boot” invested his profits in an exceptionally well presented collection of German Expressionists. A feast for Barbara. To my chagrin the old fox doesn't allow photographing in the museum, and even the images in his catalog are color-manipulated such that one cannot scan and reproduce them. There is one Nolde painting in the internet (not this one). |
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Nolde, Head of an Arab, Buchheim Museum
“Beckmann
in Amsterdam” The overpowering, museum experience of our stay in München became the Beckmann exhibition: all the great triptychs were there and innumerable other paintings and drawings from Beckmann's years in Amsterdam where he escaped to from the Nazis during WW II. His canvasses are more of a shock than a pleasure, despite that we had seen many of them previously at MOMA, at LACMA, in Berlin, Essen, Cambridge/Mass, and in Cologne, but never next to each other. |
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Self-portrait with Horn, 1938, Collection Dr. and Mrs. Stephan Lackner, Santa Barbara, California Beckmann (1884-1950) was 55 when he left Germany, at the height of his creative life. Despite his difficult situation, he shows himself liberated in this self-portrait. During his 10 years in Amsterdam he worked furiously. He painted the corrupted people around him from his guts. His own dark visions, are reflected in his self-portraits and in the heavy symbolism of his triptychs. |
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The Temptation of St. Anthony Triptych, 1936-37, Pinakothek der Modernen, München With difficulties Beckmann had smuggled this canvas out of Germany in 1937. Stephan Lackner acquired it and safely took it to the US in 1940. According to Beckmann's diaries, it is variously connected with Günewald's St. Anthony, Hindemith's Mathis der Maler and most strongly to a book with the same title by Flaubert. |
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Artists with Vegetables, 1943, Washington University Gallery of Art, Saint Louis Four people – Beckmann front right – who presumably knew each other well, sit around a small table - in cold isolation. Each holds some edible object except Beckmann, who holds the mirror of introspection. Undoubtedly this painting is an imaginary dream, not realty. |
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The Acrobats Triptych 1939, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts I never understood this old acquaintance from our Cambridge days. The München exhibition catalog explains the scenes:. In the center a snake charmer, Adam, with a colorless apple tempts an Eve repulsed by the reptile. An African idol next to Eve may represent the ancient rites between man and woman. The crowned hermaphrodite, its back to the two, smirks at the thought of what will soon happen. The left wing shows the dressing room of the troupe of actors. In the right wing a vendor sells candies and tickets to Beckmann's show. Two clowns make music holding on to a champagne bottle, and a ferocious warrior may represent the brewing war of 1939. - Who could have guessed that? Beckmann loved the people of the stage and returned to them again and again. The world must have appeared to him like a bad theater. |
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Self-portrait 1944, private collection While bombs were falling on Amsterdam, Beckmann contemplates the constant danger of being discovered. |
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The scene is at a station. A train is leaving to an unknown destination. Two men (Germans in uniform?) are seen in its window with raised arms. Five travelers are left behind on the platform. A young highly excited woman, seen from the back is sitting on a trunk with a sticker to or from Paris. A nurse offers her the choice of a tranquilizer or a drink. A second woman, half naked, is braving the wind full of energy (Quappie?), Next to her, at the center of the canvas, sits her despaired husband (Beckmann) hiding his face in his hands and a green hood. His trunk carries an old label from Berlin. An Eden-hotel servant looks at him with derision. -- They are all travelers stranded in Amsterdam, while the German war passes over them. |
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Cabins, 1947, Kunstsammlung Nord-Rhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf Finally, in 1947 the Beckmanns are able to leave for America. In a nightmare he sees himself as a cold fish being bundled onto a Ship of Fools. He is a sick man of 63, who doesn't speak a word of English. He died 3 years later of a heart attack in New York.
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”Gerhard
Richter and Caspar David Friedrich: Two Painters from Dresden“
Barbara had seen Richter's twelve tall canvasses first and had urged me to see this special exhibition. I was lazy and reluctant to undertake the complicated trip up to the LA Acropolis. Besides who was Richter? Barbara had seen an exhibition of his earlier work in San Francisco, and from what she had reported – hundreds of tiny over-painted post cards, soft-brushed photographs, abstracts on bonded aluminum, a vast amount of experimentation – had not intrigued me. I did go, and it became an experience which over-shadowed Beckmann and all other modern painters of the last 10 years. - I will dare to reproduce all twelve canvasses, because their collective beauty cannot be ascertained by any one single painting, and they were conceived as a unit. One has to stand surrounded by all of them. The room at the Getty was deserted, the small, newly restored paintings by Caspar David Friedrich were most familiar since my childhood, they did not distract. In the next three months I explored Richter (born 1932). The results can be seen on my website. The twelve paintings are completely abstract. The name of the series is “Wald” (Forrest) 2005. The individual canvasses are simply numbered sequentially. The set will go to MOMA, New York. - Barbara and I have a disagreement on how bright the paintings appeared. She remembers them lighter than shown here, I darker. The reproductions on Richter's website shows them nearly unrecognizably dark and so are most book reproductions. I lightened my copies digitally to bring out the colors. |
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Gerhard Richter, Wald 5 and 6, 197 x 132 cm, 2005, MOMA New York
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Gerhard Richter, Wald 7 and 8, 197 x 132 cm, 2005, MOMA New York
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Gerhard Richter, Wald 9 and 10, 197 x 132 cm, 2005, MOMA New York
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If this display overwhelms you, then I have succeeded in my intention. I have not figured out the digital technology to display them in a 3-D surround image, although that could be done. In any case this way allows to study each one and imagine the sequential arrangement in which Richter painted them. |
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The End of Painting? In discussions and interviews Richter repeatedly contended, quite arrogantly, that we have reached the end of painting as we know it. Conventual two-dimensional painting on canvas had been exhausted and could not be driven any further. Henceforth visual art would turn into performance art. - He produced another set of six, even larger abstract paintings, called Cage (300 x 300 cm), 2006, which are at the Tate Modern in London. Their name pays homage to the composer John Cage. They are lighter, quieter, more monochrome - and as beautiful as the Wald series. Watching the development of modern art since 2006, I now tend to agree with him. If these two remarkably beautiful sets are the end of painting, so be it. |
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