Two New Themes in Painting: Tribute and Opera
In 2021, I painted more than I had for a long time. The pleasure of working and the urge to improve remained strong. During the lockdown in November, I took things calmly: more time to paint.
I deliberately paused my Covid-19 series. When the work begins to feel too comfortable, I need a break in the rhythm. I had made a few more paintings that continued the earlier ideas, with new elements entering along the way. Now I wanted to leave them alone for a while and return with some distance.
If this image looks blurred, it is not your screen. I was thinking about the suspended state I sometimes enter when absorbed in music. I have tried to approach it before; here it seems to have worked particularly well.
With the second painting, I felt I had reached my limit for the time being. The technical and painterly treatment had come close to what I had in mind.
1. Homage to Hans Hartung
So I ventured into two other subjects. The first was homage. This work is a tribute to Hans Hartung. I had not consciously looked at his paintings for decades, but I remember liking them when I first began to paint. Some must have left a deeper impression than I realised. Looking for a reference, I came across one of his works at Sotheby’s, although I approached my own painting differently.
I painted the black lines first and added the background afterwards. I hoped this order would create an extra tension between the two.
2. Bel Canto and Wagner
These days I often prefer listening to opera and letting my own images take shape. The time when I had to see every particular production is long past. Living in Vienna has spoiled me in that respect. One exception is the Valencia Ring des Nibelungen, staged by Carlus Padrissa and La Fura dels Baus, with Zubin Mehta conducting.[1]
The embedded excerpt shows the final scene of Götterdämmerung. The closing orchestral passage, from about 3:50, is especially relevant to what follows.
Valencia Ring
This production impressed me enormously, especially its final scene. Its images stayed so firmly in my mind that I wanted to work with them in painting. I did not want to illustrate the staging. I was interested in its archetypal forms and in what they might allow me—and a viewer—to think about.
One of the paintings below—finished or not?—seems close to that experience. I see Valhalla and the world of the gods collapsing: an image of an elite and its power coming to an end. The light associated with that world is overtaken by ominous darkness, while another light emerges below, towards the Rhine. This is my response to the staging rather than a literal account of the opera.
The marks cannot be read as words. They are asemic: forms that suggest writing without carrying a fixed verbal meaning. I could have used forms derived from Western script, but those recalling Chinese writing felt right to me.
A few other drafts for “Opera and Painting” encouraged me. I hope to carry some of them further with time.
Footnotes
[1] Production credits for the Valencia Götterdämmerung: conductor Zubin Mehta; staging by Carlus Padrissa and La Fura dels Baus. See UNITEL’s production page. ↩
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