I love the juxtaposition of this scene above! Please find below an interview between the artist, Alan Ebnother and Chris Ashley from the archives of 2005...
The following conversation between Alan Ebnother and Chris Ashley was conducted via email during April 17 - May 4, 2005.
CA: Your biography states that in 1975 you “began to recognize painting.” You were then in your early twenties and involved in the dance world. What does this mean, to “recognize painting,” and when and how did you actually begin painting?
AE: In 1975 I was 23 years old. I had just moved to Europe to be in the John Cranko Ballet School. I was friends at this time with San Francisco painters George Lawson and John Meyer, so the realization that people were involved in painting was not a new concept.
In Stuttgart where I was in dance school my roommate was married to Spanish painter Vicente Peris, an art professor from Valencia: He came to live with us and was painting everyday in the house. So, looking at painting and talking about it became a part of my daily life. I guess that to me the term to “recognize painting" means an attempt to understand it and accept it into my everyday life and thinking.
CA: And so when did you yourself actually begin to paint? Why did you begin, and how did you get started? Had you ever painted before?
AE: In 1979 I actually left my job as a dancer with the Hamburg State Opera, and painted for one year. I painted every day, without a solid direction. I was like a ship lost at sea. Embarrassingly enough, I actually had an exhibition in the lobby of the Opera house at the end of this year, selling almost all of these works. But they were horrible, expressive little religious icons- Christ’s bleeding on the cross. After realizing how bad the works actually were I quit painting until 1985, when I had the courage to start again.
CA: When you started painting again in 1985 where did you begin, and how did this lead to the green paintings?
AE: When starting again I chose to work with as few elements as possible, thinking that my energy would then be directed to the actual paint problems and issues. I was working not so much on producing a finished product, but rather experimenting with materials and the task of attempting to present color in a viable and stimulating manor. It seemed to me that if a painting was not successful or boring then adding more elements would just convolute the problem and make it less apparent. I actually wanted to deal with the problem or issue and not to hide it. I painted white squares for almost one year. I was living in Zurich, and in the basement of my building there was the storage facility for a house painting company. So every night I went down and took their plastic and covered my floor. I also took their paint and these square pieces of cardboard that they used for masking or something, and I painted all night. In the morning I returned all of their equipment except the painted squares. This continued for almost nine months until I finally found and rented a studio in Ulm, Germany.
In Ulm I began work in my studio and was painting monochrome squares until I realized that I could not paint into the corners. The paintings seemed to have a natural movement and rhythm until I came into the corners. I actually did not yet have the technical ability to paint freely in the corners, and the marking seemed stiff and contrived, so I simply tried cutting them off. The resulting circle had a freedom that I could handle. So for the next ten years I painted tondos. After about seven months I painted a Veronese green tondo which was extremely beautiful and really interested me. So, I simply tried another green painting with the same pigment but pushing it into another green tone, with yet another brush mark, and this work also interested me. So here I am twenty years later, still interested and still experimenting. Perhaps one day I will feel I have pushed green as far as I can and move on. But, presently, I work painting to painting, just following my progression of experiences. So, who knows? This is actually not a planned strategy, but just something that has happened.
CA: I believe for a long time you painted tondos; what meaning does that shape have for you?
AE: After ten years of painting tondos the shape has many meanings to me. How could I begin to put into words ten years of painting? Let’s say that I understand the circle, and by painting this form I had a little bit of time to develop my skills outside of the critic’s eye! You see, at this time nobody else was really working the tondo, so the other painters and critics had nobody and nothing else to compare me with. This gave me the necessary time that I needed to actually develop my painting skills. Interestingly enough, it was simply an experience with another painter which made me paint another square. One day I had a studio visit with Ulrich Wellmann, a German painter. He commented that he liked my paintings, but not the fact that they were round. His argument was that there was no top or bottom. I argued that a square had only four possibilities for a top and bottom and that a tondo had endless possibilities. After he left, I was so mad and frustrated that I stretched up four small squares and painted them. The amazing thing was that they looked liked paintings even before I painted them. Everybody is so used to seeing the rectangular form in everyday life. This is an architectural form common to our eye. The circle was always something alien or new. A rectangle resembles the form that humans have become conditioned to expect a painting to resemble; it seemed so easy after the circle. I must actually say that now in painting my corners this is the area where I enjoy experimenting the most, and where I tend to mimic the linear borders imposed by this shape. Some day I shall go back and paint the circle again.
CA: Can you talk specifically about the various characteristics of your paintings? Maybe you could discuss your different stretcher sizes and shapes. What about different brushes, sizes, and brush strokes? And do you grind your own paint? How do you approach each work so individually?
AE: All right let’s speak about December 17th 2004[1]. This was a very complex stretcher, 38 1/2 X 38 inches, so there is just a one half inch more height giving the viewer a vertical work and not a landscape format. Not visible in the photo is the thickness or depth of the stretcher which is 1 3/4 inches thick at the top and 3 inches thick at the bottom. So the back of the painting plane runs parallel with the wall and the front painting plane is thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top (like a wedge of cheese). The bottom of the paint surface is pushed out into the light. I paint with skylights, so the light is coming from above. I ordered two stretchers in these proportions as an experiment and then attempted to paint my way out of the problem caused by the sculptural, 3D effect of the wedge. I painted against the form using marks that drew the attention to the top and upper middle portions of the painting and then gradually faded out the surface leaving just enough information to present the bottom of the work in a few areas, but not in its entirety. I was simply drawing attention away from the form. The non-critical viewer does not realize that the canvas is so dramatically wedge shaped. I have completed two of these wedge painted and am OK with the finished results, but as I am not working as a sculptor and have other painting problems to deal with they will also be the last.
I have mixed and ground my own pigments from the first year of my career. George Lawson, who I mentioned earlier, and Phil Sims were both so generous in sharing all of their knowledge and experience at the time with me, and basically taught me how to do this. In the meantime my experimental nature has led me to explore many areas of pigment and different oil-based mediums, and after twenty-odd years I seem to have a fairly good grasp of oil paint.
You also asked about brushes. Well, each different mark has a different brush that seems to lend itself to it. I usually shape the hairs myself with scissors and then grind down the ends of the bristles to keep them from splitting. I customize the brush for many different reasons- for shape, drag, stiffness thickness etc. I also often cut down the wooden shaft to make it an extension of my hand and wrist, or sometimes change the shaft to make it longer and an extension of my arm or body. This depends on the sort of mark that I decide would be an interesting or correct mark to present a particular color with. While mixing the color I am able to watch the different changes that occur with the addition of different pigments, clay, balsams, or wax to this mass. Sometimes there are close to a hundred different hues that I happen to see and work thru before I decide to stop. One of the reasons that I used this Veronese green for so long was that it is a very transparent pigment with very weak personal strengths that lends itself to be pushed in many different directions, while keeping its drying and textural proprieties.
CA: What is the connection- physically, emotionally, aesthetically, philosophically- between your painting and your past work in the dance world?
AE: Learning to dance means many things, and the connections between dance and painting could be talked about for hundreds of pages. I don't really have enough words for all the connections, but let me try. The feeling of doing a tendu, a basic ballet movement where the leg is extended straight out from the supporting leg with the foot fully pointed, is much the same feeling as creating a brush stroke. With a tendu I would gently and forcefully rub the sole of my foot along the floor. At the same time, my foot and leg would fight to become extended. I felt as though I was making love to the floor. I feel this same way when dragging a brush laden with paint across a surface! Painting is a very sensual and tactile experience, as is dance. Both rely on instinctual decisions, with the critical eye entering and judging after the act.
CA: The way you compare painting and dance makes me think of course of the often-quoted description of the Abstract Expressionists by Harold Rosenberg, “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act – rather than a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze or 'express' an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.” But I suspect that this description doesn’t match your intentions because your work is more than an arena for an event. You are also concerned with constructing space and light, and with making an expressive image and an integrated object. Do you have any thoughts about your work in relation to Abstract Expressionism, and what you’re trying to make that is beyond an event?
AE: The act of painting is perhaps dramatic and perhaps a performance, but it is a performance just for me! My paintings are not about drama or theater, but about color and defining space with this color. Exploring the prairie, perhaps, but not about the theater. Painting is not a performing art form. I am attempting to present a color with what I believe to be a rhythm, mark and time that best suits it. This drama takes place in a studio with only one spectator (me), and when the drama is over the traces left on my linen are a painting.
CA: I remember that in the first or second email you sent to me almost two years ago you boldly exclaimed the beauty of the light in New Mexico. For years you lived and painted in Germany. The light and space of these two places is quite different. What brought you to New Mexico, and how did these two locations affect your painting? What does green mean in each place? It looks to me like your paint is getting thicker and more lush. I think your current studio is much larger than your German studio- if so, how is this affecting the paintings?
AE: I moved to New Mexico for the light and land inexpensive enough that I could afford to build a studio here. My studio is about 4000 square feet and twenty three feet high. I could actually construct an airplane in here. I designed it for the light, with all my attention going in this direction rather than for comfort. The light in here is the best that I have ever experienced! I was painting in Germany and then bringing works over to New Mexico for shows and seeing the actual color for the first time when hanging the painting up in New Mexico. German light is very grey and silvery but almost never bright and clear. In my first visits I could not even walk around outside in New Mexico without sunglasses. This is truly a case of light affecting or becoming the painting.Well, back to marking- I have been trying to open up the painting for some time now. This task is not new, and is something that has been on my mind for several years and has had a lot to do with my move here. I am in the middle of nowhere. This is empty space. I want to bring this space onto the canvas. It seems to be a slow process, but it is finally working and is completely my goal. To define this empty space with a reduced amount of color, that is painting for me. Clyfford Still was on to something, and I would really like to go back and pick up his sensibility and morals and continue, but with simply one color.
Thinking about what we have spoken of so far I feel the need to also say something about this phenomenon happening with many monochrome painters of simply painting the same painting time and time again. It is simply not enough to change the color and paint the next work with the same concept and markings as the last work. Every different hue has a new way of application that exposes more or less the individual characteristics existing within it. The exploration of these characteristics is an important part of my work (perhaps is my work) and I feel something needs to be said about it. This exploration is one of the key elements in the work of many very established painters, such as Robert Ryman, where for him not just the paint application comes into play but his choice of methods for attaching the painting to the wall or the actual date and signature on the work become a pivotal piece of the composition. Each painting has its own paint structure, signature, date concept, and wall attachment. The color hue remains fairly constant with the actual paint mass radically changing. Ryman has explored a small avenue of painting without reaching boredom.
Look at Joseph Marioni and his subtle changing of the supports which corresponds to the individual choice of colors, opening or closing the top surface veils of color presenting differently sized and shaped windows into the work. This subtle yet earth-shattering attention to detail presents a path for the young painters of today. Perhaps thirty years ago, when this genre of painting was new, one could simply change color and create the department store effect of a “red one or a blue one or a green one.” But today we have progressed way beyond this point, and to continue to just produce work that resembles a product with your name on it, with little or no change or growth within it, is simply parasitic. The general practitioner (house doctor) of the past is gone. We have entered an era of specialists, in painting and in technology.
Abstract art is still a new concept, and it is in the hands of today’s artists to push and develop this concept further along. The changes do not have to be large and the directions don’t have to be specific, but an exploration of the genre itself must transpire in order to keep it alive. The public cannot be relied on to support this exploration, as they are basically still content with watching Swan Lake, listening to Mozart, and viewing Rembrandt, all of which are wonderful but transpired long ago. Historically speaking, progress in the fine art fields has not always been immediately accepted by the audience, so it is literally in the hands of today’s painters to support and push this exploration forward, regardless of the response from the viewing public.
CA: It can sometimes be helpful- and sometimes not- to talk about an artist’s work in relation to other art work. We’ve already talked about dance, and you mentioned Ryman and Marioni. What other painters are important to you, and why?
AE: Joseph Marioni is very important to me for completely different reasons than Ryman. Joe’s progress can be extremely difficult to perceive as the changes, improvements, and differences are all quite subtle to the uninformed eye. But once you begin to be aware of the vast amount of “improvements” or refinements that are taking place, canvas to canvas, the hunger to see more becomes insatiable. Watching Marioni’s or Ryman’s painting reminds me of people that first come to the desert and say that there is no vegetation or wildlife. On closer observation the desert opens itself to their vision and a complete world of plant and animal life becomes apparent. Everything is there waiting for the viewer to educate him or herself.
CA: Talk about the kind of space that you are after in your paintings. In some of the recent work the paint seems very thick; the brush strokes are extremely visible and present. One can almost see your strokes as a kind of allover calligraphy, and there is something about the space in some of your paintings that seems to build into a space like, for example de Kooning’s ribbons of color that are layered and overlapping, and working with and against gravity.
AE: Well, each painting is different. There is no master plan that I can refer to for additional information! I have never studied calligraphy but comparing my internal space to de Kooning would be the work of an art critic, not a painter. Why not compare Ryman and Monet, or Ter Borch and Umberg? From my viewpoint there is often nothing similar about any of these artists’s work except the materials. Perhaps an art critic could find something similar and compare them with each other, but for me each and every painter has his own dialogue and nuances that wait to be discovered by the viewer. To attempt a comparison would be an attempt at defining or categorizing a particular artist, which would only make the public stop looking. If you go into one of the larger, more popular exhibitions in a museum today you are faced with masses of humans reading wall texts or listening to tape recorded comments about the individual paintings. At that moment these people actually stop viewing and stop experiencing the work in exchange for some art critic’s explanation. THERE IS NO EXPLANATION FOR ART. IT MUST BE EXPERIENCED!
[1] December 17th 2004, 2004, Oil on linen, 38.5 x 38 incheshttp://minusspace.com/ebnother/images/ebnother8_jpg.jpghttp://minusspace.com/ebnother/images/ebnother8a_jpg.jpg
Alan Ebnother lives and works in Stanley, New Mexico
Chris Ashley is an artist, writer, and educator living and working in Oakland, California
No comments:
Post a Comment