Klaus Fussmann and abandoned houses

Following our landscape excursions on Sunday and Thursday, I went to the museum from where my parent's had sent me the catalogue of Albert Koenig's prints (mainly woodcut).

Koenig's landscape representations from the 1910-1940s caught my eye when they seemed so traditional and eery - old trees, woods and heather. He did many of those in the surrounding areas of the heathland we walked and cycled through. - The area is characterised by a particular geological formation - Kieselgur, which google suggests to translate as diatomite - which was industrially exploited... for making both filters and dynamite. (Wiki knows more about Kieselgur in German)

But we weren't in luck at the Museum with Koenig's work. Instead, there was an exhibition by Klaus Fussmann. - A retrospective full of interior still lives, gardens, a few landscapes and a few portraits.

And I begun to fill my gaps (in fact: a wide open void) on German contemporary art. And went back to take another look at this interior drawings and paintings a few days later.

Many of them were done in the (early) 1970s of abandoned Berlin flats and his studios. What a very good coincidence: I could explore still life of interiors a bit more; explore the wide range of yellow-beige via reddish beige to cool blue beige; and contemplate Fussmann's paintings in their quiet melancholy and the meaning of time, memory and emptiness.

Klaus Fussmann, Atelier Steinmann, 1970
gouache, pencil and coloured pencil on board
private collection

I didn't know his work before, but was taken by this stark contrast between those empty rooms and overflowering gardens... the passing of time and all things living. I'm intrigued (if not entirely convinced) by this juxtaposition and marvel at the riches of the German language - Vergaenglichkeit was the word used - and struggle to find translations. How about :

transitoriness, evanescence, transience, transiency

... they all seem a bit flat, not quite melancholy and yet joyfully enough.... strange that...

[but I've wondered about this for long enough to know that that flatness is sometimes not more than a lack of experience and connotation assembled around a particular word]

For more info on Fussmann, try these gallery sites

• some bio info (in German)
• some of his work
• more of his work (also many prints - lino and etchings - note to self: look at them for printmaking course)

White, empty and Berlin are the connections to the White Room. More I haven't found yet. His interiors are often arrangements on tables or shelves, of bowls, vases and assorted small, white things.

In all his interiors, he paints from above. He is looking down on the objects, or even the entire rooms. It's an interesting incident. It gives him a wide perspective and it makes the objects look even more forlorn and surplus. The paintings which depict a whole room look as if painted from a high ladder. It makes for an interesting assortment. While the table arrangements are often very monochrome, the rooms have the colour of some chairs, a cloth or a jacket.

I find the paintings very strong. Very different to the quiet, joyful assemblages of trickery that Morandi rearranged throughout his lifetime on tables, these are tristesse on canvas. They are left over, forgotten, only to be found by Fussmann who rearranged them into some order and captures them in their forgottenness. Momentarily, for a final snapshot of what is left.

I'm taken by the act of a final recording, taking stock of what has been abandoned. The painter as archivist, as record keeper. Of material objects that are left.

Klaus Fussmann, Stilleben Käuzchensteig, 1974
oil and gouache on board,
private collection

Silent Saturday

White Room, Two views,
Ink in A4 Moleskine


White Room 1, Remix
Mixed media collage, 35x40cm


White Room, Drying Rack
Pastel and ink, A4 Moleskine

More white overlaid

Now... if individual views are combined, it may look like this

White room wide, mixed media collage,
A3 Sketchbook

There are different possibilities... about the sense of moving across the room; but also about placing different things across the room, the paper plane. I want some large tracing paper and some acrylic medium for proper collaging. But inbetween, a bit of ordinary drawing practice: perspective, attention and detail... phew... so difficult. Yet, I'm sure that will see to the development of the concept too.

Weiss, weiss, weiss, das weiss ich

White room 1, mixed media collage on paper, 35x40cm

... white, white, white, that's what I know.

A room full of white floorboards, window frames, walls and doors. And a bit of orange and lime green.

A room in a flat full of history: of someone's ex-flatmate, of others' ex-comrade, of someone's ex-lover, and another ones ex-lover. Right in the middle of Kreuzberg and the lives lived here.

And still: the flat isn't lived in, noone's home other than temporarily mine. With all its history, memories and things. And the smell of current emptiness.

A room full of white. Obvious white. What's with the layers of it - the windows got painted, new layers on top of old ones. Will they hold? Will they peel away?

Thus: some cartridge paper, some glue, some tissue paper, some acrylic ink and a marker pen. For a start.

White room 1 (Detail), mixed media collage on paper, 35x40cm

Weiss, weiss, weiss, das weiss ich....

It's about experience and knowledge in the middle of interior still life. I am sitting on my new bed and marvel at the sights of whiteness, colour and their invisible connections to past and presence.

Next: better glue, more marker pen, more ink, other walls and windows.

All new beginnings..

... need a bit of art, don't they?

I've been looking at this room for two weeks now. Today it got freshly painted windows and I took it as a cue to get the sketchbook out...

Nothing fancy. It's Berlin tenement dailies... a radiator and a window. It's in graphite and continues the whiteness from the first picture post.

But... there's colour here too. Sunshine orange, 1970s orange and a variety of lime to apple green.

There's a hint of a domestic series coming through the window. But first it looks like another thunderstorm. Oh, how I miss summer thunderstorms, they are so rare in Glasgow. But I've had my fair share over the past fortnight already. - No, that isn't metaphorical but applied weather science :)

Autumn interlude

... two fresh figs in lush purply greens with some sugary icing.



They were supposed to become part of:

Take two pears, two figs - cut however fine you like; a finely-cut small piece of ginger; and the freshly squeezed juice of one orange. Place in an ovenproof dish, you can add some brown sugar on top, and bake in a medium hot oven for about 20 mins or until slightly caramelised on top.

Serve with ice cream, cream or nothing else for a taste of autumn warmth.

That'll be tomorrow's dinner then. But before, they really should get a sketch.



.

Reflective surfaces

Green in the bottle, Pastel on Colorfix, 23x30 cm

I went to a day course yesterday on painting reflective surfaces, and we were asked to bring along whatever medium we'd like. I took the pastels - they seem to be my firm favourite now and with some rearranged storage solutions (more on that later), they are so easy to pack up and take with me.
The course covered the two different types of reflection: (a) reflections within an object - such as stainless steel flask in first image, and (b) reflections of objects within something else. The second one is the more common one, and in particular deals with water surfaces.

A couple of useful tips included
- that colour doesn't reflect as intensely, in particular the further it is away from the breaking point
- that the size of reflection depends on position of observer, i.e. in case of water surface, the lower down the view point, the more elongated does the form appear in its reflections (which has to do with different angles of inflection and reflection.

In the morning, I did quite a few sketches of a facetted whisky flask which reflected beautifully a rather garish green striped table cloth. Finally, I did the pastel sketch above.

Rocky shoreline, Pastel on Colorfix, 23x30 cm

The afternoon focussed on the second type of reflection - water surfaces reflecting landscapes, boats and other objects. I had enjoyed doing the whisky flask from life, but with the water reflections this was going to be more difficult. Hence, the afternoon sketches were done from photo references. I had picked one which I liked for the colours and also for it being similar to many of the other photos and sketches I’ve done in Ardnamurchan and Perthshire earlier on in the summer.

In the post...

... today were already my two new sketchbooks. That's probably been the fastest ebay delivery I have had EVER. So, two pretty new books. After dinner I started to add some backgrounds and marks - rather simply at the moment just a few watercolour washes and some acrylic paint scattered throughout the books, to use as background for sketches:



Some lime green acrylics wash above, below some watercolour doodling



One of the books will be on textures and detailed patterning - to take forward some of my pieces on wallmarkings.

The other one will be on colour studies. On the basis of that first painting for which I used lemon yellow as base colour, it is going to be lemon yellow (or: Hansa Yellow), based on PY3 pigment (Monoazo Yellow, Arylide Yellow) that I will start to research and experiment with for this month.

Here's page no 1 in the sketchbook:



Looking at this sad attempt at a lemon, I remember that one of the summer courses here offers a one-day masterclass on painting lemons... probably I should consider signing up for the whole year ;)