Natalia Goncharova, femme fatale of the Russian avant-garde, was born June 21, 1881 in the region of Tula, 200 kilometers south to Moscow. Of noble descent and born into a highly educated family, one of her ancestors (after whom she was named Natalia) had been the wife of Alexander Pushkin (and inadvertedly responsible for Pushkin´s death in a duel about her). She went to school and became friends with Marina Tsvetaeva, who would later become one of Russia´s leading poets, and also a biographer of Goncharova. After school, Natalia tried to study zoology, botany, medicine and history, but after not fitting into the respective environments, she turned to study sculpture in Moscow. There she would meet fellow student Mikhail Larionov, who recognised her talent as a painter and convinced her to concentrate more on painting and to become part of what would soon become to be the Russian avant-garde. Larionov and Goncharova would remain a lifelong couple, living an obviously perfect relationship of equals who share the same interests and capabilities and being collaborators, yet also remain distinct enough to follow individual paths and not to become overpowered or distracted by each other. As an unmarried couple they would be seen as „scandalous“, yet also as powerful and independent: They would marry only late in their lives, in order to avoid legal trouble concerning their respective estates. Natalia Goncharova was described as a strong-willed and provocative personality, causing scandals not only in the art scene and living an exuberant lifestyle. In the 1910s, both Larionov and Goncharova quickly became successful not only in Russia, but also in Europe, and during the first world war both managed to move to Europe, to soon permanently settle in Paris, where Goncharova also worked as an art teacher and as a set and costume designer for the theatre.  Working for the theatre was not her major passion, yet since her flamboyant set designs and costumes would become very popular, it became her major source of income and also a means to continue to promote herself as a painter. In later years, public interest in the art of both Goncharova and Larionov waned, together with declining health of both it would make the life of the couple more complicated. In the mid-1950s the interest in their works would resurge, while their health, however, was on further decline. Plagued by arthritis in her final years, Natalia Goncharova died in her sleep on October 17, 1962, while Larionov had been at the hospital at the same time. He would pass away only two years later.

Natalia Goncharova´s trajectory as an artist was illustrious. Starting as a sculptor, she was soon to become one of the best and most promising students of her academy. Influenced by Mikhail Larionov she moved to painting, starting with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, with Henri Toulouse-Lautrec being a major influence and idol for her. In accordance with the rapid development of stylistic innovations at that time, she would remain aware of what is going on around her, and also especially embrace Cubofuturism soon thereafter. Eager to develop a distinct „Russian“ avant-garde, she, and Russian avant-gardists in general, would begin to rely on „archaic“ traditions or approaches to painting, and amalgamate them with the most contemporary ones, resulting in Neo-Primitivism, therein also trying to amalgamate childlike innocence and spontaneity and sophisticated artistic intelligence and craftsmanship, as well as an affirmation of both future-directed modernity and being and remaining spiritually rooted in „Russian soil“. Religious motives and iconography would remain a constant topic in her work all the same, as well as the depiction of farmers (as a child she had preferred rural over urban life). Larionov and Goncharova would also come up with an original stylistic innovation, „Rayonism“, which is about depicting light itself respectively objects via the way they reflect light. She was a great colorist (and it was her talent as a colorist that originally made Larionov encourage her to shift from sculpturing to painting). She was competent in portraying figures both via contour as well as via the „forces“ and intensities that seem to constitute that figure in the respective environment. Fluent in many styles, Goncharova was able to come up with interesting and intuitive solutions about how impressionist or cubofuturist depictions could look like, displaying an innate command over artistic depiction in general. Goncharova, Larionov and others of their circle would advocate a pluralism of styles and cement it theoretically and philosophically.

Above all, what seems most striking is the sheer humanity in the art of Natalia Goncharova. Without being naive, her depiction of the world, of humans and of animals is of great dignity and sweetness. It seems Natalia Goncharova had a very harmonious soul. Unfortunately, such is a rare occurence, not least in the arts.

Vincent van Gogh is one of the most incandescent minds of all time. While it is true that he did sell a single painting in his life, it is not true that he had come to be utterly unrecognised. Albert Aurier, the most profound art critic around at that time, would write an exalted article, praising Vincent van Gogh as a rare genius, able to see through the material hyle of shit while at the same time not transcending (or descending) into otherworldy or celestial depths. Rather, you would have an overabundance, a plethora of world, due to an intense perception of „a bubbling brain that would burst out his lava into all canyons of art;  a terrifying, half-mad genius, often sublime, sometimes grotesque, always slightly grazing the pathological“. It is true, in the art of Vincent van Gogh you have the otherwordliness of the world. You may say, you have a vision that refers to the peak of human perception and episteme, the Unitary Consciousness, in which all manifestations that lie within reality and that lie within the mind and in the spirit amalgamate into single, intense, elevated, transcendent perception of totality. In Vincent van Gogh´s paintings, everything has an extreme presence; nothing is hidden, reality seems to emerge out of itself, in ways that might be beautiful, frightening, dangerous or disgusting. Nature becomes of an expressive character; therein Vincent would become a forerunner of Expressionism, while his vision and, consequently, his impact on art would be more general and more profound. It is a true metaphysical reflection of the metaphysical structure of the world; while Vincent would reflect on some kind of embracive overtotality that lies inside (or beyond) nature, he was also aware that it is not necessarily protective; Artaud would say that in Vincent van Gogh´s vision you have laid bare „the hostile flesh of nature“; haha, art and the recognition of art lies in the eye of the beholder, and the depth of vision would also articulate itself in the many aspects it oversees; the more abysmal the depth, the higher and more glorious the vision until it gets consuming like the flame. The Burning World. „I love a nature that is nearly burning“, and: „Some men have great fire within their soul“. – While he had not been a child prodigy, but rather a problem child (although actually problematic (or „problematic“) he would eventually become later in his life), Vincent van Gogh had a capacity to get immersed into things, a pronounced and synthetic/synaesthetic intelligence and a passionate heart from early on. Art, as well as science and religion would have a great fascination on him from early on as well. To him, art had to rely to a considerable degree on (quasi-) scientific investigation of reality, of perception and of the means and methods of art; like religion it would refer to the divine, the otherworldly, the good and it would create a spiritual bond between men. Despite his ever-present interest, Vincent had decided to become a painter relatively late in life – since all other attempts to find accommodation in life had failed for him. It was a stunning quest, as it did not seem very promising as Vincent usually combined talents as well as considerable deficiencies in any domain he would approach, with the latters ultimately leading into tragic failure of his endeavours. Finally, when Vincent reached perfection, it was a triumphant victory of subjectivism that would define new objective standards. Vincent´s art is so idiosyncratic and, eventually, ungraspable that it cannot truly be explained or that it could have been foreseen. It is true that technically Vincent was not a master painter in many respects; he could not paint freehand, his line was nervous and imprecise and, above all, he could not achieve much similarity between the portrait and the portrayed. People and things are depicted roughly as well as bluntly, but they carry both more idiosyncracy as well as universality (not only as the person or the thing portrayed, but also more idiosyncracy and universality as you have it most other paintings) and, above all, they carry a pressing immediacy. In his greatest paintings and his most mature vision you would recognise that „everything“, and everything that can ever be said, simply and bluntly is there (a not very intellecutal sentence, but therein signifying that intellectualism comes to an end when approaching visions of the Absolute). While the most protean painter of the 20th century, Picasso, would invent a new style every once in a few years, Vincent van Gogh would (apparently) come up with a new style with any new painting he would do; respectively, Vincent would both transgress style as well as „anti-style“, as what he would do could be described as a permanent quest, a processive both searching and finding of expression as something both more primary as well as transcendent to style. Vincent´s „style“ (nevertheless) has a childish innocence, nativeness and immediateness as well as the intellectual sophistication of traditional Japanese art (which had a huge influence on Vincent) with its focus on purity and simplicity, respectively it combines both approaches; it is very virgin and very eternal, very young and very old, adequate therefore to depict a world that is both in bloom and in decay. Of course, this can be quite irritating and (like Franz Kafka) Vincent was dismissive of most of his works, considering them as „etudes“, and his true art and his true form and message as something still to come. Yet, when intelligence/creativity reaches its most upper extreme, it will likely not present itself via a „classicist“ form: instead, it will become inherently experimental and establish multiple points of view, it will become a sort of phase space of the intellect and of the soul (which may, of course, easily be confusing for the bearer of that soul and it will take some time to become familiar with it). Vincent van Gogh´s vision refer to a shifting, dynamic and also a bit elusive reality: and therefore has a firm grasp on reality as how it actually is. His style of painting makes the painting process visible, therefore reassuring that one is confronted both with reality, a vision of reality, a perception of reality and an artwork/a construction of reality; therein Vincent was a forerunner of process art and, more profoundly, of the self-referentiality of art and its metaphysical quest for its exploring own „epistemological“ possibilities and potentials. Avant-garde artists after van Gogh (and at his time) became very self-confident about the possibilities of art, also because of this self-referential quest for art within art; more recently of course art would lose such self-confidence and the self-referentiality become increasingly pointless. Obviously, it lacks the spiritual strengh of a Vincent van Gogh. Vincent´s quest within art (and within any endeavour he would approach) would be for „the true“.  According to Vincent, „the true“ is the force „that brings light into darkness“, that transforms suffering into solace, that consoles, that has the power to heal. It is „what encourages you and inspires you and is good nurture for the true life“. It refers to a kind of epiphany, and when Vincent would become aware of anything of that kind, he would say: Dat is het! „The true“ „can be found everywhere“ and in great numbers; „the world is filled with it“. In contrast to the pessimists and existentialists (and, seemingly, most people, notably intellectuals or art critics) I perfectly agree with Vincent on that; and for instance when people would ask me why, for instance, I often post harmlessly lascivious images of females with big tetas (or try to mock me whether I do it out of sexual frustration (or, as feminists would suspect, in order to exercise power over women via the „male gaze“, while it is actually them exercising power and impression over me)), I may simply respond: Because dat is het! Those are images/epiphanies that show that the world is good and life is worth living. „The true“ is the essence of things. Dat is het. „The true“ Vincent would also find in the portrayal of humble or everyday people, hitherto rather neglected by „high“ artists: peasants, craftsmen, maidens, more generally: in (the portrayal and investigation of) the idiosyncratic and the subjective (and he was especially fond of sentimental artworks, depicting children, melodramatic situations, girls in love, families living in harmony, Biedermeier-like art, like I am as well). Due to the evaporation of traditional and a stable metaphysical structure in which man would find himself embedded in modernity, the modern artist could not create a closed, consistent and total portrayal of (man within) the world any longer. Traditional iconography, allegories or metaphers had become obsolete by Vincent´s time. What is more, in the later 19th century moral foundations had become fundamentally shaken and modern man became confronted with the possibility of nihilism; most dramatically illustrated in the vision of Dostojevski, it would become the task of the individual to enliven morality and establish universal moral standards. The subjective had become prevalent. But how can you create a universal grammar out of something that is subjective, i.e. that is opaque and cannot (and should not) be generalised? Van Gogh however would note that it is precisely the subjective experiences and the individual idiosyncracies that are experienced by everyone all alike and may therefore become a basis for collective experience. An enlightened individual with a profound and empathetic vision of reality and of high personal integrity could serve as an exemplar of humanity and create universal grammars, a subjective vision that embodies/enlivens objective truths. Therein, the artist would become comparable to a saint. By the end of his life, Vincent van Gogh would consider himself to be an otherworldly, transcendent being (which is a correct perception), and art and religion he had always seen as intertwined (which, as both is based on worship, is also a correct notion). He would become godfather of modern art as a quest for subjective expression of objective truth, and a kind of guardian angel of what would become the difficult and demanding task for true artists for decades to come: finding new modes of expression anew – „We all started with van Gogh“, Picasso would say, in that respect. In the later 20th century such endeavours still were/are there but somehow have lost intellectual substance and rigor. Vincent van Gogh at his time was dismissive of the Impressionists, he found them to be „merely clever“ and resting on the foundation of a merely tricky idea, whereas true art would demand „extreme seriousness“ (nowadays, the tide has moved against the notion of Vincent once more, probably to an extend that would surprise him even more (although humor and irony usually are good, it is probably also good that Vincent to a considerable degree lacked humor and irony, i.e. basic principles of postmodernity)). Vincent van Gogh would notice Aurier´s essay of exited praise for him, but he reacted somehow indifferent and dismissive. He had a low self opinion as he had had to experience himself as a failure throughout his life, he saw that he could not reach the mastery of other, technically more profound painters, and he did not consider it possible that he was „a rare genius“. Also, while Aurier could see the polished surface of Vincent´s art, Vincent the artist himself knew about the (unelegant) difficulties and coincidences within the process of creating his art, therefore he was less ready to see it as results of a divine inspiration. While the article by Aurier and also a subsequent exhibition of some of Vincent´s works would attract attention, he still could not sell anything while at the same time Theo´s financial situation had become more problematic, terrifying the ashamed Vincent that he could not escape the situation of putting financial stress on his brother ever more. Irritated, Vincent fled to the countryside again, fully in bloom of his mastery he would create some of his greatest paintings; yet soon thereafter he would succumb to a fatal injury inflicted by a gunshot.

They say there is a thin line or a similarity between genius and madness. That is not actually true. Genius refers to an abnormal intensity of perception and of experiencing the world by getting immersed into it, as well as to great fluency in making unusual associations between (often remote) perceptions and concepts. Due to the unusualness of his ideas, the genius may become mistaken for crazy by others (and therefore become prone to identity crisis and feelings of estrangement himself), but he is, to an abnormal degree, rational in all his endeavours – whereas the madman is, profoundly, not. What makes Vincent van Gogh´s story so attractive/tragic is that he was both a genius and a madman. Rejected by his contemporaries, he is now considered pure and a saint, born to suffer in a world hostile or injudicious to purity, illustrating the tragedy of the genius; yet, apart from that, Vincent actually was a misfit on his own accounts and a challenge to most people he met, including those who were sympathetic of him. About the origins of Vincent´s irrationality there have been debates and scholars have tried to identify it as a bipolar disorder or some kind of schizophrenia. Epilepsy has also been suggested. Likely Vincent had a schizotypal personality disorder, maybe combined with other abnormalities. Schizotypy is a condition that involves unusual emotional and perceptual intensity, capacity to ruminate, associative and network-like thinking, anhedonia, introversion and impulsive nonconformity. Therein, it may be a condition that enables genuine creativity, personal autonomy or genius: Einstein, for example, appears as a perfect illustration of healthy schizotypy. A schizotypal personality disorder involves all those features but gives them a turn towards the unhealthy and the irrational. You may have odd perceptions and personal ideologies within the schizotypically disordered individual, magical thinking, irrational impulsiveness, getting overwhelmed by emotions and social isolation and withdrawal due to reduced capability of getting along with others and to intellectually empathise with them. In contrast to the schizoid individual, the schizotypal individual, who specifically knows both emotional intensity and may have a strong sense for „connectedness“ between people and things, may experience his social isolation as very painful, and that may generate considerable mental health problems and depressions that, in addition to the odd ways of thinking of the schizotypal in the first place, may degenerate into states that are near to psychosis, or into actual psychosis and schizophrenia. Theo van Gogh has experienced „two personalities“ within his brother, respectively a „Jackyll and Hyde“ personality within Vincent. Very strangely, Vincent was capable of extreme rationality and understanding as well as compassion and love for others, transgressing into self-sacrifice, as well as he easily was very subborn, argumentative, self-righteous, impossible to get along with different opinions and, therefore, with most people in general. He was both very fluent and considerably limited and inflexible. Clearly, there are problems for sensitive and intelligent or unusual individuals to get along within society, especially within childhood and youth, and that may lead to problems of adaption, but Vincent´s irrationality, in its stubbornness, cannot, however, actually get traced back to traumatic origins, but appears as something genuine, and in such a case a personality disorder or mental illness is very likely at play. Mental illness came to affect also other members of Vincent´s family; his brother Cor later commited suicide and his sister Wil went insane and spent nearly four decades of her life, until her death, in a nursing home. Theo´s tragic decline came from syphillis nevertheless; it is however possible that Vincent´s aggravated mental health problems later in life had the same origin, and one of the possible motives for his (apparent) suicide was the fear of plunging ever more into insanity. While failure to adapt to institutional logics (or get accepted by institutions in the first place) and an irregular, „trial and error“ biography may not be uncommon for uncommon people and for geniuses, Vincent van Gogh had failed in every aspect of life, be it professional or interpersonal or as a student (and the feelings of guilt and shame aggravated his depressions). In some ways, his failures actually had glorious and triumphant aspects, aspects of failure due to being „too high to function“, but, at the other end of the tail, they carried morbidity. The most heartbreaking story in his biography before he decided to become an artist was him wanting to become a preacher among mineworkers in Zundert who had to live in extremely miserable conditions, notorious not only in the whole country but even beyond its borders. The suffering of the proletarians in Zundert affected Vincent greatly and he went to measures of extreme self-sacrifice in order to help them personally: he spent his time with them, gave away practically all his money and things and, after a huge explosion had happened that left many dead and even more wounded, medically cared for the wounded to the extend of exhaustion. Unfortunately, his grotesque self-humiliation finally began to bear less resemblance to that of a strong-minded and highly rational saint, but more to religious mania and the behaviour of a fanatic and it became uncanny not only to his superiors but also to many of the mineworkers of Zundert. That, and his inability to take into consideration any advice from others finally led to his expulsion and another tragic failure in his life (the official reason for his dismissial however had been that, despite the eloquence that would become apparent in his letters, he could not actually preach and talk in front of crowds). Vincent was a man who lived in extremes, both in divine ways as well as in clearly unhealthy fashions. Self-sacrificial and saint-like to an extreme degree during his time as a preacher, he would ask his brother for more money with some sense of entitlement a while later (while, later again, feelings of guilt about stressing his brother´s financial resources ever further may have been, then, a motive for the (apparent) suicide). Despite his permanent condition of dire straits, he never learned how to live economically. During his lifetime, his appearance would range from dandy to bum, alienating the people around him. As a truly transcendent and saint-like individual, Vincent had high hopes concerning other people and he easily developed enormous passion and compassion for them, which, however, often were out of touch with reality, and he was specifically prone to idealise the misfortunate among human creatures (like the people of Zundert). Sien, a moody prostitute with whom he tried to establish a family for a while, he considered to be „an angel“, and in the eye of newborn children he would see „the infinite“ (one of the infants in whose eyes he had seen the infinite would later become associated with the fascists). With Gaugin at least he wanted to live his ideal of establishing an (everlasting) fraternic community of artists, of intellectual and emotional bonds unable to get broken, while alienating him with his argumentativeness. When Gaugin wanted to leave him to move to new territories, Vincent became so afraid that, in a dissociative state aggravated by alcohol abuse, he cut off his ear, in an apparent attempt to make a „sacrifice“ to Gaugin to make him stay (and, likely, as a mutilation due to self-loathing; like in the final hours of his life, deadly wounded, Vincent did not elaborate much about the natures of the incidents). Whether his death was the result of a sucide attempt or whether Vincent was (unintentionally) shot by rascals that used to follow and harrass the eccentric painter is something we do not know though: There are good reasons to take the former as well as the latter possibility into account. The dominant narrative of the suicide – that may, however, erode because of the reasoning about his death in the more recent monumental biography about Vincent van Gogh by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith as well as in the film about van Gogh by Julian Schnabel – is at least the more meaningfully tragic one and carries more gravitas. A tragic tale of his life may „benefit“ a genius as it increases his personal sex appeal after his death and make his biography appear more meaningful. Vincent´s ascent to the heavens may be that, in its comprehensive, genuine as well as elusive and mysterious tragedy it is very well-rounded. After his death he became an archetype, an icon, a symbolic figure, seemingly a good spirit/angelic creature, watching over us.

Indeed, not long after his death, Vincent van Gogh became to be seen as archetypical modern painter and as a saint of art. He bears maximum charisma as he is actually a metaphysical figure. The multiple threads that concern art, and all human endeavour and all human quest seem to meet in his art and in his biography. He is a superknot of threads. It has been noted that van Gogh had ruminated more about art and also about the relation between art and world, also as concerns the practical aspects, than any other modern painter (and, for instance, his idea about the artist communities was not only an emotionally motivated utopia, but, first and foremost, a practical idea about how the socially brutally excluded painters of his time could create means and a practical way of living and become more independent from the cynical art market). There is a lot of confusion about what art could actually be or what it would mean to be nowadays (and, due to this confusion that goes over people´s heads, unfortunately also a profound indifference towards answers to such questions); conservative philosopher Roger Scruton fortunately says that the truth of art is spiritual truth. Spiritual truth means a deep connectedness to the world and usually has to be gained via suffering. Van Gogh is the epitome of  „suffering for art“. Vincent´s quest was one of extreme integrity and for authenticity, and humanity needs such stories in order to ensure the authenticity of itself, of the human condition and of the human experience. The genius in someone deeply introspective into the subjects of his investigative quests and therefore is able to unveil „hidden secrets“ of matter. Art is a quest for metaphysical localisation of man and finding modes of expression for that. Vincent van Gogh was extremely introspective into art, in a way that he fell through the metaphysical abyss of art. Because of this, you finally have the totality within his art, the plethora and overabundance of the things portrayed and that extreme degree of presence death to false metal (reminder: could Derrida´s notion about the impossibility of presence be countered via van Gogh? To be investigated!); as you have the ultimate explosiveness within a White Hole due to matter that is falling through a Black Hole and is channeled through a Wormhole – that´s how such a system works.  Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari say that a true work of art stands (erect) for itself. Even more than that, in the art of van Gogh you have the Absolute. The art of van Gogh (as well as the tragic conciseness of his biography) cannot be transgressed. The Absolute is an instance that is indifferent to all human relativity and therefore indifferent to all human opinion and to all human thinking. You may say, it is the sphere of absolute values. Van Gogh´s Starry Night or his Church of Auvers, or Beethoven´s Ninth or the General Theory of Relativity exercise a power over me that is infinitely higher than mine. They´re the Absolute. Talent´s quest may be for, respectively reaches its fulfillment in perfection. The genius finds its full realisation in reaching the Absolute. The strangeness of the Absolute is that it is the most universal of statements and that it is very immediate and intelligible as well as it is very different from anything else and not very intelligible, and the establishment of the Absolute is very different from any other endeavour, it´s (naturally) very different realms of being; in the terminology of Wittgenstein (another monad that was working on the Absolute), the language of the Absolute is a different language game from the language games that happen in time and in space. The people of the Absolute are radically different and distinguished from anyone else; they not only belong to groups radically different from the general run of people (the groups of artists, philosophers, druids et al), but are also radically different monads within those groups. And so, apparently, the circle closes. Vincent van Gogh had a passionate desire for brothership and community. He wanted to establish not only a true community of artists but, via art, a brotherly community within mankind. Therein, one may remember Gilles Deleuze´s essay on American literature and Herman Melville, Bartleby, Or, The Formula, in which he outlines that American literature is a call for brotherly unity and America is a utopia of brotherly unity, with this ideal of brotherly unity and authentic community nevertheless being contaminated and corrupted in and by reality. With reference to Melville, Deleuze touches on the problem of the „true originals“, truly original people, who, in a heroic, in a funny and/or in a tragic way stand outside of society and, due to their autonomy and originality, cannot be influenced or consumed (and also not corrupted) by society. They are outsiders of humanity as well as they are an embodiment of humanity and of the human individual in a metaphysical sense. They embody the struggle between the individual and society in a search for meaning and mutual pacification. The reconciliation between the original and society/humanity is the problem for establishing fraternity and authentic community within men, so Deleuze/Melville. Often, the reconciliation between the original and humanity will happen only after the original´s death, when the biographical original individual and the ouevre of the original has entered the autonomous sphere of true ideals (or, above that, of the Absolute) that help to give meaning to humanity. With the reconciliation between the original and humanity, fraternity and authenticity is, then, truly achieved – in an ideal and metaphysical but therein highly tangible sense. And so, the circle and the cycle closes, the dead original can truly rest in peace, as the circle and the cycle opens up for another original again, later in history.

P.S.: Goethe (?) says, only a genius is able to truly recognise a(nother) genius. A tragedy associated with van Gogh is that Albert Aurier, who recognised van Gogh so profoundly and wrote so flamboyantly about him (therein likely mirroring his own flamboyant, explosive mind) at a young age, at the beginning of his twenties, died soon thereafter. I guess Aurier´s early demise is a tragic loss for humanity.

There has been a show about contemporary textile art that gave me some terrible thrills. Textile art traditionally is about making clothing and Raumtextilien more beautiful and appealing; contemporary textile art however has emancipated from functional aspects, instead aims at creating artworks and sculptures, focusing on the materiality of textile, colours, interplay, forms and dimensionality and reaching into and occupying space. It often carries a social and political message. I have to say that I like very much the dimensional aspect of that kind of approach. True art is about suggesting a view into another dimension and the exhibition just offered me that. I find it difficult to say much else about it, although I have read about textile art subsequently, I could not study it extensively, but it is also good when impressions overpower the intellectual capacity to exhaustively describe them. As already mentioned, art is also about creating symbols that express the state of the art of contemporary society. As you don´t have an easy state of the art of society that could be expressed e.g. via Warhol´s repetitive soup cans or Beuys` naive but powerful social sculpture nowadays, but a very complex and individualised society, no such obvious symbols seem to be at hand. Overlaying and telescoping stuff seems to be the name of the game contemporarily. Via overlaying and telescoping stuff you create more dimensionality and you create more depth and substance. I have to say that those textile artworks offered me new glimpses about what aesthetics can be. There is a dimensional intensity in them, vibration and reaching into space and territory. It was about time someone came and does something like that.

Unprotected 0 Fig 120° is a tasty and refined sculpture/structure that bears charisma. What makes the specific charismas of such sculptures/structures that are both so silent and so manifest? Well, that they are both so silent and manifest. They are erect, they stand tall (or at least upright), they are constructed and crafted. Craftsmanship, intelligence and refinement they embody. They are manifestations. Due to their impersonality and blatant materiality they appear as objects in this world, as manifestations independent from man. As manifestations that are both personal and impersonal they may be both older than man or younger than man, at any rate they seem to transgress man and stand erect into an indefinite and/or potentially posthuman future – due to their futuristic architecture may even be a call from the posthuman future. They are both dependent from man and independent from man. Because of this, they are both sublime and – as maybe referring to an aesthetic/intellectual category of its own – less-than-sublime, and therefore create a more comprehensive whole. In their silence, they do not speak but seem vocal nevertheless. Maybe they embody some truth, but refuse to speak so that we are forced to enter into a relationship of mimesis and intuitivity to tap the secrets they seem to maintain or to express. They are a frontier to our imagination and confront us with the blank space of our original imagination. In that aspect, they are metaphysical and abysmal. They can only be completed with imagination, they are symbiotic with our imagination. In Marlena Kudlicka´s works sculptures get transgressed into structures. That is an aspect inherent in sculpture, but within the aesthetic approach of MK it gets more distinctly revealed. It becomes an emergent quality. It is transgressive. MK says she is interested not only in „structure“ but also in fragility and error as inherent parts or incremental ingredients of large structures. The delicate nature of construction of her native Poland under communism where building materials where often and unpredictably lacking provide an impetus, intellectually and metaphysically, that reminds us that the inclusion of fragility and error into that which seems solid and erect, greater completeness and substantial quality is achieved. It also reminds us that via the inclusion of idiosyncracy, beauty truly gets achieved, personalised and individualised (technically, beauty is just a combination of qualities in their most average manifestations). Hell yeah, Unprotected 0 Fig 120° is a manifestation! As such, it does not need further or external qualities as it comprises many (and probably paradoxical) qualities and seems a world in itself, a world that that is self-contained. It stands upright, it is solid, compact and affirmative. Indeed, it is a great affirmation! Imagine a little figure that wanders around and affirmatively and determinedly beats a drum – „Here I am! What would you do against me?! Here I am! And you can do nothing about it!“ That would be a personification of Unprotected 0 Fig 120°, at least as I can imagine, as it is presented before my inner eye. Very cute, very powerful, if not brutal. It is a great affirmation, indeed!

French philosopher Alain Badiou advocates that art should become more „affirmative“ again. Within so-called postmodernity, art somehow has lost its edge. Affirmation of particuliarities has undermined the sense of art being an expression of universality, affirmation of (particularised) subjectivity has, in practice, degenerated into an art being for the sake of self-expression without transmitting universal and objective messages and stylistic inventions (and, as one can add, contemporary emphasis on the artist´s biography – like being a member of a minority, being homosexual or having feminist credentials – over the actual art undermines the idea that art is primarily about oeuvre and not about personality). Them particuliarities seek alignment with the grand system of circulation, the art market and with „democracy“ and the democratic system of permissive communication, that, at least according to Badiou, is a system of manipulation and estalishment of a fake consensus. All of that produces averageness and harmlessness. You have an avant-gardism without avant-garde, frail particuliarties, an „inconsistent manifoldness“. Alongside with a „false humility“ that negates that art or philosophy could produce absolute truth, it has become a feeble enterprise. Badiou affirms that art should become (again) about „monumental construction“, about (grandiose) „project“ and about the creative power of weakness and establishing a stark contrast to the forces of establishment. „Art has to be as solid as a mathematical proof, has to come as unexpected as a nightly attack, and has to stand as high as a star.“ Toward the end of his life, Duchamp said that (within a permissive society that consumes and digests avant-gardism, as well as in a post-avant-garde age where artists may have to find radically new ways in order to be able to be truly innovative) the artist of the future will need to go into the underground, and also Badiou says that affirmative art of the future will happen outside the established systems of communication as it is incommensurate with them. As „proletarian aristocratism“, the artwork of the future does not communicate and it does not deliver a direct message, as it delivers a universal message to all, from a standpoint that is both weaker than the establishment and therein more universal, and also stronger than the establishment and therein more universal (and less average). It affirms the potential of art to produce truly powerful and all-inclusive as well as transcendent meaning. Avant-garde has always also been about creating a subjectivity and a territory that the „system“ (and there is always a „system“) cannot truly colonise; thererin you have a dialectics of inclusion and exlusion that is often very demanding for the true artist. – Therein, let us say, that we do not truly know how this art will look like. That we do not truly know how it will look like is, of course, a part of the game, since true art comes unexpectedly. I can also say that art with metaphysical potential is truly in place in contemporary art (though not necessarily at the forefront). I do not know what to think about Badiou´s traditional left-leaning heuristics about „democracy“ and the „systems“ of „democratic communication“ being about or resulting in the production of „false consciousness“, and, more generally, to make concluding and comprehensive statements about contemporary art is an evasive attempt that has been excitingly plagueing me now for years, but maybe we can say that true art is also about the production of powerful and all-inclusive symbols – and in a highly individualised society – where conditions are, to a considerable degree, fulfilled for which the avant-gardists, left-wingers and punks of the past have been fighting for – finding symbols like Warhols repetitive soup cans or a cubist painting as grand signifiers of respective modernity appears much less likely. To find a master signifier seems truly difficult nowadays. Nevertheless, things of depth and of value can be found, indeed. If you think of the master signifier and the symbol and the affirmative art as outlined by Badiou, the consciousness of the deep genius of art of today will both subvert and transcent today´s state of the art of the Weltgeist. It will be the Unitary Consciousness that is the reflection and the meta-level of the Weltgeist. The deep genius of the art inhabitates the bottom of the ocean, where he lives and dwells. Think of an ultra-deep genius of art that forever lives at the bottom of the ocean, whose work will hardly be recognised during his lifetime and forgotten after his demise, because people are forever too stupid to understand him! Fascinating, eh? This is, of course, only a hypothetical case, since people are not stupid.

Lu Shoukun (1919-1975) left China in 1948 to become a influential figure in the Hong Kong art scene, where he founded and championed the New Ink Movement. Ink painting is a powerful tradition in Chinese painting (and „a way of self-cultivation by scholars to enhance morality and the mind“), and Lu Shoukun aimed at taking it into another era, reconcile it with modernity. He draw upon Western avant-garde and integrated it into his own vision. The height of his vision he reached toward the end of his life with his „Zen paintings“. They consist mostly of bold and broad brushstrokes on a (usually) white background and a red dot (signifying a lotus or a butterfly). Adapting the langauges of Western Abstraction, Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting, the Zen visions seem both bold and devoid of gravity as they seem effortless created, within a moment, to reunite it with the timeless, formless and eternal as well as with sweetness and the living world and the pulsating heart (the red dot). In Lu Shoukun´s Zen paintings, the West and the East mirror each other and show possibility of integration, and especially 1974´s „Zhuangzi“ delivers the quality of an icon.

 Like Lu Shoukun, Liu Guosong (b. 1932) is an important pioneer in Chinese modernist painting, and he is even considered the „father of modern ink painting“. He moved, in 1949, to Taiwan and attempted to overtrow the conservatism in Chinese and Taiwanese art. Embracing Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism, he creates dynamic landscapes which seem to express the forces of nature as well as the creative forces within painting and the human mind – a dynamic interplay. He also uses innovative techniques like „stepped ink“ and „water rubbing“ as well as collage, to give his paintings greater depth and texture. Most notably, Liu Guosong developed the idea of „revolutionary life force“ where, according to the freedom of creative mind, the ink is completely set free. As a teacher, Liu Guosong allows his students to use whatever material they like and „the more different their paintings are from his, the better“.

 Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) artistically impressed people already as a youngster. As a student he spent many years in the vibrant Paris and Berlin of the 1920s where he got into touch with the Western avantgarde and mixed it with Chinese tradition. His life is a story of ups and downs within the turbulent history of China in the 20th century. In the late 1920s he returned to China and became a respected artist and professor but his career experienced a setback within the Sino-Japanese War. Becoming more reclusive, Lin Fengmian further developed his style. During the Cultural Revolution he was forced to destroy a large part of his work and became imprisoned. The last decade of his life he spent in Hong Kong as his reputation in the Asian world increased once more. Not very well known in the West, his art amalgamated traditional Chinese style with Western avant-garde, and especially with his many paintings of ladies and nudes, he alludes to Matisse. Although more limited than Matisse (who has his own distinct limitations of well, though), his Ladies are very, very tasty and enchanting as they are stylised but, in that reduced manner, also an ideal of beauty, grace and elegance. His equally tasty portraits of nature show that Lin Fengmian was a true freak of nature.

Inmitten von Moden und ephemeren Trends widmet sich Duncan Wylie der eigentlichen Aufgabe der Kunst und der Malerei: die Tiefenstruktur und Vielschichtigkeit der Welt zum Ausdruck zu bringen, die Potentialität inmitten des Realen, das Geschrei des Seins (auch, wenn es möglicherweise nur die Lautstärke des kreativen Geistes ist, der sie wahrnimmt). Große, geniale Kunst lässt in der Welt, die sie abbildet, immer auch noch eine andere Welt sichtbar werden und hat ihr Leben im gegenseitigen Widerspiel und dem gegenseitigen Durchdringen dieser Welten bzw. Seinsbereiche. Das ist die ewige Aufgabe der Malerei und ihr eigentlicher Sinn! Duncan Wylie bildet die Tiefenstruktur der Welt ab in einer Zeit, in der, physikalischen Spekulationen zufolge, unser Universum in eine unendliche Vielzahl von Multiversen eingebettet ist, in denen wir selbst unendlich oft, mit alternierenden Geschichten, auftreten. Duncan Wylie hat neue Lösungen gefunden, den Reichtum und die Tiefe der Welt darzustellen.

Geboren 1975 in Zimbabwe, fällt ein gewisses Nomadentum in der Biographie von Duncan Wylie auf – der gegenwärtig in London lebt und arbeitet. Ausgehend von der Erfahrung der Vertreibung von (in Zimbabwe weißen als auch, und zahlenmäßig umso mehr, farbigen) Siedlern und der Zerstörung ihrer Häuser als auch dem Versuch der Zerstörung ihrer Identitäten und ihres Gemeinschaftsgefühls, bilden Akte der Zerstörung bzw. devastierte Architekturen ein frühes Grundmotiv in den Werken von Duncan Wylie – reflektierend verlängert in die Aufgabe, den „Augenblick“, dem Impakt – möglicherweise „das Ereignis“ – einzufangen, sowie den Zufall, das Schicksal; inmitten dessen die metaphysische Unbehaustheit des Menschen innerhalb des Seins, dessen Sinn offensichtlich abwesend ist, oder erst konstruiert werden muss. Zutiefst existenzielle Motive.

Wenngleich in seinen Bildern meistens keine Menschen vorkommen – von zeitweiligen rätselhaft unverblümt-unmittelbaren Porträts unter anderem von Robert Mugabe abgesehen – ist es in letzter Zeit die Figur des Seiltänzers, die öfter bei Duncan Wylie auftaucht. Ein Gradwanderer, der sein autonomes Selbst mühsam konstruiert, ein originärer Künstler, der zwischen Kosmos und Chaos als den Elementen wandelt – die Selbsterschaffung und graduelle Selbststabilisierung des Menschen in einer potenziell chaotischen Welt, die Erlangung autonomer, den Zumutungen der Welt gegenüber souveränen Subjektivität, ist die Botschaft, die Duncan Wylie dem Menschen mitzuteilen hat – weniger als eine harsche, autoritäre Aufforderung denn als Vermittlung von Hoffnung und als Zeichen des Respekts für die individuelle Gradwanderung, den individuellen Lebensweg, die individuellen Kämpfe jedes einzelnen.

In seinen jüngsten Arbeiten, die in der Galerie Dukan erstmals gezeigt werden, scheint Duncan Wylie bei einem Subjekt angelangt zu sein, das über eine etwas sicherere Bahn (Eisenbahngeleise) wandelt, und das beginnt, von seinem inneren Material, seinen Innenräumen produktiv chaotisch überlagert zu werden, das zunehmend komplexer und reichhaltiger wird. Er nennt sie „self constructing figures“. Die Doppelbedeutung von „construct“ scheint eine wesentliche Inspiration zu sein: insoweit ein Konstrukt eine definitive materielle Konsistenz und Objektivität haben kann, aber auch etwas Subjektives (z.B. „ein ideologisches Konstrukt“) sein kann – damit eben auch ein Akt der Schöpfung. Haben wir es mit einer Verhältnisbestimmung Subjektiv – Objektiv zu tun? Dem Ineinanderspielen von beiden? Man bemerke, wie sich die „explodierenden“ Subjekte und die Welt, der Hintergrund, in den sie eingelassen sind, offensichtlich überlagern. Gleichermaßen figurative wie auch abstrakte Kunst. Die Architektur in diesen Werken ist nunmehr intakt, die Welt scheinbar „heiler“.

Zusätzlich präsentiert sich Duncan Wylie in dieser Ausstellung auch noch auf eine neue Art und Weise mit seinen Gravuren „(Various) Disasters for Democracy“: Kaltnadelradierungen, die an das Dämonische im Dasein gemahnen und die an Alfred Kubin erinnern – entdeckt Duncan Wylie auch die Möglichkeiten des Surrealismus für sich?  Duncan Wylies Kunst bleibt, wie es heute selten der Fall ist, universal, und in ihren Aussagen von universaler Gültigkeit. Nichts entkommt letztlich ihrem Blickwinkel; in der Hoffnung, die sie vermittelt, liegt Mahnung, in der Mahnung Hoffnung.

Philip Hautmann (geb. 1977 in Linz) ist Schriftsteller und Philosoph und lebt in Wien

http://www.galeriedukan.com/exhibitionhome/duncan-wylie-construct-and-various-disasters-democracy

In the midst of fashions and trend dictates, Duncan Wylie dedicates himself to the true purpose of art and of painting: to express and portray the deep structure and the multilayeredness of the world, of potentiality within reality, the clamour of being (even if it is only the loudness of the creative mind that perceives such a reality). In great art, in art of the genius, you always seem to have another world emerging within, or beneath, the world that is ostensibly presented, and seems to live in the mutual osmosis of both worlds, respectively world visions. Isn´t that the eternal purpose of art and the true meaning of art? Duncan Wylie portrays the deep structure of the world in an age where, according to scientific speculations, our universe is embedded in an infinity of multiverses, in which we, most personally, appear with alternating biographies. Duncan Wyle has found new solutions to portray the richness and depth of the world.

Born in Zimbabwe in 1975, a certain nomadism is evident in Duncan Wylie´s biography –  who currently lives and works in London. The experience of the expulsion of (in Zimbabwe not only of white but also, and at distinctly higher magnitude, black) settlers and the destruction of their homes, not least also with the purpose of destroying their identity and sense of community, acts of destruction and devastated architectures become a basic motiv in the works of Duncan Wylie – transcended into the task of portraying „the moment“, „the impact“ – maybe even „the event“, as well as of chance and fate and the metaphysical Unbehaustheit of man within an existence in which meaning and salvation is obviously absent, or needs to be constructed in the first place. Deeply existential motives.

Although there usually are no people portrayed in his paintings – apart from intermittent enigmaticly blunt and direct portraits, for instance of Robert Mugabe – it is the character of the tightrope walker that emerges in Duncan Wylie´s more recent works. A wanderer between worlds, who laboriously constructs his own self, an original artist, navigating between chaos and cosmos as the elements of art – the self construction and gradual empowerment of man in a potentially chaotic world, the acquirement of autonomous subjectivity, sovereign against  the impositions of the world seem to be the message Duncan Wylie wants to transmit to man – to a lesser extend as a harsh, authoritarian appeal than as an indication of hope and as a sign of respect for the individual tightrope walking within one´s own challenges of each and everyone of us.

In his most recent works, which are presented by the Dukan Gallery for the first time, Duncan Wylie seems to have pushed forward to a subject that wanders on a somehow safer track (railroad tracks) and that seems to become overlaid by his own inner material, in a productively chaotic way, a subject that seems to become ever more rich and complex. He calls them „self constructing figures“. The double meaning of „construct“ seems to have been an inspiration: since a „construct“ can have a definitive, material, objective substance, yet can also be something rather subjective (i.e. an „ideological construct“) – a materialisation of creativity at any rate. Do we have an exploration of the interdependence subjective – objective it that? The osmosis of both? Also take a look at how the „exploding“ subjects and the background of the world they are situated in obviously interfere with each other. Both figurative and abstract art. The architecture in those works is meanwhile intact, and the world seemingly a safer place.

 In addition to that, Duncan Wylie presents himself in a new fashion with his engravings „(Various) Disasters for Democracy“: Drypoint etchings thar are reminiscent of Alfred Kubin and seem to refer to the „demonic“ in the world – does Duncan Wylie also explore the possibilities that lie within surrealism? Duncan Wylie´s art remains – what is rarely the case in our days – universal, with messages of universal significance and validity. Nothing escapes its focus, in the hope that is transmits there is admonition, in its admonition there is hope.

Philip Hautmann (b. 1977 in Linz, Austria), is a writer and philosopher and lives in Vienna

Duncan Wylie, Contemporary Metaphysical Painter