Wonder - The Brandenburg Pictures

In 2010, one year after the Wonderteam had moved from Berlin to the Herrenhaus Häsen in Löwenberger Land, Wolf began painting a series of small square acrylic paintings, in which he undertook a reduction to the essential basic elements of painting, colour and line.

It was a renewal in the decision to abstract everything that is not absolutely required, however, still is painting.

Wolf said, “What can I drop, how far can I go and it still works as a picture, that it is painting?”

 

Wolf focused again or still more on the reality of the child and varied in many facets his main theme, Coming Home.

 

In the Coming Home pictures we always find the same subjects, the house, the tree that is always laden with fruits, the alley, a human and an animal, typical subjects in pictures of children.

 

In addition ironical political pictures were painted as a reflexion on the time of transformation, the neoliberalism, especially the banking crisis and the ensuing crises of states.

 

These linear pictures consequently are also reductions of the earlier Berlin pictures that were created between 2001 and 2009 in Wedding, in the format 100 x 140 cm, in which Wolf had daubed lavishly with oil, often with runny pigments, on burlap or canvas.

 

In contrast to these material-like pictures which Wolf always used to fit himself, the new linear Brandenburg pictures are set. The canvases are industrially prepared and the smooth surface of the canvas always remains visible.

On small formats, 40 x 40 cm or 50 x 50 cm, Wolf applies the paint directly from the tube, the paint ramains relatively unmixed, Wolf’s selection of colours is still based -as it always has been since the beginning of his painting- on Harald Küpper’s Integrative Colour Theory, which consist of the primary colours and assumes that the colours mix in the eye of the viewer.

Referring to his approach of the child’s reality in painting Wolf said in a talk, that here on the basis of the Integtrative Colour Theory, “The topic and the form try to merge, that it is still more crayon-like in its entirety. Hence this linear, however, it is still painting.”

 

Wolf sometimes talks enthusiastically about the magic that crayons held for him in his early childhood.

In the aforementioned talk which I recorded, Wolf realized with surprise that the square format of the Brandenburg pictures hold a vivid memory, namely the magic of his stamp collection with magnificent pictures on miniature format.

Wolf: “Also, the pictures inevitably mirror a part of the own mental state. I like it when some pictures turn out so splendid.

When I was a child there were always these stamps which one collected, there was always a 'Sperrwert', those were especially magnificent. The Hungarians had that, and DDR as well. [ ...]

Oh no, I just realize that. That’s the format! The stamp!

I always liked that, that has shaped me, I had that stamp album with that incredible beauty and splendour, and there was one that was particularly expensive, 'Sperrwert' it was called. [...]

Well, I was shocked that I had actually realized here such an early childhood post stamp story, that is actually the love for detail.

And there were just some, they were..., I love that, I just realize that, the Dove[1], it also has become so particularly magnificent, gorgeous.”

 

The approach with the reality of the child in Wolf’s work is based on feeling, is fed from memory, that is to say from an integrated perception, and by that it is deeply autobiographic.

The decision for a reduction to coloured lines, set directly from the tube, in the Brandenburg pictures, mirrors Wolf’s reorientation, a determination of the status quo, a ‘putting himself into a new perspective with regard to the world’.

 

In the recorded talk about this article, Wolf provides information on the human and artistic challenges that an autobiographic work of this kind entails.

Wolf in his own words:

 

W: The Berlin pictures were created in Berlin, in a big city, [...] it was a neighborhood, it was somewhat a St. Pauli in a way, next to it was actually a brothel, and there, of course, this had originated, in this ...

 

S: Retreat

 

W: That is not a retreat. No, that is what it is not. This is what I had thought it is.

I have partly made it into a retreat, however, as far as  painting is concerned, it wasn’t a retreat at all. It was in the contrary an opening, it was forward..., the opposite of a retreat. That was an emergence. An emergence to oneself, in fact. To one’s own roots.

[...]

The landscape does matter. Though not in the Romanticism, transfiguration or so, but..., I can’t even tell, I had experienced the landscape quiet differently than you and Brigitte have, and I didn’t really enjoy that, you see, I grew up in the meadows. In the marshland. Most times I got angry anyway when the neighbours were so extremely narrow-minded, so dead-alife and sick. I didn’t like that.

However, I didn’t eliminate that either. But I couldn’t actually like van Gogh did, now paint Mrs. Müller, or the mailman. That doesn’t work after all. For me that would be a bit of romantic transfiguration. I didn’t have a longing, Suse. That’s the point. I didn’t have a longing as I was actually there.

And that’s basically ..., that isn’t actually so unusual for an artist, my impressions.

The impressions were during night-time, this silence, the encounter with oneself, however, not in the romanticism, not in the transfiguration, that’s so important to me.

Besides I had found a topic.

This more or less ‘incidental’ marshland-topic which didn’t really originate in the marsh but rather when I had already left, got an enhanced validity [2]. It was no longer marsh, it was actually..., well, I am all that myself.

[...]

I am, however, no homeland-painter nor a craftsman. Therefore..., I must always..., these variations on the topic...

[...]

The other thing is, that as a painter I enjoy to check out a topic, in how far this will work out, as an opening, a technique, a reduction.

I didn’t want to reduce this like Mondrian or Miro did, as to get lost in cypher, in patterns or also like Nay himself, I didn’t want that. I wanted, of course, to keep the figurative power.

However, I reduced it to the extreme, of course. Basically I am telling my… stories there.

There is one more thing, [...] in this hard times..., for some time it wasn’t allowed to say that..., the loss of values was kind of a term, that is still harmless in a time when one experiences that own values in life do not become less but disappear, are being given up.

[...]

After all, that’s always the same thing, ... my approach as always, I like to do this like Warhol, only I don’t want to show the public, the facade, rather the substance.

This is what I have learnt from Warhol, from Lichtenstein as well, and I think that this is possible.

However, for doing this you must connect to your Feelings which Warhol wanted to avoid like the pest, and you have to connect yourself to your childhood.

But this probably nobody will understand.

And there is the appeal from the colour and the variation on colour.

And the playing with the technique.

I had gotten away from acryl. And I have returned to acryl in a way I love.

So the first picture was a real line-picture where I wanted to try out if this is possible, if one could … from acrylic lines..., without contents actually, thus without colour contents, rather with content as content, if this would bear. This was what actually scared me so much.

It’s obvious when I see that, I then drop all of that furbelows. The colourizing and such things.

These pictures aren’t colourized. Never any single one.

[...]

Besides, it originated from the limited means. I had no real studio. I don’t have one yet.

[...]

I wanted to have pictures then which, when I took them to exhibitions or fairs, I didn’t need to rent a container for but simply put them into a suitcase to take them along.

Besides I always felt attracted to the small format.

That’s my experience when I was at the Westkunst, no, this was in the Museum Ludwig at the time of the Westkunst, and I stood up there on the balustrade and there hung an Arles picture, the Bridge of Arles, van Gogh, and opposite hung a Penck one hundredfold enlarged. Now guess which picture I found to be the better one? 

 

S: van Gogh.

 

W: Obviously when you are an artist yourself, you don’t want to be like Penck, that’s absurd. I’d rather like to try to also accomplish this in a small format.

I had always liked the small formats, the Netherlanders with their snow landscapes, with the people that were painted in there, and I don’t have to be that fond of details now.

[...]

Of course in the end this is all Sophie Reinheimer.[3] But I needed something to survive.

I actually only gave myself the permission, that’s it actually..., that is not a retreat, but that is a ‘Shit on you still more’.[4]

I have no chance at all to occupy a positon in the art market. Because my most important instrument is my awareness. And the most important instrument in today’s art is the elimination of awareness, this is the foremost purpose.

[...]

I would have to bridge the complete erasement of awareness and the raised awareness and acknowledgement. I have no idea what this is to look like.

[...]

Well, and then there are these topics.

The variations..., variations about..., I also have political approaches. The Banker, [see fig. left] Merkel..., this is basically only an expression of myself.

I paint, so I am.

Though one could say this differently. I am painter.

[...]

Basically I had wanted to demonstrate that proof.

That is not to fight for painting through outside successes ...

 

S: So ‘Shit on you’ basically means, I am no painter. I don’t serve that.

 

W: No, that means on the contrary, I am a painter. That means I don’t care what Neo Rauch is doing.

[...]

No, I wanted to straighten this somewhat, from memory because you mustn’t forget, most of these pictures I have done without external or internal..., so without inner environment, without reflection..., I just did that.

I mean that, and therefore this is not a retreat but this is more freedom. This is what I need to experience newly again and again.

I am not painting presently because I don’t feel free.

How can one possibly feel free in this world?

Many people do that with alcohol. Or with music.

These pictures, however, were neither created with alcohol nor with music.

 

S. Without drugs whatsoever.

 

W: That is simply sober. Plain strategy. No, with colour, naturally.

 

S: It wasn’t created under the influence of drugs.

 

W: No. While the pictures in Berlin partly were created under the influence of drugs. That is to say if you take wine as a drug and a cigar.

I always take pleasure and have fun there somehow.

I don’t know where the motivation is comming from. Maybe the motivation comes because I see...

I don’t fear versatility. I am more afraid of repetition. I don’t like that. When everything is the same. I don’t like that. It’s going to be boring. That can’t be said of me that everything is the same.

 

S: This is actually amazing that it is always the same, however, it is always different.

 

W: Yes.

 

S: So, Coming Home are always the same components, however, every time it is a unique creation, every time like the first time.

 

 

When Wolf started out in Häsen in 2010 to reduce his pictures to lines and to the small square format, I didn’t realize the inner artistic process, that occurred within him.

In the light of the Berlin pictures that used to be so rich and so political with their topic, I didn’t find a real access to the simple linear pictures.

Moreover we lived in adverse circumstances and the communication wasn’t transparent, everyone of us used to work increasingly in his own area and was thus confronted with one’s own problems.

Wolf eventually prompted me by saying that I wasn’t saying anything about his pictures at all that he would like me to write something about them.

In the meantime I too was very much impressed at the sight of the more than 100 newly created pictures, about the inexhaustible variety in always the same topic of ‘Coming Home’.

Besides I had, after a long break, again begun to record our work talks from which I compiled the book Ein Wolf soll es sein (It Ought to Be a Wolf) in 2016; in the centre of the book are the linear pictures while at the same time a biographic portray originated.

 

In view of Wolf’s way of working I wish to add that the titles of the pictures come about afterwards and are in a way randomly chosen, they aren’t concepts that influence the creation of a picture.