Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Here is John Cage’s Imag­i­nary Land­scape No. 4, per­formed by the Mael­ström Per­cus­sion Ensemble:

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Writ­ten in 1951, Imag­i­nary Land­scape No. 4 is scored for twelve radios. Two per­form­ers “play” each radio, one dial­ing the fre­quency, the other chang­ing the vol­ume and tone. The work is notated con­ven­tion­ally, i.e. with notes express­ing dura­tion placed on a five-line staff, and was com­posed using chance oper­a­tions (in this case coin tosses), as was Cage’s Music of Changes, writ­ten at the same time. Though their com­po­si­tional meth­ods were iden­ti­cal, the two works dif­fer in one fun­da­men­tal respect: given the nature of the instru­ments they employ – the piano in the for­mer case and the radio in the lat­ter – Imag­i­nary Land­scape No. 4 is inde­ter­mi­nate whereas Music of Changes is not.

The inde­ter­mi­nacy stems from the fact that radios pro­duce sounds that vary accord­ing to fre­quency, time of day, and geo­graphic loca­tion. It fol­lows that those sounds can­not be deter­mined in advance, and thus that each per­for­mance of Imag­i­nary Land­scape No. 4 will be dif­fer­ent in ways that can­not be pre­dicted. Accord­ing to Cage him­self, the expe­ri­ence of inde­ter­mi­nacy was the moti­va­tion for the piece:

When I wrote the Imag­i­nary Land­scape for twelve radios, it was not for the pur­pose of shock or as a joke but rather to increase the unpre­dictabil­ity already inher­ent in the sit­u­a­tion through the toss­ing of coins. Chance, to be pre­cise, is a leap, pro­vides a leap out of reach of one’s own grasp of one­self. (quoted in CCJC, 57)

The “leap out of reach of one’s own grasp of one­self” that Cage refers to here was to become one of his guid­ing prin­ci­ples, the goal being to elim­i­nate indi­vid­ual will, pref­er­ence, and desires, in a word, to give up con­trol. The West­ern musi­cal tra­di­tion, with its empha­sis on orig­i­nal­ity and indi­vid­u­al­ity, not to men­tion the reg­i­mented, hier­ar­chi­cal nature of the orches­tra, indeed of dia­tonic har­mony itself, had become sus­pect to Cage. Through­out his career he sought ways around these imped­i­ments, as he saw them, and at the time he clearly hoped that com­pos­ing for the radio via chance oper­a­tions would allow him to bypass them, as he explained in the con­clud­ing lines to an arti­cle detail­ing the com­po­si­tional pro­ce­dure of Imag­i­nary Land­scape No. 4:

It is thus pos­si­ble to make a musi­cal com­po­si­tion the con­ti­nu­ity of which is free of indi­vid­ual taste and mem­ory (psy­chol­ogy) and also of the lit­er­a­ture and “tra­di­tions” of the art. The sounds enter the time-space cen­tered within them­selves, unim­peded by ser­vice to any abstrac­tion, their 360 degrees of cir­cum­fer­ence free for an infi­nite play of inter­pen­e­tra­tion. (CDPC, 59)

In the mid– to late-1950s Cage would write three more works for radio, namely Speech (1955), Radio Music (1956), and Music Walk (1958), before aban­don­ing the instru­ment, though he did later com­pose for tele­vi­sion, audio tape, records, and other elec­tronic sound sources.

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Works Cited
CDPC: Cage, John. “Com­po­si­tion to Describe the Process of Com­po­si­tion Used In Music of Changes and Imag­i­nary Land­scape No. 4.” in Silence Hanover, NH: Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity Press, 1961. 57–59.
CCJC: The Cam­bridge Com­pan­ion to John Cage. Ed. David Nicholls. Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002.

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Published:
03.07.2010 – 6:00 am
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In a roomful of shouting people

Above the Clouds

For many years, the name Peter Schmidt was uniquely asso­ci­ated in my mind with Brian Eno. It was Schmidt who did the cover art for Tak­ing Tiger Moun­tain (By Strat­egy) and Evening Star, it was also he who made the four prints included with early press­ings of Before and After Sci­ence and who col­lab­o­rated with Eno on Oblique Strate­gies, and Eno often spoke of him in inter­views, men­tion­ing his sad­ness at Schmidt’s untimely death. Attracted by the work, impressed by the high esteem in which Eno held him, and admit­tedly intrigued by the rel­a­tive lack of infor­ma­tion that seemed to be avail­able about him, I recall sniff­ing around for any­thing I might find out about Peter Schmidt in the pre-internet days of the late ’70s and early ’80s but came up with noth­ing of con­se­quence and even­tu­ally gave up.

Well, nowa­days of course it’s peo­ple and things that don’t exist on the inter­net that are the excep­tion, and for­tu­nately that is no longer the case of Peter Schmidt. In Jan­u­ary 2008 John Emr cre­ated a web­site and a blog devoted to Schmidt, and both are invalu­able resources for those who wish to learn more about the artist and view a broad sam­pling of his work. The blog in par­tic­u­lar is inter­est­ing in that it con­tains exam­ples of fin­ished pieces, prepara­tory sketches and notes for paint­ings, writ­ings, and a vari­ety of ephemera about Schmidt, pub­lic show­ings of his work, etc. Through his con­tact with Schmidt’s fam­ily, friends, and col­lec­tors Emr is able to present many pieces that I imag­ine have never been dis­played pub­licly before. Col­lec­tively, they give an idea of the sur­pris­ing breadth of Schmidt’s work, and allow us bet­ter appre­ci­ate what he was able to accom­plish in his unfor­tu­nately brief life.

I’ll admit a bias for his water­color still-lifes and land­scapes, many of which are strik­ing exam­ples of the under­stated beauty of oth­er­wise mun­dane objects and unspec­tac­u­lar scenes and views. These to me embody what is most inter­est­ing about Schmidt’s work: its indif­fer­ence to the mon­u­men­tal and the superla­tive, and its focus on the quiet, the “insignif­i­cant,” the inti­mate. For this rea­son I have always thought that Schmidt’s phrase, “In a room­ful of shout­ing peo­ple, the one who whis­pers becomes inter­est­ing,” was a per­fect epi­graph to both his work and the posi­tion he occu­pied in the art world of his time.

You can see a selec­tion of Peter Schmidt’s paint­ings in the Peter Schmidt gallery. Hav­ing vis­ited the gallery, I hope you will feel suf­fi­ciently inspired to explore John Emr’s web­site and blog, listed below.

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03.01.2010 – 6:05 am
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Peter Schmidt gallery

Waves in Dense Fog
Landscape with sun and clouds
Rain in Watford
The Small Bowl
Waterfall
Glass of Water
The Tunnel
Snæfellsnes in the distance
Breaking waves, rocky beach

This gallery con­tains a selec­tion of paint­ings by Peter Schmidt. Click on a thumb­nail to enlarge it.

Learn more about him and his work at the Peter Schmidt Web and the Peter Schmidt Web Blog

Return to “In a room­ful of shout­ing peo­ple.”

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The mystique of the optical

Fensterdoppelbild

Dou­ble Win­dow Picture

One more thing about Oskar Schlemmer’s Fen­ster­bilder (which were the sub­ject of an ear­lier post): the para­dox­i­cal use of the win­dow motif.

Tra­di­tion­ally the win­dow has been used as a fram­ing device intended to guide the viewer’s eye to an essen­tial part of the pic­ture, and Schlem­mer him­self often made use of it in this way. When it came to the “Win­dow Paint­ings,” how­ever, he took a slightly dif­fer­ent approach.

First of all, we are see­ing through the win­dow – we do not see it itself. Though the viewer stands, as did the painter, behind it, i.e. in the room look­ing out, the win­dow itself is not vis­i­ble. There is cer­tainly noth­ing unusual about this, only it has noth­ing to do with a win­dow per se, which here is merely a van­tage point from which to paint a pic­ture, not a fram­ing device. So the series’ title, Fen­ster­bilder, is some­what ironic given that the win­dow in ques­tion does not actu­ally appear in any of the paintings.

A sec­ond para­dox comes with the sub­ject mat­ter of sev­eral of the “Win­dow Paint­ings,” num­bers II, III, VII, XIII, and XVII, for exam­ple, where the win­dow is used to frame another win­dow, that is, the scene depicted is a win­dow seen through a win­dow which is not seen (cf Schlemmer’s descrip­tion of the “Win­dow Paint­ings” as “views from my win­dow into the neigh­bor­ing win­dow”). What’s more, the win­dow seen serves as much to reveal as to con­ceal: it offers us a glimpse into the inner world of the neigh­bor­ing fam­ily while at the same time obscur­ing that view with its muntins, shades, and cur­tains. Thus the prin­ci­pal func­tion of the win­dow is sub­verted, at least in part – it gives to see, yet par­tially con­ceals, and that part which is hid­den or oth­er­wise obscured can­not be com­pletely known. It must be guessed at, imag­ined, and thus retains a cer­tain mys­tery, con­sti­tut­ing a sort of “mys­tique of the opti­cal,” as Schlem­mer him­self described it.

Finally, it is inter­est­ing that in sev­eral of the Fen­ster­bilder, includ­ing those men­tioned above, one looks out of a win­dow in order to see in a win­dow; the out­side itself is not rep­re­sented. In fact, in those paint­ings the win­dow is used as a inte­ri­or­iz­ing device, allow­ing the painter, and thus the viewer, to look from the inside in. That sec­ond inte­rior can be seen as a metaphor for Schlemmer’s inner state at the time he made the “Win­dow Paint­ings.” Liv­ing far from his wife and chil­dren to whom he was deeply attached, he seems to have used them to cap­ture or recre­ate visu­ally a domes­tic­ity that he had to for­sake in reality.

You can see a selec­tion of the “Win­dow Paint­ings” in the Fen­ster­bilder gallery.

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02.20.2010 – 6:00 am
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Picturing writing

Title Screen

The Broth­ers Quay are writerly film­mak­ers, and in say­ing that I’m not just refer­ring to their pen­chant for work­ing from lit­er­ary sources. Though they have drawn inspi­ra­tion from works as var­ied as The Epic of Gil­gamesh on the one hand and the writ­ings of Bruno Schulz and Robert Walser on the other, aside from the rel­a­tive obscu­rity of the lat­ter two and the former’s appar­ent resis­tance to filmic adap­ta­tion (only two Gil­gamesh movies in 4,000 years, and one of them by the Quays), there’s cer­tainly noth­ing unusual in that. No, the Quays’ inter­est in writ­ing has noth­ing to do with the shep­herd­ing of short sto­ries and nov­els from the page to the screen; rather, it’s all about the obses­sive visual explo­ration of writ­ing as both an activ­ity and an arti­fact that per­me­ates their films.

Work­ing through their fil­mog­ra­phy one can­not help but be struck by how often and how clev­erly writ­ing is incor­po­rated into their work, the 1988 black and white short Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies being exem­plary in this regard. The spar­tan cal­li­graphic title screen, with its spindly frak­tur let­ters and grace­ful dec­o­ra­tive ini­tials, sets the tone for the entire film, whose aes­thetic might be described as baroque min­i­mal­ism. The title screen plays a func­tional role as well, serv­ing as a win­dow into the filmic world: above the tri­an­gu­lar “A” of “Anatomies” is a peep-hole which the cam­era approaches, then peers through. On the other side we see a tiny, dis­em­bod­ied hand writ­ing furi­ously. Two other inter­ti­tles fol­low, both bear­ing cap­tions writ­ten in a flow­ery script ded­i­cat­ing the décor of the film (not the film itself, just the décor, a tes­ta­ment to the impor­tance they attribute to it) to both the Lon­don Under­ground and to an “anony­mous anatom­i­cal spec­i­men,” pre­sum­ably the pup­pet protagonist.

We then move into the inner world of the film, whose action alter­nates between two dis­tinct but com­mu­ni­cat­ing spaces – a light room with impos­si­ble, Escher-like stair­cases and white walls dec­o­rated with a pro­lif­er­a­tion of bar code-like lines and phrases writ­ten in flow­ery script, and a dark room with a gloomy, black and white striped fab­ric cov­er­ing the walls, the bed, and which is also piled up here and there. In the light room sev­eral fan­tas­tic, robot-like beings exist, among them two pterodactyl-like com­passes which come to life and glide across the white floor like ice-skaters, trac­ing cal­li­graphic curlicues as they twirl. In the dark room, two shad­owy fig­ures lan­guish, look­ing sickly and for­lorn. One rubs its fore­head with a cir­cu­lar motion of its hand, echo­ing the ges­ture of the robot-like pro­tag­o­nist in the white room, and the rub­bing motion strongly recalls the agi­ta­tion of the writ­ing hand, which returns repeat­edly through­out the film. At times sev­eral writ­ing hands appear, all scrib­bling away simultaneously.

As the film moves to its con­clu­sion we have another inter­ti­tle bear­ing a hand-written ded­i­ca­tion, this one to “the other Frag­o­nard” (Hon­oré, the anatomist) and to the Musée Orphila (the anatomy museum of the Uni­ver­sity Paris V), then come the cred­its. Both are writ­ten in the idio­syn­critic script of the pre­ced­ing title cards, thus giv­ing Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies a pal­en­dromic struc­ture that empha­sizes its inner coher­ence – the writ­ing spec­i­mens at the begin­ning and end frame the activ­ity of writ­ing which runs like a leit­mo­tif through the film.

Other works like In Absen­tia, their 2000 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stock­hausen, and The Cal­lig­ra­pher, a sequence of three “idents” com­mis­sioned (and rejected) by BBC2 in 1991, also fore­ground writ­ing as an intran­si­tive activ­ity inter­est­ing in and of itself. Like the Quays’ fan­ci­ful hand-written title screens, inter­ti­tles, and cred­its, all of these films betray a fas­ci­na­tion with the mechan­ics of ver­bal expres­sion, with man­ual tech­niques and processes, and with the graphic arts in gen­eral, char­ac­ter­is­tics that are read­ily appar­ent in other aspects of their film­mak­ing, par­tic­u­larly in their use of stop-frame ani­ma­tion, hand-made pup­pets, and elab­o­rate décors which often fea­ture etch­ings, adver­tis­ing bills, bar codes, and other printed ephemera. As they them­selves put it in an inter­view: “We’re not writ­ers but we respect writing.”

You can see a selec­tion of the stills in the Broth­ers Quay gallery.

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Published:
02.10.2010 – 6:15 am
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Brothers Quay gallery

from “Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies”
from “In Absentia”
From
from
from
from “Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies”
from
from “Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies”
from “In Absentia”

This gallery con­tains a selec­tion of stills from films by the Broth­ers Quay. Click on a thumb­nail to enlarge it.

Return to “Pic­tur­ing Writ­ing.”

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02.10.2010 – 6:00 am
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Reading “A Humument,” page 1

A Humument, page 1

A Humu­ment, page 1

The first page of Tom Phillips’ A Humu­ment is emblem­atic of the entire work. Tex­tu­ally and graph­i­cally it touches on some of the book’s cen­tral con­cerns and pro­vides clues to cer­tain of its mysteries.

It begins with the epi­graph, “vol­ume And / side I shall lie / bones my bones,” which is sig­nif­i­cant in many regards. First of all it reveals the dual­is­tic nature of the book, which is made up of both a “vol­ume” and a “side,” and fur­ther sug­gests that the two share an under­ly­ing struc­ture. This is of course the case as A Humu­ment was “writ­ten through” W.H. Mallock’s A Human Doc­u­ment. The use of the first per­son implies that the work itself is speak­ing here and thus that the book is its own nar­ra­tor, in other words that we are deal­ing with a meta­text. The verb “to lie” is inter­est­ing for its ambi­gu­ity: it could be “lie” as in an epi­taph (“Here Lies…”), and that is in fact the sense of this pas­sage in Mallock’s text, p. 367); of course it could also be “to lie” as in to not tell the truth, that it is a ques­tion of a fic­tion. Finally, the fact that this tex­tual frag­ment was taken from p. 9 and col­laged in here (and will be reprised in slightly altered form on p. 367), also fore­grounds the col­lage tech­nique that is both a method and a theme of the work. Thus the epi­graph explains and demon­strates an essen­tial qual­ity of the book.

Next comes the title, which appears just above that of its source text: A Human Doc­u­ment. The crossed out let­ters demon­strate Phillips’ m.o.: A Humu­ment was made by high­light­ing cer­tain words and let­ters of the source text and con­ceal­ing oth­ers. The fact that the title of Phillips work appears above that of Mallock’s fur­ther sug­gests that the for­mer was super­im­posed onto the lat­ter in the man­ner of a palimpsest, which indeed A Humu­ment is.

The text of the intro­duc­tion gives addi­tional details about the type of book we shall be read­ing: it is a work of con­cep­tual art (“a book of art, of mind art”) cre­ated by appro­pri­a­tion via the process men­tioned above (“that which he hid reveal I”). This is sup­ported graph­i­cally by the two word-strings super­im­posed on the image of a box as if they have been extracted from it, which they have. The arrow point­ing right metaphor­i­cally sug­gests that the present work is mov­ing beyond or break­ing out of the box (of the orig­i­nal work, of the tra­di­tional book, of tra­di­tional notions of orig­i­nal­ity and author­ship), and pic­to­graph­i­cally tells the reader that he or she should now move on to the fol­low­ing page.

Thus from the start the reader is made aware of the book’s nature, its inter­text, and the method used to cre­ate it.

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02.01.2010 – 6:00 am
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Leopards in the Temple

Leop­ards break into the tem­ple and drink to the dregs what is in the sac­ri­fi­cial pitch­ers; this is repeated over and over again; finally, it can be cal­cu­lated in advance, and becomes part of the ceremony.

– Franz Kafka

(Trans­la­tion: Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins)

Kafka’s para­ble of leop­ards in the tem­ple has always struck me as a per­fect alle­gory of the avant-garde in that it points out the tru­ism that in art the trans­gres­sive is ulti­mately absorbed into the canon. The fact that we can speak of a “tra­di­tion of the avant-garde” or of “avant-garde art” at all says as much. One is reminded of Susan Sontag’s obser­va­tion that “The his­tory of art is a sequence of suc­cess­ful trans­gres­sions,” as well as of the fol­low­ing lines by Quentin Crisp:

In an expand­ing uni­verse, time is on the side of the out­cast. Those who once inhab­ited the sub­urbs of human con­tempt find that with­out chang­ing their address they even­tu­ally live in the metropolis.

One won­ders in fact whether the trans­gres­sive is actu­ally any­thing more than a dop­pel­gänger of the canon­i­cal which, by its very nature, it needs and implies. As there can be no anti-novel with­out a novel, no meta-cinema with­out a cin­ema, no dode­caphony with­out dia­tonic har­mony, etc., that would seem to be the case. But does not the canon­i­cal, by virtue of the qual­i­ties and char­ac­ter­is­tics that con­sti­tute its speci­ficity, like­wise imply its oppo­site, i.e. a par­al­lel sys­tem that would fur­ther define and val­i­date it by the very chal­lenge of its exis­tence? That many anti-traditions are nearly as old as the tra­di­tions they seek to sub­vert seems to con­firm that supposition.

What­ever the case may be the two are clearly bound into a dialec­tic so tightly con­structed that they appear to be two dis­tinct yet inter­de­pen­dent modal­i­ties of a sin­gle activ­ity, as Henri Béhar plainly stated in a com­ment on Tris­tan Tzara’s early poems (and on Dada art gen­er­ally speak­ing): “There is no such thing as anti-art,” he wrote, “only artis­tic man­i­fes­ta­tions against art.”

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Adden­dum [2.6.10]:
I just stum­bled across a review of the show “Leop­ards in the Tem­ple, Sculp­ture Cen­ter, New York” by Ariella Budick. Refer­ring to Kafka’s leop­ards, she writes: “As a metaphor for the art world, this lit­tle tale feels espe­cially apt. The avant-garde sys­tem­at­i­cally infil­trates the canon; yesterday’s out­rage devolves into tomorrow’s plat­i­tude.” Indeed. If you wish you may read the review here.

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01.20.2010 – 6:00 am
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ShortWaveMusic

ShortWaveMusicFor the radio­heads among us I’d like to point out Short­Wave­Mu­sic, Myke Dodge Weiskopf’s paean to the ran­dom poetry and inter­mit­tent sta­tic of short wave radio. Weiskopf, who works as a radio pro­ducer, began the Short­Wave­Mu­sic blog in 2005, and it ran for some three years before loos­ing steam. After a brief hai­tus it was resus­ci­tated in Octo­ber 2009 and has been going strong ever since. In addi­tion to reg­u­lar post­ings, the site houses an archive of more than 60 atmos­pheric record­ings and related, thought­ful com­men­tary. You’ll also find some L.A. The­ater­works pro­duc­tions there (Myke’s day job), as well as assorted other treats, includ­ing mixes of some of Myke’s short wave captures.

The fol­low­ing sam­pler from Short­Wave­Mu­sic is intended to fire your imag­i­na­tion. If it catches your ear as well I rec­om­mend that you visit the site and work your way through the archive; you won’t be dis­ap­pointed. The truly smit­ten may also wish to down­load the cat­a­log of more than 100 record­ings that had appeared on the blog between 2005–’08, and will find instruc­tions on how to do so here. Now, on to the sounds…

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Dark Radio

“[This is] a short layer piece incor­po­rat­ing what sounds like three or four radio sources. I’m pretty sure this is just a brief record­ing of one of my all-night sleep installations.”

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SWM09.04: आकाशवाणी

“I would have remained a music-illiterate myself, had I not been in bed one mon­soon with asthma, and lis­tened to the radio to fill the hours. Around 2 a.m., I chanced upon some haunt­ing music being played on the Gen­eral Over­seas Ser­vice of All India Radio. While the rest of India slept I lis­tened, and was con­verted…” – Ramachan­dra Guha

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SWM09.00: Qrv Qrv Qrv de ShortWaveMusic

“Sta­tion: Uniden­ti­fied XMTR Test Sequence
Fre­quency: 11885 kHz
Trans­mit­ter: Unknown
Rec Date: Wed 09-Sep-2009 : 0406 UTC”

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SWM09.08: Mod­ern­iz­ing Khan Asparuh

“This piece is an exam­ple of ‘arranged folk­lore’ attrib­uted to the Upper Thra­cian region of South­ern Bul­garia, most likely per­formed by Donka Kol­eva, a Bulgarian-born and trained singer now liv­ing in New York.”

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Duelling XMTRs! #3

“…a col­li­sion of mod­ern East­ern elec­tron­ics and Qu’ranic recita­tion which sounds so nat­ural to our world-fusion-softened ears that it hardly reg­is­ters as an acci­dent of prop­a­ga­tion at all. You could prob­a­bly even dance to it …”

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KJES (“King Jesus Eter­nal Savior”)

“…in cer­tain fluke moments of pecu­liar prop­a­ga­tion and sig­nal chaos, KJES [“one of the weirder evan­gel­i­cal short­wave sta­tions”] occa­sion­ally crosses the line from lip-biting strange­ness to an inex­plic­a­ble burlap-dress beauty.”

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If you are as cap­ti­vated by the beauty of these dis­em­bod­ied sounds as I am, you might con­sider pur­chas­ing a copy of At the Tone, Weiskopf’s “ ‘Lit­tle His­tory’ of NIST Radio Sta­tions WWV and WWVH” (you’ll find a teaser for it here). Be sure to keep an ear out for his forth­com­ing His­tor­i­cal Long­wave CD Project, too. In the mean­while, you can enjoy his first “cat­a­log mix,” 833–45: Howth St PART/SEQ (Pananorama Mix), a sound col­lage incor­po­rat­ing “short­wave ele­ments, Qur’an recita­tion, and music,” which you can read about and down­load here.

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Published:
01.10.2010 – 7:00 am
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By Nipperkin
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The miracle of the visible

Fensterbild XII

Win­dow Paint­ing XII

[I] have recently com­pleted a series of pic­tures, inspired by what I see right around me: views from my win­dow into the neigh­bor­ing win­dow, done in the evening between nine and half-past nine, shortly before the black­out. When night is falling and clashes with the scraps of inte­rior beige-orange-brown-white-black, it pro­duces amaz­ing opti­cal effects. (LDOS, 399)

In spring of 1942 Oskar Schlem­mer, then liv­ing in Wup­per­tal where he worked in a paint fac­tory, began a series of new paint­ings. As noted in the diary entry quoted above, these new works rep­re­sented scenes glimpsed by Schlem­mer from his win­dow at night­fall. Unsur­pris­ingly per­haps, he gave the paint­ings the col­lec­tive title Fen­ster­bilder or “Win­dow Paint­ings” and described their gen­e­sis in a let­ter to his wife:

I got intrigued by this win­dow. Some­thing is always going on, some­times a pot is being put out, some­times some­thing is being done at the table, iron­ing, kneed­ing cake dough…, then the table is being set and flow­ers are put on it. Look, the suit is being brushed and pat­ted, I know that already. Later the hus­band will be com­ing home, and then the win­dow will be closed and the light turned on, and then it will get a lot more inter­est­ing, because then one sees only their shad­ows behind the cur­tain… I have painted that. (quoted in OSMA, 33 · Trans­la­tion: Frauke von der Horst)

Schlem­mer painted a total of eigh­teen “Win­dow Paint­ings” and one “Dou­ble Win­dow Paint­ing”  between April and June of 1942. As Jur­rie Poot has explained, four­teen of them are mixed media works “con­sist­ing of oil and/or water­color over pen­cil and col­ored chalk on card­board,” while three of the four oth­ers, painted in Sehrin­gen and Stuttgart, were made using oils on oiled paper. (OSMA, 33) They are remark­able for the quiet, under­stated beauty of their sim­ple com­po­si­tions as well as for the unevent­ful quo­tid­ian scenes they depict. The lat­ter must have been par­tic­u­larly poignant for Schlem­mer, who was liv­ing far from his wife and chil­dren at the time. Despite their sub­dued palette and mood, the Fen­ster­bilder were a source of excite­ment to Schlem­mer, as he noted in his diary on May 12, 1942:

Con­stant flow of new ideas. In the future I shall do more and write less.

The win­dow paint­ings: the mir­a­cle of the vis­i­ble, the mys­tique of the opti­cal. At least in its un-inventability, i.e. one can­not invent that sort of thing. Source of inspi­ra­tion for free composition.

Con­cern­ing the win­dow paint­ings: I feel like a hunter who goes stalk­ing every evening between nine and ten o’clock. And then: here I can be sure that I am only paint­ing what I see, but the impor­tant ques­tion is how I see it and espe­cially how I paint it, and that brings up the old ques­tion: “what is truth?’ Truth in art – truth in nature… (LDOS, 400)

The “Win­dow Paint­ings” should have rep­re­sented a piv­otal moment in Schlemmer’s life, inspir­ing and ener­giz­ing him at a dif­fi­cult moment, and pro­vid­ing impe­tus for new work. Though they seemed to sug­gest a new begin­ning for him, in fact they bring his work to a close. Phys­i­cally ill and suf­fer­ing from depres­sion in his final years, Schlem­mer, who died the fol­low­ing April, would never achieve the same clar­ity of vision and feel­ing that he did in these works. Sens­ing this per­haps, Schlem­mer reflected back on the Fen­ster­bilder in late 1942:

“In Wup­per­tal I painted a lit­tle thing, no larger than a child’s hand, a few spots of color, a mem­ory of a win­dow inte­rior – every­one who sees it is cap­ti­vated, and I myself must say: within this tiny space I have offered my utmost. Is it the wis­dom of age, to ele­vate such restraint to a principle?

[…]

I did the ‘win­dow paint­ings’ in a state of real ent­hou­si­asm, and it is curi­ous that my feel­ings appar­ently have a direct impact on the beholder, always the best touch­stone for the value of a work of art. […]

One more thing, the win­dow pic­tures were drawn from real­ity; they offer impres­sions of the exter­nal world, seen, to be sure, through a ‘lov­ing tem­pera­ment.’” (LDOS, 405–6)

You can see a selec­tion of “Win­dow Paint­ings” in the Fen­ster­bild gallery, and read more about them here.

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Works Cited
LDOS: The Let­ters and Diaries of Oskar Schlem­mer. Ed. Tut Schlem­mer. Mid­dle­town, CT: Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity Press, 1972.
OSMA: Poot, Jur­rie. “The Fen­ster­bilder.” Oskar Schlem­mer: Mens en abstrac­tie in de jaren ’20 en ’30. Ams­ter­dam: Stedelijk Museum, 1987.

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Published:
01.01.2010 – 3:03 am
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By Nipperkin
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