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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• Peter Schmidt Web
• Peter Schmidt Weblog

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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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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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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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• schlemmer.org
• bauhaus-archiv

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See all eighteen Fensterbilder at the Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur.

Return to “The miracle of the visible.”

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