Philippe VANDENBERG
IN CONVERSATION WITH BERNARD DEWULF
Painter and artist Philippe Vandenberg (1952) enters into a dialogue with the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts (Museum voor Schone Kunsten) in Ghent. A conversation about his intentions and motives, about his work, and about being an artist.
You’re showing your work in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent. This museum is very special to you. Why? It’s the place where I first encountered art. I had no other access to works of art. In the environment in which I grew up the word ‘art’ didn’t exist. I had been drawing intensely since I was six or seven, but I hadn’t the faintest idea that these drawings would be my future. The first impressive images that I saw were those in church : the crucifixion, the stations of the cross, the madonna, the pieta. Now I’m becoming increasingly conscious of how these became basic symbols for me. Moreover, the drawings I made as a child were not real children’s drawings, such as for Christmas or for Mother’s Day, but there were heavily-laden from the very start. And that has never changed. When I was eleven or twelve I happened to find myself in this museum. It was the shock of my life. First, I suddenly realised that what I had been doing for years - drawing, sketching on bits of paper - was a human tradition. Then, I saw paintings in a museum for the first time, and it became clear to me that there was a world of difference between Bosch’s Carrying of the Cross and what I had seen before in church.
I had never painted, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as oil paint. The only reference to painting in our home was a grey reproduction of Rembrandt’s Night Watch at the coat rack behind our garage door. I subsequently returned to the museum as often as I possibly could. To me it was a source of freshness, hope, future, delight. I went to school not far from the museum and I regularly skipped school to visit the museum. I was bewitched by certain paintings, including those by Van de Woestijne, Bosch and Permeke. Later in my life came the academy, other museums, and the studio, contacts with other artists, and so on. All this explains why it is such a pleasure for me to be invited to do something with my work in this place. The opportunity to be present in this museum is indeed special to me. I’ve known it so intimately for so long. What exactly have you done with your own and the museum’s history? I didn’t want to set up a ‘confrontation’ with the museum’s collection, though I’m aware this is often done nowadays. I did want, however, to enter into a dialogue, to set out my work among what has been left from many centuries of painting. That is not to be taken lightly. As a matter of fact, it is far easier to place oneself among one’s contemporaries, since history plays no part in this. But if you place your work side by side with Bosch’s Crucifixion, you have to consider it seriously. For me, this juxtaposition acquires a degree of magic, but, of course, I don’t know what Bosch thinks of it. I’ve hardly touched the museum, I haven’t moved or removed any pieces. I’ve simply tried to devise a walk through the museum with my work as a kind of companion. The exhibition covers fifteen rooms, but not all of them have been packed with my work. In some rooms I’ve put only a single drawing of mine. Going through this process has been emotionally quite stimulating. Walking through the museum and working in it, I’ve grown increasingly aware of how its collection is what has survived a long history of painting. It commands respect.
How does a contemporary artist set up a dialogue with these historical works?
One can enter into this dialogue on different levels: formal, with respect to content, and philosophical. Certain themes from my own work are strongly represented in the museum: the crucifixion, death, suffering, the human condition. Next to Bosch’s Carrying of the Cross I hang a work from my own Passion cycle. Then there is the theme of sexuality, which brings me to Edgard Tytgat, whose work, I believe, hides a certain perversity under a rather lovely, playful character. At a certain moment sexuality was a major theme in my work. And so I tried to create a thematic link. There is also the formal aspect. It goes without saying that over the last thirty odd years, from my mid-twenties until today, my style has developed, from figurative to nonfigurative, from non-figurative to nearly fundamental painting in which also the word plays a prominent part. Still, the same urgency has always been present, and throughout its variations, the style invariably remains a desperate attempt at expression within the same space. As far as style is concerned, I’ve sought out Permeke, among others. He’s been very important to me. One mustn’t forget that Permeke was taboo in art for a long time. Like so many of my fellow-artists I vacillate between states of extraversion and introversion. And perhaps, I thought, some of my more extravert paintings may provide an answer to Permeke’s questions. Perhaps our languages find each other in this respect. There may be a plethora of reasons for creating a connection with an artist from the past. The painting that, apart from Bosch’s Carrying of the Cross, fascinates me most in the museum, is Géricault’s Portrait of a Kleptomaniac. He painted a series of ten ‘studies’ of ‘monomaniacs’, as they were called in the psychiatry of the time. The Kleptomaniac is one of the five that have survived. It is a strange painting: standing in front of it, you can never look it in the eyes. It is often said of portraits that their gaze follows you everywhere. However, this is not the case here. The man is looking nowhere, certainly not at us, the viewers, even though he appears to be aware of our presence. He wants no contact, and that’s what’s so fascinating. I’ve sought a dialogue with this work by placing my Ulrike Meinhof portraits in juxtaposition. I have a lot of respect for her as an icon of contemporary political
struggle. I’ve made two large homages to her, as well as twelve preliminary studies. And I combine these studies with Géricault’s painting. Doing so, I bring two figures together that do not function in the societal system. And in this way, I hope, I can communicate in the museum without snubbing it.
Your approach to the artist and his artistic calling is as deferential as it is serious. You’re also acutely aware of history. As a living, contemporary artist you place yourself explicitly in the historical condition. What is, in your opinion, the place of the artist in our present time? You can consider this from two points of view. First, from the point of view of the artist himself. He has no choice, really. I myself feel this very strongly. I had two options. Either I could have become a dog trainer, indeed, I grew up in those circles and I was fascinated by them, but then I would have got stuck. Or I broke with my family, resisted it and became an artist. It was a battle that needed to be fought. Afterwards it proved to have been beneficiary: it was a first test. As a child I was strongly thwarted by the social, familial, religious system. My first act of resistance was my first drawing. And that resistance has always remained. My hope is that with that resistance I can touch somebody. When that happens, I feel my resistance has been fruitful. As far as the system is concerned, a clear answer is more difficult to give. Perhaps the artist is above all the creator of icons, a supply of symbols that may be of some use to some people. As far as I’m concerned, art forces people to accept mystery. However, we’ve been educated in the belief that everything should be solvable and clear. I think this is wrong, and much of our sorrow, many of our problems, and of our suicides, result from this belief. Yet, I do feel that as an artist I must give something to society. I offer my work and what I want in return is, above all, communication. My wish and my hope is for people to look at my work. Unless my work is viewed, it doesn’t exist. That ‘third eye’ is very important in the creative process. I always try to involve it in my work.
How large should that eye be? The moment the third eye comes into being, however modest it may be, is the start of a long road full of pitfalls. For that’s the moment when the ‘career’ starts. And the question rises how many of these ‘third eyes’ do you, as an artist, want there to be? What amount is enough? Just like anyone else, the artist is a bottomless pit. And the consequence is: the more we get, the more we want. In this respect I’ve covered a varied road. Between repulsion and attraction. I have a love-hate relationship with the art world. But I’ve always been fortunate enough to have had people around me acting as that third eye, also in difficult times. As to your question how large should that eye be: anybody qualifies in principle, but not in practice, actually. “... the question of whether for me painting is a grace or a calamity. And I believe that precisely this doubt is both the motivation and the subject, the subsoil, the foundation of what I am trying to express, to create.” (From : Philippe Vandenberg, The cry of the finch, 2006) Talking about difficult times. In your texts on art and being an artist, the concept of ‘despair’ keeps returning. I believe it’s very hard to be a thinking human being without regularly being faced with despair. Despair is part of thinking. I associate it with a lucid state of mind. When you’re acutely aware of the situation we’re in, it’s ridiculous to ignore despair. You can cope with despair in two ways. Either you let yourself be destroyed by it. That has happened to some of my friends and acquaintances. Or you use despair as a kind of fuel. Despair feeds resistance. As it does in politics, or religion. As much as political parties, religions have their origins in despair. I know that despair is an unreliable companion, in the sense that it’s always looking for your weakest spot. But, as long as I’m able, in a manner of speaking, to humour it,
and to express it, I can live with it. Just look at art history in general: there is no happy art. Art is always about the blues and life’s cruelty. All great art is tragic, both Rembrandt in his facture and Goya or Velasquez in their themes. As I see it, man has used his despair to create a sort of state of grace. And however tragic the themes may be, the creator always experiences some degree of joy as well. I’m pretty certain that when Bosch made his painting more cruel, it was with the tip of his tongue hanging out of his mouth. For me the state of grace consists in the awareness of seeing something that transcends us, whatever the horror we are shown. For me, the search for that state of grace is the driving force behind what I do. This touches on the idea of the ‘lost paradise’, which is also present in your work. This theme occupied me very much twenty years ago. It is a universal theme that runs through art. I used to think that much of what we do is ultimately aimed at recovering that lost paradise. Now I’m not so certain any longer. Anyway, we all lose the divine at some point of time. I don’t mean God, but rather, what’s called ‘l’élément divin’. And I think that an artist tries to retrieve that divine element. By creating his order. For me that order lies in a sheet of paper or a canvas. This idea of order is crucial. I started drawing to escape from the oppression of daily life. Drawing gave me solace, it also provided me with a certain degree of security. It still does. As long as I’m in my studio, I feel safe, and bolstered to create order in the chaos around me. I believe that anyone who is occupied creatively, is trying to create some order that differs from the existing one. That’s where problems may arise : it is an order that does not fit into the dominant system. A painting without internal order disintegrates. That order may vary : e.g. from Mondrian to Pollock. Without order, no tension arises. At the same time, and this is equally important, one has to break up that order continually and muster the courage to leap into ‘nothingness’. That is a permanent interplay of profit and loss.
Now that you mention ‘loss’, I’m reminded of your kamikaze metaphor. A sort of motto of yours is 'L'important c'est le kamikaze'. The progress of the painting process consists in shedding and rejecting, and then restoring and rebuilding. It contains a strong aspect of destruction, which is not the same as repudiation. I’m not saying that the works I made five or more years ago are now irrelevant. But I’ve had to destroy them in my head in order to attain new things. Hence, perhaps with a certain degree of exaggeration, the image of the kamikazes, who were ready to sacrifice their life for their ideals. Still, the image isn’t that far-fetched. Looking back at my life, I find that it has been entirely embodied in my paintings. What did not take place in my painting, or did not refer to it, was quite irrelevant. And the destruction that goes on in the studio, is sometimes hard to confine within its four walls. Does that mean that anyone who repudiates your work also repudiates your existence? When that happens I can only conclude that I cannot communicate with that individual. That sort of communication is relative. Sometimes it lasts just a couple of minutes, and I relapse into a desire to communicate. But communication is essential in what I do, even though it can be very hard to achieve. There are moments of great joy in that communication process. I can’t speak for those who look at my work, but in looking at work by other people I myself have known moments of intense joy. Perhaps the best example is Rembrandt. I go and see him regularly. I often say : Rembrandt is my mother. I can only hope that occasionally somebody feels such joy in the presence of my work. That it makes some sense, that it can be of some help to people. That it may help them, for instance, to go on living. Although I’m the last person to put artists on a pedestal, I do often wonder how people manage to get going everyday. Where do they get the strength from?
I love the niggers only, the niggers of painting. Those who go from accident to accident. The wandering, the illiterate, the haunted, the maimed, the one-eyed, the crippled, the crocodiles in the desert. The dazzled, the disenchanted. Those who, like trees, suffer from the rising sap but are unaware of their leaves falling. Are we still innocent? (From: Philippe Vandenberg, Letter to the nigger, 2006.)
You’ve said that the artist can ‘help’ people. What sort of help would that be? I give a form to something that people cannot express explicitly themselves, something that is intangible by nature. The ‘bonus’ of a work or art eludes all rules and regulations, and is unsaleable. The painting is saleable, but its magic isn’t. This magic has nothing to do with the mystical. I myself quite like the word ‘divine’, not because of some argument or other for the existence of God, but in the sense of something transcendental. A good work of art expresses something transcendental, something that uplifts us. When listening to music I often have the physical feeling of being lifted out of the mud of existence. To me God is an endeavour as well. I see myself as someone who misses God. In my youth I was deeply religious. Religion was drilled into me. Later on I became aware that God mainly exists through his big absence. And now I regard him as definitively absent, rather than nonexistent. And I do miss him. That’s a weird feeling. Looking back at Bosch, Memling and all the other marvellous paintings of the past – these paintings were directed towards God and thus perfect. At a later stage the artist left God behind and continued with mankind only. God did not come to the museum any longer. But when the divine presence and the fear of God left the image, experimentation started. Naturally, there are still religious artists, such as Francis Bacon, who painted the contemporary crucifixion par excellence. Doesn’t someone who is creative ineluctably arrive at something divine, something transcendent?
I think it’s a human reflex to want to attribute what I call the accidental to a sort of superhuman power. I also think this is humbug, but I can understand it. It’s a search for security. Myself, I’d rather put my trust in the accidental. It also lightens my existence. But that doesn’t mean I don’t aspire to achieve order. On entering my studio some people might remark that it’s full of chaos. To me, however, that is not the case: there is a clear order, down to the minutest details. But that order moves each day, it is never definitive. I re-arrange the space every day, depending on the need of the day. Unless I do this, I find myself in a kind of insecurity and I’m unable to work. Also the work process contains a clear order. One movement leads to another, one colour to the next. There is a certain degree of direction, which allows you to perform certain interventions, and in combination with coincidence this leads to an unexpected image. Now, that is my personal attitude. Magritte was a painter who entirely planned his paintings. I myself need the adventure, the leap into the unknown. At the same time everything has to remain under control. That sounds quite neurotic. Indeed, but who isn’t neurotic? How can you possibly survive in this world without being neurotic? Neurosis seems to me a form of cure in our system. Without neurosis we’re dead meat. Can art cure us too? That’s a tough question. Although art has become a hype and is propagated next to wine in the colour supplements, there are, to my mind, only a marginal number of people who are genuinely susceptible to art. The public expects a lot from a painting, but the painting is nothing, just a canvas with some paint on it. What it’s all about is: the viewer. It’s he who makes the painting into what can be made of it. How many people among those hordes of art tourists actually go and stand in front of a painting and wonder: what can
this mean to me? I’ve also known periods of success. But that is not necessarily when one is understood. Not at all. Take Van Gogh, for instance. Van Gogh is an anti-artist, but who can still see this? Isn’t that misunderstanding of all times? Of course it is. We survive in spite of the misunderstanding. And thanks to the triumph of the accident. To me, the accidental is essential. It helps to let go of what is established, acquired. This inevitably involves a lot of doubting and moaning. But I’m unable to do anything else. And should I not do it, it would be even much worse. Without my art, without its order, I’d be a vegetable. There are several kinds of order. There is the daily, visible, material order. Art, however, is about a different kind of order. An order that’s concerned with questions: how do I situate myself in existence, how do I set myself free from the oppression of the existing order? I don’t believe that someone who arrives at work on time each morning and sits in front of the television each night has found an order for himself. He just adopts an existing, imposed order. Our apparent order often hides indolence. And that also engenders much despair. The painter’s environment is his canvas. There is nowhere else for him to live but in his painting. What can he do if the canvas denies itself to him, if it banishes him, while he has already been exiled into it by the systemic everyday? That is when the real becomes nothingness. A nothingness that is impossible to live with, impossible to die with. (From: Philippe Vandenberg, The cry of the finch, 2006) Despair is omnipresent. Despair has many guises. Despair guides me to my studio, where another despair is
waiting for me. That’s how it is. This goes together with the idea that nothing is definitive. I reckon we’re not enough aware of this. We are fascinated and obsessed by the definitive. But it does not exist. In spite of what well-intentioned people and institutions - parents, school - have told us. We are nomads, we are drifters. We must learn to accept this. I believe in the nomadic, and in nomadic thinking. The artist’s despair also lies in his inexorable attempt at creating the definitive image. But he never makes it, fortunately. And those who think that they’ve made it what happens to them? Think, again, of Francis Bacon. At some moment he touched God’s toe and then he went on repeating himself. My belief is that the artist should be lucid enough to avoid this trap. But that is easier said than done. I just hope it doesn’t happen to me, or hasn’t happened to me yet. I believe in continuing to attempt. Picasso said: “Je ne cherche pas, je trouve.” But as far as I’m concerned, it’s the other way round: I don’t find, I search.
That search goes together with exercising patience. That’s another concept you strongly believe in. The act of painting itself, of handling brushes, paint and the canvas, is but a small part pf the whole process. Applying some paint to the canvas is actually not very relevant as an act in itself. But it is important as the synthesis of a thought process, of waiting long and trying hard. And we haven’t been taught to cope with waiting either. Waiting may be very painful, it may convey doubt, anxiety, loneliness. But unless you wait, the painting doesn’t come. I believe in the idea of the soul. For me, the soul is in the patience. And soul, to me, means: inspiration. Without patience, no inspiration. You’re getting older in years. Are you occupied with the survival of your work? That is not essential. It is not important enough for me to worry about. Who can tell that
what is being made now will still be relevant in thirty years’ time? Just look at the people who were all the rage in the sixties and seventies, what of their oeuvre has stood the test of time? The idea of a foundation or a museum for an artist makes me think of a mausoleum. The alternative is: movement. An oeuvre should travel about, continue to be viewed everywhere. The best that may happen, it seems to me, is that your work remains surrounded by young people. If you can affect the young, you may brush a small bit of eternity. But how often does that happen? How often haven’t I noticed that as artists grow old their work is confined to their collectors’ stock. A sad fate indeed.
Bernard Dewulf Brussel - February 2008