Norbert Schwontkowski

Looking back a couple years, I think it was discovering Norbert Schwontowski's paintings that was most important in helping me to feel my way toward a new direction in my work (that I am just now, finally, starting to implement). At that time I tore out an ad for a show of his in Art in America, because the picture was intriguing. I wouldn't even say that I loved the image, but just that I wondered what kind of artist would have painted such a thing-- a pictorial thing, painted in a very unfussy manner. It was actually a while before I looked up his work, and when I did the main thing I saw and liked was just way his paintings are so dedicated to simple representation of an image, and all the images are so varied and seemingly unrelated (which makes me wonder about the ideas/narratives that surely(?) connect them). I just thought how cool, someone could paint all these different things! They were appealing to me in the same way as those Mexican loteria cards.

I have come back to Schwontkowski's work a few times since then, and he continues to help me with my own work, particularly in my understanding of my changing artistic sensibilities. I will record some of those thoughts and inspirations here.

Returning from a trip to Italy recently, I notice how his paintings remind me of Roman painting, which is done in a fresco technique and must be carried out swiftly. I think it's the somewhat weathered, beaten-up surfaces, and use of whites that give the paintings that Roman feel. And the connection makes Schwontkowski's paintings feel old, while the imagery, if not new, is at least recent.

Schw. curated a show of his own work alongside that of Forest Bess, Philip Guston, and Alex Katz.

I have only been able to track down one interview with Schw. in English. Here are some quotes and ideas from that:

Schw. made films and worked in other media before he committed to painting. The interviewer asked him about the style of his animations, and Schw. described them like this: They were all touched by the idea of giving belief or trust to your own inner way of feeling your way through life. You could say that attitude in my movies did help me later in my paintings. I’m always feeling my way through things. This is what I am trying to do in the new work I am starting-- feel my way through, rely on feeling (intuition) to decide on imagery (and in other aspects). Definitely, I'm trying to avoid letting reason dictate or censor ideas. 

Here Schw. talks about where his imagery comes from: Otherwise, most of my paintings come from a dream, which is never fixed. It is more like the feeling when you are traveling on a train without a destination, or in the early morning when you just wake, when you are still in between a dream and the thoughts of what you have to do for the day—like what sort of shirt and pants you will wear and who you’ll see for lunch, and so on. Essentially, it comes from a moment when there is not so much control of your thoughts or what you could actually see. Your eyes are open and you think you can see whatever’s in front of you, but in fact there is something from this corner of your vision, which somehow melts together and becomes something you can’t identify whatsoever. I think this is the way poetry works, by allowing things to come together and bloom and become something else, something fresh and alive. This is the main idea I want to try to apply to my own work, and part of the reason for working with small panels that can be arranged and rearranged.  

 I try to paint as fast as I can before any form of control sets in. I believe in a very fast way of painting, mostly because I have a big mistrust when I’m in control. I believe more of the relation between brain, heart, and hand, that it’s alone somehow, that it’s not disturbed by your wantings, or aims. That’s, I think, when all the things from your own power come out. To be a painter is no more than believing in yourself as you are a special person in this world...

I’m not a Christian any more than I am a Buddhist, or a Muslim, but I recognize that all these religions have one common source before they became organized powers: That is to bring together the heaven and the unknown above us and in between our normal lives. We are full of questions and thoughts and don’t really know why we are here, and this is what I felt as a young boy and that feeling never left me. What ultimately interests me is the question of life and death, and how all these paintings are connected, even if they are strange images of people, buildings, or something else that has to do with our existence, yet we don’t fully know how and why they are in there in the story. This is something to think about-- how to get that small epiphany feeling (feeling of specialness... try to define) into a painting, and perhaps how to apply the idea of the heavenly/dreamy and the terrestrial/ordinary crossing one another naturally (that one sees in Sienese painting, Fra Angelico, Bouts, etc.). From this I see that Schw. embraces the mystery of the connection between his images. 

Most of [my paintings] have their own life. Some come to birth very quickly, others take a long time. What I would often do in the beginning is to give a painting an atmospheric ground, so as to set up a mood or temperature, which usually is controlled by the unconscious. Then from there the drawing will follow at the same time the paint is being applied.

I always have a small sketchbook in my pocket, wherever I go. For example, I have an image in my head about a person who collects things, which I don’t know where it comes from... In any case the image came to me when I was bored, sitting by myself alone, having a beer and there was nobody to talk to. And most of the time that’s when I do my sketching of whatever image comes forth in my head. Something to try deliberately. 


This one's so Roman!: