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| The new simplicity. 2000–... Vilnis Vējš, Art Critic | |
| “One of the shortcomings of audio guides, which sooner ruin than improve the perception, is the kind of guide which teems with various ‘isms’.” (Ivars Ījabs)(1) Attempts at being a guide to art, whether its history or in the present, giving names to styles, directions or trends, is just as hopeless as it is seductive. Someone is always arguing the opposite: was there even such a thing as the ‘severe style’ in Latvia in the fifties and sixties? Just a few artists, who painted in ‘muddy’ colours! In the seventies, was there such a thing as photorealism? Over a period of a few years, the number of works can be counted on the fingers of one hand (more about this later!). Often enough those arguing are the artists themselves. Or else the researchers of the next generation. This is because, when identifying a current or a direction, each individual participant in the movement gets examined according to common “road rules”, not in terms of their individual course. The opponents are right: in the definition of each style, direction or phenomenon, one can see only too clearly an arbitrarily interpreted context, tendentious choice of example, subjective personal interest and human misguidedness. Especially if one direction is proposed at a particular point in time as being dominant for an entire period – like a decade. Absolutely all the art works are never taken into account, not even the majority of them. Therefore, with foundation, others also fight for their rights – those discriminated against, those marginalized and those not included. However, in this century everything will be different. Firstly, we’ve already been living in the new millennium for ten years, but not that many new directions have been identified by name (at least not in Latvia). In the art of the 1990s there was “metaphoric documentariness” (Helēna Demakova)(2), as well as message art (Inga Šteimane)(3), and the next decade should have deserved at least one other. In addition, both of those mentioned are not applicable to painting, thus one could have the impression that for twenty years it has existed without a direction. Secondly, as many had predicted the end of the world in 2000, yet survived, then we can safely ignore the seriousness of the previous century, or even, with a kindly smile, poke a little fun at it. So – onwards: in the first decade of the 21st century Latvian painting saw the emergence and development of a new simplicity (so there wouldn’t exactly be an “ism”, but something more like the new functionality of the 20s). This declaration will now be followed by arbitrarily interpreted history, tendentiously selected examples, subjective personal interest will be revealed and misconceptions will be woven in. | |
 Daiga Krūze. Trails. Oil on canvas. 150x200cm. 2009 | |
| History In the description ‘the new simplicity’, the emphasis should be placed on ‘simplicity’. It is new because we are speaking about an occurrence that couldn’t be observed in the decade before the last. It is true, ‘the old simplicity’ may be evident – a striving for an extraordinary laconicism, for example, in Aija Zariņa’s works, however this essay is not about that. Historically, the situation in painting in Latvia in the 1990s was dictated by the momentum of the trends of the Soviet period, disorientated searching for the ‘new’ and institutional discrimination. The forces that had been politically and institutionally supported had already developed their signature style in the previous decades, while the most capable artists (Helēna and Ivars Heinrihsons, Ģirts Muižnieks) were also looked upon as authoritative among their colleagues. This prevented newcomers from coming up with a radical alternative, besides, they also worked less. The poverty of the 1990s forced artists to do other things, private galleries were still new and weak, but the only supporting institution – the Soros Contemporary Art Centre – Rīga, founded in 1993, although it didn’t quite ignore painting, also didn’t support it. The concept of contemporary art was constructed through discourse: “Contemporary art is (..) oriented to contemporary, and therefore often technologically new media and new possibilities of artistic communication.”(4) The understanding of the contemporary, current, new concepts was modelled by contrasting them against the ‘old-fashioned’. In practice it meant that contemporary art was differentiated from ‘non-contemporary’ simply by its belonging to a certain medium. To be honest, painting did have little new to offer. Exhibition halls were filled by eclectic compositions of enormous scale. Painters stylized borrowed motifs from the Renaissance (Normunds Brasliņš, Paulis Postažs) to Art Nouveau (Artis Bute, Roberts Koļcovs) and postmodernism (Jānis Mitrēvics, Frančeska Kirke). In figurative painting the symbolic subject matter tradition, which had begun during the Soviet period, was continued, in which images and their metaphorical meanings connected poorly with the complicated painterly effects used. Most of the works were executed on the plane, or the surface, avoiding the dimension of depth. Many experimented with ornaments, collages and with gold. The painters that were regularly working tried to express themselves through multimedia (for example, Ieva Iltnere and Barbara Muižniece created land art works at Pedvāle), but many young artists were even embarrassed about working with ‘pure’ painting. The situation slowly changed over the next ten years, when the media associated with digital technology were no longer that new and the futuristic enthusiasm about its revolutionary role in art abated. This historical overview was vital, because without knowledge of the local historical context it is easy to get confused, as chanced to happen to German art critic Norbert Weber. (He, having read in the Candy Bomber painting exhibition (2007) annotation that it was meant to promote this genre, ironically remarked: “Here I have to wonder which genre could be more popular than painting.”(5)) Moreover ‘the noisy nineties’ should be remembered, so that the new simplicity of the coming decade can be viewed as a contrast. Examples A number of excellent artists who came to painting in the 1990s are still working. As an example, we could mention two ladies – Tatjana Krivenkova and Kristīne Keire. Although they’ve earned some degree of recognition (Tatjana once won the Agija Sūna Gallery competition Gada glezna 2002 (‘Painting of the Year’ 2002), but Kristīne represented Latvia at the 11th Vilnius Painting Triennial in 2000), they’ve never enjoyed clamorous fame, for example, by being interviewed in the Studija magazine as that issue’s artist, because the discourse was dominated by other priorities. However, both Krivenkova’s as well as Keire’s art demonstrates that in the chaotic legacy of the 90s, the most vigorous tendency proved to be an interest in the abstract, while other investigations are already looking hopelessly antiquated. Krivenkova has left the subject to the titles of the works, turning to a nuanced colourful geometry deriving from a transparent prism’s capacity to refract light, transforming it into colours. Meanwhile Keire, who has painted expressive figures also (these are specifically the ones that the Latvian National Museum of Art has purchased!), in her other works develops the subject from light reflected off the canvas and the transparency of layers of colour, which she masterfully ‘manages’, in order to achieve, for example, an impression of dusty glass. Characteristic of both artists is the focussing more on the unique capacity of painting to create images, and less on their significance. | |
 Kristīne Keire. Yellow Flask. Oil on canvas. 170x142cm. 2007 | |
| The ‘front’ of ‘the new simplicity’ was formed by artists who, shortly after 2000, renewed an interest in ordinary subjects, spatiality and the photographic aspect of painting. At least two of these three features are characteristic of Andris Vītoliņš, Vineta Kaulača, Andris Eglītis (these last two Professor Eduards Kļaviņš has placed among followers of realism(6)) and Jānis Avotiņš. For a short period they were joined by Sigita Daugule, later also Mārīte Guščika, Patrīcija Brekte and several completely new artists. Typical of this direction is also a kind of painterly ascetism, where the arsenal of specifically painterly weapons is substantially reduced in the name of integrity of contents: for example, Vītoliņš paints flatly, Kaulača – spatially, but both – ‘hard’ and ‘smoothly’, without emphasis on brushwork. Guščika’s works are black and white, Daugule’s and Avotiņš’ – almost monochrome. Jānis Avotiņš, currently the most well known Latvian artist internationally, greatly reduces drawing and paint, modelling spaces and figural forms with a tonally nuanced layering of fields. He is also the most consistent about pursuing his strategy of using photographs, seeking to renew, with painterly resources, the sentiece of scenes photographed many years ago. Inga Meldere utilises photographic materials in a slightly different way, distilling from photographic documentation only that which is pictorially valuable and the most important in content. She too uses very like tones and a narrow range of colour. In various series Andris Eglītis has tried different approaches: from copying photographs to alla prima, but common to all of his works is a certain inattention to the pictorial ‘expressiveness’ of individual fields and details, which seemed to be so fundamental in the previous period of art. It is symptomatic that it is difficult to verbalize this kind of painting. The titles of Andris Eglītis’ exhibitions Zem debess juma (‘Under the Cupola of the Sky’, 2008) and Es gribu būt tur... (‘I want to be there…’, 2009) are evidence that in his art it is vital to concentrate on the intervening space, the distance between those parts of reality which are to be objectivized. Without artists giving indications towards clear metaphors, curators and critics make do with allusions to ‘memories’, ‘atmosphere’ and ‘stillness’.(7) Meanwhile, a great colourfulness and energy dominates on a different flank of the new simplicity, which also defines its identity through the giving up of a large number of painting instruments, primarily those which were used by the previously mentioned. Some of the artists confine themselves to rather narrow gesticulation, concentrating on undiluted expression. Daiga Krūze invests great power in just a few dabs of colour, thus her landscapes and portraits are more reminiscent of laconic hieroglyphs than images of reality. Anda Lāce creates shapes of human creatures, swirling up black and greyish brushstrokes against a light background. Evija Ķirsone heightens the dynamics in landscape impressions, spreading over bright colours directly with her palms. The subject matter of Otto Zitmanis’ paintings could be viewed as conventionally figural, if the brushwork wasn’t so impulsively panicky and the nature of the images – aesthetically hooligan-like. Verners Lazdāns also paints quickly and thickly, as if battling with a fear of missing something, and this is expressed in the contents of his painting. Local hooligan of Latvian contemporary art Kristians Brekte is more an experimenter in painting, visualizing the phantoms of imagination in trickles and spatters of paint, with minimal intervention of the brush. Ēriks Apaļais remains a little distanced from the others, and with analytical curiosity explores how a painter’s most simple gestures could liberate the viewer’s creative perception. The spirit of ‘less is more’ of the new simplicity is increasingly gaining a response from new painters. For example, one could mention Ronalds Rusmanis and Magone Šarkovska, who each in their own way have cast aside the infinite possibilities of painting in favour of a narrow, precisely oriented approach. Rusmanis uses a simplified drawing and pictorially scanty colour solutions to produce small scenes of aeroplane life with a vein of black humour. Šarkovska, in turn, finds rhythmic structures in mundane fragments of reality. | |
 Andris Eglītis. Painting No.44. From the cycle "The Order of Things". Oil on canvas. 31,7x33cm. 2008 | |
| Subjective personal interest So that you shouldn’t suspect me of having a personal interest in the identification of the movement of ‘the new simplicity’ and am formulating it rather arbitrarily, proffering the desirable as the existing, I will acknowledge that this is indeed the case. The desirable in art often takes on the greatest variety of forms, even though the beauty of motivation, effort and intention are usually left in the boring shadow of cataloguing results. The year 2000 serves as a convenient starting point for my observations about the decade. This is when I had decided to paint some black and white landscapes. I well remember that I wasn’t really sure if I’d be able to pass it off as art, as at that time virtually everyone in my generation aspired to be colourful and flat. Not counting some classic painters, only Ritums Ivanovs painted realistically, spatially and in monochrome, and was, therefore, ranked as a salonist by those refined ladies who understand art. Gallery owner Ivonna Veiherte, when examining my works, invited Helēna Heinrihsone to assist her. Characteristically, this most notable representative of ‘pure colour materiality painting’(8) proved to be so tolerant that she expressed an appreciation for a completely opposing approach. Evidence of the dynamics of the situation is that in 2004, this kind of expertise was no longer needed and some of my works were even included in the annual exhibition organized by the Contemporary Art Centre (the successor to the SCAC), where up till then, painting hadn’t been noticed. Even though I have moved from works to words since that time, I don’t at all wish to observe processes ‘from the sidelines’, because I’m gladdened by the awareness that for a short while I too was lost in the same direction as some of the best artists of the decade. Furthermore, the view ‘from the inside’ cannot compete with the view from the outside, as each has their own irreplaceable magic. Fallacies Each new step in art – and the same in art criticism as well – if it doesn’t lead us backwards, can be compared to being lost, as the territory is still undiscovered and the goal – unknown. That’s why, at the conclusion, a few suggestions with regard to painting in the past decade. Firstly, it should be regarded not only as a continuation or a denial of exhibition practices of the 1990s, but of an older tradition which is personified by the Art Academy of Latvia (LMA). As we know, for years students learn to paint live models ‘from nature’ there, using a rich assortment of technical approaches. But even Professor Kaspars Zariņš of the Academy, in an interview with Inga Šteimane, admitted that “the painting of models is completely outdated”(9). Actually, it’s not so much from nature as from knowledge, as students learn to paint various poses of the human body credibly and to make them conform to a certain stylization. I remember myself what a negative attitude there was at the Academy to an all too naturalistic copying of nature. Whereas for decades artists after completing their studies have attempted to paint ‘from memory’, varying what they had learnt, studying the experiences of others, attempting to find their style and so on. It is only in this century that painting ‘from a photograph’ has really made its presence felt, even though, as mentioned at the beginning of this essay, in the early 1970s photorealism in Latvia was not unknown. Here one could speculate as to why it didn’t take on at the Academy, or at exhibitions. How would it be if Miervaldis Polis or Līga Purmale had their own students? Why do the older generation of painters, at times, hide that they have used photographs for their works, even though it’s patently obvious? After all, right throughout the 20th century photography too was a technologically complex art which, moreover, respected painting. Preconditions for the turnabout were created not so much by the birth of the new digital photography, as its unpredictably swift spread, together with the equally explosive pervasiveness of the internet in visual communication. Only a definite saturation by reproducible images was able to create the necessity for a new attitude towards them. The socalled ‘soap-dish’ style of photographic art stands out as a kind of dividing line, a style which in Latvia was represented most strikingly by the Myself, Friends, Lovers and Others series, developed over 2001–2002 by Arnis Balčus. The simplicity with which images could be multiplied forced artists to somehow position themselves against them – either by studying and criticizing them, or, conversely, searching for expressions unavailable to digital image culture. And a painting, without a doubt, is one of these. A consciousness of the inimitable and non-reproducible qualities of painting quite naturally leads to the abandonment of all others, and consequently to a new simplicity. (1) www.satori.lv/blogs/2345/Ivars_Ijabs/5910. (2) Demakova, Helēna. Citas sarunas. (‘Other Conversations’) Rīga: Visual Communication Department, 2002, p. 371. (3) Šteimane, Inga. Jānis Viņķelis. Rīga: Neputns, 2003, p. 14. (4) Kļaviņš, Eduards. Par laikmetīgās mākslas jēdzienu. (‘About the concept of contemporary art’) From: SCAC–Rīga 1993–1999. Rīga: SCAC–Rīga, 2000, p. 3. (5) Weber, Norbert. Time Will Show (‘Laiks rādīs’)”. Studija, 2008, No. 59, April–May, p. 92. (6) Kļaviņš, Eduards. Virziena noturība. (‘Stability of the direction’) Studija, 2007, No. 53, April–May, p. 72. (7) Rudovska, Maija. A few words about the latest developments in Latvian painting. Epifanio, 2009, No. 10, pp. 6–9. (8) Kļaviņš, Eduards. Heinrihsone nav/ir Heinrihsone. (‘Heinrihsone isn’t/Heinrihsone is’) From: Helēna Heinrihsone: Catalogue. Rīga: Māksla XO Gallery, 2007, p. 7. (9) Šteimane, Inga. Ko grib iekšējā balss? (‘What does the inner voice want?’) Kultūras Forums, 2010, 10 March, p. 12. /Translator into English: Uldis Brūns/ | |
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