|
|
| The CoBrA Spirit Elīna Dūce, Visual Arts Theorist The artists group CoBrA | |
| Be modern, ye collectors, museums. To you belong the ancient paintings, so do not despair. Conserve your memories, but distort them so that they suit your age. Why dismiss the ancient, if you can modernise it with a few brushstrokes? (..) Long live painting. (Asger Jorn. CoBrA Spirit. The distorted painting. 1959) It’s unlikely that anyone would be discussing CoBrA today if it had merely remained “on paper”. This rebellious group of artists wrote themselves into art history through their exhibitions. And the first of those took place in 1949, thanks to the director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, Willem Sandberg, who worshipped CoBrA’s energy, but feared that it might just wither away in small canvases. In an experimental “regime” (without any possibility of selling the works), Appel and Constant didn’t have the opportunity of creating larger works. Sandberg provided them with large size canvases, which were painted within a week for a special exhibition at the museum. The exhibition was set up by architect Aldo van Eyck (1918–1999), who was very much enthused by CoBrAn spontaneity. He arranged the paintings at various heights, placing some level with the floor, but others – even three metres up the wall. One of the seven halls allowed for the exhibition was painted black. At its opening, the beating of African drums could be heard in the background while Dotremont read out a text in French, which no-one really understood, except for the word sovietique. This was something completely unprecedented. The visitors were in the dark about the paintings (at that time it was hard to find anyone who considered CoBrA’s work to be art), and some of them caused a ruckus; critics, referring to the exhibition, wrote the phrase “large stains, smearings and empty prattle”(1), but CoBrA’s life had begun, and everything on the map of art had changed. The CoBrAns weren’t concerned with criticism after the opening, as they had reckoned on fossilized taste and the incapacity to accept new ideas. They were urged on more by the desire to dare to do something new and unseen in art, for example, working with all sorts of materials. The exhibition in Amsterdam was followed by two intensive painting, exhibition and publishing seasons. The group’s works were in demand throughout Western Europe. The culmination was an exhibition in 1951 in Liege (Palais des Beaux-Arts de Liège), in which 33 artists(2) took part and which was partly financed by collectors. | |
 Karel Appel. Untitled. Gouache on paper. 1961. Photo: Philippe de Formanoir Collection Thomas Neirynck, Fondation Roi Baudouin, BAM, Mons | |
| Language All of CoBrA’s founder members were taken with surrealist theory about automatism(3), making painting spontaneous and unpredictable. They felt that the image which was appearing on the canvas had to appear just as naturally and suddenly as the changing weather outside the window, and it should be just as impersonal as a thunderstorm, consistent with Dotremont’s “Anonymity is the great hygiene”. They had to free themselves of the idea of the artist as a solitary individualist and genius, for, in the opinion of Constant, “Today’s individualist culture has replaced creation with artistic production, which has produced nothing but signs of a tragic impotence (..)”(4). CoBrA’s artists were interested in Marxist ideas. They added to them their point of view, seeking universal art. The goal was to create art for everyone and to prove that anyone was capable of doing it, irrespective of class, race, intellect and level of education. On the wave of this idea they specialized in the creation of joint works. At times even their children were allowed to work with them, and, with poets working together with painters, word and image combinations or “word paintings” (peinture-mots) resulted. They tended to paint over their paintings, leaving open the question – what was painted first and what afterwards? Is a work of art something sacred and inviolable (not to be painted over)? At which moment does it become inviolable? These ideas caused a storm in a teacup. Even though CoBrA’s artists exhibited diversity without adhering to any particular art style (the experiment was the most important thing in the creative process), their interest in children’s drawings, primitive and folk art, an infatuation with Scandinavian myths, at the same time an interest in surrealism (especially in the interpretation of Paul Klee and Joan Miro) led to an almost recognizable CoBrA group language, the main creators of this being Appel, Jorn and Alechinsky. It was characterized by a world of fantastic creatures, the use of bright colours and spontaneously placed colours and lines, and in its visual features it had much in common with abstract expressionism. These features, which the artists continued to use even after the group disbanded, were based on CoBrA’s foundations. Since CoBrA as a unified group didn’t have one common, homogeneous style of working, they tried to articulate their positions in countless manifestos. In their treatises, they posited abstract art’s new, spontaneous and expressive forms, which would contrast with constructivism and geometric abstractionism. After 1951 There are different versions as to why the group folded after a mere three years of existence.(5) Possibly, they didn’t wish for a fate similar to that which befell the surrealists, who from revolutionaries became an accepted part of the very culture which they had criticized and wished to overthrow. Led by an utopian impulse, CoBrA did not wish to experience the same thing, so there wasn’t any reason to continue to exist, and it committed a deliberate “suicide”, so that only the very best that they were able to produce would remain on the stage. | |
 Pierre Alechinsky. Passer outre. Acrylic ib canvas. 1971. Photo: Philippe de Formanoir Collection Thomas Neirynck, Fondation Roi Baudouin, BAM, Mons | |
| In every respect, each CoBrA member commenced a successful individual career after the group disbanded. Art historian Graham Birtwistle considers that the greatest significance of the artists involved in the group was connected with the spirit of CoBrA, but only after the group had ceased to exist. The activities of CoBrA were a turning point in Europe’s abstract expressionism and very similar to action painting, which developed in America and was defined by American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952. In 1954, Asger Jorn and other CoBrAns created the “International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus” (Mouvement International pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste). They were also cofounders of the Situationist movement6. Constant’s ideas (if not exactly his work) were important both for the Dutch counterculture movement Provo, which existed in the mid 1960s, as well as for British and American hippies. In summary they were, in the words of curator Roger Malbert of the Hayward Gallery in London, visionaries who foresaw postmodernism’s ironic mood. In Latvia From the 24 September until 21November, the first exhibition of CoBrA’s works in Latvia, CoBrA & Co, will be on show at the Latvian National Museum of Art Arsenāls exhibition hall, reflecting the achievements of its members as well as the followers of its ideas – representatives of tachism and European abstract expressionism. The exhibition will be accompanied by the catalogue prepared by its curator Denis Laoureux. (1) Het Vrije Volk, 12 November, 1949. See: www.cobra-museum.nl/en/cobra.html. (2) They represented 11 countries, but a large number didn’t have a close connection with CoBrA. (3) Automatism requires the artists to free themselves and allow sub-conscious impulses to lead their hand. (4) www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue4/snakesladders.htm (5) It broke up because its members began to receive individual recognition, and with this the group lost its initial impulse; it ceased to exist as internal rifts developed; other versions were heard that its leaders Jorn and Dotremont fell ill in 1951. (6) The international Situationist movement developed on CoBrA’s base, and it was inspired by the book ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ (Critique de la vie quotidienne) 1947, written by the group’s former member Henri Lefebvre. /Translator into English: Uldis Brūns/ | |
| go back | |
