LV   ENG
THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT
Ilona Brūvere

 
Harijs Brants
 

Harijs Brants. Graphic artist. Author of pictures for Hermanis's theatre reading of Sorokin's Ice. Inventor, scriptwriter, director and performer of the Library game. Fan of computer games. Admirer of black-and-white sci-fi. Bookworm. Minimalist. Eliminator of unnecessary objects, in the direct sense of the word. Positive oppositionist. Dreamer. Darling of the ladies of the art historian circles. A great guy. An advertising artist who was using black in ad posters ten years ago, only to see black in the urban environment plans of London this year. Harijs - a clever guy who won't do a rush job of anything, who loves to fly in his dreams, and who knows how it is done.

Harijs Brants: I like suspicious, funny and absurd situations. All kinds of silly nonsense or paradoxes. Folly. Things that exist all by themselves, in a way. Contradictory, still-undiscovered things. Everything that is different around us, I guess, everything a little deviant somehow, and unknown - not familiar. The library game is also just an opportunity to try it all, writing scripts and dialogue, creating different environments and space. And afterwards you have to deal with it all. And that is a result of a sort of process of selection and of fitting together, wherein you have to find the balance between events, game tasks, visual solutions - picture, gameplay, degree of difficulty etc. I guess I'm not even that satisfied with the end product, because when you're working on a drawing, you can reach the optimum result over a couple of weeks, but with a game you're always settling for a compromise.

Ilona Brūvere: The Library in this case demands a certain amount of literary knowledge - these characters are not just dreamed up, they have been read about and imagined. They move into new situations, creating a synthesised space of literary and visual perception. Do you read a lot?

H.B.: Sometimes I just happen to fall into reading. I have fits of reading. Then it becomes something of an obsession. And when I start to read I do nothing else. I read all night. And then the chosen book leads me to another one, and all that is written in them creates a combined space of literary experience and imagination. I usually spend a couple of weeks in this space. It takes up a lot of my time. I don't know how to stop. It's like intoxication.

I.B.: What are some of your strongest poisons?

H.B.: The Russian classics, Dostoyevsky. Stephen King, Umberto Eco. Sounds like a bag of allsorts. I've had a Hemingway and Fowles era, I've picked my way through Umberto Eco's situation combinations. Later, it all settles somewhere in your subconscious. Everything that is the real thing stays around somewhere. But it doesn't directly mess with you or anything.

Initially I wanted to do the Library characters as drawings, not synthetic vector graphics, but it would have been very difficult and take a lot more time. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend so much time on the game. First you have to get the system started, get the characters moving, create specific game situations. And that is like an adventure in itself. I have reconciled myself to that solution. The game is still beta; there are still improvements to make and faults to correct. But this comic-book aesthetic has stayed with me since I was studying at the Rozentāls School, when I filled countless notebooks with comics, dreamt of animation and invented board games with dice-rolling.

I.B.: Your drawings stand out because of their emphatically graphic, ascetic style, dark backgrounds, precisely defined characters and a heightened sense of fantastic irreality, which is at times matter-of-fact, dramatic, at times sad as a haiku, a masculine shorthand record of black-and-white sensations. How do all these different genres, all those little jokes and that consistent steadiness fit together in you?

H.B.: Those are no jokes, those are all sorts of suspicious, shady characters and various oddities - but if I knew where it all came from, perhaps I wouldn't find it all so much fun. Steadiness and sadness are really just the lack of quiet joy, because those who know me would tell you I'm a chatter­box (not in the best sense of the word). But in reality I spend most of my time alone, not speaking to anyone. So it's probably a case of extremes - not talking at all, or talking non-stop.
 

 
Harijs Brants. Fly Counters. 2005
 
I.B.: What, in your opinion, is the optimum set of circumstances for creative work?

H.B.: First of all, it's a lot of free time, unlimited amounts of time, but that idea does not belong to me. I've been told so by Kaspars Zariņš, Ilmārs Blumbergs has also said the same thing - I've just pinched the idea. You also need a space where you can be alone. So that you are free to do whatever occurs to you, for as long as you want. I always have an enormous problem with time constrictions. If, for example, I have to run some very prosaic errands, or meet someone, or manage to pop out to the shop, I always end up dreadfully upset, because that segment of time has been carefully measured out. This kind of mundane little thing will throw me completely off course. It is important to me that there are no other commitments while I'm preparing to work, nothing else is happening and nothing else has to be taken care of. I need that head start, like a promise of what is to come.

I.B.: What do you do during this preparation?

H.B.: I do all kinds of useless things: I surf the Internet or read something, I research the characters and archive the info. It's like an unconscious preparation for the next moment, when things start happening again as you start working.

I.B.: You can spend forever just getting prepared, but when does it happen, when can things really start?

H.B.: When all these prerequisites have been met, when you have some time that is free of all commitments that bind you to your everyday life, and also that space for solitude. If all these circumstances do not come together, I start to fight the reality of everyday obligations to get that space, and then everything does happen. I know I can change circumstances, because they do not rule me. That is the way it happens to me, and I've seen it time and again. It might be a bit odd, but it's a good thing. I need this time of contemplation.

I.B.: Which characters are truly yours, ones you end up returning to, ones who keep haunting you as soon as you pick up your charcoal or your pencil?

H.B.: They're so different, and different every time. I'm not like Picasso, who kept to his Minotaur and bulls. Although - I do have that one little girl. Her head's screwed on the right way, but she's also suspiciously persistent. As I've drawn her, I've tried to get to know her, and I don't think she's going to be as prominent in this gallery of characters. That's just the way it is in real life. You get to know someone, and the intrigue is lost.

I.B.: Do the comics and the games have different characters that keep coming back and won't leave you be?

H.B.: I picked a little girl with tightly braided hair. There's tension in her head. And she could quite easily take part in comics and games as well. And she does. Those surreal characters of mine are everywhere, it's a single group of characters; they are completed to one standard at the sketch level, to another at drawing level, and to yet another when it comes to pictures. And a computer game demands yet another level of finish. Comic book characters can also become game or graphic art characters. It all depends on the styling. But there is a motif which unites it all - they're somewhat unreal with their slightly distorted proportions.

I.B.: Why do so many of Brants's characters have distorted body proportions?

H.B.: I guess it's all that silliness coming to light. And I don't even think they're funny, although there've been times when I've had a good laugh about them.

I.B.: Some of them are extremely wrinkly...

H.B.: But look at how some people crinkle and crack during their lives, I didn't invent it. Each person gets wrinkly in his or her own way. And this means there's always a different character. The wrinkles hold information on everything that has ever happened to this human being.

I.B.: What happens to the human being in the stories in which you determine their fate?

H.B.: Information comes from life, from movies, books; everything has been seen before, there's definitely nothing new there. That's just my personal interpretation. And as for those wrinkles... It's like a rhythm. And rhythm is part of a composition. I create my characters intuitively but if I get the feeling that something is not working, I start analysing my mistakes. I check the proportion of expanses and textures, the rhythm trajectory traced by the spectator's eye. And rhythm generates specific sensations. The trajectory of perception also includes those very same wrinkles. Interestingly, in my case this all-important trajectory of perception is located on the face of a human being. Any detail of the proportions of the face provides clues to the character, and wrinkles let the rhythm be built over several layers. It's exciting to shape it, and then to see it when it is complete. That's the most exciting thing about drawing. The desirable outcome is to perfect the drawing into a formula, something like 1 x 1 = 1.

I.B.: Which is the environment that fascinates you as an endless art object - one whose interpretational options are, in your opinion, limitless?

H.B.: That environment is somewhere else, it is not real - it's one you imagine. I guess I'm known for dark skies, and then there's a white line - something like a horizon. And the line which locks together the sky and the horizon has to be light. Like a perspective, like a sign that everything will turn out alright. And definitely the desert motif. And it isn't a sandy desert, there has to be something like cracked earth or a grid of roots. So the eye has something to roam over. When I was little, my mum gave me a few books about the art of Bosch and Brueghel, and there was so much to see, so many situations, so many characters. There was so much to see, you couldn't just have a little look and then stop, like you would with an abstract painting. That is what interests me, there's enough to work with - both for me and for the spectator.
 

 
Harijs Brants. Uncle. 2006
 
I.B.: What would be the prerequisites for you to find advertising work engaging, to see the sense of working in this field? Can you see your style and your characters within the advertising aesthetic?

H.B.: I've thought about that a lot. The main thing is for me to be able to have fun with it. For the commissioned works to not contradict the things that I am really into. Other­wise, I don't really want to bother anymore. You just want to expend yourself, to be fulfilled and express yourself as an artist. And if you don't get to do it, it creates a conflict between the artist and the client.

I.B.: Have you ever though about the essential nature of the phenomenon of art?

H.B.: While studying for my Master's degree at the Academy of Art, I worked with Heidegger's theory on the essence of art. I had everything written down in notes and laid out in diagrams. But art happens all by itself. And it either happens or it does not - it's like working with the invisible world, with hidden things and feelings. And the artist is lucky, because s/he may take part in this process, it happens through them somehow. But one shouldn't claim any real credit in this art creation process. Art may consist of imagined and made-up things, but they may not be art if they become unrecognisable in the subconscious mind of the spectator. Art, I suppose, is expressed in the desire to fulfil the unfulfilled existence.

I.B.: How are your works created? Do they keep pestering you with their presence, or do they exist in the shape of an invented and calculated vision that finally materialises?

H.B.: That's it. Three in one. They are present, they give me no peace, and then I construct them. The best thing about it, however, is the moment of expectation. The moment when a specific solution approaches you through that enormous concentrated expanse of uncertainty. Then you finally put it down on paper, you draw it and marvel: it works! Yes, all those funny little men I try to draw have their own business with me. All of them want to be useful, and I now know that I'm happy with them. The most interesting thing about each work is the moment when the secret is exposed - although in reality the secrets are never fully revealed. And it is best to prolong the moment. So that you may enjoy the feeling. And this kind of thing can bring me to ecstasy, just like computer games or reading, I don't want this process to end so quickly. I cannot switch off. For a whole month, or even two. That's why they call me an ecstasy fiend.

I.B.: Have you ever envied painters?

H.B.: Yes, back in that torturous time when I was looking for a style in drawing, how it could look and what it really could be. There is no more envy now. There's just this joyful feeling whenever someone has done something you like. But in reality envy is very human, and there is a conclusion which seems to be a convincing argument. If anyone has managed to do something well in art, and to earn some money with it, then it's good news - because you know it could also happen to you.

I.B.: What kind of dreams do you see?

H.B.: In my dreams I fly, and I don't know if it's really true, but I think I have mastered flying in those dreams. In one of my dreams I remembered taking to flight in the preceding dream, and tried to do it again. By the sixth or seventh try I got spooked out by what was happening. But that is just a moment. You mustn't be afraid. That I know for certain. The best thing ever is to fly around the city, right here in Riga.

Instead of an Epilogue

You've been drawing all day, and you're already tired. You close your eyes but you can't sleep, so you start draw­ing sketches again. And that is when all kinds of things start emerging, and you're trying to capture them. And at moments like that it is great if you do not have to think of other people who might interrupt this thing.

 
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