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拍品专文
‘In my art something else emerges in its artistic formulation. It is not natural nature, the visible person, but it is an abstraction of man, a prospect of gaining possession of him, in the world of forms in accordance with a reality which can be recognizes as such today. Art cannot hang in the air. It is time bound, as it is bound to life, to the artist’s existence.’ – Ernst Wilhelm Nay
‘Colour is a mystery that really cannot be interpreted.’ – Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Painted in 1956 and standing over a metre and a half in height, Ernst Wilhelm Nay’s Vom Aufsteigenden Blau (From the Rising Blue) is a stunning symphony of blue discs, the artist’s signature form. An eruption of seemingly infnite circles obscure the canvas and threaten to overtake the frame, and as with a cyclone, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau is powered by its own internal dynamism; Nay understood the disc to be an energetic form. The discs, wrote art historian Standish D. Lawder, ‘have no density or substance and which are themselves a source of illumination’ (S. Lawder, ‘Ernest Wilhelm Nay: An Evaluation of His Recent Paintings,’ Art Journal, Volume 21, Number 2, Winter, 1961-1962, p 101). Indeed, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau is at once heavily saturated and defiantly buoyant, owing in part to the flashes of warm reds and pinks interspersed amongst the aqueous blues. That the colours themselves vary
in tone and opacity underscores the robust link between Nay’s painting and aquatint practices echoed in such works as Ultramarine Blue and Yellow, 1960, held at the Pinakotek der Moderne, Munich. The paintings Nay created in the aftermath of the World War II endeavoured to uncover a mythic source of strength and rejuvenation; he was looking to make the world anew. These works are richly and purposefully coloured, and Nay referred to his new image-making process as Veranstaltung: ‘he hoped to conjure up an epiphany through painterly means alone’ (S. Gohr, ‘Ernst Wilhelm Nay: An Essay,’ in Ernst Wilhelm Nay, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1998, p. 25). The works of this period are not escapist, but rather the artist’s attempts to develop a new pictorial language as a force for regeneration. In Nay’s conceptualization of the new post-war world, it was the picture itself, and not its subject matter, that held significance. In 1951, Nay moved to Cologne where he was swept up by the music scene. He met composers such as Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and his paintings of the decade reflect a new musicality, rigorously planned. Nay explained, ‘Just as a composer works with sounds, I wanted to work with colours as a means of combining rhythm, values, dynamics and series to form a surface’ (E. Nay, ‘Notes by E. W. Nay’, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1998, p. 104). In his journals, the artist wrote that he began the Scheibe (Disc) series with a single daub of colour: ‘If I set a coloured dot on an empty surface an astonishing number of tensions were created. If I spread out the dot, the tensions increased’ (E. Nay quoted in E. W. Nay, exh. cat., Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1990, p. 36). In earlier works, the artist used blocked colour planes to build up naturalistic subjects: for example in Blumenkohlstilleben (Gemüsestilleben) 1928, the flat application of paint and simplification of the vegetable’s form foregrounded his future interrogation of a painting’s surface. This affection for chromatic representation is also reminiscent of Henri Matisse, who pursued colour for its own sake. Nay meticulously and intensively studied Matisse’s Femme au Chapeau as a student at the Berliner Akademie. The Scheibe series presents a complex choreography of formal relations, a contingency of colour that suggested a new engagement with the picture plane. Vom Aufsteigenden Blau marked a significant point in Nay’s
career; it is both the culmination of the Scheibe paintings and anticipates the interests that would come to characterize Nay’s later works: the orientation of the canvas, a switch from horizontal to vertical, and his continued reliance on thinner oil paints speak to this transitional moment. Nay’s whimsical and invigorated paintings seem an heir to Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee’s lyrical compositions. Formally, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau evokes a similar, stunning musicality of organic form found in the late-career paintings of Kandinsky; the drama of both is self-contained within the picture plane. Unlike Kandinsky, however, Nay did not seek out the spiritual within paint, instead believing the best art to be ‘non-illusionistic’ (E. Nay quoted in E. W. Nay, exh. cat., Cologne, 1990, p. 34). His Scheibe series possessed no symbolic substructure or reference to an external cosmology, but instead proposed a wholeness limited to the picture’s surface. Moreover, Nay’s compositions, unlike those of Kandinsky, were not improvisatory. Whereas improvisation required constant temporal invention, Nay’s paintings instead were meditations on space. It was for this reason that art historian Richard Calvocoressi described Nay’s practice as the ‘crucial link’ between pre-war modernism and the post-war endeavour to recuperate this legacy, writing ‘Nay… provided a sense of continuity between pre-war expressionism and post-war abstraction’ (R. Calvocorresi, E. W. Nay, exh. cat., Cologne, 1990, p. 6). In moving between the two, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau’s vivacious, jovial and dynamic discs instead are a pictorial poetics.
‘But we readily follow an agreeable object that flies from us, so we love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after.’ – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
‘Colour is a mystery that really cannot be interpreted.’ – Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Painted in 1956 and standing over a metre and a half in height, Ernst Wilhelm Nay’s Vom Aufsteigenden Blau (From the Rising Blue) is a stunning symphony of blue discs, the artist’s signature form. An eruption of seemingly infnite circles obscure the canvas and threaten to overtake the frame, and as with a cyclone, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau is powered by its own internal dynamism; Nay understood the disc to be an energetic form. The discs, wrote art historian Standish D. Lawder, ‘have no density or substance and which are themselves a source of illumination’ (S. Lawder, ‘Ernest Wilhelm Nay: An Evaluation of His Recent Paintings,’ Art Journal, Volume 21, Number 2, Winter, 1961-1962, p 101). Indeed, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau is at once heavily saturated and defiantly buoyant, owing in part to the flashes of warm reds and pinks interspersed amongst the aqueous blues. That the colours themselves vary
in tone and opacity underscores the robust link between Nay’s painting and aquatint practices echoed in such works as Ultramarine Blue and Yellow, 1960, held at the Pinakotek der Moderne, Munich. The paintings Nay created in the aftermath of the World War II endeavoured to uncover a mythic source of strength and rejuvenation; he was looking to make the world anew. These works are richly and purposefully coloured, and Nay referred to his new image-making process as Veranstaltung: ‘he hoped to conjure up an epiphany through painterly means alone’ (S. Gohr, ‘Ernst Wilhelm Nay: An Essay,’ in Ernst Wilhelm Nay, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1998, p. 25). The works of this period are not escapist, but rather the artist’s attempts to develop a new pictorial language as a force for regeneration. In Nay’s conceptualization of the new post-war world, it was the picture itself, and not its subject matter, that held significance. In 1951, Nay moved to Cologne where he was swept up by the music scene. He met composers such as Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and his paintings of the decade reflect a new musicality, rigorously planned. Nay explained, ‘Just as a composer works with sounds, I wanted to work with colours as a means of combining rhythm, values, dynamics and series to form a surface’ (E. Nay, ‘Notes by E. W. Nay’, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1998, p. 104). In his journals, the artist wrote that he began the Scheibe (Disc) series with a single daub of colour: ‘If I set a coloured dot on an empty surface an astonishing number of tensions were created. If I spread out the dot, the tensions increased’ (E. Nay quoted in E. W. Nay, exh. cat., Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1990, p. 36). In earlier works, the artist used blocked colour planes to build up naturalistic subjects: for example in Blumenkohlstilleben (Gemüsestilleben) 1928, the flat application of paint and simplification of the vegetable’s form foregrounded his future interrogation of a painting’s surface. This affection for chromatic representation is also reminiscent of Henri Matisse, who pursued colour for its own sake. Nay meticulously and intensively studied Matisse’s Femme au Chapeau as a student at the Berliner Akademie. The Scheibe series presents a complex choreography of formal relations, a contingency of colour that suggested a new engagement with the picture plane. Vom Aufsteigenden Blau marked a significant point in Nay’s
career; it is both the culmination of the Scheibe paintings and anticipates the interests that would come to characterize Nay’s later works: the orientation of the canvas, a switch from horizontal to vertical, and his continued reliance on thinner oil paints speak to this transitional moment. Nay’s whimsical and invigorated paintings seem an heir to Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee’s lyrical compositions. Formally, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau evokes a similar, stunning musicality of organic form found in the late-career paintings of Kandinsky; the drama of both is self-contained within the picture plane. Unlike Kandinsky, however, Nay did not seek out the spiritual within paint, instead believing the best art to be ‘non-illusionistic’ (E. Nay quoted in E. W. Nay, exh. cat., Cologne, 1990, p. 34). His Scheibe series possessed no symbolic substructure or reference to an external cosmology, but instead proposed a wholeness limited to the picture’s surface. Moreover, Nay’s compositions, unlike those of Kandinsky, were not improvisatory. Whereas improvisation required constant temporal invention, Nay’s paintings instead were meditations on space. It was for this reason that art historian Richard Calvocoressi described Nay’s practice as the ‘crucial link’ between pre-war modernism and the post-war endeavour to recuperate this legacy, writing ‘Nay… provided a sense of continuity between pre-war expressionism and post-war abstraction’ (R. Calvocorresi, E. W. Nay, exh. cat., Cologne, 1990, p. 6). In moving between the two, Vom Aufsteigenden Blau’s vivacious, jovial and dynamic discs instead are a pictorial poetics.
‘But we readily follow an agreeable object that flies from us, so we love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after.’ – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe