What is art about? "It has to be different from the real world," says my dentist. “For me, it's far from the ordinary," says the nice lady from the corner shop; “I like design better. It's also nice to look at, but it's also practical.”; "I think it's great what wacky ideas these artists have," says Paul. “Art is a good investment if you get the right advice," says Volker. "Let's work against the emptiness, against this time that is so wrong for us," says the artist.
Art is strangely different especially if the art is non-commissioned, because in commissions the concerns of the client are more important. In art, the artist's independent search is the reason for her/his work.
But not everyone who searches is thereby an artist. Scientists search for explanations, philosophers search for connections, and many are simply looking for the solution to a problem. The artist is not looking for that.
He/she is looking for the other, that which radiates a power that has not yet been used up. The uncovering, the penetration into deeper layers, and also the making of cross-connections are, like chance and contradiction, the tools of his/her creative work. With these tools he/she sees and senses and tries to stage this.
But I have left out one important aspect, the question of the object the artist is dealing with. The “other” is hard to find. However, at the edges of society, as well as in people's thoughts, the common comfort is quickly evaporating. If you are privileged, you also feel ‘the other’ in the thin peaks of intellectual and musical achievements. Some artist even dare to look into deep abysses, while others dare to go to the end of the world.
There is a place one could call the end of the world, not as the Last Judgement, but as a place where the nature of things is different from what we know.
At first glance, it may be a tree with leaves growing in the opposite direction, on a distant continent where it is always exactly the opposite season, in a desert, at night.
On a second thought, it may be a situation in which we cry out for God and justice that does not come. Worse still, when no witness is present.
There must be images for these abysses so that we can accept them, because the reality is often unbearable and harmful. This is why the cathartic Greek tragedy was invented. This is why artists create images that are not beautiful and that do not represent a different world, and is neither an investment, nor a great idea, and are certainly not practical.
The intention of these images is not to create an imposing, melancholic situation, or shock for excitement. Such events come and go, while art remains. The outstanding quality of art seems to be, that it commands us to return and look again. Nothing that manages to keep our attention is revealed in the immediate. A symbol, whether it is painted, printed, or formed, photographed, or obtained in any other way, reveals its meaning as a metaphor, ideally even without words, shunning the common arbitrariness of its interpretation.
What holds us spellbound in Claudia Terstappen's photographs is not the mysterious ambiguity of the image, but its precision. This has nothing to do with technique, it is a stroke of luck that she has virtually challenged by going to the ends of the earth to find an adequate image. Following her intuition and the question of whether one sees what one paints/photographs or paints/ photographs what one sees.
In her photograph series of Dark Nights, we look at a strange beauty that we have never seen before. The eye seeks comparisons, but ultimately cannot escape the black frame of the night. The movements are familiar to us, but at the same time strange, we do not know the actors, not like this anyway. Theodor Storm's "Erlkönig" from 1782 comes to mind as a comparison, but whether the viewer wants to name what she/he sees for the first time with words, as writers do, or whether you, the viewer can feel it, is up to you.
The museum refrains from any form of interview. The pictures speak for themselves.
Everyone will be touched in a different way and have their own opinion. I wonder, however, if opinion and interpretation are the same thing? It is through interpretation that meaning is formed, not through opinion. Only with interpretation does meaning emerge.
The nice woman from the corner shop, who loves cool and practical design, says that the trees might be infested with a fungus, e.g. cinnamon fungus phytophthora. She read something about it in the paper. This fungus attacks the root system, it travels in water and is spread via small amounts of soil that adheres to the bottom of walkers' shoes, or via other soil disturbances. It poses a significant threat to the ecosystem, as the loss of grass trees alter and reduce the species composition and structural form of the vegetation. Native birds and animals, invertebrates and microflora, can be threatened by these changes in vegetation as the food and shelter they depend on is destroyed.
Paul finds it impressive because he can't tell if the photo was taken in situ in the bush, or in a studio environment. The lighting of certain areas at night makes the background invisible, resulting in a loss of context. Volker puts the images in the service of fighting against the destruction of ecosystems and donates 25% of the proceeds of each sale to the World Wildlife Trust for the protection of native Australian plants.
We remember, the artist says: she wants to work against the emptiness in us.
What is meant here by emptiness? And why do the paintings deliberately radiate this ghostly beauty that attracts us, but which we instinctively distrust?
Is emptiness healed by a practical purpose of art? Or does emptiness refer to a laziness to explore the deeper meaning of a work of art? Why did that old poem come to my mind? Is it simply that sense of drama?
For his ballad, which belongs to the literary epoch of Sturm und Drang, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used a Danish folk tale that revolves around the "Ellerkonge", or "Elf King". In the ballad "Der Erlkönig" (The Erl King), Goethe describes a father's nocturnal ride with his sick son. During the ride through the forest, the son begins to fantasize in his father's arms by perceiving the figure of the Erlkönig. He wants to lure the son into his kingdom with promises, whereupon the boy becomes afraid. The father wants to reassure his son by explaining his son's perceptions as harmless, natural phenomena. In the course of the ballad, however, the Erlkönig's grip on the boy increases until he finally lies dead in his father's arms.
The Erlking
Who rides so late through the night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the boy in his arms;
he holds him safely, he keeps him warm.
My son, why do you hide your face in fear?
Father, can you not see the Erlking?
The Erlking with his crown and tail?
My son, it is a streak of mist.
Sweet child, come with me.
I’ll play wonderful games with you.
Many a pretty flower grows on the shore
my mother has many a golden robe.
‘Father, father, do you not hear
what the Erlking softly promises me?
Calm, be calm, my child:
the wind is rustling in the withered leaves.
Won’t you come with me, my fine lad?
My daughters shall wait upon you
my daughters lead the nightly dance,
and will rock you, and dance, and sing you to sleep.
Father, father, can you not see
Erlking’s daughters there in the darkness?’
My son, my son, I can see clearly
it is the old grey willows gleaming.
I love you, your fair form allures me,
and if you don’t come willingly, I’ll use force.
Father, father, now he’s seizing me!
The Erlking has hurt me!’
The father shudders, he rides swiftly,
he holds the moaning child in his arms
with one last effort he reaches home
the child lay dead in his arms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ7dCCavl4A
From a purely formal point of view, the ballad consists of eight stanzas with four verses each. These have a continuous rhyming couplets, which underlines the dialogue-like character of the ballad. While the father's one-line statements enclose the son's two-line statement like a protective shell, this changes in stanzas 4 and 6. Both the father and the son now alternate in a two-line dialogue. The son opens each stanza by asking whether the father does not also perceive the Erlkönig. The father, on the other hand, rationally explains his son's perceptions with natural phenomena. This is typical of Goethe, who was one of the first poets to write nature-magical ballads that deal with the conflict between popular belief and enlightened man. In Erlkönig, the son assumes the role of the simple person receptive to the magic of nature and the father the position of the rationally thinking person of the Enlightenment.
What at first glance seems like a fever dream of the son, reflecting the conflict between an old and a new understanding of nature, however, has a much deeper level. This becomes clear both from the choice of words and the stylistic devices used. This is especially true of the key words father, child, son, mother and daughters, which describe the members of a typical family. Right from the beginning, Goethe also uses the stylistic device of contrast. This becomes clear, for example, in lines three and four ("He has the boy well in his arms, he grasps him securely, he keeps him warm"), which contrast the protective qualities of the father with the qualities of a stormy night. Through this contrast, an ambiguous connection to the Erlkönig can be established in a figurative sense, who wants to lure the boy out of the protection of his father or family through his statements "You dear child, come with me! I'll play beautiful games with you". These two lines also already indicate a sexual motive the Erlkönig might have towards the boy.
The increase in intensity of the Erlkönig's advances is also striking. For example, he entices the son with his daughters, and Goethe reinforces this enticing circumstance with the repetition "And sway and dance and sing thee in". Alliterations such as "colourful flowers" and "gülden Gewand" also underpin the Erlkönig's promises, since a positive quality is directly assigned to the respective object. The statement "I love you, I am attracted by your beautiful form; And if you are not willing, then I need violence" seems unambiguous.
While the son directly addresses his father about the Erlking's actions, the father dismisses this as fantasy. In the ballad, this fact is reflected in the fact that the father is only frightened when the son describes the Erlkönig's assault: "My father, my father, now he's touching me! Erlkönig has done me harm!"). The intensity of the request for help is again underlined by a repetitio ("my father"). The child's groaning, which can be superficially attributed to feverish delirium, reinforces on a deeper level of meaning the impression of a sexual assault by the Erlkönig, which the father does not recognise or wants to recognise.
The description of the ride in the present tense and the death of the child in the past allow the assumption that the boy is not physically dead. Rather, this artifice figuratively suggests the spiritual death of the boy, who has lost his childhood through the Erlkönig's assault.
My reason for comparing Goethe's Erlkönig with Claudia Terstappen's Dark Nights lies not only in the parallels of the drama, the race against time, the repression, the parallel of a conflict between an old and a new understanding of nature, but in the question, how far the encroachment of the creeping destruction of nature has caused a rupture in us and how far we are guilty of the encroachment of admonishing our children to remedy a destruction we have caused.
The quotation opens a way into an understanding that lies outside the work.
Goethe found his words in 1782, but interpretations always change. They are temporary translations to gain a deeper understanding, while the work of art remains the same. Today, much of our understanding of art is superficial. Fast moving, popular media like to describe it as trophy decoration, provocation or entertainment. In the second half of her sentence “Let us work against the emptiness, against this time that is so wrong for us" Claudia Terstappen hints at this and it is as thou we become the ghostly trees in her pictures.
The work of art itself and the understanding that lies outside the work, are closely linked but separate. Exhibited in superficial circumstances many artists fear to be abused and withdraw from this dialog into their studios.
I wonder who we leave the stage to? Are we victims or responsible for this time, which is so wrong for us, in which we have contributed to the social haunting of art markets, auctions, opening parties and all the things that have nothing to do with the understanding of art? Couldn't it be done differently?
Alf Löhr
Art is strangely different especially if the art is non-commissioned, because in commissions the concerns of the client are more important. In art, the artist's independent search is the reason for her/his work.
But not everyone who searches is thereby an artist. Scientists search for explanations, philosophers search for connections, and many are simply looking for the solution to a problem. The artist is not looking for that.
He/she is looking for the other, that which radiates a power that has not yet been used up. The uncovering, the penetration into deeper layers, and also the making of cross-connections are, like chance and contradiction, the tools of his/her creative work. With these tools he/she sees and senses and tries to stage this.
But I have left out one important aspect, the question of the object the artist is dealing with. The “other” is hard to find. However, at the edges of society, as well as in people's thoughts, the common comfort is quickly evaporating. If you are privileged, you also feel ‘the other’ in the thin peaks of intellectual and musical achievements. Some artist even dare to look into deep abysses, while others dare to go to the end of the world.
There is a place one could call the end of the world, not as the Last Judgement, but as a place where the nature of things is different from what we know.
At first glance, it may be a tree with leaves growing in the opposite direction, on a distant continent where it is always exactly the opposite season, in a desert, at night.
On a second thought, it may be a situation in which we cry out for God and justice that does not come. Worse still, when no witness is present.
There must be images for these abysses so that we can accept them, because the reality is often unbearable and harmful. This is why the cathartic Greek tragedy was invented. This is why artists create images that are not beautiful and that do not represent a different world, and is neither an investment, nor a great idea, and are certainly not practical.
The intention of these images is not to create an imposing, melancholic situation, or shock for excitement. Such events come and go, while art remains. The outstanding quality of art seems to be, that it commands us to return and look again. Nothing that manages to keep our attention is revealed in the immediate. A symbol, whether it is painted, printed, or formed, photographed, or obtained in any other way, reveals its meaning as a metaphor, ideally even without words, shunning the common arbitrariness of its interpretation.
What holds us spellbound in Claudia Terstappen's photographs is not the mysterious ambiguity of the image, but its precision. This has nothing to do with technique, it is a stroke of luck that she has virtually challenged by going to the ends of the earth to find an adequate image. Following her intuition and the question of whether one sees what one paints/photographs or paints/ photographs what one sees.
In her photograph series of Dark Nights, we look at a strange beauty that we have never seen before. The eye seeks comparisons, but ultimately cannot escape the black frame of the night. The movements are familiar to us, but at the same time strange, we do not know the actors, not like this anyway. Theodor Storm's "Erlkönig" from 1782 comes to mind as a comparison, but whether the viewer wants to name what she/he sees for the first time with words, as writers do, or whether you, the viewer can feel it, is up to you.
The museum refrains from any form of interview. The pictures speak for themselves.
Everyone will be touched in a different way and have their own opinion. I wonder, however, if opinion and interpretation are the same thing? It is through interpretation that meaning is formed, not through opinion. Only with interpretation does meaning emerge.
The nice woman from the corner shop, who loves cool and practical design, says that the trees might be infested with a fungus, e.g. cinnamon fungus phytophthora. She read something about it in the paper. This fungus attacks the root system, it travels in water and is spread via small amounts of soil that adheres to the bottom of walkers' shoes, or via other soil disturbances. It poses a significant threat to the ecosystem, as the loss of grass trees alter and reduce the species composition and structural form of the vegetation. Native birds and animals, invertebrates and microflora, can be threatened by these changes in vegetation as the food and shelter they depend on is destroyed.
Paul finds it impressive because he can't tell if the photo was taken in situ in the bush, or in a studio environment. The lighting of certain areas at night makes the background invisible, resulting in a loss of context. Volker puts the images in the service of fighting against the destruction of ecosystems and donates 25% of the proceeds of each sale to the World Wildlife Trust for the protection of native Australian plants.
We remember, the artist says: she wants to work against the emptiness in us.
What is meant here by emptiness? And why do the paintings deliberately radiate this ghostly beauty that attracts us, but which we instinctively distrust?
Is emptiness healed by a practical purpose of art? Or does emptiness refer to a laziness to explore the deeper meaning of a work of art? Why did that old poem come to my mind? Is it simply that sense of drama?
For his ballad, which belongs to the literary epoch of Sturm und Drang, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used a Danish folk tale that revolves around the "Ellerkonge", or "Elf King". In the ballad "Der Erlkönig" (The Erl King), Goethe describes a father's nocturnal ride with his sick son. During the ride through the forest, the son begins to fantasize in his father's arms by perceiving the figure of the Erlkönig. He wants to lure the son into his kingdom with promises, whereupon the boy becomes afraid. The father wants to reassure his son by explaining his son's perceptions as harmless, natural phenomena. In the course of the ballad, however, the Erlkönig's grip on the boy increases until he finally lies dead in his father's arms.
The Erlking
Who rides so late through the night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the boy in his arms;
he holds him safely, he keeps him warm.
My son, why do you hide your face in fear?
Father, can you not see the Erlking?
The Erlking with his crown and tail?
My son, it is a streak of mist.
Sweet child, come with me.
I’ll play wonderful games with you.
Many a pretty flower grows on the shore
my mother has many a golden robe.
‘Father, father, do you not hear
what the Erlking softly promises me?
Calm, be calm, my child:
the wind is rustling in the withered leaves.
Won’t you come with me, my fine lad?
My daughters shall wait upon you
my daughters lead the nightly dance,
and will rock you, and dance, and sing you to sleep.
Father, father, can you not see
Erlking’s daughters there in the darkness?’
My son, my son, I can see clearly
it is the old grey willows gleaming.
I love you, your fair form allures me,
and if you don’t come willingly, I’ll use force.
Father, father, now he’s seizing me!
The Erlking has hurt me!’
The father shudders, he rides swiftly,
he holds the moaning child in his arms
with one last effort he reaches home
the child lay dead in his arms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ7dCCavl4A
From a purely formal point of view, the ballad consists of eight stanzas with four verses each. These have a continuous rhyming couplets, which underlines the dialogue-like character of the ballad. While the father's one-line statements enclose the son's two-line statement like a protective shell, this changes in stanzas 4 and 6. Both the father and the son now alternate in a two-line dialogue. The son opens each stanza by asking whether the father does not also perceive the Erlkönig. The father, on the other hand, rationally explains his son's perceptions with natural phenomena. This is typical of Goethe, who was one of the first poets to write nature-magical ballads that deal with the conflict between popular belief and enlightened man. In Erlkönig, the son assumes the role of the simple person receptive to the magic of nature and the father the position of the rationally thinking person of the Enlightenment.
What at first glance seems like a fever dream of the son, reflecting the conflict between an old and a new understanding of nature, however, has a much deeper level. This becomes clear both from the choice of words and the stylistic devices used. This is especially true of the key words father, child, son, mother and daughters, which describe the members of a typical family. Right from the beginning, Goethe also uses the stylistic device of contrast. This becomes clear, for example, in lines three and four ("He has the boy well in his arms, he grasps him securely, he keeps him warm"), which contrast the protective qualities of the father with the qualities of a stormy night. Through this contrast, an ambiguous connection to the Erlkönig can be established in a figurative sense, who wants to lure the boy out of the protection of his father or family through his statements "You dear child, come with me! I'll play beautiful games with you". These two lines also already indicate a sexual motive the Erlkönig might have towards the boy.
The increase in intensity of the Erlkönig's advances is also striking. For example, he entices the son with his daughters, and Goethe reinforces this enticing circumstance with the repetition "And sway and dance and sing thee in". Alliterations such as "colourful flowers" and "gülden Gewand" also underpin the Erlkönig's promises, since a positive quality is directly assigned to the respective object. The statement "I love you, I am attracted by your beautiful form; And if you are not willing, then I need violence" seems unambiguous.
While the son directly addresses his father about the Erlking's actions, the father dismisses this as fantasy. In the ballad, this fact is reflected in the fact that the father is only frightened when the son describes the Erlkönig's assault: "My father, my father, now he's touching me! Erlkönig has done me harm!"). The intensity of the request for help is again underlined by a repetitio ("my father"). The child's groaning, which can be superficially attributed to feverish delirium, reinforces on a deeper level of meaning the impression of a sexual assault by the Erlkönig, which the father does not recognise or wants to recognise.
The description of the ride in the present tense and the death of the child in the past allow the assumption that the boy is not physically dead. Rather, this artifice figuratively suggests the spiritual death of the boy, who has lost his childhood through the Erlkönig's assault.
My reason for comparing Goethe's Erlkönig with Claudia Terstappen's Dark Nights lies not only in the parallels of the drama, the race against time, the repression, the parallel of a conflict between an old and a new understanding of nature, but in the question, how far the encroachment of the creeping destruction of nature has caused a rupture in us and how far we are guilty of the encroachment of admonishing our children to remedy a destruction we have caused.
The quotation opens a way into an understanding that lies outside the work.
Goethe found his words in 1782, but interpretations always change. They are temporary translations to gain a deeper understanding, while the work of art remains the same. Today, much of our understanding of art is superficial. Fast moving, popular media like to describe it as trophy decoration, provocation or entertainment. In the second half of her sentence “Let us work against the emptiness, against this time that is so wrong for us" Claudia Terstappen hints at this and it is as thou we become the ghostly trees in her pictures.
The work of art itself and the understanding that lies outside the work, are closely linked but separate. Exhibited in superficial circumstances many artists fear to be abused and withdraw from this dialog into their studios.
I wonder who we leave the stage to? Are we victims or responsible for this time, which is so wrong for us, in which we have contributed to the social haunting of art markets, auctions, opening parties and all the things that have nothing to do with the understanding of art? Couldn't it be done differently?
Alf Löhr