Screen of Emotion,
Landscape of the Mind
DIANE THODOS in conversation with Bettina Blohm
Portrait of the artist by BRUCE STRONG
© Bruce Strong
cover, July 23, 2004: Bettina Blohm Coles View 2002, oil on canvas,
30 x 20 inches, Collection of P.C. Boston
Bettina Blohm's paintings
are Haiku-like visual landscapes that distill emotion into abstract
form. They reflect a love of Eastern art with its focus on intuitive
states of mind. Blohm's paintings also engage with a Matisse inspired
sense of color and an Abstract Expressionist scale, both of which come
across especially within her compositional placement of gesture and
shape. Enigmatic shapes or nature forms often seem to imply human presences.
In earlier works where the human silhouette is depicted, more tensions
arise which are emphasized by color contrasts and the formal placement
of figures in relation to each other.
The following excerpts from
an extended interview reveal the philosophy and approach she developed
over 20 years as a painter and graphic artist. Her work forges together
influences from Modernist and Asian art into a personal approach which
is stands in opposition to prevailing postmodern and conceptual trends.
I am interested in your dedication to painting with
historical roots in an aesthetic and Modernist tradition.
I work in the Modernist
tradition. Someone once called me a third generation Abstract Expressionist.
I believe the formal language is still relevant and can be built on.
In the best Abstract Expressionist works there is a unity between the
act of painting and their feeling and the world.
You clearly
love the expansiveness of Abstract Expressionist scale and Matissean
color.
Matisse is the greatest
painter of the 20th century to me. Nobody else even comes close. Of
course I love his color, but also his variety of formal solutions, his
way of arresting shapes on canvas, and how each form is alive. His paintings
are complex yet look simple.
Bettina
Blohm German Forest 1997
oil on canvasm, 48 x96 inches
Collection Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Germany
I
tend to see a close analogy to your work in Milton Avery's landscapes
where elements become compressed in simple abstract motifs.
I like Avery's color
and the generosity in his later paintings. In those late works he achieves
a beautiful synthesis between formal rigor and looseness and an exquisite
poetic sense. In some paintings the motif becomes so compressed it is
like a metaphor: a black and white bird hovering over a gray sea in
Plunging Gull 1960 or the green horizon line which seems to contain
the sea like a bathtub in Dunes and Sea 1960.
You have talked
about your interest in Asian landscape painting and the abstract work
of the Japanese American artist Miyoko Ito.
My first real encounter
with Asian art was in 1992 in London at the exhibit of woodcuts by Hokusai
at the Royal Academy. Certain images responded to my search for abstraction
in figuration. Because Asian art was never that concerned with imitating
nature the artists developed a greater individual freedom and expressiveness
in their gesturers. I love the sense of poetry, of spareness, of essence,
of humanity that I feel in these paintings. My ideas come from the visual
world, or more specifically for the last 10 years from landscape, and
that gives me something to push against. This is one of the pleasures
I get from looking at Miyoko Ito's paintings. Her mature work is abstract
and completely self contained yet it is obvious how hard she looked
at the movement of water or the spatial construction of a landscape.
When you arrived
in New York in 1984 you were making paintings of trees with a kind of
Expressionist fervor. What did these early tree works signify to you?
I came to new York
right after finishing art school in Munich. I chose the tree as a motif
because I had a strong emotional connection with trees. I would walk
around the city's parks and photograph different trees and then paint
them in my studio. They were urban trees with chopped off branches which
made them seem more human.
Bettina Blohm Where
Are They Going 1992-
oil on canvas, 82 x 68 inches-coll
Collection Christian Friesecke
Human figure
and silhouettes appear in your later paintings like Where Are They Going?
from 1992. I cannot help feeling a sense of anonymity and distance in
these figural works, with a rumble of emotional intensity just palpable
below the surface. What was going through your mind?
At that time I hid
my more emotional gestures under layers of flat paint and only at the
borders between shapes could one see this undercurrent of turmoil. Formally
it was a way to create depth. I wanted flat shapes but I also wanted
to retain a sense of emotional urgency. Where Are They Going? was done
at the time of the first Gulf war and the title reflects my feeling
of hopelessness, the sense that everybody just followed mindlessly.
It seems nature
and abstraction have given you a way for you to reflect on interior
states of mind - a reflective space that at times balances between solitude
and loneliness. Do you feel this too?
I always separate
things. Every shape has a clear outline and there are borders; nowhere
does one thing "bleed" into another. That may give a sense
of isolation that you mention. I have a very strong sense of human loneliness
and isolation: nature, however, offers me a sense of wholeness and connectedness.
I am struck by
the difference between your works on paper and your paintings, especially
because the paper works are more expressively stark and don't often
use color.
I rarely use color
because drawing, for me, is about mark making. Drawing is the most direct,
honest or humble visual medium. You cannot lie with drawing. From a
drawn line you can immediately see the temperament of the artist. This
is one of the pleasures I have with Classical Chinese landscape painting:
after many centuries and over vast cultural differences you can still
see the individual artist at work.
How has growing
up in Germany shaped your art? What are the things you see as distinctive
about having a European background that are still with you living in
New York?
Growing up in Europe
I may have a stronger feeling for painting as a medium with a long history.
But its a specific culture, in my case German. I only became conscious
of it when I moved here. Being European I may have a stronger sense
of the precarious nature of the world. Life is not black and white but
has gray zones. I loved New York city as soon as I arrived. I loved
the nervousness and chaos of the city. I also loved that women were
treated as equal and one had the sense that it was still possible to
add something to the history of art. Today I have a nice combination
of both worlds. I work in New York and travel 2 - 3 times a year to
Germany where I have had some success with shows.
Bettina Blohm Untitled
2004
colored pencil on paper, 7 x 9 inches
Courtesy of the artist
You have been
a committed painter for over 20 years with a consciousness of what is
going on in the contemporary art world in New York over a long period
of time. What is your view of present affairs?
As a friend of mine
says: today artists are like racehorses. Again and again artists are
destroyed through commercialization. It is a fundamental problem in
the American art world and not new. Eugene O'Neill describes in his
play Long Day's Journey into Night a gifted actor who got seduced by
money and fame into playing the same part over and over.
And art education?
I believe art education
has become too academic. Powerful emotions are at the basis of all art
making. Today we do not have a compelling formal language as other times
did and young artists have to find their way through a jungle of possibilities.
The result is often an anxious obedience to the latest fashion.
What do you attribute
this to?
Art movements have
always been connected to political environments. There has been a feeling
of apathy and cynicism, a feeling that nothing mattered but money that
has been dominant in the art world and in the political system. The
esthetic of an artist like John Currin is closely linked to the politics
of George Bush; it is based on an all-pervasive contempt for people.
If the political situation changes it may bring back some idealism and
belief in art.
