double page paintings
DESCRIPTION
A book of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Andreas Rüthie. With an essay by Chris Brown, In conversation with Stuart Cameron,TRANSCRIPT
Andreas RüthiDouble Page Paintings
Andreas RüthiDouble Page Paintings
DUCKETT & JEFFREYS GALLERY
Essay by Chris BrownIn conversation with Stuart Cameron
This is a quiet room. Cosy, typically cottage in style
and scale, filled by a double bed whose clothes are
folded and piled in the middle of the undressed
mattress in a way that sets this as the guest room.
An empty chair stands opposite you in the corner.
Such spaces are characterised by the transience of
their occupancy. They are intentionally left blank or
incomplete, waiting for a person, an activity or thing
that will fill them temporary meaning - perhaps
accommodating a visiting friend or relative, or housing
a dress-making project - before becoming vacant
again. You are a guest, but alone in the building and
consequently not wholly present, so if there is a person
due to give meaning to this room, it is not you.
The empty chair or the paintings on the wall have
the potential to give more presence to the room than
you do. You’re not entirely sure of the purpose of
your visit, but you can recall a minor problem finding
your way there. No matter, you arrived in good time
and can now set to familiarising yourself with your
surroundings.
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Andreas Rüthi
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
There are a few low piles of books stacked on top of the plain, stripped wooden
wardrobe. Browsing through the titles, you quickly gain a sense of your hosts. It is
accepted as socially appropriate to attempt a snapshot understanding of a person
through something as intimate as the collection on their bookshelves.
The titles on the spines read:
Ovid MetamophosesSelected Poems by Bertolt BrechtGreek Art and the Idea of Freedom, Haynes (published by Thames and Hudson)The Greek Myths 2, Robert GravesThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver SacksThe Iliad of Homer, LattimoreLeben des Galilei, Bertolt Brecht
Monet's Impressions, Metropolitan Museum of ArtSeurat (Taschen Basic Art Series), Hajo DutchingRenoir (Taschen Art Album), Peter H. FeistPaul Cezanne (Big Art), Hajo DuchtingBasquiat (Taschen Art Album), Leonhard EmmerlingSalvador Dali - The Paintings (Vol 1), Robert Descharnes and Gilles NeretThe Joseph Cornell Box: Found Objects, Magical Worlds, Joan Sommers
Homer, OdysseeHomer, The IliadLonesome Traveler, KerouacThe Catcher in the Rye, J.D. SalingerDie schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertums, Gustav SchwabGrimms Märchen IGrimms Märchen II
And in between the three piles of books is a fourth
pile comprising two DVD-R cases. Your hosts seem
to be culturally engaged, having numerous classics
from Greek through to twentieth century, as well as
popular accessible titles by sociological and cultural
theoreticians, and numerous monographs on
well-known artists from the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. An interest in culture, particularly
literature and fine art painters, seems to be the
overarching interest here. The frequency of German
titles is interesting too, their spines look rather aged
which would suggest that their owners might have
some connection with mainland Europe. You wonder
how the bookshelves of your childhood would have
stood up to the same scrutiny were you now able to
revisit them afresh, and what suppositions you might
have made based on the titles they held. On
reflection, you now begin to wonder if it is entirely fair
or accurate to formulate your impression of a person,
even just a cursory one, based on their bookshelves.
There might be any number of reasons why a book
occupies a space on a shelf besides being by choice
of the reader to whom the shelves belong – if could
be a well-meaning but misguided present that is yet
to be regifted; it may be part of a whole inherited
collection whose dismantling and reallocation is
prevented by the obligation of sentiment (which
inadvertently encourages each individual knowledge
within to go stale); but the most likely reason for such
a cuckoo in the nest is the loaned title received from
a friend or relative which is yet to be read and/or
returned.
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
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It is uncommon to find a bookshelf that is not
compromised in this way, whose contents are based
on the grounds of the reader’s own selection alone.
Such collections aren’t kept free of imperfections
merely by chance, they are maintained with the
obsessive care of a librarian. Certain books become
seminal to the reader’s experience, from which
follows the acquisition of new titles and the ensuing
new branch of knowledge or interest; whereas the
personal significance of another might diminish with
time, and the choice whether or not to relinquish the
book may become a consideration. The reader would
take pride in guiding you around her collection of
books, as a curator might guide you around a collection
of artworks - imparting specialist knowledge, making
endorsements and recommendations to enable you
to pursue this new interest presented to you, should
you wish to: “This is the author’s second novel, his
first title was published a few years ago to high
acclaim, his style is quiet and mature, I think you
would like it” or, “This is the latest from an
independent press in Birmingham, it champions new
writers, and I think this particular novel might ring true
with a situation that is close to home for you”.
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We treat books as mute friends, storytellers,
teachers. They become a short-hand for the
memory of the period when we first experienced
their contents and they revealed a new facet of
our selves to us. The luxury of an unbroken
sequence of chapters during a long journey, or
the snatched episode in a waiting room. The
search for knowledge and literary experience is
ritualistic; bookshops cannily trade on this. Their
spaces do not conform to a ritual of study,
however; it would be more accurate to identify
the spaces as a sociable place, but quietly and
intimately so. Here is where one goes to catch
up with familiar friends with the latest stories to
impart, to make new connections with exotic
titles and authors, or to seek advice and
information from experts - all poised to engage
you through a myriad pages.
In the restroom there is another pile of browsable
books containing reproductions of paintings by late
nineteenth and twentieth century artists. They feature
more well-known European and American artists of
particular canon – O’Keeffe, Matisse, Picasso - those
who are taught as part of a typical art education.
These are the artists whom you must have an
understanding of to be able to develop a relevant art
practice of your own; it wouldn’t surprise you if this
collection of books had been chosen for this room
precisely for that purpose. You leaf through the
reproductions of well-known masterpieces deliciously
and in your own time.
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We develop personal and trusting relationships with
books, and the scale and size influences this. An
expert on bookbinding once wrote, “Two constants
reign over the proportions of a well-made book: the
hand and the eye. A healthy eye is always about two
spans away from the book page, and all people hold
a book in the same manner.” You recall an occasion
when you were studying a book in a public space
and that relationship between the book and your
body became acute. You developed a keen sense
that the person seated next to you was not very
discretely peering over into your space to gain a few
lines from your book. This invasive use of your
personal space and engagement with any object
therein was unwelcome, and you closed the book.
A book requires an intimate reading by one person
alone. Due to the size of a typical paperback,
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it’s unrealistic to expect that the object can be
adequately read by two people side by side. One’s
reading speed and pace of page turning would also
become compromised, but ultimately it is the
necessity for one’s response to be private of that
dictates book reading as an intercourse for one. So
you stand your ground, closing the book until you can
spend time with it, alone. This solitary reading
completes a precise transaction: the writer invests
time, creative thought and skill into creating the work;
your part is to acknowledge the writer’s efforts by taking
the appropriate amount of time and attention to fulfil
your individual response. Others have to negotiate
their own transactions with the writer, or otherwise
pursue another book altogether; perhaps with the
intention of returning to your writer, perhaps not.
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
You re-enter the space after visiting the restroom.
There are paintings on the walls of this room, each
depicting an open book. It is difficult to tell, but the
particular painting in front of you looks like one of the
titles from the top of the wardrobe - possibly Brecht’s
selected poems, judging by the familiar shape of the
text on the page. It is not possible to read the words
- the painter’s style does not strive for a photo-realist
detail – but the heading and verses resemble a page
you flicked to from the writer’s early Poems And
Psalms section, 1913-1920. The painter’s act of
recreating an analogue of the printed page encourages
you to consider the numerous convolutions of
creativity that led to this image coming into existence.
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Rüt
hi in
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dio,
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The author created an original thought – the germ, if
you like. This was then committed to paper (was
Brecht known to handwrite his works, or use a
typewriter? You have no idea). From this original
manuscript, a typesetter would be employed to
create a page layout, and a publisher would
reproduce it mechanically to potentially unlimited
edition, reaching a mass audience and splintering the
experience from one unique into many simultaneous
equivalents. Of those potentially infinite splinters, here
is one that has been isolated and reproduced
manually, becoming unique once more. This
particular germ may have lost the connection with
the original creator in being transmitted, but it has
gained another by coming full-circle to be in the
hands of a creator once more, ready to be received.
The book is propped open by a small die-cast model
of a racing car. There seems to be no hierarchy of
information in the way the brushstrokes depict the
main elements of the painting, that a die-cast model
car holds as much significance as Brecht’s writings.
Any blacks and strong colours occur only on the
depicted text and in the object. The page, the book’s
edges, its structure, all blend into the muted warm
background, as do the shadows. It’s as if the object
itself is a 2D image, a motif reduced to the same
physicality as a picture in a book.
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
Standing to view this painting you realise that it’s in
reach, that if you were to raise your arms you could
take it and hold it in the same way you might hold a
paperback book. This would be possible to do. You
know that handling artworks is frowned upon, that
“even clean hands can damage the surface of the
works”. But, having spent time with artists you know
very well that they often handle their works far more
recklessly than any gallery, and would probably be
happy for a viewer to have a better understanding of
the work by holding it, completing the transaction
more fully – a connection between you and the artist
via a physical object. There is no invigilator on duty,
the chair in the corner of the room is empty. The
absence of any security camera is apparent. Most of
the canvas frames are unpainted on the edges,
displaying the buff linen material. You can handle the
painting here without damaging it, being careful to
apply pressure to hold it securely only on the sides
and around the back where the wood of the frame is
exposed. And you have only very recently just
washed your hands.
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Another person enters the room, seemingly guided
by combination of blithe curiosity and an absence of
independent thought. The person stands next to you,
faux-admiring the very painting with which you have
been preoccupied for an indefinite period, promoting
tremendously rich, engaging and detailed thought
that has suddenly run dry as if plugged with a
stopper. The size and detail of hung paintings
sometimes commands an intimate viewing by one
person alone. Two people side by side simply
couldn’t fit in the proximate space where the work
can be adequately viewed. So you stand your
ground, directly in front of the work and spend time
with it, selfishly. This completes a transaction: the
artist invests time and creative thought and skill into
creating the work; your part is to acknowledge the
artist’s efforts by taking the appropriate amount of
time and attention to reach a decision on your
response. This person will have to wait for you to
vacate the space before he can occupy it and
appreciate the work. He impatiently continues to
another part of the gallery; perhaps with the intention
of returning to this painting, perhaps not.
It’s in your hands. It’s now no longer on the wall,
hung at 5’ 8” – slightly higher than the recommended
average hanging height; it’s now at your waist height,
tilted upwards to your face. The lightness of the can-
vas frame somehow betrays the depiction, and your
cognizance is troubled by this – the sight of the
image in your hands summons an expectation of its
weight. Of course this expectation is absurd, but it’s
there nonetheless, in the same way that you desire a
novel’s ‘truth’ to align correctly with reality. You’ve
recently read an author who disrupts this expectation
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
to great effect in a novel in which the ‘truth’ endlessly
shifts about, from one ‘truth’ disorientatingly into
another, as if tectonic plates sliding over each other.
The story follows a concert pianist who is in an
unidentified provincial European town to give a recital
he doesn’t recall having agreed to. At one point it’s
clear that the town is in Germany, the references are
so precise and the descriptions so unmistakable from
your own experience of this town that you know for a
fact it has to be [name of town]. Until other conflicting
details and descriptions make it subsequently clear
that you were wrong and it is in fact an entirely
different town and country altogether. The author
uses technique this to make the reader empathise
with the main character’s sense of profound
dislocation with his situation.
You rehang the work. Presently the invigilator returns
to the space and strolls her territory before going to
take up her position seated in the corner on a chair.
Although it is an aesthetically pleasing object, the
chair also serves a purpose. It must be incredibly
satisfying, thinks the invigilator, to be able to craft
something so beautiful as well as purposeful. This
surely must be the highest aim of the artisan.
Regarding the chair in front of the paintings, the two
things must have taken an equivalent level of manual
skill to create; one transacts with the body in a
physical way, and the other in a cerebral way. She
considers this chair as an object worthy of exhibiting
next to these paintings, and steers a train of thought
to an exercise in aesthetic democracy where a
person could propose any object that they consider
worthy of exhibition for whatever reason. The curator
would have to concede to this choice and work with
it alongside the existing artworks. Ultimately it would
surely give more meaning to the artworks, giving
them something to exist with rather than the stuffy
blankness of the white walls in this space. Potentially
any object could be nominated – a piece of fruit, a
keepsake or
ornament – each would have its own intrinsic
referents that oscillate with the other artworks.
The chair, possibly an imitation / replica dining chair,
has been painted purple. It’s of such a high gloss
finish that she has spent more than one occasion
considering how it was achieved. Examining it she
observes the pinched reflection of her thumb in the
cylindrical chair leg. It’s the same high gloss of a car
bonnet – perhaps this chair was also spray painted.
That would explain the colour, too. Spray paint
comes in a selection of colours that tend to have
more in common with machinery than the palettes of
domestic interior decoration.
Or lacquer. Does the lacquer technique also involve
spraying, or is it applied as a liquid in which the
object is dipped? You wished that you had pursued
more art school training, perhaps that would give you
better understanding of such things. The chair isn’t
huge, but on consideration it’s probably too large to
make a dipping technique practicable. At that point
you remember a powder coating technique where
the pigment is applied dry, but you don’t remember
what the process involves or how it becomes fixed.
You absent-mindedly consider your thumb’s reflection
once again, click the lead out of your retractable
pencil a couple of shades, and begin to write.
© Chris Brown, March 2010
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
Chris Brown is a practitioner whose
activities include visual and graphic
arts, photography, curating, writing,
and music composition. He is
co-director of g39, the Cardiff-based
artist-run space, and Magazine
Coordinator for a-n The Artists
Information Company. He also acts
in an advisory capacity for a-n's
NAN and AIR schemes, and is a
member of Go Faster Stripe, an
independent collective that promotes
high-profile UK comedians through
its programme of live acts and DVD
production. He recently studied
postgraduate Composition and Jazz
at the Royal Welsh College of Music
and Drama.
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In Conversation with Stuart Cameron
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
Stuart Cameron:
The genre of still life painting and its history are
clearly important to you as an artist. Were you always
drawn to this, or was it a gravitation through the
process of painting?
Andreas Rüthi:
I became more interested in still life in the mid
nineties when I stopped using my studio in the East
End of London because I had a day job at the time.
The birth of my daughter also meant that I was
spending more time at home. I painted in the kitchen
at night and was making still life paintings that
included little domestic objects, toys, and tins, and
gradually also postcards. Once I had done a series of
24 paintings, I worked on the book ‘The Daubers’
with writer Ian Hunt. Half of it was his text in English
and German and the other half was my paintings.
Still life must have been in the back of my head for a
long time though, because I have at home an ink
drawing of mine from 1967, when I was 11. I still like
it a lot, because funnily enough it shows concerns I
am still dealing with now.
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Stuart Cameron:
There’s a particularity about your choice of objects
and images. What determines this? Are there things
you would exclude, and if so, why?
Andreas Rüthi:
In most paintings I select the reproductions first and
then play around with my collection of knick-knacks,
merchandising and jugs until I find something
suitable. If I can’t find the right thing, I go to charity
shops and boot sales. So the objects have already
had a previous life.
There are images I have not used like really iconic
paintings such as the Mona Lisa. I am happy if the
viewer recognizes the period or style of the picture
rather than getting the names and titles right. I am
more interested in creating the relation or dialogue of
images and the objects. Objects that I have excluded
in the past were things loaded with symbolism or
other values such as a crucifix or Coca Cola Can.
Lipsticks by famous labels on the other hand are
always welcome.
The shell-like gravy jug in front of the Dali painting
was relatively ‘easy’ to find, because there is also a
shell in the painting and the pink of the jug works
great with the purples and blues in the book. It is
very rare that I use objects that friends give me with
the intention that I use them in a painting. I usually
give it a try but it rarely works.
Stuart Cameron:
Given the singular intimacy of vision and scale within
your paintings, obsessional perhaps, what kind of
external or circumstantial factors might influence you?
Andreas Rüthi:
This way of working is also a reaction against the
masculine, large-scale paintings and studio culture,
for example in the 80’s in Germany, the assumption
that bigger is better. While studying in the Netherlands
I discovered the stillness and quietness of artists such
as van der Weyden and van Eyck. His painting of the
man with the turban is my favourite painting of all
time.
The scale of the paintings makes the task of painting
intimate, like reading a book. Many of my paintings
are a similar size to a book.
The singular vision you mention is an ongoing process
of contemplation about the fact that an original
painting now can be reproduced infinitely in any size
or form and will be seen by most of us not in its
unique form.
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
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Stuart Cameron:
The frequent juxtaposition of the iconography of ‘high
art’ and ‘popular culture’ in the paintings leads me to
re-evaluate the nature of such forms of categorization
and identification, and to try to get my bearings. Is
this what you intend?
Andreas Rüthi:
I suppose I suggest that one cannot exist without the
other and in the recent paintings it is literally
supporting the image. The difference of high art and
popular culture is expressed more explicitly in the
paintings with postcards and objects, because the
postcard is more static and a memento of an existing
painting. The books and catalogues suggest
animation: not only do they relate to the objects
around them, but also to the potential of all the other
(invisible) images inside the book. All that reflects in
the composition: depending on the emphasis, they
are more or less decentralized.
There is another distinction which has to do with
mapping, as Svetlana Alpers debates it. The
decentralized pictures refer more of to works by
Pissarro, Degas and Mondrian whereas the more
central one use compositions similar to Braque,
Cezanne or Morandi.
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Stuart Cameron:
One’s led to speculate on a ‘duality’ within your
paintings, which you have expressed in terms of the
‘retinal’ and ‘the rational’. Can you expand on this?
Andreas Rüthi:
I paint from ‘life’ in my studio partly because I select
‘real’ objects, such as fruit, crockery and toys and
place them with what I call my ‘special’ objects such
as postcards and art catalogues, special because
they are a carrier of reproductions of real paintings.
The decision to combine these two and expand on it
was hardly rational, it probably happened in one of
these moments when I get fidgeting and a bit bored
and start fiddling around, when suddenly the whole
world opens up and you later realize that you have
started something entirely new.
It is also important to me to use consciously both my
eyes, keeping in mind that we are living in a one lens
culture, where most visual information is recorded but
also filtered through one lens systems, which is
always a reduction.
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Stuart Cameron:
The construction of the paintings and the handling
of the paint seem to operate within fairly narrow
parameters and according to certain groupings of
paintings. Can you say more about this?
Andreas Rüthi:
I usually work in series, sometimes having ten or more
paintings on the go at the same time. This may
influence the way I use paint and develop similarities
across a body of work. I have also made a lot of
drawings and watercolours as a parallel activity, that
anticipate a variety of modes, constructions and
methods of painting. I also started to do some small
sculptures and draw them, something I used to do 20
years ago, when I had some paintings in the New
Contemporaries, based on a little wooden sculpture
made by me.
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Stuart Cameron:
There’s an understated irreverence in your paintings.
Is this intentional and, if so, do you think it’s an innate
characteristic of your make-up as an artist?
Andreas Rüthi:
I like provocation, and often use it in the form of
deadpan humor. That is maybe also a reason why I
choose what looks on the surface like the most
conventional genre of all: Still life. On one hand it has
incredible worldwide popularity - think of Chardin’s
cherries and plums, Cézanne’s apples or Van Gogh’s
sunflowers. On the other hand still life was at the
forefront when radical changes happened in painting,
just think of all the amazing Cubist still life by Braque
and Picasso from around 1905 that rocked pictorial
space. Introducing catalogues and photographic
reproductions also opens up the debate toward a
critical view of our current media culture we are in.
Andreas Rüthi Double Page Paintings
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Essay © Chris BrownConversation © Stuart CameronPhotography Helen SearsDesign Duckettandjeffreys.com
ISBN XXXX NUMBER TBA