Conversation with Herbert Brandl (May 2007)
Robert Fleck: Among your paintings for Venice there is one abstract one with a “crazy” color combination or red, yellow and violet. It reminds me of a sunset. Is such an interpretation permissible?
Herbert Brandl: It is a sunrise. (laughs) The red of dawn.
RF: You often study photos before you start painting. Was there one that inspired the painting?
HB: Yes. However, they were photos of a sunset. The picture then turned into a sunrise in the process of painting. The photos were taken in the North of Lanzarote, from a steep cliff looking out to sea. I have constantly found the idea of processing these photos exciting. Of course I did not paint copies of them. It’s as if you see them out of the side of your eyes.
RF: Sunrise” is a topic that a painter who wants to be serious would wish to avoid. It is considered “out of bounds”.
HB: It is indeed dangerous. I still have the feeling now that the picture is dangerous.
RF: How do you use photographs?
HB: If I go hiking I tend to photograph everything I see. That often spells hundreds of photos to sift through in my studio on screen, digitally. Nothing has been processed. Because I do not use it as a photo but to view.
RF: From the very outset your oeuvre has been typified by abstract and highly intense images. Did photography help you here?
HB: It helped to stop me getting lost in mere intoxication with the colors. After all, the idea must be to open oneself to the image, to painting, to the entire process. It is different if you start from a memory. It is often tiring to remain only in the open, unlimited space that is solely defined by the canvas. Essentially, the idea is to facilitate the entry.
RF: The images for Venice also clearly show to how great a degree you have a strong affinity for landscapes. That again is rare in contemporary painting.
HB: That has an incredible weight. The early works are only abstract because I removed their recognizability. Today, viewers also read the multiple meanings of the older images.
RF: I can remember two very beautiful pavilions in Venice that had an affinity to landscape: Howard Hodgkin in the British Pavilion in 1980, and Jean-Frédéric Schnyder in the Swiss Pavilion in 1993.
HB: One can well ask what is that landscape doing there today, without an autobahn, without people, without civilization. That is not a real landscape. Nor is it an ideal landscape. It is a landscape composed of colors that run from a brush. I can still remember how Peter Weibel, my teacher at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, found it strange that one of his students presented him with landscapes – images that essentially only concerned themselves with light and the horizon.
RF: Peter Weibel is on of the most important Concept artists per se. You had already been strongly influenced in Concept Art by your high-school teacher, Graz Concept artist Wolfgang Temmel. And in the 1980s you never shared the feeling of many painters of your generation who thought they automatically quoted old things when painting with a brush on canvas, from Modernist or old art.
HB: I never had the feeling because I hardly know those empty landscapes from art history. Certain paintings from the 19th century depict scenes in which all you see is a few stones and ruins, but ruins they are. For a while I was fascinated by the 19th-painters of century natural history who accompanied the scholars. I still feel reminded of that, for example in the case of the landscapes with the black lava fields.
RF: Aha, so those are lava fields!
HB: Originally it was a lava beach that I photographed, because it reminded my of Yves Tanguy and Surrealism.
RF: Now you mention Surrealism I come to the third theme that I noticed in your paintings for Venice. Quite unlike Surrealist paintings, your oeuvre is almost exclusively construed from the vantage point of color and almost never in terms of lines. Yet you apply the color in a highly unorthodox manner. We would hunt in vain for the classic methods of complementary contrasts in your works.
HB: I try and avoid them as far as possible. For that reason, there are hardly any hard lines. While still a student I was not really affected by color theories, you know Goethe, Itten etc. I perceived color differently. For this reason there are colors in my paintings that do not go together. In fact, they are unpleasant in their proximity. I have always said to myself that essentially each color fits every other color. In other words, there is no system. In other words, not: only blue to green or the relationship of the colors to each other transports this or that property or statement.
RF: If there is no system, can a mere accident happen on any canvas?
HB: There are accidents all the time. I address them by leaving them visible. The strange thing is you get used to these catastrophes and then view them as a fact beyond all judgment or assessment. The sunrise over there is precisely such a catastrophic picture. That kind of a red and a yellow along with that violet, at best a Jamaican disco owner would come up with something similar when painting a wall.
RF: Do you retroactively correct your pictures?
HB: No. Usually I have too many details while painting. And in the course of the process I paint them out. That is a kind of correction during painting.
RF: The painting process is a single act?
HB: It comes to a standstill. However, that has emerged down through the years. My early works are strongly layered, like crusts or encrustation. My principle back then was always to start another attempt until I reached the point of no return. The structure that remained is a kind of bone, a proof that there was a different image behind it before.
RF: All in all, your formats have become larger of late?
HB: Yes. They could go a bit further. But I want to be able to paint everything at one go.
RF: The preparations for a pavilion for the Biennale are considered especially stressful?
HB: I had more time than usual. By refusing to take on any other shows once I was nominated I was able to concentrate on it far more than otherwise. That was an unusual situation.
RF: Is that why the paintings look so unlike we had expected? Above all, no two pictures are alike in any way and that makes the pavilion so special.
HB: The problem for me was that if everything looks the same, looks to have come from one and the same mold, for example in series of pictures, then the pavilion would have too many rooms, and too many idiosyncrasies in the rooms. That would be boring in these rooms.
RF: You did not paint “in situ”, i.e., the paintings were not destined for specific walls and their dimensions fit for the pavilion.
HB: No, I was not thinking of the pavilion at all. The formats are a tick larger than normal. But I did not address specific walls. I simply thought: We will have to find the right place. In other words, we would have to accept that, close to despair, we would try things out and would not actually know whether it would work. Then there’s the great moment when it all does work, and then the pavilion arises.
RF: They are also very strong individual images. The whole thing seems to me like a statement that painting can be convincingly presented in this way.
HB: Yes, it is also a statement.
RF: I am thinking of the widespread idea that painting can today only be pursued as a concept so that the viewer sees: “The artist painted this series for a specific situation or wants to convey coherent thoughts.”
HB: That I certainly did not want. And it thus remained open till the end. We took a few days to find out which were the right pictures.
© Herbert Brandl, Robert Fleck 2007
⇒ Biography
⇒ Julian Heynen about Herbert Brandl
⇒ Herbert Brandl in the Austrian Pavilion
⇒ Peter Pakesch to Herbert Brandl
⇒ Bibliography
⇒ Achille Bonito Oliva about Herbert Brandl
⇒ Hans Ulrich Obrist talks to Herbert Brandl
⇒ Martin Prinzhorn on Herbert Brandl
⇒ Norman Rosenthal about Herbert Brandl
⇒ Conversation with Herbert Brandl (May 2007)
⇒ Talk with Herbert Brandl in November 2007
Robert Fleck: Among your paintings for Venice there is one abstract one with a “crazy” color combination or red, yellow and violet. It reminds me of a sunset. Is such an interpretation permissible?
Herbert Brandl: It is a sunrise. (laughs) The red of dawn.
RF: You often study photos before you start painting. Was there one that inspired the painting?
HB: Yes. However, they were photos of a sunset. The picture then turned into a sunrise in the process of painting. The photos were taken in the North of Lanzarote, from a steep cliff looking out to sea. I have constantly found the idea of processing these photos exciting. Of course I did not paint copies of them. It’s as if you see them out of the side of your eyes.
RF: Sunrise” is a topic that a painter who wants to be serious would wish to avoid. It is considered “out of bounds”.
HB: It is indeed dangerous. I still have the feeling now that the picture is dangerous.
RF: How do you use photographs?
HB: If I go hiking I tend to photograph everything I see. That often spells hundreds of photos to sift through in my studio on screen, digitally. Nothing has been processed. Because I do not use it as a photo but to view.
RF: From the very outset your oeuvre has been typified by abstract and highly intense images. Did photography help you here?
HB: It helped to stop me getting lost in mere intoxication with the colors. After all, the idea must be to open oneself to the image, to painting, to the entire process. It is different if you start from a memory. It is often tiring to remain only in the open, unlimited space that is solely defined by the canvas. Essentially, the idea is to facilitate the entry.
RF: The images for Venice also clearly show to how great a degree you have a strong affinity for landscapes. That again is rare in contemporary painting.
HB: That has an incredible weight. The early works are only abstract because I removed their recognizability. Today, viewers also read the multiple meanings of the older images.
RF: I can remember two very beautiful pavilions in Venice that had an affinity to landscape: Howard Hodgkin in the British Pavilion in 1980, and Jean-Frédéric Schnyder in the Swiss Pavilion in 1993.
HB: One can well ask what is that landscape doing there today, without an autobahn, without people, without civilization. That is not a real landscape. Nor is it an ideal landscape. It is a landscape composed of colors that run from a brush. I can still remember how Peter Weibel, my teacher at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, found it strange that one of his students presented him with landscapes – images that essentially only concerned themselves with light and the horizon.
RF: Peter Weibel is on of the most important Concept artists per se. You had already been strongly influenced in Concept Art by your high-school teacher, Graz Concept artist Wolfgang Temmel. And in the 1980s you never shared the feeling of many painters of your generation who thought they automatically quoted old things when painting with a brush on canvas, from Modernist or old art.
HB: I never had the feeling because I hardly know those empty landscapes from art history. Certain paintings from the 19th century depict scenes in which all you see is a few stones and ruins, but ruins they are. For a while I was fascinated by the 19th-painters of century natural history who accompanied the scholars. I still feel reminded of that, for example in the case of the landscapes with the black lava fields.
RF: Aha, so those are lava fields!
HB: Originally it was a lava beach that I photographed, because it reminded my of Yves Tanguy and Surrealism.
RF: Now you mention Surrealism I come to the third theme that I noticed in your paintings for Venice. Quite unlike Surrealist paintings, your oeuvre is almost exclusively construed from the vantage point of color and almost never in terms of lines. Yet you apply the color in a highly unorthodox manner. We would hunt in vain for the classic methods of complementary contrasts in your works.
HB: I try and avoid them as far as possible. For that reason, there are hardly any hard lines. While still a student I was not really affected by color theories, you know Goethe, Itten etc. I perceived color differently. For this reason there are colors in my paintings that do not go together. In fact, they are unpleasant in their proximity. I have always said to myself that essentially each color fits every other color. In other words, there is no system. In other words, not: only blue to green or the relationship of the colors to each other transports this or that property or statement.
RF: If there is no system, can a mere accident happen on any canvas?
HB: There are accidents all the time. I address them by leaving them visible. The strange thing is you get used to these catastrophes and then view them as a fact beyond all judgment or assessment. The sunrise over there is precisely such a catastrophic picture. That kind of a red and a yellow along with that violet, at best a Jamaican disco owner would come up with something similar when painting a wall.
RF: Do you retroactively correct your pictures?
HB: No. Usually I have too many details while painting. And in the course of the process I paint them out. That is a kind of correction during painting.
RF: The painting process is a single act?
HB: It comes to a standstill. However, that has emerged down through the years. My early works are strongly layered, like crusts or encrustation. My principle back then was always to start another attempt until I reached the point of no return. The structure that remained is a kind of bone, a proof that there was a different image behind it before.
RF: All in all, your formats have become larger of late?
HB: Yes. They could go a bit further. But I want to be able to paint everything at one go.
RF: The preparations for a pavilion for the Biennale are considered especially stressful?
HB: I had more time than usual. By refusing to take on any other shows once I was nominated I was able to concentrate on it far more than otherwise. That was an unusual situation.
RF: Is that why the paintings look so unlike we had expected? Above all, no two pictures are alike in any way and that makes the pavilion so special.
HB: The problem for me was that if everything looks the same, looks to have come from one and the same mold, for example in series of pictures, then the pavilion would have too many rooms, and too many idiosyncrasies in the rooms. That would be boring in these rooms.
RF: You did not paint “in situ”, i.e., the paintings were not destined for specific walls and their dimensions fit for the pavilion.
HB: No, I was not thinking of the pavilion at all. The formats are a tick larger than normal. But I did not address specific walls. I simply thought: We will have to find the right place. In other words, we would have to accept that, close to despair, we would try things out and would not actually know whether it would work. Then there’s the great moment when it all does work, and then the pavilion arises.
RF: They are also very strong individual images. The whole thing seems to me like a statement that painting can be convincingly presented in this way.
HB: Yes, it is also a statement.
RF: I am thinking of the widespread idea that painting can today only be pursued as a concept so that the viewer sees: “The artist painted this series for a specific situation or wants to convey coherent thoughts.”
HB: That I certainly did not want. And it thus remained open till the end. We took a few days to find out which were the right pictures.
© Herbert Brandl, Robert Fleck 2007
⇒ Biography
⇒ Julian Heynen about Herbert Brandl
⇒ Herbert Brandl in the Austrian Pavilion
⇒ Peter Pakesch to Herbert Brandl
⇒ Bibliography
⇒ Achille Bonito Oliva about Herbert Brandl
⇒ Hans Ulrich Obrist talks to Herbert Brandl
⇒ Martin Prinzhorn on Herbert Brandl
⇒ Norman Rosenthal about Herbert Brandl
⇒ Conversation with Herbert Brandl (May 2007)
⇒ Talk with Herbert Brandl in November 2007
