ESTHER STOCKER / TAMÁS JOVANOVICS
ENTERING THE MESS - A DIALOGUE ABOUT THE MESSY SIDE OF MINIMALISM
Diaolgue taken from the book 'Esther Stocker / Tamás Jovanovics - Entering the Mess. A dialogue about the messy side of Minimalism'
Copyright Esther Stocker & Tamás Jovanovics |
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Exuberant Minimalism
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Esther, I believe, we both have something to do with Minimalism, but in a paradox way. We both use a fundamental, geometrical, reduced visual grammar in our works, but at the same time we both use repetition and spread the reduced formal vocabulary in an all-over way across the whole painterly field, so that the result is often a complex system of shapes and grids. This is what I tend to call Exuberant Minimalism. Would you agree with this paradoxical definition?
Esther STOCKER : Yes, I agree. And I have a passion for paradoxes. Never heard the expression Exuberant Minimalism before… I wonder if there is an exuberant aspect in historical Minimalism, in the sense that reduction can be exuberant. What would you say to Extravagant Minimalism? Anarchic Minimalism, Unreflected Minimalism, Irrational Minimalism, Imprecise Minimalism… Careless Minimalism, Slacker Minimalism… Does it hurt a little to have those words together?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : It does a little bit, and it should so. I of course like them all, even if I think exuberant is the one that expresses the contradiction most evidently with the original meaning of Minimalism, which is the par excellence manifesto of the 'less is more' type of philosophy in art. Less is more, for sure, but it is a more intriguing challenge entering the mess and see if you can get out of it somehow. I like to take risks, I like to battle too. I like it that I have to draw that line 200 times, and that I don't have the right to miss a single one of them.
Dig your way through
Esther STOCKER : Entering the mess is something I can agree with and it might be a deeper truth of making art as well. And there is so much mess to enter: all the possibilities of materials, form and color, all the limitations of that… so many great artworks of the past, but still so many great artworks missing, still to be created. So many past styles and movements of art, so many theories and contradictory theories of art… ideas or concepts in art can be messy… I mean, there is really no rule to how to continue, how to progress. There is all this big field of possibilities and you have to dig your way through that.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Yes, as you say: dig through your way, I like to see this digging through in a painting, and at the same time, I still want the painting to create a metaphysical space within the real space, a floating something, disobedient to gravity. I want to see Minimalism, but an exuberant, overwhelming Minimalism when I am painting paintings.
Esther STOCKER : If you look at very reduced forms, either people’s emotions could respond in an exuberant, exalted way or there appears a strong need for exuberant or exalted forms. I believe I belong to the first group. Reduced forms can move me, create a passion inside of me, "exuberate" me. But not every form of reduction... Just as the absence of something creates the hunger of the opposite or a deeper consciousness of what is missing. Which brings me to the fact that in every talk I am asked about color. Why? I can only explain it to myself that the absence of it makes people aware of it. Do people regularly ask you about color – your relationship with it? And what is your answer then?
Colors, blacks and whites
Tamás JOVANOVICS : That is funny: you don't use color (I mean a part from black and white that I do consider colors) and you get constantly asked about it. I do use color, in fact, I like to think of myself as a kind of a colorist, and no one asks me about it. That's fine, as I think color has a very mysterious nature, and I would struggle to define a color theory, or strategy that I employ. But to answer you, I would say, that I use color as a double strategy. Firstly, as said, I think color is so mysterious, it is everywhere, still it is immaterial, you cannot touch it, grab it, you have no direct relationship with it, it is always beyond you. Secondly, exactly since it is everywhere, there is also a demystifying factor in using it freely, it creates a bond between the artwork and the world as a whole as we know it. Black and white, or any other reduction, like using only yellow, etc. is more ethereal, metaphysical in a straightforward way. I don't mind if my work gets noticed as ethereal, or metaphysical, but I still wish to have the above mentioned bond and challenge that using colors mean.
Esther STOCKER : That's a very beautiful description of color. I have never thought of black and white as metaphysical before, always closer to an analytic thinking and to the color of form, the structure to define relationships. I find it very fascinating that you say you cannot have a direct relationship with color. Why do you think in that way? Still color is so seductive. And – for me – annoying when too strong. Is black and white less seductive? Is there more pleasure in color and more thinking in black and white? Then again, there is – clearly – pleasure in thinking.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I think black and white do not exist, at least not for perception. The perfect white is way too bright, it would blind you, the perfect black is way too dark, you simply would see nothing at all if you were in front of it. So at the end of the day, there are only shades of white and shades of black that we see, and those shades do, let's say, import the quality of the so-called real colors, because these shades render the black and the white yellowish, or bluish, and so on. I mean I am very sensitive to the subtle and less subtle yellows and blues that I see even on the white of the computer screen. So what people call black is for me a very dark version of blue, brown, red, etc. and what they call white for me is a very light version of yellow, pink, orange, etc. So for me the distinction is not so much between black and white and the other real colors, more between reducing or not reducing your palette to a certain number of colors. I decided to reduce my formal grammar, but not to reduce in any way my color palette, whereas you took the decision to cut even your colors down to these two extremes, which are intriguing not only because they are extremes, but also because of what I described above, they basically contain all the other colors too, just at a very subtle level.
Esther STOCKER : It could all be shades… One of the most beautiful book titles I ever read is: ‘Il mondo va considerato all'ombra’’ by Domenico Papa. The world is considered in the shadow. Black and white is close to light and space, to all or nothing, and to knowing the truth. Let me exaggerate a little and call it the real colors of passion.
All-over: horror-vacui or joy of repetition?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Getting back to the all-over and exuberant nature of your and my paintings, I liked how you defined – in an interview from the catalogue of your duo show with Anna-Maria Bogner – the difference between the works of you two. You said: "It seems to me that in the artworks of Anna-Maria Bogner, there is no fear of the singleness of forms, she is not afraid of placing very few lines into the space. Whereas me, on the other hand, I am indeed afraid of the singleness of the elements, of their loneliness, so to say" This is almost exactly how I would have defined my work compared to Anna-Maria Bogner´s. But is there really, as you say above, a fear factor that drives you towards multiplying the elements? Is it possible that this fear is driven by the so-called horror vacui? I feel like there is a link between horror vacui and the so-called all-over type of painterly approach...
Esther STOCKER : I believe many things we do, many forms we create are motivated by fear. Or the desire to overcome that fear. If there is one solitary element on a canvas, I have to put something next to it. That makes me feel better. Even better, if there is a structure, if there are more elements that can relate to each other. I am not sure if it is a horror vacui, although I surely suffer from that too. Because one solitary form or element can already solve the problem of horror vacui. It might also be a perceptual-paradoxical issue, that you want to let people know about that complexity. In a way it doesn't feel right for a form to stand alone, because I need to already describe that all forms are only what they are because of others. In contrast to others.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I am not totally sure about the horror vacui factor either. But that doesn't mean it is not there. I mean when someone fills up a surface as intensively and consequently as you or I do it, then from a psychological point of view I have to accept if someone thinks there is a certain degree of self-defense, obsession aspect in it too. And both are somewhere related to fear, I think...
Structure is adventure
Esther STOCKER : The filling up might be an interesting point – the need to structure. Yes why is that so? I usually make the argument based on the idea of equality. What is your reference point to the all-over action of painting? In some brave moments I call myself a structure. I say, I feel less as a single form then as a structure myself. A structure in the world.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I like this definition of the self, calling it more of a structure than an entity. I remember you once cited someone saying that Structure is Destiny. I rather think structure is adventure. In my eyes, a structure is never fixed, determined, it is rather a dynamic relationship, a dangerous relationship, if you will. The all-over aspect of painting is essential to me because I want the painting to float, to disobey gravity. If a painting does not question, does not break its own rectangular limits, then it would be more an icon than a structure, and would probably transmit more of a kind of stability, certainty type of message. I prefer more evasion than invasion, more the centrifuge than the centripetal forces.
Obsession: passion or fear
Esther STOCKER : Is obsession related to fear? I associate obsession closer to passion, a too strong passion spiced up with some madness. What do you mean exactly by self-defense? I find it quite fascinating that you use that term. I would usually speak about self expression in that case. Which makes me think that self expression could be self-defense to some degree. Could it be? And who is there to defend from? The universe, existential questions?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I think passion is controllable, obsession less so. In my eyes obsessions are mostly repeated unconscious reactions to unsolved inner issues. Whatever the truth is, I really like the term horror vacui both in art and in metaphysics. There is nothing more natural than being overwhelmed, afraid of the fact that there is a giant, unthinkably complex universe around us, and we have no real clue how and why all this exists and how and why we got into this ourselves. So to me, the natural reaction to this overwhelming, exuberant reality, is to react in a similarly exuberant way. I strive for clarity, but I can't help being realistic about the outcome of my paintings, and I see them as a battle for clarity that ends up being messy, even if most people tell me that they are very controlled and organized.
Being overwhelmed...
Esther STOCKER : Is it not strange that being overwhelmed is a thing that scares and fascinates us at the same time? Being overwhelmed might be the fundamental experience in art – if a good experience. How would you describe your emotions with art in general? Thinking about it more, it might be the fear of death. We have to defend ourselves from that fear perhaps. Of course we cannot overcome it, and we know that, but art can last longer than ones life and communicate over time.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Possible, but at the same time I always feel that there is also simply a joy factor, in our case, the joy of repetition...
Esther STOCKER : I would say that repetition also serves pure survival. Many willing and unwilling acts of our existence are repetitive: heartbeat, breathing, walking... I believe it was Kierkegaard who said repetition serves to overcome fear. Ha, the fear again! But that is actually another crucial point for me: the dissolution of meaning. And I think it was Frege who described this process. When you repeat a word many times it starts to sound absurd, it becomes more abstract, I would say. I think the same thing happens to forms: if you repeat them, you weaken their context, the meaning of them can fall to pieces. At the same time you are forced to look at them again and again. So it could be another process of minimalism, reduction....
The dissolution of meaning
Tamás JOVANOVICS : The dissolution of the superficial meaning layers is one of the most fundamental experiences for me too in painting. Robert Irwin said: "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees." (Probably the most beautiful and meaningful definition of art/painting I have ever heard.) And as you say, in our case, this meaning-decomposition, meaning-dissolution is also due to the repetition process that is so important for both of us. And I believe this decomposition, dissolution aspect is a factor of joy too. This is why I call it the joy of repetition, because by destroying a certain meaning, you immediately generate another one. You are right, repetition is often essential, as for example breathing or the beating of the heart, and I often argue with these examples when people ask me about my repeated Horizontal Lines paintings, or my One Centimeter Series paintings. But I believe there is another point to repetition too, like letting a table tennis ball pop on the bat a hundred times, or the repeated, fast beat in music, or the rhythmicity of the sexual act, which all are related to joy, even ecstasy. But there is an even greater joy when a shift, an accident happens within that repetition. It is this mixture of the repetition (the structure) trying to keep growing all over, even beyond the visible border of the painting, notwithstanding the shift, the accident that just intervened, that just tried to break its certainty, its machine-like nature. I remember when just next to me in Marseille, a guy who just stepped off a local bus, was shot by two killers who descended from the same bus with him. They quickly covered their faces with a mask and started shooting at him with two submachine guns. The guy was hit by dozens, if not hundreds of bullets in his body. I remember vividly that he still tried to run away, as if there was a way to escape. Our works might not be that dramatic, but there is a similar pattern to the systems, and the accidents that happen to them.
Esther STOCKER : This is quite a shocking story and observation you made. What did you think then?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : First second I thought I accidentally entered a movie set. Next second, I realized it was reality, so I just made sure that I make myself as small as possible to avoid ending up myself with a bullet in my body. But looking back, in the larger context, I could even decrypt this event as a reminder that things are never clear and straightforward. At that time I was doing a master’s degree in art in Aix-en-Provence, but with a philosopher, not an artist tutor. He spoke uncountable hours about the American Minimalists, mostly about Carl Andre and Donald Judd and their really cutting, rather dogmatic ideas about art, how clean and clear it should be. Even back then, as much as I liked their works, I felt very suspicious about their theories, and I felt always much closer to the more organic, messier side of Minimalism, like the works of Robert Morris or Richard Serra. So there was this young painter dude from Eastern Europe with the scholarship of the French Government, he listens and studies carefully how and what art should be, and a few minutes later he is in the middle of a mafia shooting with blood flowing all over the place. I think the two things together are called reality, and I always thought that art needs to be at the same time something totally different than reality, and still as complex, as exuberant, as paradoxical as reality.
Damage / accident
Esther STOCKER : We talked so much about fear and now a new thought comes to my mind, which I would like to explore with you. Looking at forms – more closely: I start to think that occupying oneself with questions of forms is perhaps a good way to deal with fear. All you deal with in the end is the preciseness of relations. And fear in the end is always the fear of yourself in relation to the other – unknown, of death, of things we cannot understand. And fear shapes our life and existence.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Now that you mention this, it comes to my mind, that you once told me about you having been put into an isolation station at the age of 8 or 9. It was an extremely clean, hermetically sealed, objectless, white room, not even your parents were allowed to enter, and you were alone there for weeks, being aware that you might even quite probably die. When you told me this story, I immediately thought that the floating, metaphysical nature of your visual language (if you don't mind me saying that) must have unconsciously been born there, in that isolation room. Do you think there is any relationship between this traumatic experience in your childhood and the way you express shapes as an artist now?
Esther STOCKER : Yes I believe there is a strong relationship of that event to what I do and who I am. I for a long time wanted to repress or ignore that. But it seems that old monsters like to visit sometimes. Sometimes I call it now an involuntary perception experiment, but an involuntary psychological or existential experiment would actually be more adequate. Involuntary Minimalism you could call it. It certainly shaped me as a person. This is not easy to describe. I believe I could feel boundaries of my identity then. Because when you are very alone, it is sometimes hard to stay yourself. I was reading about damage recently – actually relating to politics as far as I understood – it said something like damage is also re-birth. I have to admit that damage since then was something that always fascinated or attracted me. I identified myself with forms of damage, damage was the truth for me, the truth of existence. That we as individuals are damaged and partly in our lives we just have to get by with that. But we can express that and find beauty in it as well. So later as a teenager for some time I cut a hole in each of my clothes that I owned because I refused to accept that forms can be whole. I wasn't one whole form myself. It was clearly a need for self expression. How about yourself and damage? What is your relationship with that? Did you ever feel damaged and did it have a consequence or create a need for expressing that? Like damage as an aesthetic category – did it have any attraction for you? And adding to that: what is your relation to beauty? Because I believe that beauty sometimes can heal but it is so powerful that it can be scary too.
Beauty
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I definitely did not have such a brutal existential experience as you in my childhood, nor as an adult. But I feel close to your damage-theory. I also use the terms accident, or tilt, or as one of my installation’s title: ‘Swing Out’. In fact, any term that expresses the fact that the universe is not a place of peaceful, defined and determined stability, that everything is in constant disequilibrium. Not sure why this notion is so important to me, as the only real rupture in my life I can recall was when I was around 17, and I suddenly got aware that the universe is infinite. I am not kidding. Until then, I thought the earth is around 80% of the reality of the universe, then there is the moon, a nice little decoration, and the sun, which they say is several hundred times bigger than the earth, but obviously it must only be there to shine for us, and then there are those other dots on the night sky, called stars, they must be just some decoration again. So I felt like I am in a protected context, that the universe is basically what I see and know. At 17 I understood that those little dots in the sky, most of them are bigger than our sun, and there are billions of them, and supposedly even billions of galaxies that contain billions of stars each. So you know, I suddenly felt very, very small, and the surrounding unknown extremely big. I have friends who told me they went through this mental reflection at the age of six, so I must be a late developer. In any case, to me it happened when I was quite busy with my art studies, preparing for my entry at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Probably one of the reasons I liked Kandinsky as much as I did was that he seems to have been preoccupied with this question of the universe, and still managed to make it docile through his paintings. Regarding the question of beauty in art, I am quite old school, I love beauty, I think as a painter it just helps so much to make people look at your work. Of course, like with humans, there is an inner and outer beauty, and the inner one is a little bit more important than the outer. But really just by a fine margin. But how do you mean beauty can scare you?
Esther STOCKER : I don't think beauty is generally scary. First of all beauty is attractive and we long for it. But sheer beauty can have a brutal face. Because beauty is so powerful, and the reckless expression of power can be scary. That is my impression. We don't like to be overpowered. Or we want both? We want to be overpowered sometimes? But then we want to be safe again and refuse extreme expressions of beauty. Just that it is hard to have extreme beauty around you all the time, because the human is closer to the “not so beautiful”. Extreme beauty feels unreal, beyond human. I guess we long for “some” imperfection, so that we can have something easier to identify with. As it is always said, real beauty is only bearable with a little mistake to it. But in fact that means that extreme beauty scares us too much.
Technique
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Esther, I know you have had this question asked a couple of times in your life, why don't you just make high quality prints if you paint in black and white use anyway the computer, even if only as a secondary tool, in the creation of your paintings? Would it not be more ‘contemporary’ to print and go? Don’t you feel a certain contradiction in painting what you paint?
Esther STOCKER : In my understanding the contradiction lies in a more general aspect: why paint something that can be printed, right? And I believe that is a question that refers to some of your paintings as well, correct? My short answer to that is: Why not paint something that can be printed? My longer answer to that refers to the size and uniqueness of a painting, and to the painting process itself, ideas are changed directly and in a one to one relationship in painting. And also, not to forget: the meaning of a painting is something else. It is a different message. Painting for me is also a thinking process. You could compare it to this dialogue: it is more the dialogue of painting than printing.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I totally agree with you, it is probably the procedure of painting, the process of creating, shaping, transforming, that is totally different when one spends hundreds of hours bent over a table or standing in front of the easel or the wall, compared to clicking the mouse in front of a screen. But I still wonder, why do you use brush instead of roller foam or spraying? Is it because you want to add a personal touch to your paintings?
Esther STOCKER : ...It might be that simple: I just love the instrument of the brush, its sensual qualities. It is a basic tool, like the pencil. Just the perfect extension for my hands, my thoughts.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : You are a multimedia artist, you are prolific in sculpture, installation, public art, and also in design. Still, you always underline that at the heart of it all, there is your painterly activity, that at the end of the day, you are a painter above all. I am really touched by this. Where does this affection towards painting come in your case?
Esther STOCKER : I am not sure if I can answer that completely. I am just this "painting“ person. My head is full of paintings, black and white paintings of course. I just use space as canvas. Funny thing: perhaps other people don't see me as a painter. But who cares? I believe that my overwhelming experiences in art happened with paintings which I always loved. And painting shaped my artistic thinking.
Let's make the world new again...
Tamás JOVANOVICS : It comes to my mind that even though we have talked for hours and hours about art over the last five-six years, not a single time have we really mentioned old masters, any painter let's say before Malevich's era. I mean I have a pretty intimate relationship to some Baroque (f.e. Andrea Pozzo) and Renaissance (f.e. Piero della Francesca) artists. What about you, is there anyone before the modern era who inspires your ideas, your art to any extent?
Esther STOCKER : Gericault was important for me. Recently I looked at Magritte and Caspar David Friedrich again, I admire their works.... I like to think of art as a timeless pleasure or faculty. The truth is, right now I worry that the past is too strong in Europe. Not enough courage for the future, not enough risky new forms. How can we get to know ourselves if we don't express ourselves, our time? My impression is that Europe is stuck in the past and it is our duty as artists to create something new. Let’s move on Tamas, and make the world new again!
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I very much like this proactive, avant-gardist, almost activist zeal in you. But on the other hand, to me it is very dear how Europe is able to preserve its past (I just came back from making my annual rounds in Tuscany, visiting one day the birthplace of Michelangelo Buonarotti, the next day the foundation of Alberto Burri in that massive former factory in Città di Castello, and the following day again a Piero della Francesca in a tiny church in a tiny village). I am probably even more impressed by the architecture, by how incredibly beautiful and creative the simple popular houses, constructions, streets, human landscapes are. I was shocked when I was in Hanoi in Vietnam, that there was hardly any sign of the past in the city, except two or three well refurbished Buddhist temples. No signs of how Vietnamese people have thought, built, let's say three or four hundred years ago. As you said it with the forms, in order to show one, you need the other ones to distinguish it from them. Same with new and old, you need the old to distinguish it from the new. But you might be right, currently there is a conservative wave storming through Europe in general, not only in arts. But this takes us to social questions I guess.
Do forms always relate to the social?
Esther STOCKER : There is something great in connecting aspects of forms, aspects of our lives that seem so far away from each other. In the end something I believe in is that new aspects appear if genres are mixed, or if a genre is not afraid to step beyond its own limit. Aesthetic or formal aspects that might seem contradictory appear as good friends. Let's hope for something similar in society I would say. Are forms always corresponding to aspects of life? Questions of forms, do they always relate to the social? What do you think about that?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : That is a tough question. I am not the best person to be asked about it. I mean, I am not even sure that the forms I use express me as a person, let alone society. I mean, each painting I make, I take it as a present, a present from I don't know who and I don't know where. I do not like to identify myself with my paintings, for sure I do not aim to express my feelings with them.
Esther STOCKER : Haha, you think you can escape self-expression? I like to think that one cannot avoid that anyway, so there is no need for specifically trying for it. But right, lets have some doubts about how we can even be so sure about who we really are. That might be another truth about art, that we just don't know.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I think we are saying the same thing, just approaching it from two ends of the same stick. You say that one can not avoid self-expression, so there is no point in trying to avoid it. Whereas I say: one can not avoid self-expression, hence there is no point to aim for it, as it comes anyway automatically. And for me the world is anyway more intriguing than my own self. I think at the end of the day, what we artists do, is to add things to the world that we believe are missing from it.
Esther STOCKER : Yes, but how can you exclude yourself from the world? It comes down, in the end, to the problem or paradox of perception again... There is an inner truth of the individual and there is a truth of the world.
Painting as ghost
Tamás JOVANOVICS : As you said earlier, we are structures, not entities. We are small vectors in the universe. There is no point for a vector to think about its own ´vectorness´. Its ´vectorness´ is defined by where it comes from and where it points to. Maurice Merleau-Ponty said that there is no such thing as "thinking", there is only "thinking of something". I tend to agree with this. So I don't exclude myself from the world, I just put myself in scale within the world. Nevertheless, I accept that my paintings do express to a certain degree what kind of personality I might be. In the same way, they probably do express or interpret to a certain degree the society inside which art and life takes place. Indeed, a recent series of mine, I call it 'Hybrid Hierarchy' and as a matter of fact I was definitely influenced by an essay that I read about the current Hungarian regime, defined as a 'Hybrid Democracy'. I felt there is also a parallel truth with how democracy or hierarchy works with shapes and colors in painting. But the social aspect, for me, remains secondary, the first for me is always the immaterial factor of a painting. A good painting is like a ghost, it enters, haunts the space, the real space, but it remains immaterial, floating, transcendental almost. At the same time it is also playful, ghosts are mostly funny, they enjoy frightening you.
Esther STOCKER : I like the description of a painting that can be a ghost. And also expresses so well the mystery to it. Or the anthropological idea that the painting looks at you, communicates, that images are alive for us.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I would love to end our conversation here, as I think it would be a very nice and intriguing conclusion, but I still would like to know how yourself relate to the social aspects of painting/art. As you asked me, questions of forms, do they always relate to the social? If yes, how? Do paintings (our ghosts) haunt the world somehow?
Esther STOCKER : Yes I believe they do. Not in a symbolic way. Questions of form, expressions of form only make sense because the social exists. For me, form without the social would be meaningless. I mean, that's all we have in the end: the shape of our lives and the structure of our thoughts. And the expression we give them.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Esther, I believe, we both have something to do with Minimalism, but in a paradox way. We both use a fundamental, geometrical, reduced visual grammar in our works, but at the same time we both use repetition and spread the reduced formal vocabulary in an all-over way across the whole painterly field, so that the result is often a complex system of shapes and grids. This is what I tend to call Exuberant Minimalism. Would you agree with this paradoxical definition?
Esther STOCKER : Yes, I agree. And I have a passion for paradoxes. Never heard the expression Exuberant Minimalism before… I wonder if there is an exuberant aspect in historical Minimalism, in the sense that reduction can be exuberant. What would you say to Extravagant Minimalism? Anarchic Minimalism, Unreflected Minimalism, Irrational Minimalism, Imprecise Minimalism… Careless Minimalism, Slacker Minimalism… Does it hurt a little to have those words together?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : It does a little bit, and it should so. I of course like them all, even if I think exuberant is the one that expresses the contradiction most evidently with the original meaning of Minimalism, which is the par excellence manifesto of the 'less is more' type of philosophy in art. Less is more, for sure, but it is a more intriguing challenge entering the mess and see if you can get out of it somehow. I like to take risks, I like to battle too. I like it that I have to draw that line 200 times, and that I don't have the right to miss a single one of them.
Dig your way through
Esther STOCKER : Entering the mess is something I can agree with and it might be a deeper truth of making art as well. And there is so much mess to enter: all the possibilities of materials, form and color, all the limitations of that… so many great artworks of the past, but still so many great artworks missing, still to be created. So many past styles and movements of art, so many theories and contradictory theories of art… ideas or concepts in art can be messy… I mean, there is really no rule to how to continue, how to progress. There is all this big field of possibilities and you have to dig your way through that.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Yes, as you say: dig through your way, I like to see this digging through in a painting, and at the same time, I still want the painting to create a metaphysical space within the real space, a floating something, disobedient to gravity. I want to see Minimalism, but an exuberant, overwhelming Minimalism when I am painting paintings.
Esther STOCKER : If you look at very reduced forms, either people’s emotions could respond in an exuberant, exalted way or there appears a strong need for exuberant or exalted forms. I believe I belong to the first group. Reduced forms can move me, create a passion inside of me, "exuberate" me. But not every form of reduction... Just as the absence of something creates the hunger of the opposite or a deeper consciousness of what is missing. Which brings me to the fact that in every talk I am asked about color. Why? I can only explain it to myself that the absence of it makes people aware of it. Do people regularly ask you about color – your relationship with it? And what is your answer then?
Colors, blacks and whites
Tamás JOVANOVICS : That is funny: you don't use color (I mean a part from black and white that I do consider colors) and you get constantly asked about it. I do use color, in fact, I like to think of myself as a kind of a colorist, and no one asks me about it. That's fine, as I think color has a very mysterious nature, and I would struggle to define a color theory, or strategy that I employ. But to answer you, I would say, that I use color as a double strategy. Firstly, as said, I think color is so mysterious, it is everywhere, still it is immaterial, you cannot touch it, grab it, you have no direct relationship with it, it is always beyond you. Secondly, exactly since it is everywhere, there is also a demystifying factor in using it freely, it creates a bond between the artwork and the world as a whole as we know it. Black and white, or any other reduction, like using only yellow, etc. is more ethereal, metaphysical in a straightforward way. I don't mind if my work gets noticed as ethereal, or metaphysical, but I still wish to have the above mentioned bond and challenge that using colors mean.
Esther STOCKER : That's a very beautiful description of color. I have never thought of black and white as metaphysical before, always closer to an analytic thinking and to the color of form, the structure to define relationships. I find it very fascinating that you say you cannot have a direct relationship with color. Why do you think in that way? Still color is so seductive. And – for me – annoying when too strong. Is black and white less seductive? Is there more pleasure in color and more thinking in black and white? Then again, there is – clearly – pleasure in thinking.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I think black and white do not exist, at least not for perception. The perfect white is way too bright, it would blind you, the perfect black is way too dark, you simply would see nothing at all if you were in front of it. So at the end of the day, there are only shades of white and shades of black that we see, and those shades do, let's say, import the quality of the so-called real colors, because these shades render the black and the white yellowish, or bluish, and so on. I mean I am very sensitive to the subtle and less subtle yellows and blues that I see even on the white of the computer screen. So what people call black is for me a very dark version of blue, brown, red, etc. and what they call white for me is a very light version of yellow, pink, orange, etc. So for me the distinction is not so much between black and white and the other real colors, more between reducing or not reducing your palette to a certain number of colors. I decided to reduce my formal grammar, but not to reduce in any way my color palette, whereas you took the decision to cut even your colors down to these two extremes, which are intriguing not only because they are extremes, but also because of what I described above, they basically contain all the other colors too, just at a very subtle level.
Esther STOCKER : It could all be shades… One of the most beautiful book titles I ever read is: ‘Il mondo va considerato all'ombra’’ by Domenico Papa. The world is considered in the shadow. Black and white is close to light and space, to all or nothing, and to knowing the truth. Let me exaggerate a little and call it the real colors of passion.
All-over: horror-vacui or joy of repetition?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Getting back to the all-over and exuberant nature of your and my paintings, I liked how you defined – in an interview from the catalogue of your duo show with Anna-Maria Bogner – the difference between the works of you two. You said: "It seems to me that in the artworks of Anna-Maria Bogner, there is no fear of the singleness of forms, she is not afraid of placing very few lines into the space. Whereas me, on the other hand, I am indeed afraid of the singleness of the elements, of their loneliness, so to say" This is almost exactly how I would have defined my work compared to Anna-Maria Bogner´s. But is there really, as you say above, a fear factor that drives you towards multiplying the elements? Is it possible that this fear is driven by the so-called horror vacui? I feel like there is a link between horror vacui and the so-called all-over type of painterly approach...
Esther STOCKER : I believe many things we do, many forms we create are motivated by fear. Or the desire to overcome that fear. If there is one solitary element on a canvas, I have to put something next to it. That makes me feel better. Even better, if there is a structure, if there are more elements that can relate to each other. I am not sure if it is a horror vacui, although I surely suffer from that too. Because one solitary form or element can already solve the problem of horror vacui. It might also be a perceptual-paradoxical issue, that you want to let people know about that complexity. In a way it doesn't feel right for a form to stand alone, because I need to already describe that all forms are only what they are because of others. In contrast to others.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I am not totally sure about the horror vacui factor either. But that doesn't mean it is not there. I mean when someone fills up a surface as intensively and consequently as you or I do it, then from a psychological point of view I have to accept if someone thinks there is a certain degree of self-defense, obsession aspect in it too. And both are somewhere related to fear, I think...
Structure is adventure
Esther STOCKER : The filling up might be an interesting point – the need to structure. Yes why is that so? I usually make the argument based on the idea of equality. What is your reference point to the all-over action of painting? In some brave moments I call myself a structure. I say, I feel less as a single form then as a structure myself. A structure in the world.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I like this definition of the self, calling it more of a structure than an entity. I remember you once cited someone saying that Structure is Destiny. I rather think structure is adventure. In my eyes, a structure is never fixed, determined, it is rather a dynamic relationship, a dangerous relationship, if you will. The all-over aspect of painting is essential to me because I want the painting to float, to disobey gravity. If a painting does not question, does not break its own rectangular limits, then it would be more an icon than a structure, and would probably transmit more of a kind of stability, certainty type of message. I prefer more evasion than invasion, more the centrifuge than the centripetal forces.
Obsession: passion or fear
Esther STOCKER : Is obsession related to fear? I associate obsession closer to passion, a too strong passion spiced up with some madness. What do you mean exactly by self-defense? I find it quite fascinating that you use that term. I would usually speak about self expression in that case. Which makes me think that self expression could be self-defense to some degree. Could it be? And who is there to defend from? The universe, existential questions?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I think passion is controllable, obsession less so. In my eyes obsessions are mostly repeated unconscious reactions to unsolved inner issues. Whatever the truth is, I really like the term horror vacui both in art and in metaphysics. There is nothing more natural than being overwhelmed, afraid of the fact that there is a giant, unthinkably complex universe around us, and we have no real clue how and why all this exists and how and why we got into this ourselves. So to me, the natural reaction to this overwhelming, exuberant reality, is to react in a similarly exuberant way. I strive for clarity, but I can't help being realistic about the outcome of my paintings, and I see them as a battle for clarity that ends up being messy, even if most people tell me that they are very controlled and organized.
Being overwhelmed...
Esther STOCKER : Is it not strange that being overwhelmed is a thing that scares and fascinates us at the same time? Being overwhelmed might be the fundamental experience in art – if a good experience. How would you describe your emotions with art in general? Thinking about it more, it might be the fear of death. We have to defend ourselves from that fear perhaps. Of course we cannot overcome it, and we know that, but art can last longer than ones life and communicate over time.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Possible, but at the same time I always feel that there is also simply a joy factor, in our case, the joy of repetition...
Esther STOCKER : I would say that repetition also serves pure survival. Many willing and unwilling acts of our existence are repetitive: heartbeat, breathing, walking... I believe it was Kierkegaard who said repetition serves to overcome fear. Ha, the fear again! But that is actually another crucial point for me: the dissolution of meaning. And I think it was Frege who described this process. When you repeat a word many times it starts to sound absurd, it becomes more abstract, I would say. I think the same thing happens to forms: if you repeat them, you weaken their context, the meaning of them can fall to pieces. At the same time you are forced to look at them again and again. So it could be another process of minimalism, reduction....
The dissolution of meaning
Tamás JOVANOVICS : The dissolution of the superficial meaning layers is one of the most fundamental experiences for me too in painting. Robert Irwin said: "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees." (Probably the most beautiful and meaningful definition of art/painting I have ever heard.) And as you say, in our case, this meaning-decomposition, meaning-dissolution is also due to the repetition process that is so important for both of us. And I believe this decomposition, dissolution aspect is a factor of joy too. This is why I call it the joy of repetition, because by destroying a certain meaning, you immediately generate another one. You are right, repetition is often essential, as for example breathing or the beating of the heart, and I often argue with these examples when people ask me about my repeated Horizontal Lines paintings, or my One Centimeter Series paintings. But I believe there is another point to repetition too, like letting a table tennis ball pop on the bat a hundred times, or the repeated, fast beat in music, or the rhythmicity of the sexual act, which all are related to joy, even ecstasy. But there is an even greater joy when a shift, an accident happens within that repetition. It is this mixture of the repetition (the structure) trying to keep growing all over, even beyond the visible border of the painting, notwithstanding the shift, the accident that just intervened, that just tried to break its certainty, its machine-like nature. I remember when just next to me in Marseille, a guy who just stepped off a local bus, was shot by two killers who descended from the same bus with him. They quickly covered their faces with a mask and started shooting at him with two submachine guns. The guy was hit by dozens, if not hundreds of bullets in his body. I remember vividly that he still tried to run away, as if there was a way to escape. Our works might not be that dramatic, but there is a similar pattern to the systems, and the accidents that happen to them.
Esther STOCKER : This is quite a shocking story and observation you made. What did you think then?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : First second I thought I accidentally entered a movie set. Next second, I realized it was reality, so I just made sure that I make myself as small as possible to avoid ending up myself with a bullet in my body. But looking back, in the larger context, I could even decrypt this event as a reminder that things are never clear and straightforward. At that time I was doing a master’s degree in art in Aix-en-Provence, but with a philosopher, not an artist tutor. He spoke uncountable hours about the American Minimalists, mostly about Carl Andre and Donald Judd and their really cutting, rather dogmatic ideas about art, how clean and clear it should be. Even back then, as much as I liked their works, I felt very suspicious about their theories, and I felt always much closer to the more organic, messier side of Minimalism, like the works of Robert Morris or Richard Serra. So there was this young painter dude from Eastern Europe with the scholarship of the French Government, he listens and studies carefully how and what art should be, and a few minutes later he is in the middle of a mafia shooting with blood flowing all over the place. I think the two things together are called reality, and I always thought that art needs to be at the same time something totally different than reality, and still as complex, as exuberant, as paradoxical as reality.
Damage / accident
Esther STOCKER : We talked so much about fear and now a new thought comes to my mind, which I would like to explore with you. Looking at forms – more closely: I start to think that occupying oneself with questions of forms is perhaps a good way to deal with fear. All you deal with in the end is the preciseness of relations. And fear in the end is always the fear of yourself in relation to the other – unknown, of death, of things we cannot understand. And fear shapes our life and existence.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Now that you mention this, it comes to my mind, that you once told me about you having been put into an isolation station at the age of 8 or 9. It was an extremely clean, hermetically sealed, objectless, white room, not even your parents were allowed to enter, and you were alone there for weeks, being aware that you might even quite probably die. When you told me this story, I immediately thought that the floating, metaphysical nature of your visual language (if you don't mind me saying that) must have unconsciously been born there, in that isolation room. Do you think there is any relationship between this traumatic experience in your childhood and the way you express shapes as an artist now?
Esther STOCKER : Yes I believe there is a strong relationship of that event to what I do and who I am. I for a long time wanted to repress or ignore that. But it seems that old monsters like to visit sometimes. Sometimes I call it now an involuntary perception experiment, but an involuntary psychological or existential experiment would actually be more adequate. Involuntary Minimalism you could call it. It certainly shaped me as a person. This is not easy to describe. I believe I could feel boundaries of my identity then. Because when you are very alone, it is sometimes hard to stay yourself. I was reading about damage recently – actually relating to politics as far as I understood – it said something like damage is also re-birth. I have to admit that damage since then was something that always fascinated or attracted me. I identified myself with forms of damage, damage was the truth for me, the truth of existence. That we as individuals are damaged and partly in our lives we just have to get by with that. But we can express that and find beauty in it as well. So later as a teenager for some time I cut a hole in each of my clothes that I owned because I refused to accept that forms can be whole. I wasn't one whole form myself. It was clearly a need for self expression. How about yourself and damage? What is your relationship with that? Did you ever feel damaged and did it have a consequence or create a need for expressing that? Like damage as an aesthetic category – did it have any attraction for you? And adding to that: what is your relation to beauty? Because I believe that beauty sometimes can heal but it is so powerful that it can be scary too.
Beauty
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I definitely did not have such a brutal existential experience as you in my childhood, nor as an adult. But I feel close to your damage-theory. I also use the terms accident, or tilt, or as one of my installation’s title: ‘Swing Out’. In fact, any term that expresses the fact that the universe is not a place of peaceful, defined and determined stability, that everything is in constant disequilibrium. Not sure why this notion is so important to me, as the only real rupture in my life I can recall was when I was around 17, and I suddenly got aware that the universe is infinite. I am not kidding. Until then, I thought the earth is around 80% of the reality of the universe, then there is the moon, a nice little decoration, and the sun, which they say is several hundred times bigger than the earth, but obviously it must only be there to shine for us, and then there are those other dots on the night sky, called stars, they must be just some decoration again. So I felt like I am in a protected context, that the universe is basically what I see and know. At 17 I understood that those little dots in the sky, most of them are bigger than our sun, and there are billions of them, and supposedly even billions of galaxies that contain billions of stars each. So you know, I suddenly felt very, very small, and the surrounding unknown extremely big. I have friends who told me they went through this mental reflection at the age of six, so I must be a late developer. In any case, to me it happened when I was quite busy with my art studies, preparing for my entry at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Probably one of the reasons I liked Kandinsky as much as I did was that he seems to have been preoccupied with this question of the universe, and still managed to make it docile through his paintings. Regarding the question of beauty in art, I am quite old school, I love beauty, I think as a painter it just helps so much to make people look at your work. Of course, like with humans, there is an inner and outer beauty, and the inner one is a little bit more important than the outer. But really just by a fine margin. But how do you mean beauty can scare you?
Esther STOCKER : I don't think beauty is generally scary. First of all beauty is attractive and we long for it. But sheer beauty can have a brutal face. Because beauty is so powerful, and the reckless expression of power can be scary. That is my impression. We don't like to be overpowered. Or we want both? We want to be overpowered sometimes? But then we want to be safe again and refuse extreme expressions of beauty. Just that it is hard to have extreme beauty around you all the time, because the human is closer to the “not so beautiful”. Extreme beauty feels unreal, beyond human. I guess we long for “some” imperfection, so that we can have something easier to identify with. As it is always said, real beauty is only bearable with a little mistake to it. But in fact that means that extreme beauty scares us too much.
Technique
Tamás JOVANOVICS : Esther, I know you have had this question asked a couple of times in your life, why don't you just make high quality prints if you paint in black and white use anyway the computer, even if only as a secondary tool, in the creation of your paintings? Would it not be more ‘contemporary’ to print and go? Don’t you feel a certain contradiction in painting what you paint?
Esther STOCKER : In my understanding the contradiction lies in a more general aspect: why paint something that can be printed, right? And I believe that is a question that refers to some of your paintings as well, correct? My short answer to that is: Why not paint something that can be printed? My longer answer to that refers to the size and uniqueness of a painting, and to the painting process itself, ideas are changed directly and in a one to one relationship in painting. And also, not to forget: the meaning of a painting is something else. It is a different message. Painting for me is also a thinking process. You could compare it to this dialogue: it is more the dialogue of painting than printing.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I totally agree with you, it is probably the procedure of painting, the process of creating, shaping, transforming, that is totally different when one spends hundreds of hours bent over a table or standing in front of the easel or the wall, compared to clicking the mouse in front of a screen. But I still wonder, why do you use brush instead of roller foam or spraying? Is it because you want to add a personal touch to your paintings?
Esther STOCKER : ...It might be that simple: I just love the instrument of the brush, its sensual qualities. It is a basic tool, like the pencil. Just the perfect extension for my hands, my thoughts.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : You are a multimedia artist, you are prolific in sculpture, installation, public art, and also in design. Still, you always underline that at the heart of it all, there is your painterly activity, that at the end of the day, you are a painter above all. I am really touched by this. Where does this affection towards painting come in your case?
Esther STOCKER : I am not sure if I can answer that completely. I am just this "painting“ person. My head is full of paintings, black and white paintings of course. I just use space as canvas. Funny thing: perhaps other people don't see me as a painter. But who cares? I believe that my overwhelming experiences in art happened with paintings which I always loved. And painting shaped my artistic thinking.
Let's make the world new again...
Tamás JOVANOVICS : It comes to my mind that even though we have talked for hours and hours about art over the last five-six years, not a single time have we really mentioned old masters, any painter let's say before Malevich's era. I mean I have a pretty intimate relationship to some Baroque (f.e. Andrea Pozzo) and Renaissance (f.e. Piero della Francesca) artists. What about you, is there anyone before the modern era who inspires your ideas, your art to any extent?
Esther STOCKER : Gericault was important for me. Recently I looked at Magritte and Caspar David Friedrich again, I admire their works.... I like to think of art as a timeless pleasure or faculty. The truth is, right now I worry that the past is too strong in Europe. Not enough courage for the future, not enough risky new forms. How can we get to know ourselves if we don't express ourselves, our time? My impression is that Europe is stuck in the past and it is our duty as artists to create something new. Let’s move on Tamas, and make the world new again!
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I very much like this proactive, avant-gardist, almost activist zeal in you. But on the other hand, to me it is very dear how Europe is able to preserve its past (I just came back from making my annual rounds in Tuscany, visiting one day the birthplace of Michelangelo Buonarotti, the next day the foundation of Alberto Burri in that massive former factory in Città di Castello, and the following day again a Piero della Francesca in a tiny church in a tiny village). I am probably even more impressed by the architecture, by how incredibly beautiful and creative the simple popular houses, constructions, streets, human landscapes are. I was shocked when I was in Hanoi in Vietnam, that there was hardly any sign of the past in the city, except two or three well refurbished Buddhist temples. No signs of how Vietnamese people have thought, built, let's say three or four hundred years ago. As you said it with the forms, in order to show one, you need the other ones to distinguish it from them. Same with new and old, you need the old to distinguish it from the new. But you might be right, currently there is a conservative wave storming through Europe in general, not only in arts. But this takes us to social questions I guess.
Do forms always relate to the social?
Esther STOCKER : There is something great in connecting aspects of forms, aspects of our lives that seem so far away from each other. In the end something I believe in is that new aspects appear if genres are mixed, or if a genre is not afraid to step beyond its own limit. Aesthetic or formal aspects that might seem contradictory appear as good friends. Let's hope for something similar in society I would say. Are forms always corresponding to aspects of life? Questions of forms, do they always relate to the social? What do you think about that?
Tamás JOVANOVICS : That is a tough question. I am not the best person to be asked about it. I mean, I am not even sure that the forms I use express me as a person, let alone society. I mean, each painting I make, I take it as a present, a present from I don't know who and I don't know where. I do not like to identify myself with my paintings, for sure I do not aim to express my feelings with them.
Esther STOCKER : Haha, you think you can escape self-expression? I like to think that one cannot avoid that anyway, so there is no need for specifically trying for it. But right, lets have some doubts about how we can even be so sure about who we really are. That might be another truth about art, that we just don't know.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I think we are saying the same thing, just approaching it from two ends of the same stick. You say that one can not avoid self-expression, so there is no point in trying to avoid it. Whereas I say: one can not avoid self-expression, hence there is no point to aim for it, as it comes anyway automatically. And for me the world is anyway more intriguing than my own self. I think at the end of the day, what we artists do, is to add things to the world that we believe are missing from it.
Esther STOCKER : Yes, but how can you exclude yourself from the world? It comes down, in the end, to the problem or paradox of perception again... There is an inner truth of the individual and there is a truth of the world.
Painting as ghost
Tamás JOVANOVICS : As you said earlier, we are structures, not entities. We are small vectors in the universe. There is no point for a vector to think about its own ´vectorness´. Its ´vectorness´ is defined by where it comes from and where it points to. Maurice Merleau-Ponty said that there is no such thing as "thinking", there is only "thinking of something". I tend to agree with this. So I don't exclude myself from the world, I just put myself in scale within the world. Nevertheless, I accept that my paintings do express to a certain degree what kind of personality I might be. In the same way, they probably do express or interpret to a certain degree the society inside which art and life takes place. Indeed, a recent series of mine, I call it 'Hybrid Hierarchy' and as a matter of fact I was definitely influenced by an essay that I read about the current Hungarian regime, defined as a 'Hybrid Democracy'. I felt there is also a parallel truth with how democracy or hierarchy works with shapes and colors in painting. But the social aspect, for me, remains secondary, the first for me is always the immaterial factor of a painting. A good painting is like a ghost, it enters, haunts the space, the real space, but it remains immaterial, floating, transcendental almost. At the same time it is also playful, ghosts are mostly funny, they enjoy frightening you.
Esther STOCKER : I like the description of a painting that can be a ghost. And also expresses so well the mystery to it. Or the anthropological idea that the painting looks at you, communicates, that images are alive for us.
Tamás JOVANOVICS : I would love to end our conversation here, as I think it would be a very nice and intriguing conclusion, but I still would like to know how yourself relate to the social aspects of painting/art. As you asked me, questions of forms, do they always relate to the social? If yes, how? Do paintings (our ghosts) haunt the world somehow?
Esther STOCKER : Yes I believe they do. Not in a symbolic way. Questions of form, expressions of form only make sense because the social exists. For me, form without the social would be meaningless. I mean, that's all we have in the end: the shape of our lives and the structure of our thoughts. And the expression we give them.
