Blance Blatt: Reality and Dream: Discarded suitcases filled with life.
The originally German artist Blance Blatt lives and works in the middle of nature in Central Switzerland. Her works, mostly structured in thematical series (Out of Daily Life; Symbols / Signs; Therapy for Thinking in Smaller Units), are made emerging out of life, often inspired by the conditions and objects surrounding the artist.
She commits with the material making use of appropriation of used and partially discarded material as did already her predecessors such as Duchamp, Schwitters or Rauschenberg: She uses old used gunnysacks, blankets, clothes , towels and other fabrics as canvases and produces her own colors applying natural pigments and wallpaper paste, always respecting and integrating the motives of the base material.
The motives and forms are usually reduced, but continuously reflect human and organic figures, signs, plants, architectural structures. Motives that surround and accompany her every day.
Looking at the genesis of her paintings, the artist covers the moments and situations in which she is at that specific moment: travel, transitions, movements, at home, all this reflected in the used towels, utensils of daily life, but also drawings on newspapers, notebooks and napkins, material which she just has at hand. Her inspirations are nourished by everyday life. It is not the objective, homogeneous canvas which constitutes the painting support, but substances that come from a non-artistic context, and are alienated and converted to fit into the artistic context. Schwitters, Tàpies, but also the African artist N'Guessan (Ivory Coast) have used these non-art materials, especially when they were traveling and did not have the usual mediums available.(*1)
The material is an expression of the awareness of deficiency in an affluent society, the use of discarded material and its simultaneous re-contextualisation and appreciation becomes a statement. This can recall individual connotations in the viewer since he/she relates particular memories with the material used, specifically the everyday material. (**2) However, in the sense of Marcel Broodthaers, and in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, she separates the content from the form, the used material from the semantic message of the images, and does this always with a spark of humor and poetry, combined with a critical attitude and the intention to encourage the viewer to reflect on the topic. The painting of the dogs that close both eyes reveals itself at a second glance as a painting of three faces (ambiguity), the cuddly toy with a sowed shut mouth (childhood and memories, lack of humanity in the computerized world), flows of people (migration issue), all these metaphors of controversy and conflicts, but also an allusion to the contemporary culture and its related social issues.
Exploring the content of the work, one feels at first very strongly drawn into the world of dreams, particularly taking into account Paul Klee, whose paintings are one of the sources of inspiration for Blance Blatt. Especially his book “Dreaming Pictures” can be consulted as a reference. Nevertheless her work seems to have a rather sober and austere connection to childhood and dream worlds, contrary to the one of Paul Klee.
Blance Blatt creates her own visual imagery. Paul Klee’s Ohne Titel (Komposition mit Früchten)(Untitled, (Composition with Fruits)), around 1940, which belongs to one of his late works, is completely reinterpreted in the painting of Blance Blatt’s Berührende Begegnungen (Touching encounters)(various versions). Rectilinear, literally Cubist style broken-up characters, reminiscent of stick men, populate the pictorial surface, yet they can only be identified individually at a second glance. She speaks of refugee flows (capturing the present social situation) while Paul Klee interpreted fruits (marked by illness and chaos of war, the works of the painter were dark, the formats became larger, the motives and colors easier).
In turn, the notion of the world of dreams leads us to the movement of literary Romanticism, an era (1795-1848), when terms such as nostalgia and infinity, the removal of limits, particularly between dream and reality, the love for magic and for a universal poetry were propagated, at the same time also a social critique became clear. A special reference in this context is the 116th Athenaeum fragment by the Schlegel brothers:
“Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Its destiny is not merely to reunite all of the different genres and to put poetry in touch with philosophy and rhetoric. Romantic poetry wants to and should combine and fuse poetry and prose, genius and criticism, art poetry and nature poetry. It should make poetry lively and sociable, and make life and society poetic. It should poeticize wit and fill all of art's forms with sound material of every kind to form the human soul, to animate it with flights of humor.“(***3)
Blance Blatt does exactly this in her works: She poeticizes wit, makes the poetry alive and sociable, makes life and society poetic, fills the forms of art with modern educational material of any kind. And she raises, at a first glance, nostalgia for childhood, infinity, space, togetherness and peacefulness, romance. But if you contemplate her images in detail, you observe that they actually speak of the opposite, of childhood trauma ("Cuddly Toy"), refugees and sadness ("Touching Encounters"), disease ( "You and I"), finiteness of life and fear, longing for peace ("Holy family"). Her entire work is nourished by contrasts, juxtapositions, the display of inner conflict and the need for peace and simplicity. Her works take us into a world of dreams, revoking childhood, whether positive or negative, whether light or heavy, either nightmare or peace.
The artist painted countless pictures over the years, she stores them particularly in old suitcases and boxes: Another aspect that reinforces the idea of traveling, migrating, of movement, as it is already reflected in the materials she uses. But the suitcase aspect also represents narrowness, limitation, lack of time, material and space. Only when she has found the matching used frame for a painting, it is freed from the storage place and fitted and set directly into the frame. The frame replaces the stretcher and becomes part of the picture. A painting comes to light.
Blance Blatt's work is a call to more carefulness of the being, the fellow human beings, the things, the food, the environment, the presence, towards life in general.
Anne-Marie Melster / 28/10/2016
German Version
--
*1 Thomas Fillitz: Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Afrika: 14 Gegenwartskünstler aus Côte d'Ivoire und Benin. Wien, Köln, Weimar. 1997, 71.
**2 Vgl: Monika Wagner: Das Material der Kunst: Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne. C.H. Beck Verlag. München. 2002, S. 110
Paris 28. Oktober 2016
**3 http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=368 (Translation Jonathan Skolnik). Source of the original text fragment: Athenaeum: Eine Zeitschrift von August Wilhelm und Friedrich Schlegel. Berlin 1798, Fragmente, S. 28-30 (https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_sCA9AAAAIAAJ)( „Die romantische Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie. Ihre Bestimmung ist nicht bloß, alle getrennte Gattungen der Poesie wieder zu vereinigen, und die Poesie mit der Philosophie und Rhetorik in Berührung zu setzen. Sie will, und soll auch Poesie und Prosa, Genialität und Kritik, Kunstpoesie und Naturpoesie bald mischen, bald verschmelzen, die Poesie lebendig und gesellig, und das Leben und die Gesellschaft poetisch machen, den Witz poetisieren, und die Formen der Kunst mit gediegenem Bildungsstoff jeder Art anfüllen und sättigen, und durch die Schwingungen des Humors beseelen“.)
She commits with the material making use of appropriation of used and partially discarded material as did already her predecessors such as Duchamp, Schwitters or Rauschenberg: She uses old used gunnysacks, blankets, clothes , towels and other fabrics as canvases and produces her own colors applying natural pigments and wallpaper paste, always respecting and integrating the motives of the base material.
The motives and forms are usually reduced, but continuously reflect human and organic figures, signs, plants, architectural structures. Motives that surround and accompany her every day.
Looking at the genesis of her paintings, the artist covers the moments and situations in which she is at that specific moment: travel, transitions, movements, at home, all this reflected in the used towels, utensils of daily life, but also drawings on newspapers, notebooks and napkins, material which she just has at hand. Her inspirations are nourished by everyday life. It is not the objective, homogeneous canvas which constitutes the painting support, but substances that come from a non-artistic context, and are alienated and converted to fit into the artistic context. Schwitters, Tàpies, but also the African artist N'Guessan (Ivory Coast) have used these non-art materials, especially when they were traveling and did not have the usual mediums available.(*1)
The material is an expression of the awareness of deficiency in an affluent society, the use of discarded material and its simultaneous re-contextualisation and appreciation becomes a statement. This can recall individual connotations in the viewer since he/she relates particular memories with the material used, specifically the everyday material. (**2) However, in the sense of Marcel Broodthaers, and in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, she separates the content from the form, the used material from the semantic message of the images, and does this always with a spark of humor and poetry, combined with a critical attitude and the intention to encourage the viewer to reflect on the topic. The painting of the dogs that close both eyes reveals itself at a second glance as a painting of three faces (ambiguity), the cuddly toy with a sowed shut mouth (childhood and memories, lack of humanity in the computerized world), flows of people (migration issue), all these metaphors of controversy and conflicts, but also an allusion to the contemporary culture and its related social issues.
Exploring the content of the work, one feels at first very strongly drawn into the world of dreams, particularly taking into account Paul Klee, whose paintings are one of the sources of inspiration for Blance Blatt. Especially his book “Dreaming Pictures” can be consulted as a reference. Nevertheless her work seems to have a rather sober and austere connection to childhood and dream worlds, contrary to the one of Paul Klee.
Blance Blatt creates her own visual imagery. Paul Klee’s Ohne Titel (Komposition mit Früchten)(Untitled, (Composition with Fruits)), around 1940, which belongs to one of his late works, is completely reinterpreted in the painting of Blance Blatt’s Berührende Begegnungen (Touching encounters)(various versions). Rectilinear, literally Cubist style broken-up characters, reminiscent of stick men, populate the pictorial surface, yet they can only be identified individually at a second glance. She speaks of refugee flows (capturing the present social situation) while Paul Klee interpreted fruits (marked by illness and chaos of war, the works of the painter were dark, the formats became larger, the motives and colors easier).
In turn, the notion of the world of dreams leads us to the movement of literary Romanticism, an era (1795-1848), when terms such as nostalgia and infinity, the removal of limits, particularly between dream and reality, the love for magic and for a universal poetry were propagated, at the same time also a social critique became clear. A special reference in this context is the 116th Athenaeum fragment by the Schlegel brothers:
“Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Its destiny is not merely to reunite all of the different genres and to put poetry in touch with philosophy and rhetoric. Romantic poetry wants to and should combine and fuse poetry and prose, genius and criticism, art poetry and nature poetry. It should make poetry lively and sociable, and make life and society poetic. It should poeticize wit and fill all of art's forms with sound material of every kind to form the human soul, to animate it with flights of humor.“(***3)
Blance Blatt does exactly this in her works: She poeticizes wit, makes the poetry alive and sociable, makes life and society poetic, fills the forms of art with modern educational material of any kind. And she raises, at a first glance, nostalgia for childhood, infinity, space, togetherness and peacefulness, romance. But if you contemplate her images in detail, you observe that they actually speak of the opposite, of childhood trauma ("Cuddly Toy"), refugees and sadness ("Touching Encounters"), disease ( "You and I"), finiteness of life and fear, longing for peace ("Holy family"). Her entire work is nourished by contrasts, juxtapositions, the display of inner conflict and the need for peace and simplicity. Her works take us into a world of dreams, revoking childhood, whether positive or negative, whether light or heavy, either nightmare or peace.
The artist painted countless pictures over the years, she stores them particularly in old suitcases and boxes: Another aspect that reinforces the idea of traveling, migrating, of movement, as it is already reflected in the materials she uses. But the suitcase aspect also represents narrowness, limitation, lack of time, material and space. Only when she has found the matching used frame for a painting, it is freed from the storage place and fitted and set directly into the frame. The frame replaces the stretcher and becomes part of the picture. A painting comes to light.
Blance Blatt's work is a call to more carefulness of the being, the fellow human beings, the things, the food, the environment, the presence, towards life in general.
Anne-Marie Melster / 28/10/2016
German Version
--
*1 Thomas Fillitz: Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Afrika: 14 Gegenwartskünstler aus Côte d'Ivoire und Benin. Wien, Köln, Weimar. 1997, 71.
**2 Vgl: Monika Wagner: Das Material der Kunst: Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne. C.H. Beck Verlag. München. 2002, S. 110
Paris 28. Oktober 2016
**3 http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=368 (Translation Jonathan Skolnik). Source of the original text fragment: Athenaeum: Eine Zeitschrift von August Wilhelm und Friedrich Schlegel. Berlin 1798, Fragmente, S. 28-30 (https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_sCA9AAAAIAAJ)( „Die romantische Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie. Ihre Bestimmung ist nicht bloß, alle getrennte Gattungen der Poesie wieder zu vereinigen, und die Poesie mit der Philosophie und Rhetorik in Berührung zu setzen. Sie will, und soll auch Poesie und Prosa, Genialität und Kritik, Kunstpoesie und Naturpoesie bald mischen, bald verschmelzen, die Poesie lebendig und gesellig, und das Leben und die Gesellschaft poetisch machen, den Witz poetisieren, und die Formen der Kunst mit gediegenem Bildungsstoff jeder Art anfüllen und sättigen, und durch die Schwingungen des Humors beseelen“.)