I have just could two minutes before midnight upload my favorite pictuer for the theme Lokal. It is of course a joke, but nevertheless I think also it is quite serious...


3.11. 2008: I dont want to be lazy, of course I have done (well done!) a series of little sketches to work out some Ideas on the theme "local". The idea above is to make sure, that anything local must be concentrated to a point. A Cocon, something which is extremely "inside".


I remember, as a child, my phantasies were very wide, but that only worked in a very enclosed place: a stool turned arround, giving the feeling of being inside, was phantastic to make voyages all over the world.




Or the garden gnome, which is a very good symbol for the hope of the garden gnome friends to show everybody, how inside they are...
So here he is the garden gnome,


and of course he doesn't realise, that there is a outer world.



What else can I say? Günther Grass has a chapter in his roman "Die Blechtrommel" which has the title "Unterm Rock". Underneath the dresses of his grandmother he is safe. When one grows older there is an other aspekt of this Idea - more erotic of course.

The intimacy of beeing together is a very local thing. Inside your shoe is very lokal, putting your hand in trhe pocket as well.
Local has to do much with emotion, with depth symbolic, with safety, and with the feeling of getting lost (in the global)....


Good night - see you on thursday

local

Tilman's next assignment is "local". A drawing about the local. Drawing local.
Local in contrast with global. Global is something that has meaning and value for everyone. But you lose something when going global. Maybe you lose everything. This can be illustrated with art. Most art nowadays is global. It is boring.
Tilman gave an example of how this is done: take a bit of german expressionism, take a bit of (also german) constructivism. Add a large sauce of esthetics. Then you have global art.
Maybe Tilman got excited last time, being a German and proud of these great German roots of expressionism and constructivism, shaping nearly all of art. He thought using these styles produces a "german work of art". I think quite the opposite: using these well explored styles he produced "acceptable global art". Luckily his own way of drawing intervened: he did not succeed in getting rid of his personal hand and failed to make real global art, which is devoid of all traces of personality. Having a personality and showing it is really bad in art nowadays.

The local: thinking about it i concluded that maybe drawing can never reach the really local, because it always refers to something. Even material drawing, showing only traces or the material refers to this fashion of minimalism in art. Without this context of minimalism nobody would recognize it anymore and everything produced by nature, on the street in a garbage dump is indeed more interesting on all levels then the works of minimalism. Nature is just more experienced in producing these works of art.

referring to local things: a meeting, going there very bodily with backpack, experience is local, the drawing of this experience isn't.

Then drawing, referencing the local. The local feeling. The feeling of being busy locally. That is you are drawing and not thinking about the big world, the future, becoming famous. Just concentrated on the drawing, the act of drawing:





Then my senses told me that smelling and touching are indeed the most local things possible. Then the brain comes in: the brains associates and refers. The brains, the rational is the culprit of becoming global. So in the act of smelling and tasting the brain must remain locally concentrated. Then drawing small modest things must be in the direction of what can be achieved in local drawing of the local. I found a shell on the beach. I made a drawing of it. This shell was indeed interesting because there was a hole in it. Something had been busy very very locally, digging in and eating the pour small defenseless creature which tried to hide locally inside a shell......


I could only refer to this local behaviour with a drawing.
After my failure to produce a German Drawing, no i failed again making a local drawing.

My assignment for november has to wait until Tilman adds his contribution. Why rush things?

Deutscherer

I see you have done quite a bit of a work. of course I am late, as usual, but not so late. I have had to work on a series of Drawings for an exhibition in Rimini, so that was for me the chance to go deeper in the materia than I could do before.
What is "german" in art...? I think there a a few important elements. I have tryed them out in a few sketches. "Walchensee an der Seine" - german Impressionism and french Impressionism - there could not be a difference bigger than that. ( http://www.loviscorinth.com/images/top10/421.jpg)

So this was the first Idea: expressionistic violence against sort of harmless aesthetic.


Or Caspar David Friedrich: very important, very very thoughtful and heavy

or the german minimalism:


So in fact, after some further reflection the "real german piece of art" must consist of (besides of some new smoke) expressionistic self-giving, a sort of rational constructivity (BAUHAUS), a romantic depth-symbolic attitude - sort of miracle, hidden secret (new smoke), and then: funily enough, sort of irony, humour, one shouldn't beleave it.
So ok, after all this I have done my homework and tried out:

lost in an urban dessert, (constructivity), the poor figure drawn by expressive strokes (expressionism), showing all the lonelyness of an urban beeing (depth-symbolic), but looking still a little bit silly (irony perhaps).
or a next step:
without comment but now THE german picture at it's best:

its violence, romantism, expressivity, irony, constructivity, miracle, just everything what is necessary for a good work of art...
look at the details:


So thats it. deutsch, deutscher, deutscherer...
and no Dürer at all.
The new theme will be: LOKAL. of course.