Painting © Manfred W. Juergens · 2014/15
The confrontation with coming and going, love, loss, grief, suffering and death will eventually affect every human being. Wanted or unwanted. It is part of our being and certainly carries our inevitable earthly transience as a cause in itself. That believers spiritually accept this topic is understandable. Since humans exist, they have creatively implemented these processes, values and contents. Otto Dix says 'The old topics are the best'.
JThe more restless my environment is, the more hectic society shapes and transforms, the democracy gets into its crisis, the greater my longing for peace and devotion becomes. Last year I saw in Porto the picture ❯ Mártir Cristão by Joaquim Vitorino Ribeiro
from 1879.
We, the visitors of the museum, stood quietly and devoutly in front of the picture board. She touched. Incredible devotion. Silence. My inner voice told me later: This is the idea for a Pietà. At some point I paint my own devotional picture. I have often felt the same at the sight of the works of Giovanni Bellini in Venice.
Months later, at a model session on the subject of ❯ Lucretia
, when my model, which was close to content because of the powerlessness, lay down on the sofa and lowered the drunk water glass, the idea was born. The glass is empty and will soon fall to the ground. And there were the aspiring lines like Ribeiro. The hair flowed like lived life. The tattoo crept into the entity as a death and removed the figure in a strangely hovering way from the now.
The next months were about Pietà. Why should not I transform the medieval theme with a man of today? Often I thought, perhaps it is the left behind Maria herself. I liked the idea and, despite the coldness of the picture, I lent something to the content of the picture. Sofa, boots and costume are a strange mix of different times and content. Welcome reasons for irritation.
Reaktionen auf die Tafel gab es bisher nur im Atelier. Auffällig ist die Stille, die das lebensgroße Bild auslöst. Auch bei Menschen die nicht aus unserem Kulturkreis stammen. Reactions to the blackboard were previously only in the studio. Striking is the silence that triggers the life-size picture. Even with people who are not from our culture. Opinions and statements on the board: Is she still alive? · I see the beauty of being, passing pain and salvation. · How did she die? At the loss? · Did she poison herself? · Is her soul still here? · There's an erotic component too. Strange mixture. · Devoted devotion to the world. · Very gently floating. · What a rest. · Maybe stayed at the party? There were also outraged newsletter cancellations from the United States.
Painting
New Realism Art
2015 · The Genesis of a Portrait