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拍品专文
Few artists have explored the extremities of their medium with quite the force of the German painter Albert Oehlen, whose oeuvre constitutes an unceasing investigation of the possibilities of oil paint. “Mr. Oehlen’s paintings,” the critic Roberta Smith has said, “are overfull of the act of painting: of successive formal decisions; of different colors applied with brushes of various widths at different speeds” (R. Smith, ‘Albert Oehlen, a Master of Disciplined Excess’, The New York Times, 11 June 2015). Selbstporträt (Self-Portrait), executed during a prolific period during the early 1980s in which Oehlen embarked on a monumental project of self-portraiture, is a subtle masterclass in his distinctive technique.
Oehlen has constructed here a dizzying panoply of hues and textures, ranging from extravagant impasto to almost ethereal smears of paint that reveal the white canvas beneath. Apparent simplifications in form, such as the curved peak of his parted hair, become palpably physical through the artist’s strokes and striae, many in a bold aquamarine. His eyes, marked out in deep black, gaze out of the canvas with a brittle curiosity, as if prompted by an object of interest; his lips bear a hint of apprehension. “In Oehlen’s self-portraits,” according to the critic Glenn O’Brien, “you can always tell that he’s thinking. He perfectly captures that transparent, blank moment right before the Eureka of epiphany” (G. O’Brien, ‘Indulgences: 95 Theses or Bottles of Beer on the Wall’, in Parkett, no. 79, 2007, p. 38).
Oehlen, who was regarded along with his friend and contemporary Martin Kippenberger as an enfant terrible in the 1980s German art-scene, cannot resist adding a jot of humor, with a densely-layered jot of a moustache and two black strands hanging from his nose. There is an element here of deliberate self-abasement, where Oehlen revels in his own coarse humanity while simultaneously demonstrating his artistic prowess. Such panache can be seen in Selbstporträt’s striking translucency, achieved using a method Oehlen has referred to as ‘glazing painting.’ As he explained, “you work with many layers of thin oil paint. You can model the subject of the painting by bringing it to where you want it very slowly, instead of putting down the right color at once with one brush stroke” (A. Oehlen, quoted in R. Goetz, ‘Interview by Rainald Goetz’, in Albert Oehlen: Self Portraits, exh. cat., Skarstedt Fine Arts New York, 2004, p. 46). This grants Selbstporträt a radiant quality that evokes Oehlen’s method of painting himself reflected in a mirror. And, as with reflections, his lissome, aqueous brushwork feels like a fleeting instant that could dissolve with the slightest movement.
Eclecticism has been defining trait of Oehlen’s practice across his career, and his self-portraits are no exception. In Fruhstuck Now, he transformed himself into a classical bust, riffing on the similar portrayal of Marie-Thérèse Walter found in Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust. Boogie Nr. 1 (1996) depicted Oehlen dancing nude under polychromatic nightclub lighting, while Ich seh Dich I shows him with a single Cyclopean eye. In each case, Oehlen experiments with art’s ability to fashion different selves, and to capture facets of a person that can only find expression in the transformative medium of paint. In comparison to these carnivalesque works, Selbstporträt has a remarkable candor: a rare moment of earnest representation by an artist known for his mercurial stylistic shifts and sportive irreverence.
Oehlen’s engagement with self-portraiture stemmed, in part, from his desire to challenge his own capabilities. He has a career-long habit of testing himself with arbitrary restrictions: for one series, for instance, he used only gray paint, while another only included the primary colors of red, blue and yellow. “I posed,” he has recounted, “the self-portrait as a problem for myself in my search for new levels of difficulty, precisely because there’s a huge historical apparatus attached to it, and because it makes you think of art, of seriousness and meaning. Putting myself next the masters” (A. Oehlen quoted in R. Goetz, ibid., p. 48). The self-portrait has a particularly distinguished history in Northern European art, and Selbstporträt belongs to a creative lineage that flows through Gerhard Richter’s blurred, self-effacing characterizations, Vincent Van Gogh’s luminous visions of himself and Rembrandt’s peerlessly penetrating self-examinations, all the way back to the Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.
Dürer is the first artist known to have scrutinized his own form at discrete points in time, from the age of thirteen to twenty-eight. Oehlen echoes this in completing at least one self-portrait a year, allowing him to chart himself from an abundance of vantages across his life. All but one of Dürer’s portrays the artist from the same left-facing perspective as Oehlen’s Selbstporträt. For Oehlen, this allows for enhanced scrutiny. “If you turn your face suddenly,” he has explained, “you don’t see the curvature of the nose anymore. For this reason, I always have the view from the same angle” (A. Oehlen quoted in R. Goetz, ibid., p. 64). Despite this shared perspective, however, each of Oehlen’s self-portraits is idiosyncratic. A consummate performance by one of the most virtuosic painters working today, Selbstporträt is no exception.
Oehlen has constructed here a dizzying panoply of hues and textures, ranging from extravagant impasto to almost ethereal smears of paint that reveal the white canvas beneath. Apparent simplifications in form, such as the curved peak of his parted hair, become palpably physical through the artist’s strokes and striae, many in a bold aquamarine. His eyes, marked out in deep black, gaze out of the canvas with a brittle curiosity, as if prompted by an object of interest; his lips bear a hint of apprehension. “In Oehlen’s self-portraits,” according to the critic Glenn O’Brien, “you can always tell that he’s thinking. He perfectly captures that transparent, blank moment right before the Eureka of epiphany” (G. O’Brien, ‘Indulgences: 95 Theses or Bottles of Beer on the Wall’, in Parkett, no. 79, 2007, p. 38).
Oehlen, who was regarded along with his friend and contemporary Martin Kippenberger as an enfant terrible in the 1980s German art-scene, cannot resist adding a jot of humor, with a densely-layered jot of a moustache and two black strands hanging from his nose. There is an element here of deliberate self-abasement, where Oehlen revels in his own coarse humanity while simultaneously demonstrating his artistic prowess. Such panache can be seen in Selbstporträt’s striking translucency, achieved using a method Oehlen has referred to as ‘glazing painting.’ As he explained, “you work with many layers of thin oil paint. You can model the subject of the painting by bringing it to where you want it very slowly, instead of putting down the right color at once with one brush stroke” (A. Oehlen, quoted in R. Goetz, ‘Interview by Rainald Goetz’, in Albert Oehlen: Self Portraits, exh. cat., Skarstedt Fine Arts New York, 2004, p. 46). This grants Selbstporträt a radiant quality that evokes Oehlen’s method of painting himself reflected in a mirror. And, as with reflections, his lissome, aqueous brushwork feels like a fleeting instant that could dissolve with the slightest movement.
Eclecticism has been defining trait of Oehlen’s practice across his career, and his self-portraits are no exception. In Fruhstuck Now, he transformed himself into a classical bust, riffing on the similar portrayal of Marie-Thérèse Walter found in Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust. Boogie Nr. 1 (1996) depicted Oehlen dancing nude under polychromatic nightclub lighting, while Ich seh Dich I shows him with a single Cyclopean eye. In each case, Oehlen experiments with art’s ability to fashion different selves, and to capture facets of a person that can only find expression in the transformative medium of paint. In comparison to these carnivalesque works, Selbstporträt has a remarkable candor: a rare moment of earnest representation by an artist known for his mercurial stylistic shifts and sportive irreverence.
Oehlen’s engagement with self-portraiture stemmed, in part, from his desire to challenge his own capabilities. He has a career-long habit of testing himself with arbitrary restrictions: for one series, for instance, he used only gray paint, while another only included the primary colors of red, blue and yellow. “I posed,” he has recounted, “the self-portrait as a problem for myself in my search for new levels of difficulty, precisely because there’s a huge historical apparatus attached to it, and because it makes you think of art, of seriousness and meaning. Putting myself next the masters” (A. Oehlen quoted in R. Goetz, ibid., p. 48). The self-portrait has a particularly distinguished history in Northern European art, and Selbstporträt belongs to a creative lineage that flows through Gerhard Richter’s blurred, self-effacing characterizations, Vincent Van Gogh’s luminous visions of himself and Rembrandt’s peerlessly penetrating self-examinations, all the way back to the Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.
Dürer is the first artist known to have scrutinized his own form at discrete points in time, from the age of thirteen to twenty-eight. Oehlen echoes this in completing at least one self-portrait a year, allowing him to chart himself from an abundance of vantages across his life. All but one of Dürer’s portrays the artist from the same left-facing perspective as Oehlen’s Selbstporträt. For Oehlen, this allows for enhanced scrutiny. “If you turn your face suddenly,” he has explained, “you don’t see the curvature of the nose anymore. For this reason, I always have the view from the same angle” (A. Oehlen quoted in R. Goetz, ibid., p. 64). Despite this shared perspective, however, each of Oehlen’s self-portraits is idiosyncratic. A consummate performance by one of the most virtuosic painters working today, Selbstporträt is no exception.