Jörg Olberg

Agony - The architecture of decay -

1987

Ernst Fuchs (1930 Vienna - 2015 ibid), The Lost Trace, 1972. Vernis mou and aquatint etching, 46.8 x 36.4 cm (plate), 66 x 50 cm (sheet), 69.5 x 53.5 cm (frame), WVZ Hartmann no. 185...

Max Clarenbach (1880 Neuss - Cologne 1952), Evening. Etching, 18 x 41 cm (platemark), 33.5 x 57 cm (frame), inscribed "Abend" in pencil at lower left, signed and dated "M. Clarenbach. 28.III.[19]09". Framed and mounted under glass. - Somewhat browned and slightly foxed. About the artwork The horizontally elongated etching depicts the panoramic view of a small town as seen from the other side of the river. There are gabled houses on the left and a mighty church spire on the right. The bourgeois houses and the large religious building indicate the urban character. These buildings are rendered in dark tones to emphasise the lighter row of houses in the centre of the picture, closer to the water. The chiaroscuro contrast creates two parallel planes that open up a space for the imagination of what the city could be. The imagination is stimulated by the almost entirely dark, barely recognisable buildings, while the arm of the river leading into the city further stimulates the imagination. However, as the silhouette of the city as a whole is reflected in the water, the parallel planes are perceived as a band of houses that stretches across the entire horizontality of the etching and seems to continue beyond the borders of the picture. The reflection has almost the same intensity as the houses themselves, so that the band of buildings merges with their reflection to form the dominant formal unit of the picture. Only the parallel horizontal hatching creates the convincing impression of seeing water, demonstrating Max Clarenbach's mastery of the etching needle. The water is completely motionless, the reflection unclouded by the slightest movement of the waves, creating a symmetry within the formal unity of the cityscape and its reflection that goes beyond the motif of a mere cityscape. A pictorial order is established that integrates everything in the picture and has a metaphysical character as a structure of order that transcends the individual things. This pictorial order is not only relevant in the pictorial world, but the picture itself reveals the order of the reality it depicts. Revealing the metaphysical order of reality in the structures of its visibility is what drives Clarenbach as an artist and motivates him to return to the same circle of motifs. The symmetry described is at the same time inherent an asymmetry that is a reflection on art: While the real cityscape is cut off at the top of the picture, two chimneys and above all the church tower are not visible, the reflection illustrates reality in its entirety. The reflection occupies a much larger space in the picture than reality itself. Since antiquity, art has been understood primarily as a reflection of reality, but here Clarenbach makes it clear that art is not a mere appearance, which can at best be a reflection of reality, but that art has the potential to reveal reality itself. The revealed structure of order is by no means purely formalistic; it appears at the same time as the mood of the landscape. The picture is filled with an almost sacred silence. Nothing in the picture evokes a sound, and there is complete stillness. There are no people in Clarenbach's landscape paintings to bring action into the picture. Not even we ourselves are assigned a viewing position in the picture, so that we do not become thematic subjects of action. Clarenbach also refrains from depicting technical achievements. The absence of man and technology creates an atmosphere of timelessness. Even if the specific date proves that Clarenbach is depicting something that happened before his eyes, without the date we would not be able to say which decade, or even which century, we are in. The motionless stillness, then, does not result in time being frozen in the picture, but rather in a timeless eternity that is nevertheless, as the title "Abend" (evening), added by Clarenbach himself, makes clear, a phenomenon of transition. The landscape of the stalls is about to be completely plunged into darkness, the buildings behind it only faintly discernible. The slightly darkened state of the sheet is in keeping with this transitional quality, which also lends the scene a sepia quality that underlines its timelessness. And yet the depiction is tied to a very specific time. Clarenbach dates the picture to the evening of 28 March 1909, which does not refer to the making of the etching, but to the capture of the landscape's essence in the landscape itself. If the real landscape is thus in a state of transition, and therefore something ephemeral, art reveals its true nature in that reality, subject to the flow of phenomena, is transferred to an eternal moment, subject to a supra-temporal structure of order - revealed by art. Despite this supratemporality, the picture also shows the harbingers of night as the coming darkening of the world, which gives the picture a deeply melancholy quality, enhanced by the browning of the leaf. It is the philosophical content and the lyrical-melancholic effect of the graphic that give it its enchanting power. Once we are immersed in the image, it literally takes a jerk to disengage from it. This etching, so characteristic of Max Clarenbach's art, is - not least because of its dimensions - a major work in his graphic oeuvre. About the artist Born into poverty and orphaned at an early age, the artistically gifted young Max Clarenbach was discovered by Andreas Achenbach and admitted to the Düsseldorf Art Academy at the age of 13. "Completely penniless, I worked for an uncle in a cardboard factory in the evenings to pay for my studies.” - Max Clarenbach At the academy he studied under Arthur Kampf, among others, and in 1897 was accepted into Eugen Dücker...

Rudolf Hayder (active in the 1st half of the 20th century), Heron. Color woodcut on thin Japanese paper, 24 x 29 cm (image), 29 x 36 cm (sheet size), signed by hand at lower right "R. Hayder" and titled by hand as "Reiher". Lower left inscribed by hand "Orig.[inal] woodcut, hand print". - A little bit stained in the margins and very occasionally in the image, minimal hole above the signature, traces of creasing. At the back side's margins with remnants of an old mounting. About the artwork In the context of French Japonism, the color woodblock print, which was widespread in the Asian region, was rediscovered for Western art. The artists of the time, such as Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, were inspired not only by the cultural influence, but also by the two-dimensionality of the pictorial spaces. Thus, color woodcuts became an important moment in the development of the modern pictorial concept founded by Impressionism. In Rudolf Hayder's "Herons", too, the two-dimensionality of the pictorial space is decisive for the pictorial effect. The herons, surrounded by reeds, are framed by the yellow background of the lake, followed by the dark blue-greenish stripe of the opposite shore and, above it, the sky in a lighter blue-green. Formally, it is a sequence of planes, but the two-dimensionality of the motif creates a spatial effect. This spatiality in the surface creates an intense pictorial effect. Hayder intensifies this effect with the blazing lake. In terms of color, the water becomes a sunset. The yellow turns reddish brown toward the shore, then fades to brownish red, while the shore is a watery turquoise...

Bernhard Pankok (1872 Münster - 1943 Baierbrunn), General Wilhelm von Blume, 1915, aquatint etching, 34 x 29.5 cm (sheet size), 26 x 22 cm (plate size), signed in the plate at upper left, in pencil at lower right and dated in pencil at lower left. - At lower left old collection stamp, at the right broad margin with a small spot, otherwise very good condition. About the artwork The 1915 aquatint etching of General Wilhelm von Blume is based on a 1912 oil painting in the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster. A second oil portrait of the general by Pankok is in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. When Pankok painted the first oil portrait in 1912, the general had already been retired for 16 years. It is therefore a retrospective portrait. Accordingly, the orientation of his head is such that he is looking back in both the oil painting and the etching. Without fixing on anything in particular, he looks thoughtfully inwards and reflects on his life. Uniformed and highly endowed, it is his military activities in particular that he is reviewing attentively and, as his gaze reveals, quite critically. Pankok has literally written the sum of his experiences on Wilhelm von Blume's face: The physiognomy is a veritable landscape of folds, furrows, ridges and gullies, all the more striking against the flat background. It is clear that each of the medals was also won through suffering. However, by breaking the boundaries of the picture, his bust appears as an unshakable massif, which gives the general a stoic quality. The fact that the design of the portrait was important to Pankok can be seen from the different versions, the present sheet being the third and probably final revision, which Pankok dates precisely to 18 February 1915. Compared with the previous state, the light background now has a dark area against which the sitter's face stands out, the dark background in turn combining with the uniform to create a new tension in the picture. Pankok's taking up of the portrait of the high-ranking military veteran and its graphic reproduction can also be seen in relation to the First World War, which had broken out in the meantime. In the face of modern weapons of mass destruction, Wilhelm von Blume's warfare and military writings were relics of a bygone, more value-oriented era. About the artist After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1889 to 1891 under Heinrich Lauenstein, Adolf Schill, Hugo Crola, and Peter Janssen the Elder, Bernhard Pankok went to Munich in 1892, where he worked primarily as a graphic artist for the two major Jugendstil magazines "Pan" and "Jugend," which established his artistic success. Through this work he met Emil Orlik, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In 1897, he exhibited his first furniture, and in 1898, together with Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and Hermann Obrist...

Richard Haas The Rookery Courtyard, Chicago, 1974 Etching on etching rag paper Signed, titled and numbered 11/50 in graphite pencil on the front Frame included Etching on etching ra...

A rich and tonal image of an icon of Manhattan architecture. Etching with drypoint, 11 7/8 x 7 3/8 inches (300 x 186 mm), full margins. Edition of 100. Signed in pencil, lower right...

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