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Homage 1987-1999 |
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Paintings | Pablo Luis GonzálezPowerful influences in the creation of these paintings were the rather late discovery of the work by Count Balthazar Michel Klossowski de Rola, "Balthus", and the subsequent find of that of Paula Rego. I was surprised that, in my obsession with the icons of 20th Century Modern Art, a figure such as that of Balthus escaped from my prying eyes. I learnt to look again, within a shifting perspective, at the works by the Old Masters, especially those by Piero de la Francesca and Pisanello: I observed carefully the tensions and shifts between the internal dynamics of the geometry of the paintings and those of the frames in relation to the rooms where they were hung; my eyes also attempted to seek under the layers of paint and time to glimpse at the colours being laid to such depth and intensity of hue. The sound of my steps reverberated day after day across the rooms of the National Gallery that embraced those Early Italian works as I walked and walked through their vastness then and there, with a different look, a different expression, on my face as days lapsed. What attracted me to Balthus' work was not so much his overemphasized "naughtiness", but rather the hovering tensions between what it is and what it is not; between what it is shown and what it is implied; between a precarious equilibrium and chaos; between an object being on a mantelpiece and falling over the edge; between the daily chores of life and their dark underlying forces; and, ultimately, by the texture of his brush strokes and the sensuality of the manner that paint has been applied onto the canvas. Cuban, Chilean and European painters were frequent visitors to my family home, as we were to their studios. Several of their paintings and drawings were hung on our walls. The smell of turpentine from those years is still lingering on my nose. A sense of respect and, to a great extent, fear to painting, to oil painting, to failure more than anything else, accompanied me for many years since those days, my own personal cloud that followed me anywhere I went. One night in 1993 I went fully into oils after drinking nearly a full bottle of red wine, the remains of this fear being scattered all around me for the cats to play with the fragments. "Homage to an unknown artist" (1993-99) was then born, being the first oil painting I started working on. Background compositional elements were lifted straight from Balthus' "Nu assoupi" (1980). "Homage to an unknown artist", a rather small picture, took several years to complete; it was abandoned for a long period as several of other works in this series, and others, were painted; a knife was at one point thrown at it out of frustration. Pablo Luis González: Hull, 14 May 2003 Comments »
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