Artis the Artist in Antwerpen

After weeks of spending hours wandering through European art museums, it would seem the works of Vermeer, Hals, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck are highly venerated. What a surprise....

While at the Gemeente Museum in Den Haag some time ago, I watched a long procession of Japanese tourists march with silent, albeit stoic determination to Jan Vermeer's View of Delft. Lead by a short woman who spoke loudly, they stared with confused wonder at the masterpiece. They crossed their arms, they blinked and nodded. I was curious as to what they were thinking. Maybe they were frustated at not being able to take a picture. Maybe they felt they had accomplished something by seeing the painting, i.e. they could cross it off the list.  Now they could be content.

I don't know where they went next. Probably not into the rest of the museum where more modern masterpieces by Kadinsky or Monet are being shown. Or maybe they did.

Presently the Gemeente, known more for its 20th century masterpieces is showingcasing the masters typically found in the Mauritshuis. Unfortunately the latter lovely, lavish building is being renovated so everything has been relocated. 

Walking about the Gemeente, the most highly perused works were those of the 16th and 17th century. I saw several Rembrandts (his Homer and Anatomy Lesson), several chaotic works by Jan Steen and of course Vermeer's famous Girl with a Pearl Earring (which will be making a stop in Japan sometime in the next little while).

As much as I love visiting these quiet, sacral spaces, I can't help but wondering about the artists and their lives. Rembrandt, I learned lived a fairly comfortable life, only later to be besotted with debt. Vermeer had many children and thankfully married into a wealthy family. 

As for the modern Van Gogh, his story has become legend, mythologized. People perhaps visit out of curiousity. They've been told he is genius but without the ear-cutting-off-incident, would he still draw the same audience? Is his life more integral to his art or a curious side piece, a tragic story we are darkly amused with? 

When I see the crowds lining up in front of his museum, I can't help but wonder if they would be the same kind of people who would deny him in his own time. (To be honest, I wonder the same about practicing Christians, how many would be Unchristian to Christ if they lived in Jesus' time.)

Rhetorical questions and musings aside, I feel there is often a sad, strange diachotomy between the living and dead in art. Highly prolific artists have come and gone and some have been celebrities - Picasso and Warhol for instance. 

And yet, people are not adoringly drawn to their works. Not so much the modern works - most of the Gemeente showcaing the moderns was empty and the exhibition there echoing with distant footsteps. 

Not to say modern art is unloving (most of the time I feel it lacks beauty and tenderness), I just don't think most people, including art curators and critics have the brains or wherewithall to see what is great without the hype and politics surrounding the art. Human beings, for the most part are social animals (to reference Aristotle - well, to some extent) and being social there is the ailing pressure of one's peers and of course, the mob or the crowd. 

And money. 

The art I saw in the Gemeente only impressed me a little. Maybe I was missing the context. I don't know. 

I left Den Haag for Antwerpen, thinking I would visit the MAS, the new museum on the Stroom and Ruben's house. I visited the former and enjoyed myself but I was enthralled with another artist, not one found in a museum not a household name... well, not yet. 

Artis Karnisauskis, as you may well guess from the name is not a native Belgium. He hails from Latvia. He speaks in addition to his native tongue, Russian and English. And I would say, his modern art is more fascinating and moving than much of what is being produced academically. 

To get by, Artis drives to Brugge and sells his more commercial pieces, sepia scenes of the medieval town in a market square where American, Canadian and British tourist gobble up his work. In themselves, these pieces have a timeless quality, remarkably melancholy. Looking at them, the buildings and towers and the canals seem to shimmer as if the viewer were peering at the scenes in a dream. They look like at any minute the scene will shiver into a fade and we will lose them forever. 

His more abstract art is more intellectual and less romantic but still, there is something baffling, fascinting and heartfelt in them.

Take for instance the above unnamed piece. Before heading to Cologne, I had been staying with Artis and his wife Sandra through AirBnb, a site where locals can advertise rooms available for travelers. This painting hung above my bed. 

I fell in love with this piece. You feel like you are swirling in the smog of life. But on closer inspection, everything is perfectly placed.

The lone cyclist on the left possesses something old world about him. The bike handles are red; he wears a fedora and yet there is something murky and folorn about his distance to the buildings and the high wires. Also, I noticed the dark smog halo around his head. 

I thought about the famous poet Rilke's words, his comment about modern life at the beginning of the 20th century: "Automobiles run me over."

The buildings, the street, the bus to the right are etched with a grid-like pattern. In the sky, a web of wires, interconnecting and strangling. The brown hues of the painting cause almost a kind of viewing asthma, as if we have trouble seeing the painting, inundated with the dirty chaos of daiy life. And yet the orange sky has an autumnal piece, a sadness mixed with vibrancy. It is fiery and there, admidst the lines, an angelic-like figure (perhaps a bird, it is up to our imagination) is caught but not paralized by the electrified sky.

I have seen similar scenes in Amsterdam and Vancouver. 

Another piece has the same orange-red intensity.

This one is more abstract. Two bird-like figures are floating, circling in the green atmsophere. Again, they could be birds, demons or angels. The reddish portion has a star-like quality. For me, it reminds me of a time when I was ill and felt lost inside my own body. The illness was a kind of earth, a dying home inside myself. The red ground of this painting throbs with pain and reality. Upon this ground, a third creature or flower has taken shape and form. Though there is something grim and grotesque in the image, I feel a certain hope, a future in its message. 

This last piece is perhaps the most bewildering. Either we are presented with a stuffed animal or a dead one. A sheep lies upon a white surface and with its one leg, reaches or points up, connected to a kind of kite like image. Again, it is up to the viewer to decide. Either it is a childhood toy, disused, destroyed by rough playing or more likely it is an animal dead, waiting to be used for meat. The kite's image could very well be a reference to the hell of the slaughterhouse. 

While visiting the MAS in Antwerpen, I came across some interesting words outside the Master's temporary exhibit. "Art is not a luxury and never has been. Art seeks answers to life's questions."

For Artis I sense and understand these questions from his work but at times, I feel I need to keep asking and seeing. There is nothing determined here, everything is still open to interpretation. Though the art is silent, it's the viewer and the artist that create the dialgue. 

The evening before I left, Artis told me an interesting story about an another artist he know. "He would paint a painting and then stop. He wasn't happy with it. But he wouldn't paint any more. He would keep coming down to look at it in his studio. He would spend the year looking at it until he finally liked it and realized it was done. It's all attitude. How you want to see. It's all in your head. Your heart."

Interpreting Artis' work requires both head and heart. Otherwise you'll lose something in the experience.

To contact Artis and find out more about his are and commerical work follow the link below

Artis Karnisauskis