Page 40 - Studio International - May 1973

Edgar Fernhout*

In Autumn

How slowly and painstakingly this painting must
have been painted. Stroke has been laid over
stroke, adjustment after adjustment; there is no
area which has not been retouched several times
over. Evidently it was not an easy painting to
make, nor is it easy to view. For a child learning
to speak, but still without knowledge of syntax
and grammar, words may come out in any order,
and no particular order would be senseless until
actually spoken and proved senseless. Fernhout,
one feels, is painting that way. Positions for
brush-strokes have been tried and rejected and
tried again; and should a position, as position,
finally fit, it still might be unsettled, for apart
from position there is the direction and the size
of a stroke; and then there is the painting's
chromatic balance and order.
In Autumn is not a large painting, slightly less
than one square metre, but it is wide and deep in
terms of colour. Its ground is white; then there
is a web of patches of very light yellow; and in
between are small strokes of pale blue. At first
glance the yellow patches seem to hover in front
of the white, with the blue strokes further back,
(Above) (Below)
working almost like shadows of yellow, sunk
Autumn 1962 In Autumn 1971
into the white ground. This chromatic structure, Oil on canvas, 8o x 114 cm. Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm.
however, is checked by the painting's surface Eindhoven: Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Private collection
texture. The strokes of the brush are discreetly Photo: van de Bichelaer Photo: Cor van Wanrooy
in evidence; their difference in direction is only
slight though just enough to articulate each
individual position; hence they are at no point
countering each other. In fact, their relative
positions seem to be calculated so as to let them
slip into and receive each other, like people
embracing. Awareness of this textural quality
makes the yellow move back, so to speak, into
the white ground, giving it a subtle radiance,
fluctuated by the strokes of pale blue.
Still, the patches of yellow don't actually
mingle. Therefore, compared to Fernhout's
earlier work, In Autumn is spatially much more
open. Those earlier pictures might be described
as orchestrations of closely knit colour patches,
arranged in tonal order : blackish violet, dark
blue, light blue, pale emerald-green, grey, white.
Only rarely did one find a light colour next to a
very dark one, for the sharp contrast would have
cut into the chromatic balance which ultimately
held the painting together. And since the
picture's wholeness was primarily based upon
tonal relationships, it was virtually impossible
for colour to achieve a pure, independent
clarity. The structure of recent paintings like
In Autumn is different, and based upon a
measured placing of the colour patches, resulting
in a subtle regularity of intervals. q
R. H. FUCHS

*Born 1912, Fernhout lives and works in Bergen, North Holland.
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