Page 30 - Studio International - March 1974

then until this day. In mathematical operations, except to note that for Penck as well as Pollock bit of practice. You can practice imagining
too, there is the concept of an exactitude which the tendency towards concrete symbols in things in just the same way. If you do so, you
in some circumstances creates progressive Picasso's later work was important.10 Penck sets will soon notice what you can imagine and what
distortion as it develops from an inexact himself off from Klee, Picasso, Pollock, et al. you can't. You will learn to imagine things
starting point. Penck once said in conversation (the fame of these names should not be when you want to, but you will also find that
that it seemed to him as though, in our misunderstood) not least in that, like many of ideas and imaginings come to you even when
technically perfected world, a highly exact half- his contemporaries (and with similar difficulty), you don't want them to. You will see that the
tone screen were taken as a basis upon which to he will not come to terms with the idea of being better your imaginings are developed the better
erect irrational monstrosities; he himself is shut off in the garden of the arts and of the 'art you will manage with things in reality. If you
trying to demonstrate the opposite in his world'. He seeks out means for non-pretentious can imagine how to build a house out of blocks
pictures and drawings : only if one initially contact with the public : through serious works of wood, then you can also actually build it.
experienced the irrational in plastic terms and that dethrone the singles independent work (the When you are bigger and you take your bicycle
then sought conceptual clarification could one 3 i-part Standart series of 1970/72); books to be to pieces and can imagine how the pieces fit
achieve understanding without forgetting the leafed through (one was reproduced at the 1971 together, then you can tell another youngster,
reality of the irrational. Penck says, 'I think Penck exhibition in the Haus Lange, Krefeld); who hasn't imagined it, what he must do if he
that the Standart determines art's function in serigraphic editions; the production of short wants to take his bicycle to pieces. By doing
the direction of enlarging its own films; through co-operation on a common this you will see how you can put your
indeterminateness'; and another paradox is programme of pictures with three Dresden imagining into words, and how someone else
bound up with this : 'Only when we make fot painter friends (since 1972). can do a thing according to your words. That is
ourselves pictures of God, can we make no The training aspect of Penck's activity is an experience. Now I want to say something
pictures of God and so come closer to God'. exposed clearly and cogently in the following about painting and drawing. Try out everything
The monstrous technical exactitude of our text by him (from Was ist Standart ?' Cologne: you can draw with a pencil or a piece of chalk:
culture and the even more monstrous Gebrüder Konig, 197o): lines, dots, crosses, arrows, and whorls; it
inexactitudes in dealing with irrational `Dear children! Dear little girl! Dear little boy! doesn't matter what you call these things, but
realities (an inexactitude which is systematically If you already know your letters, if you can notice how all these things look, and practise
repressed by the conscious mind) are the points already read, then read what is written here. If imagining them. If you do this you will find
of departure for Penck's activity. Undoubtedly you can already manage a pencil, or if you have that a feeling or sensation appears for each sign
fascination is twinned with fear — a fear based on made drawings, if you have drawn or written when you paint it, and also when you imagine it.
perception, yet totally unsentimental. In anything on the walls of houses, read what is It can also happen that with one sign some idea
Wilhelm Worringer's words, `Tibullus says written here. You can do many things with your for doing something occurs. You will even find
primum in mundo fecit deus timor (the first thing hands: you can dig holes in sand or earth, build that the feeling you had when you imagined the
God made in the world was fear), and this same up heaps, pile stones together, you can see and sign also appears suddenly and so creates for
feeling of fear can be seen also as the root of take hold of all the things that are near you, and you an experience in reality'.
artistic creation' — and particularly, as you have all sorts of toys to play with. You do DIETER KOEPPLIN
Worringer showed in his fundamental work on things with your hands. Try out everything you
`Abstraction and Empathy' of 1908, as the root can do ! You can make cars run, and you can
of the symbolic art of all early cultures, and make them crash into each other, so that Footnotes
ultimately, of our own late culture. Penck is there is an accident. You can play with Indians 1 Text by Penck in the catalogue Bilder, Obiekte,
certainly not the first artist in this century to and soldiers, with pistols and tanks, aeroplanes Filme, Konzspte (Pictures, Objects, Films, Concepts),
Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, April-
take his bearings from the concrete definiteness and rockets. You know that fire is hot and snow May 1973, p. 133 :' . . . and practice — buy a Standart
and simultaneous multiplicity of meaning of and ice are cold, that Mummy and Daddy cut book and fill the verses with writing, just to see how
long you can goon. I set the permutation of
signs. Paul Klee painted symbols, but his goal things with a knife, hit things with a hammer information against the explosion of knowledge. Then
was a 'composition' as a harmonizing game at a and pull nails out with pliers. You know you everyone ultimately grasps his programme and it goes
high level — not what Penck is now achieving, a have a head and eyes, a nose, ears and a mouth, a smoothly'.
model intended for direct use which changes the body and hands, arms and feet. You know what 2 Quoted from another unpublished manuscript
`Standart, descriptive Einfuhrung' (Standart:
observer; 'You try it, too; undertake your own pain and joy are. The things you feel are your descriptive introduction).
cybernetic training !' Many other artists of recent feelings. You feel love, fear, hate, anger, 2 In the catalogue cited above, pp. 13 If.
4 The book ICH Standart-Literatur is published in
years who work with signs could also be affection, happiness, pain, disappointment. offset facsimile by Editions Agentzia, Paris.
mentioned. Your feelings are your soul. But what is your 5 A. R. Penck, Was ist Standart ? (Cologne :
What is noteworthy is the superficial mind ? Your mind is your thoughts and Gebrüder Konig, 1970).
comparability of Penck's signs with those imaginings. Perhaps you have already noticed 6 This friendship, which at the outset also included
joint work of high intellectual calibre, is testified to by
Jackson Pollock created from 1938 onwards in that pictures appear to you when you close your the jointly executed graphic work published by the
the course of Jungian psycho-analytic eyes, and I'm sure you dream at night. Perhaps Galerie Michael Werner in Cologne and by the
treatment.9 These drawings of Pollock's, which you have suddenly thought that you could go to beautifully plastic text on Baselitz's art which Penck
wrote for an exhibition in Munich (catalogue cited
Penck did not know of, are more or less indebted the woods, to the cinema, or to see a friend; above, note 1).
to Picasso and Surrealism. Their immediate such a thought is called an idea. An idea is 7 In a Large View of Life done at the same time, a
purpose was private self-discovery, but they something that one can do. When one does similar small dancing figure carries a shield inscribed
`Ralf' : Ralf Penck.
also aim at general objectivization. Penck started something, one has an experience, and you feel 8 A. R. Penck, Was ist Standart ? op. cit.
not from psychological self-analysis but from something. Life means doing things. You will 9 C. L. Wysuph, Jackson Pollock: Psychoanalytic
Drawings. (New York: Horizon Press, 197o); Judith
an analysis of the mechanisms of society and find that experiences repeat themselves and Wolfe 'Jungian Aspects of Jackson Pollock's Imagery'
of human potential for perception, imagination through this you can recognize the experience. in Artforum, November 1972, pp. 65-73.
and comprehension. However, he naturally But did you know you can imagine an 1° There are some drawings by Penck, with a
structure of lines bordered by dots, which have far
draws intensively in his work on a psychological experience ? You can imagine going into the from coincidental similarities with Picasso's drawings
view which is based on his own nature. I shall kitchen and taking a cup out of the cupboard, of 1924 (Zervos vol. 5, pl. 136).
not dwell here on the obvious points of or you can imagine going out of the door and 11 Twelve red brush drawings from a broken up book
were reproduced in the catalogue Zeichnungen 2,
difference from Pollock's psycho-analytical walking along the street .You know what sport Städtisches Museum, Leverkusen — Schloss
drawings (and Pollock's later development) is, and you also know that in sport one does a Morsbroich, 1972-73.
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