Nadja Zgonik
BIRTH, LOVE, AND DEATH

Sometimes, reflection on painting is like a submersion. When looking at paintings, reading a painter’s thoughts, reviewing interpretations written earlier, the feeling overwhelms you that the water level is rising and that the world, which used to be controllable and low, at your feet, begins gradually to surge, to run over you and that at any moment it will flow over your head, encompass and contain you. If it happens that art seizes all of you, dealing with a professional topic changes from a momentary task to an idea which gives you no peace of mind. It follows and occupies you and intertwines itself into your everyday perception of the world. If this happens, you can never return to the state previous to seeing and experiencing the painting – the painting becomes a part of your life.
Of course, not every painting or every mode of artistic expression affects the viewer in the same way. If a painting is to catch the viewer in a trap, it has to attract his/her gaze using all possible means. It has to induce his/her senses and reason, to pervade his/her conscious memory, to touch his/her former perceptions, and perhaps also wishes and fears, so that the contact between the painting and the viewer is close, complete and, above all, immediate.
Among Slovene painters the work of Jože Tisnikar holds special sway, and the public receives it as though it is surrounded with a kind of charisma. The power of his paintings is astonishing. They attract us beyond explanation with their unfashionable style and traditional motifs rooted in Christian iconography and everyday life, as well as by their powerful magnetism. Tisnikar’s painting succeeds in something which current modern art deliberately denies. He does not attract his viewers with the use of large quantities of material data arranged so that they must be perceived by moving around and through haptic and visual perception. Instead he succeeds in exciting us with refined, artistic means and materially moderate art so that we are all perplexed, shocked, agitated, and the impression of the artwork stays with us for a long time.
This effect is due to a certain feeling of domesticity emanating from his paintings. The viewer tends to feel as though the scenes are a part of his/her own life. This is primarily a consequence of the painter’s special relationship towards the world, so beautifully presented in Tomaševič’s documentary film. The film depicts the painter as a mute and uninvolved witness observing the events around him, while his unique attitude towards life, superiority, a kind of philosophical distance and the ability to uncover the real semblance of things, enable him to see all episodes of everyone’s life – from birth to love to death – passing in front of his eyes. Tisnikar’s erudition as an onlooker has focused his view of local life and reality, of customs and habits, singularities and secrets. In his paintings Tisnikar succeeds in establishing direct contact with the viewers precisely because of his genuine and profound interest in his fellow people, especially in the powerless who seem to be unable to control the conditions of their own existence, who encounter poverty, disease and sorrow as their inevitable fate. For this reason, painting that deals with the spirit of a place cannot be related to local colouring. It is simply a result of the painter’s capacity to comprehend his fellow being, specifically defined by the pulse of his/her living place, but also with universal meaning, since the main themes of birth, love, and death are common to all humanity.
Tisnikar’s paintings are never reflections of concrete motifs, narratives of definite stories, even if some of his figures are modelled on existing persons, and some paintings depict the deceased that passed through his hands in the prosection room or their relatives, either in mourning or remaining unaffected; and even if the figure of the raven – Tisnikar’s domestic companion for many years –  often plays an important part in his paintings . Despite the great influence of his surroundings and the artist’s immediate perception of them, his intentions are quite the opposite: concrete scenes are depicted to convey hidden contexts. The ideas behind Tisnikar’s paintings are always grand, universal issues of birth, death, and what comes in between – filled with love, or melancholy, when love is missing. Thus a tavern scene is not only a genre depiction of the drunken guests, but rather a hint at their intimate distresses and agonies, at the need for oblivion and self-punishment leading to death. The repeating trains of people emerging from the dawn at the high horizon of a painting are not only a depiction of processions accompanying the deceased on the way to the grave, but a reflection on the idea of the eternal streaming of life, in which an individual is an extra rather than a star. Or, as Tisnikar explains: »Life has its hidden depths, like the sea. All one can do is to keep afloat, speak one’s assigned part, have some fun, and make one’s exit to leave the limelight to others.« His other more recent motif is the crucifix, only in Tisnikar’s paintings the Crucified is doubly afflicted - he suffers from his martyr’s death as well from being crippled. The stump of his missing left arm points unusually upwards and does not drop, as one would expect of a limb. This fact suggests that the mutilation was a revenge upon the cross, not upon Christ himself while still alive. The motif of the Crucified is always both an image, a unique reflection of a concrete scene, and a universal symbol. The pain related to the symbolic world is thus doubled, it is the collective pain of humanity, which experiences this second injury as a wound on its sphere of perception. The image of the suffering Christ has always enabled people to experience their own suffering through identification with the pain of the Other–Christ. The symbol, helps them unite within a common feeling, and this collective experience creates the awareness that they are not alone in their distress. In dealing with grand and universal issues, Tisnikar reaches out to all of us, to everything we have in common and that brings us together as secular viewers and to everything that induces our humanism and compassion. This address of the wide public is also a speciality of Tisnikar’s painting mission, proving that he opposes the new-age obsession – and the modernist one in particular - with his own, singular perception of the world of every individual. He is extremely sceptical about the relevance of such a standpoint and tries to convince us that our perception of the world consists more of elements that bind, rather than separate us.
Thus Tisnikar does not create narrative paintings, but reflections of timeless allegories. The painted images are meant to present abstract conceptions or ideas by means of allusive figures, persons from known stories, and imaginary creatures. The most effective painting motifs, those that have the power to seize the viewer’s imagination and influence his/her perception of the world, have always included general, ethical issues which help to explain the metaphysics of the world. Love, sacrifice, denial of material benefits, these were the themes most frequently depicted in the tradition-rich Western art commissioned by the Catholic Church. Also depicted were Christ, Virgin and Child and countless saints. Even the Church was aware, however, that the most effective images for the stimulation of belief were those which frightened and threatened the believers. This is why in the Middle Ages, the image of Christ suffering on the cross became more popular than that of Christ on the throne, and the Last Judgement became one of the most important motifs. Later, during the Renaissance, the most popular saint was St. Anthony; especially his Temptations enabled artists to let their imagination soar to the most daring heights. Paradoxically, the scenes of horror and fright served not only as ideological repression, but also represented a creative field for artists, upon which their imaginative passion could freely invent the most non-realistic images and depict scenes of the most mysterious, fantastic and appalling phantoms.
If we were to define the decisive art history and sociological context of Tisnikar’s paintings, we would come across a surprising and interesting comparison. In the history of painting there is a great and influential artwork whose creation was influenced by the hospital ambience, the Isenheim altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald in the chapel of the monastery hospital in Colmar. Its expressive depiction of human suffering has influenced numerous portrayals of the Crucified in this century. A rough, even naturalistic image of Christ on the cross, which provokes an emotional response – shuddering and anger – in the viewer, is supplemented by a side altarpiece with a fantastic scene of Christ resurrected, and the Temptations of St. Anthony, composed with bizarre ingenuity. The presence of St. Anthony the Abbot is not a surprise, since monasteries with hospital functions were in the care of the Anthonite Order. Fantasy and expressiveness, painting as consolation, and the hospital context – all these things noted as characteristics of Tisnikar’s work were already combined in one work.
Tisnikar’s painting is also connected with hospital surroundings. During his work in the prosection room, his artistic patron was Dr. Strnad, the head of Slovenj Gradec hospital. For decades, his studio was a room in the cellar of the hospital, and the bulk of his motifs were connected with these surroundings. We could say, therefore, that the hospital context was instrumental in the genesis of Tisnikar’s painting.
By the end of the Middle Ages, to be brought into hospital meant farewell to life, for the rudimentary medicine did not allow for substantial help to the sick. Thus the painting in the hospital chapel was the only solace left to the dying. It was the sanctified object through which these people – in prayer - sought contact with God as their only remaining hope. Nowadays things have changed and we all live under the illusion that science can prolong our life indefinitely. This is a deceptive hope, however, and Tisnikar warns us of this fact with his motifs of dying and passing away. Not that he wants us to be sorrowful and pensive, rather he wants to prepare us for reality. He wants to ease our experience and, in his words, enliven the memory of the final encounter.
Thus Tisnikar takes painting back to one of its forgotten roots. He discovered painting as his individual form of expression which enabled him to overcome the unease and anxiety of perpetual encounters with physical decay and death in the green-blue lit prosection room. But it was perfectly clear, however, that his painting would never be a distanced or analytically-serene solution to painting problems. Art induced by basic impulses contains magic and the power of spells and deliverance, the kind of power witch doctors and spiritual men had long ago. When a work of art is not merely an aesthetic object, but a part of an indistinct narration and defence, its influence grows, it is there to console and comfort the viewer. Only seldom have we come so close to the mysterious and magical as we do with Tisnikar. The raven, traditional symbol of unbelievers and magicians, has found its master.