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.