How War Penetrates the European Art Collectors’ Minds: Insider POV
It is a large industrial complex, repurposed for cultural events and commercial fairs. Areal Böhler in Düsseldorf hosts one of the newest but most promising European art fairs with a simple and indicative name: Art Düsseldorf. A hermetic space, filled with its perfect lighting, homogeneous reflective flooring, humming of an art-loving crowd and tinkling of the prosecco glasses in the on-site bar.
Like the other times, our gallery has a separate booth with white walls, a little table full of catalogues and publications by the artists we represent, and a little transparent Plia chair. The booth of our gallery is deliciously minimal, unlike most of the other ones: German galleries are still keen on striking coloured painting, dragging along a somewhat outdated Expressionist line. The space we occupy is clean and relaxing, thanks to the clean, minimalist lines of most of the artworks, carefully handpicked by the owner of our gallery: a woman with exquisite taste and commercial drive.
Like in all fairs, I assist by being present at the booth, engaging in conversations with the passerby, and trying to understand their intention. Are they just curious? Do they want to buy artwork from us? Or maybe, they are here to talk and share a story? The latter is not at all uncommon. In fact, a couple of collectors who stopped by on the first day did so because they noticed a large, almost square, minimalistic painting by Ulrich Erben. A German artist in his 80s, with a studio in Dusseldorf, he is well-known by the local collectors and art-lovers, some of whom happen to be his friends. This couple, in fact, not only knew the man well but also owned an impressive number of his paintings. After taking some time for the elegy to how beautiful of a human being Erben is, the man of the couple wanted to brag about the rarest piece by the artist that he owns. It was not like everything else Erben ever painted (he paints in series, so there is a lot of similar, but not identical artwork). The man announced how proud he was to be the only one to own such a rare piece from the famed artist, before showing it to me, before asking me who I was, or what my name was, or where I was from (many ask me that because of my confusing accent).
Note: Van Ham is a German auction house that organised charity art sales in 2022 in collaboration with Artsy to raise funds for humanitarian help to Ukraine, which was suffering the first months of the full-scale Russian invasion. The selection of artwork included big names like Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, and the aforementioned Ulrich Erben. Except, most of the collectors and artists donated the already existing pieces for sale (Andy Warhol would not create anything new, naturally), but not Erben. He said he was going to paint something special for this auction, and he did. This painting ended up in the collection of the nice couple I met at the fair, and they showed it to me proudly.
Ulrich Erben, Untouchable, 2022. From the website of Rotary Club Germany.
“You know, what is the title of it?”, the man asked me with a shade of conspiracy, “Untouchable. He called it “Untouchable””. He shows a photo of the painting on his smartphone, and it is a large canvas of a Ukrainian blue-and-yellow, painted over the Russian white-blue-red. The flag on the background is barely perceivable in the narrow margin between the Ukrainian flag and the canvas’ edge. The colours of my land are painted in a superb technique championed by Ulrich Erben. And he called them untouchable. A man who thinks in terms of colour gradients and geometrical forms produced a manifesto on the moral superiority of the victim over the aggressor.
I was moved. I told them I was Ukrainian, and that it meant more for me than they could have imagined.
Before leaving, the couple did not bother me with common curiosity questions like “How is it going at the moment” or even “What do you think about Zelensky?”, even though both are important and timely things to ask. They seemed to apologise to me for the war Russia is waging as if, to some extent, it was their personal fault. They said they hoped everyone I loved was safe. Then they left.
We had this absolutely stunning piece in our booth, by an Italian artist, Franco Guerzoni. In his late 70s, he still carries on the research he started decades ago. It revolves around the poetics of a ruin in its historical and archaeological sense, finally finding its form in the numerous layers of plaster and pigment that he applies to his canvases in a methodical, meditative manner. His artwork requires physical time to produce due to the properties of the material he employs, and this element of time gazes back at the viewer like a real archaeological site, or an uncovering of a Renaissance fresco in Italian churches. Every artwork reveals itself to the patient audience that is ready to spend time contemplating it, unrolling its layers one after another.
Franco Guerzoni, Giardino Zen, 2009. Photo by me.
An enormous white painting by Guerzoni attracted a lot of attention thanks to its size and its compelling minimalism. A couple of senior ladies approached me to talk about it. One of them spoke English, and she asked whether the artwork was hinting at a landscape of a battlefield. The traces excavated in plaster were reminiscent of the car tracks in the mud, and the little arrangement of rocks – of a ruin or a barricade. The title of the artwork is Giardino Zen (ita.: Zen Garden), and the traces were really meant to symbolise the meditative movement of a sand rake: slow, precise, and repetitive. The arrangement of stones is nothing more than garden gravel. Hints of colour that shine through the white plaster can be relative to the remnants of plants, natural pigments and dusts. In other words, nothing about this piece is about a war landscape.
As I was reciting my lines about the meaning of the artwork, worshipping the mastery of the artists and the elegance of the material solutions, one of the women was quickly and gradually translating my speech to her friend. Once they understood that the painting was exactly the opposite of what they thought, the couple exploded in cheerful gabble. “I guess, our minds are focused on the tragedies of the world”, she said in the end, “I see war even where I am supposed to see peace. Ukraine is just around the corner, and it is suffering atrocious things”. I agreed briefly, and the two cheerful German ladies were on their way.
I rarely present myself as a Ukrainian unless asked specifically. It usually takes the conversation away from a hypothesis of the acquisition of our artwork. But knowing that people just cannot take their minds off the Russian crimes against my homeland brings me a morbid feeling of comfort. Why morbid? It feels like there is a portion of suffering that is inflicted on Ukrainians, and it is inflicted on Europeans, too. They do not only feel it through the economic setbacks, but the war as a hyperobject, penetrates their lives and their thoughts and dreams, and manifests itself through the intuitive processes such as the contemplation of art.
I brought my favourite shirt to the fair. It is a black linen shirt, embroidered in white and red delicate stems of grain, birds, and a big word “Slovo” (Слово ukr.: Word) on the sleeves. It is a shirt from the Ukrainian brand Etnodim, dedicated to the Kharkiv group of writers and dissidents from the 20th century. All of them occupied a cooperative building in the form of “C” for Слово. I was wearing it when a young woman approached me and greeted me in Ukrainian. I replied enthusiastically, before she hastily proceeded to explain that she saw my shirt and just wanted to say hello. Her friend, another young woman, joined her shortly, and she was also Ukrainian. They asked me a few questions about our stand. They were not there to buy, they came to the fair on Sunday to take a look at art. It was exciting and moving to connect this part of my life to my home, through language and interaction with Ukrainians. I was sorry to say that I had to move on to the next potential client, thus being forced to say goodbye. They wished me loads of luck, all three of us moved by this brief encounter, and happy to have recognised each other in the crowd, even though not acquainted before.
It is a brief story of a garment that gives away something more than style or a dress code. For those who know, it champions my identity and reconnects me to home even when I am so far away from it.
