Painting Paradox

Portrait by Aubrey Mayer

Charline von Heyl

Jean Dubuffet Warhols Send Sotheby’s Soaring From Raging Bulls to Miserable Drips Faking It at Frieze Contemporary Art Market File: Rufino Tamayo The Armory Show Silver Linings

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

CvH: I used to get that a lot when I was a kid, people saying that I was basically just doing group shows. But by the end, you would see that actually it does work as a whole, and that every one could only be a von Heyl painting.

MP: I see that one of the books you’re reading is about the actress Romy Schneider.

CvH: Again, I think it’s the sad clown theme. Everything about beauty, I think, is what you struggle with as an artist; beauty is so attractive, but it’s also what limits you more than anything else. So you have to create a new form of interest that goes beyond that. As we know, it cannot be ugly, either, because ugliness is the other side, the other extreme of beauty. You have to really find a different way of maneuvering. For me, that’s where the sabotage comes in [Sabotage is the title of her new artist’s book (Xn Editions, 2008)]. When you create something indifferent and destroy, transform, and manipulate that into something that you can’t quite read anymore, but that has a strong feeling of atmosphere, then you have created something new; this process of extraction is actually quite brutal. I find that when I start working again, I always have to get to the point where I really disrespect my work. I always thought that as an artist, you would get to this point where you just do your work because you know that you can do it. But, being in Dijon, actually thinking to myself, This is a great show, I did these paintings, intimidated me to the point of feeling paralyzed.

MP: Have you ever had a complete mental block?

CvH: Are you kidding?

MP: What’s the longest?

CvH: Actually, the longest was this winter, after Marfa [Texas, where von Heyl had a residency at the Chinati Foundation]. The last two years were extremely productive, but after Marfa there was...September, October, November, December, and January. I used to come into the studio and then leave because I was having panic attacks. Then I forced myself to actually stay in the studio, to get into a really bad mood, and leave again. Then slowly, I stayed in the studio; I could at least read in the studio again — that was a way of kind of taming myself. Only in February did I start working again. And now, I just put something on the canvas, I try out what happens, see if it has this playful quality that’s going to take me somewhere new. I cannot go into the studio feeling happy about my work and try to make another painting like that. It just doesn’t work. I mean, it’s always phony.

MP: So you always start from the place of total despair?

CvH: That’s why I’m drawn to this clown theme; the worst platitude about painting is the sad clown, and then you just start to realize that everything about painting actually incorporates all the platitudes you can possibly think about. And you live with those platitudes. Platitudes that you kind of sacrifice your life for, that make you believe nothing else is important anymore. You’re like a druggie that gets addicted to the high of creating something, to creating all this weird shit. I mean, I believe in it because I live it, but I don’t take it too seriously. I have a sense of humor. 

"Painting Paradox" originally appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' Summer 2009 Table of Contents.