JUNE 3, 2014

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About

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… The following gives you a chance to read the address by Dr. G. Neumann

– an art historian – which he performed at the opening of an exhibit of

paintings by Ute Neumann. He gave the kind permission to the artist to use

the text at her own discretion.

EXHIBIT : “MUSICAL IMPRESSIONS” by Ute Neumann. ” Seeing Melodies”,

” Hearing Colors” – pictures are sounding – music you can see. This is – I’m

expressing myself in musical terms – the bass-line, the endless melody of the

pictures in this exhibit.

I’m permitted to get you acquainted with the works by Ute Neumann with

whom I don’t share family relations even though I carry the same name.

It doesn’t seem to be so difficult with the brightly colored sometimes

figurative and abstract paintings; but this is a wrong impression. We are not

allowed to see these pictures isolated by themselves, we have to understand

them as part of todays art and the development at the beginning of the 21.

century. As we do that we meet some problems.

Right now the modern art finds itself in a phase of historical changes. There

are several well-known accepted art critics, feuilletonists and artists who are

arguing with conviction, intelligent analyses and historical persuasive

explorations which are comprehensible and believable, that the end of culture

and art are here.

Edouard Beaucamp, the respected art critic of the FAZ writes: ” Since one

generation we are treated with the enlarged explanation of the meaning of art

(“everything is art, anybody is an artist, anything goes”), and now we are also

trained to see the waste as the channel of life and aesthetic document of this

generation”. Why did that happen? I don’t want to make TV and consume

compulsion responsible for the cheapest cultural products and rich

entertainment. But one thing is remarkable:

culture and art develop at a predestinated pace. They don’t improve if they

have no enemy – that means to develop without any critic. The modern art

has no enemy. The “arm-in-arm” position by art critics , exhibitioners and

modern galerists find everything acceptable and good. They all prevent the

opposing antagonism to serious art of present-time modern art. The young

Enzensberger wrote some time ago: “We need an enemy”. We were satisfied

with the present freedom of culture, that agrees with everything, even with

less freedom more content? With the resurrection of an earnest enemy with

art criticism who opposes stupidity, refuse and worthless art and creates

categories and new art perception – this would make art interpretation and art

understanding meaningful again.

We have to approach the meanings of Ute Neumann’s paintings under the

before mentioned aspects – considering today’s art news. First of all: we have

to realize that today no country or region has its own style of art and there are

no directions binding in a certain kind of present considerations. It is

characteristic for the condition of today’s modern art that the international art

scene seems to have abandoned the painting on a flat two-dimensional

surface – the so-called “Tafel-Bild” in German – the panel.

Ute Neumann is painting on a panel, she doesn’t consider to change into

another field, and she does well, because the enemy-free art critic is acting

divided and ambivalent. The modern art critic accepts the production of

“Tafel-Bilder” by the Grand-masters Baselitz, Richter, Polke, Lüpertz, Tuebke,

Heisig, Sitte and Mattheuer of the previous DDR. The departure of this

practice and the return to the Tafel-Bild proves two facts: 1. The “Zeitgeist” or

the spirit of the “enemy-critic” is short living and capricious 2.The panel of the

Renaissance is still living today and keeps the timeless and classic form of

artistic expression. The timelessness of the style shows its modernization!

Today you are here to attend a modern art exhibit, though Ute Neumann is

not an art critic and not an excited artist, she doesn’t stage or manage her

shows herself. The art critic and the curator in the recent past tried to make

us believe that art has to frighten, to accuse, to provoke or to demand –

certainly those are functions of art, too – but art doesn’t exclude at the same

degree that it may serve and help aesthetic beauty. Art always would be

modern as long as it is good – even without carrying a mandate.

Ute Neumann loves to be inspired by music when she is painting. She is

listening to some composition, lets it sink in, takes it into her feeling, her inner

world and fashions the music in soul and spirit and creates the inner picture –

often after hearing it only once – into color and form. This is not always a

reflection of the music she just experienced, it is spiritually reflected work.

Musical designations used by the composer, portraits, that are perceived by

her mind , are flowing occasionally into transformations of the painted work.

Here it is not the sound that associates the colors used by the painter but a

reality that uses a title of a composition and inspires the painters work with

the brush.

​The colors of the music become independent music, even though they are

confined by the realistic title. Always when a title of a musical composition is

influencing the painting, abstract representation is changing the heard music

into realistic painting. The free sound is not anymore emotionally used but is

steered into an outlined form. It is no new idea by Ute Neumann to be guided

from music to painting. In the Renaissance already the Florentine painter, the

architect Leon Battista Alberti constructed house fronts with the principle of

musical intervals. It was the imagination of the Romantic that music and

painting support each other to increase the effect. Philipp Otto Runge

suddenly understands by looking at Raffaels Sistine Madonna that the painter

is a musician and speaker at the same time. Runge composes his famous

work “die Tageszeiten” (The Times of the Day) like a symphony. The poet

Adalbert Stifter asks: “Wouldn’t it be possible to create music for the eye

using light and colors at the same time? And the french poet Beaudelaire

remarks when he listened to Wagner’s music: ” It would be surprising, if

music could not suggest colors! And colors and sounds (music) together

could suggest thoughts!”

With the beginning of the 20. Century the “musicalization” of the painting

became a central theme for the modern art. Kandinsky, Klimt and Matisse are

trying to create music in colors. Kandinsky is the artist who felt and reflected

the interdependency of painting and music the most. To him color and music

have the same intellectual claim to be art. Kandinsky’s Colleague at the

Bauhaus in Weimar, the Swiss painter Johannes Itten, is finally the one who

suggests the “musicalization” of painting by rules. He developed the science

of chromatic colors, analog to the chromatic scale of tones. He added 12

different color shades to 12 segments in the color wheel. Lyonel Feininger

wrote fugues for the organ, whose structures he used for his paintings. Ernst

Wilhelm Nay, stimulated by works composed by Stockhausen and Brulez

detached himself from the figurative paintings and decided to join the

nonobjective painting with his “Rhythmic pictures”. It is known that KRH

Sonderburg listened to music by Parker, Monk and Rolling Stones when he

was working.

Let’s go back to Ute Neumann. We know she finds herself with her paintings

in historical tradition - and she knows it herself.

These are the most different expressions like fugues, songs, operas,

symphonic poetry or 12-step-tonality used to inspire distinct painted works

that are stimulated by figurative or landscape presentations. Painters inspired

by music create realistic and abstract works. Ute Neumann is a good

example for this kind ofworkmanship, and her work shows abstract and

figurative paintings. She takes her painting profession very serious and

dedicates herself to her skilled work. At first an autodidact she later received

a 2-year scholarship from the Dr.-Hans-Hoch-Foundation that paved her way.

Then came the successful break-through. She got an invitation to exhibit at

the German Embassy in Tallinn – Estonia and following that she showed her

paintings at the Goethe Institute in Oslo/ Norway at the biggest industrial

company at the Norsk-Hydro in Oslo.

Ute Neumann is a colorist, a painter who is thinking in colors and she

executes her intuitions on a plain level. Her gift is shown by a distinct

understanding of colors and by an instinct for the rhythmic distribution of

colors on a certain flat level. Her figurative compositions are not determined

by drawings. Nothing graphic is designated to the paintings. She doesn’t want

to be a specialist in graphics. For somebody who comes from the colors like

her graphic seems to be far away. The color on the panel and expanse are an

end in itself, that’s why she is attracted to abstract painting. Somebody like

her loves the brilliance of colors and is far from printed designs. The color on

the surface is an end in itself. That is the reason she prefers especially the

abstract painting. Because by developing the colors there are no limits, color

and flatness have no border. Ladies and Gentlemen, take the time to discover

the musical disposition and forms in the paintings of this exhibition. Ask

yourself whether Ute Neumann’s execution of her paintings meet Schiller’s

idea in his 22. letter of his “Aesthetic Letters”:

“The creative art in its highest perfection must become music and should

touch us by its sensual presence.”

I wish you stimulating discussions about Ute Neumann’s paintings, joy while

looking at them and taking home in your mind the gift of the splendor of her

beautiful color-music.