Man Sleeping in L.A. Apartment, a painting by Eoin Llewellyn
The title of this painting, Man Sleeping in L.A. Apartment, plays in counterpoint to its subject. We see a man lying on a carpet, eyes closed, shoes on, dressed for the street. If he is sleeping, certainly it is a disturbed sleep. Just as certainly, this is a disturbing work of art.
The man lies in an unwalled space that is neither wholly natural (note the carpet, the small buildings in the distance) nor wholly cultural (the meticulous attention to cloud formation). Lombardy poplars on the hillsides echo this hybrid status: a species of tree we associate with cultivated landscapes.
The relationship of the man to the landscape is problematic, fraught. Though he lies on the ground he is not at rest (the crook of the arm and wrist). Is he listening for some sort of signal, as American Indians once put their ears to railroad tracks, listening for the approach of a train miles in the distance?
A sleep without rest, an apartment without walls, an uncertain landscape: here are sources of the disturbance. We are reminded of the anxious worlds of Surrealism: Magritte, Delvaux, de Chirico.
Other sources? The unrelieved, antique browness of man and earth, the amped-up blueness of the sky. In this artificial place we cannot feel at home, not as we might strolling the harmonized worlds of Hobbema or Ruisdael.
The uncertain and unsettled relationship of the human to the natural world also recalls paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. But in Friedrich's compositions, figures are usually small relative to the landscapes that command their gaze. Nature dominates, challenges. The confrontation is direct, the balance of power is clear. Not so in Llewellyn's painting. Here the sleeping man fills the foreground, his back turned to the distant hills and worrying sky. The cropping of his head by the frame's edge suggests a misfit, not a confrontation. This radical crop imparts a more contemporary pictorial sense than what we find in Friedrich. Despite that, the 19th and 21st century visions each describes an uneasy co-existence of culture and nature.
Man Sleeping employs a compositional device that draws the viewer into a diamond-shaped void bounded by the upper tip of the man's hip and lower edge of the cloud formation. The shape directs us into an existential funnel. Where are we headed? What lies beyond this moment? The impossibility of an answer stirs unease.
The painting urges us to consider our present moment in history. This writer, a 62-year old American, feels poised on a downward slope. The world appears more anxious than anytime in his memory. Markets in turmoil, unemployment soaring. The global climate changing. And while there are signs of spring in parts of the Arab world, in most of the West it is winter.
If the man in this painting is listening, what is he hearing? Nothing good.
Nick Despota
September 2011
California, America
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EXTRACTS
ENGLISH & GERMAN TEXTS BELOW
COLLISIONS
EOIN LLEWELLYN
“They didn’t understand what I understood by ‘Surrealism’…something more real than reality”
-Pablo Picasso
“You realise that you can’t represent reality at all...that what you make represents nothing but itself, and therefore is itself reality.”
-Gerhard Richter
I am a humanist in philosophy and art. My work reacts against over-conceptualism and aims to re-engage the general public in the painted human form and its potential to deliver an emotive visual narrative. I believe my work and its theoretical underpinnings resonate with the concerns voiced by art critic Robert Hughes, namely that the commercialization, or monetization, of art has contributed to the demise of craft, skill and our very relationship to aesthetic beauty. Recovering aesthetic beauty and drawing the viewer to a visceral experience is what I continually aim to achieve.
The sources I work from—found photographs, magazine clippings, film stills, crime scenes, vintage imagery and the live model—follow a humanist tradition in painting. My influences reach much further back, calling on the techniques of Velázquez, Van Dyck and Degas. The works of these artists often rely on no more than six colors yet nevertheless carry vast visual impact.
My appreciation for the painting skills of the past is fused with the aesthetic dislocation of both the figure and the reality found within the works of Francis Bacon, Picasso and Giacometti, and in the films of David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovsky.
With these artists, the depiction of reality itself does not suffice; it must go further. In my case, it is the material—paint—and its ability to erase and reconstitute reality that is the reality. It can be seen in the canon of exaggerated form to attain beauty, used by the Greeks and Romans, and reapplied in Michelangelo’s and Ingre’s overly voluminous sculptures and paintings. It can also be seen in the primitive masks that shocked the artists of Paris in the 1900’s and led to the destruction and internal implosion of the figure in the works of Picasso. Bacon, in response, contributed his own interpretation to this long line of new aesthetic realities.
The transition from standard realism to a new reality takes time, as has been illustrated through the history of past painters. This slow but steady progression is something I am sure of and endeavor to contribute to.
While not all of my images have fully broken from a faithful realism, there are glimpses of the elusive capturing of what Bacon would call the other, evident in the supple psychlogical renderings of the head and my decisions to leave areas of canvas bare so as to increase the potency of the falsehood of the reality being painted. This I believe only acts to increase the power of the paint’s presence within the figures inhabiting the space of the canvas.
Similar to the representational passages in Bacon’s work—like the lightbulb, the arrow or the Letraset typography—these are visual facts that amplify the viscuous alternative reality of the figures painted within the same space. I have conviction that this relationship, between that which is known and identifiable and the mark which is elusive and intuitive, is an essential merging to further the reality of painting itself.
EXTRACTS
KOLLISION
EOIN LLEWELLYN
“Sie hatten nicht dieselbe Auffassung von Surrealismus wie ich... etwas, das realer ist als die Realität.“ – Pablo Picasso
„Du erkennst, dass du Realität überhaupt gar nicht abbilden kannst... dass alles, was du machst, immer nur sich selbst darstellt und somit selbst Realität ist.“ – Gerhard Richter
Ich bin Geisteswissenschaftler der Philosophie und Kunst. Mit meinen Arbeiten stellen ich mich gegen Über-Konzeptualismus und möchte erreichen, dass die Menschen ihre Aufmerksamkeit wieder dem gemalten menschlichen Körper widmen und dessen Potential, emotionale visuelle Geschichten zu erzählen. Ich bin der Überzeugung, dass meine Werke und ihre theoretischen Fundamente die Überlegungen aufgreifen, die der Kunstkritiker Robert Hughes formuliert hat, allen voran, dass die Kommerzialisierung, sozusagen die Monetisierung der Kunst zum Niedergang des Handwerklichkeit, der Fähigkeiten und unserer eigenen Beziehung zur ästhetischen Schönheit beigetragen hat. Ich strebe unaufhörlich danach, die ästhetische Schönheit wiederzuentdecken und den Betrachter einer intuitiven Erfahrung auszusetzen.
Die Quellen, mit denen ich arbeite – Photos, die ich entdeckt habe, Ausschnitte aus Magazinen, Standbilder aus Filmen, Tatorte, Bilder aus vergangenen Zeiten und Aktmodelle – orientieren sich an der humanistischen Tradition des Malens. Beeinflusst wurde ich durch die Techniken früher Maler wie Velázquez, Van Dyck und Degas. Die Werke dieser Künstler basieren oft auf nicht mehr als sechs Farben und erzielen dennoch eine enorme visuelle Wirkung.
Meine Wertschätzung für die Kunstfertigkeiten der Maler vergangener Zeiten ist verschmolzen mit der ästhetischen Verschiebung sowohl der Figur als auch der Realität wie man sie in den Werken von Francis Bacon, Picasso und Giacometti sowie in den Filmen von David Lynch und Andrei Tarkovsky finden kann.
Diesen Künstlern ist die Darstellung der Realität nicht mehr genug – es muss darüber hinausgehen. In meinem Fall ist es das Material – die Farbe – und dessen Fähigkeit, Realität verschwinden zu lassen und wiederherstellen zu können, das ist die Realität. Es kann im Kanon der übertriebenen Darstellung gesehen werden, wodurch Schönheit gewonnen wird, so wie es die Griechen und die Römer einsetzten und wie es in Michelangelos und Ingres gewaltigen Skulpturen und Gemälden erneut Verwendung fand. Es kann ebenso in den primitiven Masken gesehen werden, die die Künstler um 1900 in Paris schockierten und die zur Dekonstruktion der Figur und zur innere Implosion in den Werken Picassos führte. Bacon wiederum trug mittels seiner Interpretation seinen Anteil dazu bei und reihte sich ein in die lange Linie der Künstler der neuen ästhetischen Realitäten.
Der Übergang vom bekannten Realismus hin zur neuen Realität braucht Zeit, wie man in der Geschichte der vergangenen Maler gesehen hat. Ich glaube fest an diesen langsamen, aber stetigen Fortschritt und bemühe mich darum, dazu beizutragen.
Nicht alle meine Bilder haben vollkommen mit der getreuen Darstellung der Realität gebrochen, doch es gibt Andeutungen der flüchtigen Auffassung des „Anderen“ wie in den Werken von Bacon in den lebendigen, aufrüttelnden Darstellungen des Kopfes vorkommen sowie in meinen Entscheidungen, Teile der Leinwand leer zu lassen, um die Wirkung der Unwahrheit der gemalten Realität zu verstärken.
Das, so denke ich, passiert lediglich, um die Macht der Präsenz der Farben innerhalb der Figuren auf der Leinwand zu verstärken.
Ähnlich den darstellerischen Ausschnitten in Bacons Werken – wie die Glühbirne, der Pfeil oder die Letraset Typographie – sind dies visuelle Fakten, die die alternative Realität der gezeichneten Figuren im selben Raum verstärken. Ich bin überzeugt, dass die Beziehung zwischen dem Bekannten und Identifizierbaren und dem Schwer zu fassenden und Intuitiven eine essentielle Verschmelzung in Richtung der Realität des Malens selbst ist.
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My present body of paintings is a study in the restrained palette of 16th-19th century painters such as Velázquez, Degas and Van Dyck, whose works often relied on no more than six colors yet nevertheless carry vast emotive and visual impact. While I find many painters of today exciting and progressive, these early masters teach us the importance of the sheer quality of the paint work, the simple directness of the act unimpeded by over-conceptualism, and paint’s ability to encapsulate that which words cannot.
I am continually fascinated by the quality of craft within these works, and in reaction to what I see around me in contemporary galleries and museums I decided to return to this approach, combining it with 20th century imagery. I believe my work, and its theoretical underpinnings, resonates with the concerns voiced by art critic Robert Hughes, namely that the commercialisation, or monetisation, of art has contributed to the demise of craft, skill, and our very relationship to aesthetic beauty.
My current work therefore tries to recapture lost knowledge in painting mediums, compositional devices and colour. This appreciation for the painting skills of the past is fused with the dislocation of both the figure and reality within the works of Bacon, Picasso and Giacometti. These ideas, as well as a commitment to the psychological power of the portrait, are the main themes explored in this body of work.
I work from many sources including found photographs, magazine clippings, film stills, police mug shots and crime scenes, vintage photography and from the live model in the studio. The images I decide to work with follow a humanist tradition in painting filtered through a contemporary lens. These can be images depicting tenderness between a couple in private, or violent fight scenes which allow me to explore movement and space, referencing the frenetic work of Bacon, the cold reality of Marlene Dumas and the excitement of Goya’s depictions of our bizarre humanity.
The connecting principle between the varying images I work with is that they offer me the opportunity to explore the presence of the figure or an otherness in a scene. Capturing an almost tangible human presence through paint is the challenge that drives me, because it is the realization of that goal that ensures images endure rather than suffer a pictorial death. To this end, the application of paint must be both definite and elusive, for it is not my aim to merely record in a realist sense, but to imbue the paint with psychological intent and emotion, and to elevate the beauty of craft in the stead of aesthetic fashions.
Llewellyn’s work has been exhibited throughout Ireland, England and Germany and is to be found in both private and public collections throughout the world.
To see images and reviews, or to read more about Llewellyn’s work in his own words, go to www.llewellyn.ie.
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T.A.O.M.A.C.
2009
Vol 2
BERLIN GERMANY
The question of existence is central to the vision of this work. The physical space of the curator’s body is all the mass he and all of us uptake in this world, or this reality.
On meeting Lan during a performance in his black suit I was immediately taken by its direct embodiment of a simple exploration of the human being in a time, space and presence phenomena.
Anthony Gormley’s sculptures came to mind as did Alberto Giacometti’s artistic philosophy of “du negative”; it is in the very absence of the self, or the known mark that the artist would normally make, that one may find the self and presence in a completely different way.
My work is always created from the standpoint of addressing the question of the loss of man or the affirmation of man: one’s place within life and life as a whole, the space we inhabit and our corporeal sense of self versus the metaphyisical.
The question is not that you exist, but rather in what capacity do you exist?
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Points of view on working on images of the figure and the head
§
What interests me in the art of portraiture is not the likeness, the beauty or the colors of a particular painting, person or photograph. It is rather its ability to trap the presence of the model, or a more expansive idea of the human’s embodiment of space, in a way that defies the two-dimensional space it is depicted upon.
For example, when one looks at Francisco de Goya’s black paintings or some of Francis Bacon’s works one is disallowed from perceiving this as a flat canvas with painting material upon it.
The image and its emotive creation defy standard cognitive space and it inhabits quite a different dimension within the mind and eyes of the audience. Perhaps this is Art’s way of creating a space-time experience where material and time take on a different reality and, in turn, bring the mind of the audience to that same reality.
Taking this as the basis for what interests me, I have searched out images which come close to creating this intuitive experience.
Eoin Llewellyn
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THE RETURNING
27 August, 2007
Eoin Llewellyn and Alternative Entertainment Gallery launch Llewellyn’s New Works from the 8 September to 30 September, 2007. The opening reception will take place on 8 September from 3-5pm with an opening speech by Patrick Dunne, author of the Lazarus Bell.
Llewellyn’s largest solo show of the summer embraces an eclectic mix of mediums to powerful effect. Alistair McBride of Cultural Capital has lauded this approach, stating:
"Often when an artist puts his hand to different media the message and sense of cohesion is fragmented or diluted, with Llewellyn only the opposite is true; his photographic projects, sculpture, installation work, charcoals and oil paintings are all inter-connected and are mutually informative, the more of his works one sees the more intricate and considered layers that can be discovered".
New Works takes the viewer through a diverse range of paintings and sculptures which although contemporary, contain a clear influence from the past with references to the techniques and structures of Manet, Rodin, Velazquez, Picasso and Corot. In New Works, Llewellyn continues to explore philosophical questions:
"I have always associated the act of creating with the metaphysical, a belief that art can be a mediator between two worlds. My primary interest lies in the tension between belief and disbelief which faces modern man. The vacuous and the spiritual, and art’s ability to act upon this and steal meaning from emptiness".
HISTORY OF DIAMONDS (2005)
My present work explores Hellenistic sculpture and its historic surface to inform the present. These intense charcoal drawings are realised over a long period of time. Slowly building up layer upon layer of shade and contour resulting in a surface that is both classical and yet real, experienced rather than illustrated.
Classicism or the perfect drawing is not of concern here. The impetus lies rather in the contemplative nature of such an approach to art where beauty, craft and content merge to create a stimulating visual experience which works on both levels of form and content.
In a world where immediacy prevails and the demands upon the human mind escalate by the day, one feels it is important as an artist to react and question the motives and reasoning for such a manic reality and the impact it is having upon us. The archetypes as understood by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are fading and fracturing. The symbols and social structures, which have acted as guides to the general psyche of a people, are wavering.
Beauty and ugliness, pain and resolve lie side by side in these drawings, creating a distant reality from its heroic Hellenistic origin. The works’ original intent is subversed and replaced with a completely new experience.
E. Llewellyn
TRANSITUS, from artist’s compilation, The Red Book (2001)
Never would the eye have perceived the sun if it had not first taken its form and beauty.
To believe that a material object such as a painting or sculpture can contain an actual physical or spiritual presence is the illusion that both artist and audience participate in, yet it is this lie or illusion that has sustained particular veins in art and rituals for thousands of years.
From the Pyramids in Egypt to the rituals of Tribal cultures to Goya’s enigmatic black paintings and the physical void found within Francis Bacon’s figures.
Perhaps, contained within the psyche of the human being is the belief that art can harness, or ‘Trap’ a certain ‘otherness’ within our experiences of life and reality which is otherwise inexplicable.
What I involve myself in, as many artists do, is an attempt to create visual substance where words cannot.
“God is dead” is a paramount philosophy to the content of my work. The Question of life’s journey and its unknown end have fired the imagination of the mind since man’s beginning. Yet even after Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution,” the Big Bang, quantum physics, space exploration, capitalism, enlightenment, etc., we still yearn to believe in a distant ‘otherness’ behind what we see. It fascinates me to see in this modern era how our beliefs persist, evolve, or leave us altogether.
The search and findings of the psychologist Carl G. Jung and the mythologists Joseph Campbell have been an invaluable source of inspiration to my work.
Their exploration into the human’s subconscious relationship with life’s journey and death present us with a beautiful meaning and inner function of life and the challenges it poses to the self within.
Art itself is a journey, a marriage between one’s experience in life and the subconscious. To immerse oneself through creativity into these two worlds is highly rewarding.
E. Llewellyn
THE GOLDEN TREE (2000)
The tree since times of antiquity has always presented itself as a beautiful yet simple symbol for life and its journeys.
In its universal appeal it has the ability to act as a metaphor for the human experience of love, life, death and spiritual and psychic growth.
Joseph Campbell, the renowned professor of anthropology and mythology and author of the “The Power of Myth,” explores the origins of “The Tree” as a symbol within our minds. His findings show that before man became settled within an agrarian society and subverted nature to his own will, he had a very different relationship with his surroundings. It was The Seed, The Plant, The Tree, which sustained life and hence it was these symbols which came to represent not only life itself, but God.
Thus, from the Wats of Tibet, to the frescoed walls of Pompeii, the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Horus, to the cruxification of Christ on the tree of knowledge—the myriad of images and archetypes associated with the tree are both as fascinating as they are endless.
E. Llewellyn
STREAM (2000)
"Eternity isn’t some later time,
Eternity isn’t a long time,
Eternity has nothing to do with time,
Eternity is that dimension which
thinking and time cuts out,
The experience of eternity here
and now is the function of life"
Joseph Campbell (excerpt from “The Power of Myth”)
Within this exhibition I have continued to explore a number of themes which have always been of concern to me.
The Question of You and I, The existence of God,
The Unconscious, Life in both its beauty and
futility and the ritual of Death and its material outcome.
The wonderfully vast and diverse imagination of the peoples of this world engages these questions into a colourful dialogue of both story and song, ritual and dance.
Yet within such diversity is to be found a common word, clarity and purpose.
E. Llewellyn__________________________________________________________
Never would the eye have perceived the sun if it had not first taken its form and beauty.
To believe that a material object such as a painting or sculpture can contain an actual physical or spiritual presence is the illusion that both artist and audience participate in, yet it is this lie or illusion that has sustained particular veins in art and rituals for thousands of years.
From the Pyramids in Egypt to the rituals of Tribal cultures to Goya’s enigmatic black paintings and the physical void found within Francis Bacon’s figures.
Perhaps, contained within the psyche of the human being is the belief that art can harness, or ‘Trap’ a certain ‘otherness’ within our experiences of life and reality which is otherwise inexplicable.
What I involve myself in, as many artists do, is an attempt to create visual substance where words cannot.
“God is dead” is a paramount philosophy to the content of my work. The Question of life’s journey and its unknown end have fired the imagination of the mind since man’s beginning. Yet even after Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution,” the Big Bang, quantum physics, space exploration, capitalism, enlightenment, etc., we still yearn to believe in a distant ‘otherness’ behind what we see. It fascinates me to see in this modern era how our beliefs persist, evolve, or leave us altogether.
The search and findings of the psychologist Carl G. Jung and the mythologists Joseph Campbell have been an invaluable source of inspiration to my work.
Their exploration into the human’s subconscious relationship with life’s journey and death present us with a beautiful meaning and inner function of life and the challenges it poses to the self within.
Art itself is a journey, a marriage between one’s experience in life and the subconscious. To immerse oneself through creativity into these two worlds is highly rewarding.
Excerpt Eoin Llewellyn 2000___________________________________________________________THE CALMING OF FAILURE (1999)
The truth of our existence permeates through the mind of us all at one point or other. Its answers may only lie in the reality we hold onto at any given time. These works are an attempt to arrive at a plane absent of time. Where duality is superseded by the moment as the material is by presence.
E. Llewellyn
PRESENCE (1999)
It is the ‘experience’ of a sensation which is painted. Not the event or object itself.
Through this conveying of ‘experience’ the viewer is left with an inescapable mood, or the translation of the experienced event which the creator crossed in making a piece. An object is never painted, but itself infused with experience, i.e. life itself/the general temperament of the individual, or the psychological sensation of ‘seeing.’
“The eye sees more than the heart knows.”
In this light the paint (the material itself) surpasses its material origins and encapsulates the unconscious ‘experience,’ hence immediately engaging the same in the viewer.
The sensation of experience in seeing is what is searched for constantly within all this work. Whether it is the certain ‘presence’ found within the head of a friend; hence adopting the artistic philosophies of Alberto Giacometti, or the notion that an ephemeral ‘presence’ or entity can be trapped in the terrain of a painting.
It is this that keeps one working.
E. Llewellyn