Elemental vision
Andrew Lambirth
Karl Weschke Beneath a Black Sky: Paintings and Drawings 1953-2004 Tate St Ives, until 9 May
Karl Weschke has been living in an isolatrth..ed house on the tip of Cape Cornwall (locally held to be slightly more westerly than Land's End itself) for more than 40 years. He was born in 1925 in Taubenpreskeln, Gera, in the province of Thuringen in Germany, grew up in considerable poverty, and was early inducted into the Hitler Youth, He fought for the Germans, was captured and made a prisoner-of-war in Britain (1945-8), and on his release settled in this country, apart from brief forays to Europe and Scandinavia. It is only in recent years that Weschke has returned to his native land and been received there with respect and admiration. A substantial retrospective exhibition of his work was mounted in Gera in 2001, documentaries were made, and he was given the freedom of the city. This year Weschke was awarded the German Order of Merit for services to the arts and to Anglo-German relations. He is also being honoured with a small select retrospective in his adopted homeland.
Tate St Ives is situated in a magnificent position overlooking Porthmeor Beach, but it has never been very good for hanging pictures in. Its principal feature is a theatrical drum-shaped entrance, around which the galleries are grouped. This waste of space, this architectural extravagance, means that there is at least one large semi-circular gallery with a splendid sea view and powerful natural light effects, but severely compromised wall space. The top floor is principally devoted to a restaurant with more views. (Two of Weschke's suites of etchings, on Egyptian and Greek themes, currently hang there, as an adjunct to the main exhibition below.) Two of the galleries where Weschke's works hang have bad lighting, the so-called drawings gallery resembling a dim storage area. The building seems to have been designed more with tourists in mind than artists but, even so. Weschke's retrospective looks impressive despite the strange environment.
The strong selection of work has been made by Tate curator Ben Tufnell, and several things have been rediscovered or relocated, while previously unshown drawings have been excavated from folders, and long-shut notebooks have been prised open. For instance, an early oil, 'Hanging' of 1961, has been reclaimed from a fellowartist's studio where it had been stored and half-forgotten for years. Described by Weschke as 'my tribute to Rembrandt', it ostensibly depicts a flayed oxen, and was based upon drawings made in the local slaughterhouse. But it also alludes to capital punishment, and indeed to Christ's Crucifixion, hence the title, which is not simply descriptive of a carcase of meat.
The curved walls of this gallery can easily distort the appearance of a painting's surface, but the light bouncing off the ocean can be even more disturbing. Two paintings hung near an expanse of glass suffer especially from this, particularly when the sun is shining as it was on the day I visited. Even if the image is a strong one, such as 'The Fire-Eater (with spectators)', the paintwork is flattened by the harsh light, the colour values and tones altered, all subtlety drained from the picture. This is not how paintings should be exhibited in a museum. Still, thankfully, some look better than others.
The wind threatens to steal your brains at Cape Cornwall, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it works away at the veneer of civilised behaviour, and forces the human being to confront the primal, the elemental — even the bestial. Gazing out over the Atlantic, with a foothold on the extremity of British soil, the artist who lives here is faced first of all with a simple struggle for survival.
Nature is constantly there, all around Weschke, inescapable. The desolate moors heading down to the sea, the Bronze Age fields, the hump of Kenidjack, that ancient hill, are always before him. He is pitted against nature, but also against himself, (But then, art is always to do with our positioning in the world, both figuratively speaking and literally.) Hence the bleak untenanted landscapes, usually bereft of human presence. When a figure does intrude, it often has the ruthlessly altered appearance of a mummer in a play, or a scarecrow stuffed with straw. Forms are exaggerated and simplified, expressions curtailed.
As Frank Whitford writes in the useful accompanying catalogue: 'Almost everything Weschke does speaks of abandonment, melancholy, fear, and the lonely struggle to understand the incomprehensibility of experience.' (Quite different from the mischievous company of the man himself.) Weschke is able to portray the suffering of nature, because he understands the suffering of man. Gallery 3 brings together four paintings — 'Meeting Point of Land and Sky II' (1961). 'Pillar of Smoke' (1964), Sturmfloten' (1965-6) and 'Cloud over Kenidjack' (1972-3) — which encapsulate Weschke's feelings about the landscape and what it can express. As he says: 'a picture becomes an independent reality, a new reality. It shouldn't be a postcard of something — it should be a new fact in existence.'
Perhaps the landscapes in this exhibition are his finest things, but there are a number of figure paintings which also make their point resoundingly. The magisterial triptych 'Study for the Women of Berlin' (1969-70), which still belongs to the artist but deserves to reside in a major public collection — perhaps in America or Britain, possibly in Berlin itself — expresses sympathy for the violated, who offer each other comfort after the trauma of rape. This is a difficult and dangerous subject to attempt, but Weschke has done something beautiful and compassionate with it, and one admires his bravery.
Another painting which had disappeared from view is 'Floating Figure' (1973-4), now in the collection of the Glyn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea. This mysterious apparition, like something out of a Goya painting, though not quite so dark, seems to be an extension of Weschke's interest in the meeting-point of land, sky and sea. It could also refer to the artist's activities as a diver, and might even presage the accident he experienced in 1977, when forced to make an emergency ascent which nearly killed him. Look at 'Body on the Beach' — Weschke describes it as 'ultimate distress'— compared to the related subject of `Caliban', seen as 'still struggling'.
Gallery 4 contains the artist's selection of work by others in the Tate collection who matter to him, Here are Turner and Kandinsky, a Marino Marini horseman, the more predictable inclusion of Kirchner. Schmidt-Rottluff and Beckmann, together with a Ralph Brown sculpture and John Crome's atmospheric 'Moonrise on the Yare'. The whole exhibition, ranging from expressive drawings (particularly one done of the Swedish landscape in 1954, and Weschke's first drawing of Kenidjack, sizzling with energy from 1960) to major oils, is a revelation. Just a pity that Weschke was not given Gallery 5, tall and well-lit, to show in. This was reserved for a trendy young artist-in-residence, whereas it could have made the most marvellous ending to this long-overdue celebration of our most distinguished living 'Cornish' painter.
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