Dialogue No. 4 of the Dialogue series, 2003.
From norbertmarszalek.com:
Norbert Marszalek’s paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States, including the Holter Art Museum in Helena, Montana; the South Bend Regional Museum of Art in South Bend, Indiana; the Nathan D. Rosen Museum Gallery in Boca Raton, Florida; the Texas Artist Museum in Port Arthur, Texas; the International Museum of Art in El Paso, Texas; the Beverly Arts Center in Chicago; and the Bowery Gallery in New York City.
Mr. Marszalek’s work will be shown at the Rockford Art Museum (Rockford Midwestern, July 11-October 5, 2008), at the George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles ((Neo) Realism, a group show, July 14 – August 30, 2008), and in the Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s Biennal (Contemporary American Realism, September 13 – November 2, 2008).
He is a familiar voice in the MWC blog comments. We’re opening up the floor for him to discuss his own work.
The Newlyweds, 2006
Let’s get located here. You’re based in Chicago. Are you Chicago-born?
Yes, I was born in Chicago and still live and work here. It’s a great city to make art in. My studio is currently in the Contemporary Art Workshop building. The Contemporary Art Workshop was founded in 1949 by John Kearney, Leon Golub, Cosmo Campoli and Ray Fink, and is one of the oldest artist-run alternative spaces in the country.
What are your daily inspirations and motivators, fine art and otherwise?
Reading character-driven type novels is very inspirational for my work. I enjoy classic authors like Sherwood Anderson and Frank Norris and modern day writers such as Michael Chabon and Justin Cronin. I tend to view my paintings as short stories or chapters in a novel.
Also, a fellow painter, Bill Dolan, and I recently created a Web site called Neoteric Art to encourage open dialogue with painters concerning work, issues and the art world. Neoteric Art gives Bill and I the forum to write essays and reviews and also to interview other artists. It’s been great for me to contact artists whom I find interesting and ask them questions about their work and experiences.
Are there artists with whom you feel your painting is in dialogue?
I feel my work is similar to Edward Hopper in regards to the psychological makeup…dealing with the elements of confinement and isolation.
The Painter’s Mother and Father Posing, 2006
I see the ‘incidental’ as a connective thematic thread in your paintings: figures slouching, or glancing away in distraction; still lifes of household ephemera; forms fashioned from everyday grays and browns or camera-flash whites. Is that a fair claim? What draws you in to this type of subject, as opposed to things more bright-and-bouncy?
“Incidental” is a good way of defining it. I want my paintings to come across as random experiences. Experiences that most of us feel akin to but don’t give much consideration. I am curious about the quiet moments…someone caught in their thoughts or a household item left for discard. I explore the poignant in the seemingly mundane; this is where I connect with the subject matter and the act of painting. I also think that what we paint is part of us…our personality— I’m really not much of a “bright-and-bouncy” sort of individual.
How does place affect your work?
I enjoy people watching and being in a large city offers a lot to see. I’m intrigued by the way people interact with each other and inversely with the concept of “being alone in a crowd”. Chicago also has a large art community so I get to socialize with a lot of different artists. All of this filters down into my work.
Scenario: You’ve been asked to explain your interests and objectives as an artist, without saying anything. You’ve got four walls, set aside for four paintings (by anyone, living or dead, but yourself). What four paintings would you hang?
George Bellows – Cliff Dwellers
Lucian Frued – Reflections
Richard Diebenkorn – Girl with Plant
Willem de Kooning – Gotham News
What advice (from a mentor, teacher, or even someone you haven’t
met) has helped you most over time? What advice would you pass on to
fellow painters?
I’ve always thought this quote from Robert Henri is worth sharing:
“There is no art without contemplation.”
I would also recommend reading (or rereading) Henri’s The Art Spirit. I read a few pages every day.
View more of Norbert’s work at norbertmarszalek.com
i’ve appreciated Norbert’s work for a while – always enjoy the chances we have for discussion. there is a directness and a chalky built-ness in his works that doesn’t come across in jpegs – the play between fussed/obsessively worked areas and large areas of mere wash is particularly compelling. also interesting is the quality of those flesh tones…
Is this work sourced from photography?
I believe at least some of it is.
To answer Matthew’s question: All my paintings are referenced from photography that I take myself. I have always been intrigued by the flatness, distortion and flash-look of snapshots and wanted to incorporate that feel in my work (it’s especially apparent in my earlier paintings). Recently I’ve been getting away from the overt camera-mechanics. I usually use between 2-5 photos and create drawings for the final composition.
they are sourced in photos, but i think there is also a good bit of compositional wrangling going on – placement, cropping, position, etc. i think the overall value range/light structure is very related to the photo, but the paint surface is more related to the focus he is trying to develop i think.
i think these have a kind of sympathetic contrast with marszalek:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2008/jun/25/art.denmark?picture=335218405
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Slideshow/slideshowContentFrameFragXL.jhtml?xml=/arts/slideshows/hammershoi/pixhammershoi.xml&site=Arts
norbert, are you familiar with hammershøi?
That sounds like an interesting process (the compositing of photos through drawing), that seems to actually provide a link to Hockney and his experiments with different kinds of “seeing”, photographic, optical, and ocular.
Norbert, could you address your way of thinking about the interaction between seeing through the camera lens and seeing through eye? It seems to me that your work could be described as realist from one standpoint and as equally concerned with the influence of a mediating technology from another.
No, I am not familiar with Hammershøi…great! stuff though. Thanks Matt…you have prompted me to do some research on him.
Matthew: I like the flatness of the objects that the camera creates. When I’m working with the photos and composing I’m in a collage-state of mind and I carry that through the painting process. Also, I can take that instantaneous moment which is captured on film and (sometimes years later) create a fresh, new moment.
Those Hammershøi paintings are really great.
Kinda like Edwin Dickinson covering Bonnard.
Back to Norbert’s: that bit of process revealed makes so much sense. There are obviously some photo references, but the compositions are too sound for the photos to be structural supports of the paintings.
Yeah, I was noticing the anchored and interesting composition, especially in The Newlyweds.
I think Sam’s phrase above is a good one: “forms fashioned from everyday grays and browns or camera-flash whites.” So much of the expression in these comes from the struggle to reconcile sturdy, substantive forms with the snapshots flatness. I once heard a painter describe Massaccio as having a ‘from-life tension’ even though the works obviously weren’t painted with a live model. I see the same thing in a lot of Norbert’s work, in the Dialogues and especially inThe Newlyweds.
Great picks for the four walls question. I was totally unfamiliar with that Bellows. It’s great.
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There is something very real, immediate and sometimes awkward about snapshots of people that I like. That comes through nicely in the work without overtly looking like a painting of a snapshot.
I went to see some of Norbert’s ‘Dialogue’ series when he exhibited at at the Rosewood Gallery in Ohio in 2006. This smaller painting was one of my favorites in the show. I really responded to the immediacy that he placed the viewer within the depicted space. I had noticed that in some of the paintings the skin tones seemed a bit too washed out and with a grayish hue. He may be placing too much dependency on referencing the photo for color choices. I am an artist who only works from direct observation. But I certainly realize that not everyone uses this practice. It doesn’t diminish what he is doing within his work. I really enjoyed the show and this interview with him.
Nice interview Norbert! The paintinmgs are looking good (and neoteric too). Although I appreciate your photo snapshot reasoning behind the early works, I like the more recent ones even more where it becomes less photographic. I don’tt know why really. But then, I haven’t studed them all closely “live” — seeing small jpegs sure ain’t the way to appreciate painting! Good luck.