Comments on: Interview with Norbert Marszalek

By: Mark Staff Brandl

Mark Staff Brandl — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:10:16 +0000

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.

By: Kathy Moore

Kathy Moore — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:49:52 +0000

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.

By: Bill Dolan

Bill Dolan — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:49:36 +0000

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.

By: neotericart » Blog Archive » NeotericArt’s Norbert Marszalek at MW Capacity

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:38:24 +0000

[...] There is a great interview with Norbert Marszalek at MW Capacity, a painter blog for no-coasters. Check it out! [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:04:08 +0000

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.

By: carla

carla — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:53:08 +0000

Yeah, I was noticing the anchored and interesting composition, especially in The Newlyweds.

By: Sam K

Sam K — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:40:16 +0000

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.

By: Norbert Marszalek

Norbert Marszalek — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:56:04 +0000

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.

By: Matthew Choberka

Matthew Choberka — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:46:01 +0000

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.

By: matt ballou

matt ballou — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:32:17 +0000

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?