EVA WITTOCX

The Paintings of Kees Goudzwaard:
the Viewer Viewed

This text was first published in Kees Goudzwaard - Schilderijen, SMAK, Ghent 2005.

I think of my paintings as realism, not as abstraction, but as being real, because my aesthetic is involved with real surfaces of the paint plane, or the relationship to the wall, of real light, not illusion. You see, I don't use illusion and I don't use symbolism.
Robert Ryman

The philosopher Aristotle says that one of man's important characteristics is his ability to imitate. Unlike animals, man imitates movements or copies what he sees or experiences. "Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation." Aristotle believes it is through this imitation that we "learn" about the world, about what is happening around us and about people and events. Through imitation we are able to name, analyse and acquire insight into things. One could say that Kees Goudzwaard's paintings imitate and question our perception and viewing behaviour. Goudzwaard is trying to tell us something about looking as a form of interpreting reality and does this by way of abstraction. Although his paintings can also formally be seen as a copy or translation of a paper model to another support, the meaning of his work is far broader. The paintings are situated between the abstract and references to the concrete, between observing the familiar and an absorption in the painted surface. As our eye is lead from point to point, there is an appearing and disappearing, areas move towards us and sink into the painted surface. The composition of blocks and strips provides us with transit zones which absorb and saturate. In this way they tell us something about how we "observe", how our eyes analyse reality, connect and give meaning. Indeed, Goudzwaard's paintings are almost like viewing machines. To achieve this he avoids anything anecdotal or overtly material. The abstract painted surfaces are perfect and smooth so that our eye is not held by the texture of the paint but slips into the painted surface of the picture.

Kees Goudzwaard's creates his paintings by transferring paper models, compositions he applies to the canvas using sheets of paper and tape. The process by which Goudzwaard's work comes into being consists of two parts: he first makes a model which he then translates into paint on canvas. He sees the model as a temporary example. Goudzwaard then painstakingly places different areas of paper - often a combination of coloured and transparent paper - next to and above one another. He attaches the paper with tape, usually along the full length of the edge of the paper. In other examples of his work an area of colour covers the entire canvas onto which Goudzwaard has then stuck a criss-cross pattern of strips of tape. Sheets of paper and tape are used as a stand-in for areas of colour and lines; these are the building blocks which are meant to help him come into contact with the composition. He uses the paper shapes to try out colour combinations and visualise certain characteristics. At a certain point the model is brought to a close and the painting process begins. In his early work especially he also used silk-screen printing techniques to transfer areas of text. During the painting process the work gradually frees itself from the model and acquires independence. In the painting process Goudzwaard works step by step. Each separate part of the model is replaced with an equivalent in paint and the image is built up in paint in exactly the same way as the paper model.

Each painting is the product of an accumulation of strips of tape and areas of paper. Due to the transparent nature of the materials, there is a new nuance of colour in each overlap. Consequently, the strips of tape or the areas of paper are no longer independent entities. Whenever they coincide with other areas or strips they generate new areas and tones of colour. Because the artist always uses rectangular areas of colour - which is the most obvious shape that does not imply a "choice" or something cut out - the overlaps are also rectangular but cover a wider range. When two or more areas coincide, this also results in a darker tint of the same colour. There is a clear difference between the method used to construct the model and that used to paint the canvas. In order to achieve clear, uniform tones of colour, Goudzwaard does not paint the areas as they originally were in paper. The canvas is divided into different blocks of colour. Goudzwaard paints each of these separately, never mixing the colours. Each adjacent colour must be completely dry before the following new tone can be applied. Each colour and area is independent.

Even when he makes the models Goudzwaard's compositions are mainly comprised of different areas, strips and colours. The lines we see in the paintings are boundaries indicating where areas of colour meet. In Goudzwaard's work the line is not, to use Henry Van de Velde's description of a line, that which "contains the power and energy of the person who drew it". Goudzwaard avoids the action in which the painter generally moves his arm or wrist to draw a line. An action which could be considered similar to this is that of sticking strips of tape onto the canvas. The gesture of applying tape however is limited by its special quality, its material nature. In no way can his paintings be described as expressionist. The only element of the picture that might in some way indicate a personal input is the tearing off of the tape. During painting, the torn-off edges of the tape are transferred onto the canvas very precisely. Apparently the artist consciously chooses to include this non-geometric aspect. This element means that one does not interpret the tape as a limited rectangular shape but rather as an interrupted continuity linked to the other strips of tape.

When we look at Goudzwaard's paintings we see a three-dimensional effect that is the result of a multiplicity and accumulation of shapes rather than of lines. Moreover, in the works, which are built up of various blocks, there is the idea that each coloured area - which is derived from an empty page - is a potential part of the picture. Working with areas rather than line constructions is reminiscent of the debate on the contrast between "line" and "colour" in the School of Art in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century. Here Rubens' painting technique was compared to that of Poussin. While Poussin was said to have based his work on a fixed idea that acquired form through lines, Rubens focused his attention on a spectrum of colour, on the play of colours and shapes, in order to achieve a unified and diversified painted surface which pleases the observer's eye. Within this apparent contrast and in the description of Rubens' technique as the use of colour to create space, Goudzwaard's paintings are linked more to the latter. However Kees Goudzwaard uses colour without symbolism or personal meaning. He adopts the colours from existing sheets of paper. As the colours in his paintings are derived from the colours of the overlaps, the mixing of colours does not suggest a personal choice either.

In the organisation of the painted surface Goudzwaard refers to the structure of letters or texts in a number of his works. Although the words in texts do of course have a linear character, he is more interested in arranging a page as a whole. The text disappears in favour of several blocks of text or paragraphs which succeed one another and are separated by white lines and leave parts of the support empty. As a result of this structure, the viewing behaviour of the observer develops in two ways. Initially the canvas appears to be a frontal close-up that can hold the viewer's attention. Although the blocks of text are present as a "shape" they cannot be observed or read in detail. The viewer's eye now glides across the canvas, alternating between areas that are close to the painted surface and those that draw the gaze further back. The abstract surface of the painting transforms into a space that generates viewing experiences. Leporello (2001) is a good example of this. The letter structure is clearly visible but more as a negative form; the white paper forms a dark background for suggestions of indentations or paragraphs. In his other, early, work Goudzwaard has texts reset in new type and silkscreen-printed onto the canvas. The texts in Depression, what it is and how to cure it (1998) or Rakelings leven (1999) are visible and offer elements from reality which the reader/observer can test against the surface of the painting. By expressly including textual references in his paintings, Goudzwaard is suggesting that the observer should "read" his work and link pictorial elements, and study the links and contrasts. His paintings are not pictorial spaces that absorb the viewer into an illusionary dimension; nor are they a faithful rendering of reality. Like the texts or textual structures, the paintings tell a "story" about viewing.

Throughout his oeuvre Goudzwaard arranges the canvas in a variety of ways. Many of his paintings appear to result from a model that has been built up horizontally. In works such as Thee (1998) or Naalden (2002, p.23) we can see how stains or transparent foils have been accumulated. These works are more centrifugally-oriented. Here Goudzwaard is more interested in a sort of nonchalance in the way the various sheets have been placed on top of one another and on the surface of the picture. The work Vergadertafel (model) (1998) is similar to this and the title also refers directly to a horizontal plane. In the transformation into paint on the canvas the flatness or two-dimensionality of the table or floor is replaced by the vertical wall area which becomes a projection screen to which the eye of the observer can relate in a different way. The viewer is able to tell whether a work developed vertically or horizontally. The vertical paintings seem to be based less on arbitrariness and have a more calculated composition. Here the painter uses the areas in search of a rhythm, and applies shapes that are more related to one another and the empty canvas, areas which also link other shapes and create bridges for our viewing. In some paintings we see that the rectangular areas of colour are attached to the canvas on all four sides, a technique that denies the canvas any sense of direction. In some areas, or in other works, only the top of the rectangle is attached, as in Double Layout (2003). By limiting the adhesion in this way the painter introduces the force of gravity into the painting. Because the area of colour is fixed in a painterly manner to the canvas on one side only, this composition also appears to contain a lightness or instability (compare washing hanging on a line and at the mercy of the capricious wind).

Each of Goudzwaard's paintings is achieved by "looking and waiting". The act of painting is subject to the intensity the painter wishes to give the area by way of colour and paint. In the course of painting something is built up; it is more than just an action in itself. It is only by working slowly and precisely that the preconceived aim is achieved. The process of painting requires both control and a certain distance. One can see that Goudzwaard's paintings only achieve independence when they have been invested with peace and quiet. However even if the canvases do imply a certain period of time, this by no means determines our viewing experience. One could say that every painting denies the notion of duration a priori; indeed it can immediately be fully viewed or absorbed as a two-dimensional surface. It seems as if the time we spend looking at the paintings does not take place in reality. In this way Goudzwaard's paintings also ignore the period of time that they carry with them.

In most of Goudzwaard's work there is both a flatness and a three-dimensional effect. In Flight of stairs (2005) for example, we have on the one hand various red and grey rectangles placed adjacent to one another. On the other hand, depth is evoked by the literal accumulation of the grey area on the beige area, with the white area and the transparent foil on top of that. Although the canvas is flat, here - as in other work - we are presented with an optical play of perspective. It is impossible for our eyes not to interpret this work as an "accumulation". There is a distinction between what our eyes actually see and our interpretation of it. Our eyes not only "see", but also think and interpret all at the same time. The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty pointed this out in his standard work Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). The stimuli our eyes absorb are also directly linked to thought; we immediately interpret what we see and then see the object in this light. Our perception goes one step further than what is actually present. What is really present in Flight of stairs for example, is a white rectangular canvas in the centre and an oblong grey strip below it surrounded by a beige polygon. Nevertheless it is impossible for our eyes to see these "facts". We see the stratification even though it is not there, we "know" that it is/was there. A simplified version of Merleau-Ponty's theory of perception was referred to in the sixties by the American artists associated with Minimalism. Their distilled geometric objects are immediately interpreted by the viewer as geometric forms, even though we cannot see all their sides at once. The essential feature of Minimal Art is its three-dimensionality, so that we can discover the geometric form by seeing the different sides as we walk through space. While one can experience the "missing information", the so-called back of the image, oneself, this works differently on the two-dimensional plane of the painter's canvas. Although our experience cannot verify the stratification, the perception of stratification is an emphatic presence Goudzwaard's paintings. The way the paintings are built up leads our eye to an interpretation of layers, of successive planes. The strips of tape strengthen this effect. It is also because the strips of tape are placed over and under one another that one gets the suggestion of large, simple areas of colour rather than that of complex polygons - which are in fact visible.

Almost all of Goudzwaard's paintings are frontal while at the same time suggesting depth. The areas are not subject to perspective and are made up only of rectangles - a form which indicates shape rather than direction and only refers to itself. It is also partly through the strips of tape that the shapes do not float through the painted space. Due to his method many of Goudzwaard's paintings also have a frame structure. Long strips - of tape that sticks the paper together - follow the edges of the canvas. The frame or framing structure has provided us with a view of reality ever since Alberti. What one sees within the frame is a self-contained whole, a specific composition. This ensures that in the viewer's experience everything happens within the work itself. Goudzwaard's paintings are not fragments of endlessly illusionary planes. The eye is not lead outside the canvas as is the case for example in the work of Barnett Newman. Goudzwaard's more monochrome work generates a different type of experience. His paintings are not built up with several areas of paper, but out of bits of tape stuck onto a monochrome background. These paintings with short strips of tape produce more of an all-over effect. The eyes of the observer move across the canvas and are caught by the colourless strips while discovering traces of a pattern or plan. In some works there is a balance or a tension between the zones that are more filled-in and the open spaces that draw the eye deeper in. The arrangement of an abundance of small elements on the surface of the picture gives one the idea that the surface of the painted picture can extend beyond the limits of the canvas. The artist used this fact as a starting point for a wall-sized painting. In Panorama (2003) he had a monochrome background printed in silk-screen with bits of tape on different sheets. He placed the sheets onto a gigantic wall so that a pattern evolved which could be endlessly continued and was only confined by the architectural limits of the wall in space.

Kees Goudzwaard's paintings do not offer us any anecdotes, nor do they have a tendency towards the purely aesthetic. However, by their play of lines and shapes they do manage to attract our eye. The titles the painter gives his work provide us with leads when we look at them. For example, Volière (1996) can be "interpreted" in many ways; the word makes us think of a cage or cage structure, containing a piece of reality, as well as of transparency, lightness and a screen structure. Some titles control our view. For example Panorama emphasises the horizontal shape of the canvas. Other titles again, such as Double Layout or Bladspiegel, contain references to books and texts. The names Goudzwaard gives to his paintings provide us with an opening, perhaps in some way they might suggest an anecdotal reading, but they also immediately undermine it. The formal language of his work is abstract. In our use of language the word "abstraction" refers to shapes, objects or compositions which have no apparent link with reality and are free of any reference to the world we know. This term does not so much apply to literature, film or music, but is mainly used to describe non-figurative painting. Nevertheless, "unrelated to reality" is a finishing point or the result of a process which singles out aspects of reality and in this way distorts reality in a particular way. An example is cubist painting which balances on the edge of what is familiar, or the distillations of Piet Mondrian who - quite simply - starts out from a tree structure and ends up with compositions of black and white shapes. One can say that there is always a link between abstraction and concrete reality. As the American artist Robert Ryman says in the quotation at the top of this piece, his work - which is interpreted as abstract - does contain a certain reality in both form and content. Each work contains elements inspired by everyday life. On the basis of concrete things or objects, the painter thinks about this duality and ideas are generated.

In Kees Goudzwaard's work the viewer is able to recognise numerous references ranging from architecture, close-ups, blocks of flats, street patterns and ground plans, to piles of boxes. The result of our desire to give meaning to things, these references flash through our interpretive mind. However, these elements do not determine our experience, nor do they dominate, but are more like vague points of reference. In Kees Goudzwaard's work abstraction appears to be emphasised and rejected all at the same time. Even though his work has a conceptual starting point, it translates itself into a painted surface. By depicting the flatness of sheets of paper he tries to avoid illusionary space. The paintings are therefore placed in a zone between abstraction, illusion and references to the concrete. They challenge the perception and analyse it through the simplicity of the work. The rhythms, volumes, spaces and emptiness of the painted surface ensure that the viewer is confronted with his own way of viewing.


SMAK, Ghent 2005