The world is already crazy enough...

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Bernsboek: Wouter Berns Schilderijen

Wouter Berns

The Dutch artist Wouter Berns (b.1970) says, ‘The world is already crazy enough, all you have to do is paint it’. His very individual vision has been entertaining and stimulating gallery-goers in the Netherlands for 25 years. Despite his surreal juxtapositions, his pictures amount to much more than just humorous absurdity. They are reminiscent of René Magritte, Edward Hopper, Giorgio de Chirico, Jack Vettriano, and Paul Nash, but without being derivative.

In 1995 Berns created a seriously retro (as in 16th-century) painting complete with cracks and crazing, and got it hung in an art museum, labelled with a probable date of 1544–1570 and by an ‘unknown artist’! Eventually the prank came to light in the local paper, much to the embarrassment of the experts who had been taken in. Working typically in acrylic on canvas or wood, he has been called a contemporary artist with the technical method of an Old Master. He is inspired by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, whom he calls the ultimate painter-storyteller in the history of art.

Some of the motifs found in the Bernsboek accompanied a one-man exhibition in Kampen in August; they are classical references, female nudes, and a barefoot man in a white suit and white panama hat. On the dust jacket he is Sisyphus reaching the top of the mountain (Sisyphos: The Summit). In Le bon vivant he sits half turned away from us on a nondescript metal chair. Near him are a potted palm, a couple of books on the floor, a bottle of wine, and a stack of yellow-spined volumes that could be copies of the National Geographic. He carelessly holds a wineglass as he gazes at a large picture taped to the wall, depicting a tropical sunset with more palm trees like his potted plant.

Frankly jokey and surreal is Shipwreck, showing a kitchen sink from just below counter-top level. There are plastic bottles of washing-up liquid and hand-wash,  a high-curving tap with two hot and cold knobs. Water is running into the sink, but between us and the stream of water is a sinking ship, its stern and rudder high in the air as it sinks impossibly into the sink. The pun of ‘sinking in the sink’ doesn’t work in Dutch, where the two words are different, but even without the verbal pun, the picture is arresting. The story behind it is prosaic enough: an acquaintance visiting his studio gave him a model ship to use for inspiration. Berns was playing with it (‘play’ plays an important part in Berns’ work), put it in the sink, and the idea was born!

Berns’ landscapes range from fairly conventional to quite eerie. They may be backdrops to action or highly unlikely topography (like the Lilliputian plain where Atlas kneels with the globe on his back) or vertiginous cliffs. Backgrounds may also be just a wash of ochre behind, for example, two women in black gowns watching an upturned black top hat in Het orakel (‘The Oracle’). This top hat and black gown also feature in other work.

One of his most unnerving pictures is Ellen, a woman doing the splits over a chasm. One leg is on one cliff edge and the other is on a facing cliff edge that seems to be about three feet away. Far below her is a meandering river and stylized landscape with clumps of trees fading into a misty horizon. She looks down without apparently being too perturbed about her situation.   How is she going to stand up again, and how did she manage to get into this position in the first place? It’s a metaphorical predicament. She’s fine as long as she doesn’t move, but she will have to move eventually and then how is she going to manage? It is quite a haunting image.

I asked Wouter Berns about Ellen. Ellen and her husband are his friends, and the husband commissioned a portrait of her. As Berns and his subject discussed the project and kidded around, Ellen, an orthodontist and mother of five, mentioned that she could do the splits. Berns promptly arranged Ellen on two card tables and took photos to work from. For Berns as well as Ellen her splits over the chasm is a symbol of her life in two worlds – that of her demanding profession and of her children. ‘I imagined her as a bridge, and Ellen also liked the idea of literally being a bridge for her children’.

There are several images of ‘The Magician’s Wife’. The magician is never present but his top hat is. Typically there is a vague backdrop with a woman in a black gown holding or observing the top hat. Berns told me e that in 1999 he painted a magician bowing to his top hat and an imaginary audience (not illustrated in Bernsboek). ‘Later I read the book The Magician’s Wife by Brian Moore. The relationship between that magician and his wife in the book inspired me. The paintings are not illustrations for the book, but inspired by the story. In fact, I never illustrate a story. I imagine and associate. I paint questions, not answers.’

Wouter Berns is clear that his figures must be anatomically correct and draperies must hang properly. ‘The atmospheric landscape type paintings are actually the most difficult, because atmosphere, in contrast to the length of an arm, the size of a foot or the folds of a dress, is hard to measure’, he says.

This collection of Wouter Berns’ work is the next best thing to visiting an exhibition. There is minimal Dutch text, and even the five-page description of his life and work is summarised in two pages of English.

Bernsboek. Wouter Berns Schilderijen is published by Aerie Uitgevers, Kampen, 2012.     122pp.,   82 colour and  8 mono illus, €24.95 ISBN 978-90-78430-09-4