Ladies and gentlemen,

in a correspondence as a tuning to this exhibition Christian Wulle, who is a theoretical head,
has written for me, that the two modes of expression in their variability, this one of his colleague,
would be similar as one request.
I absolutely share this view, although one also must admit that, seen two of the pictures in
an immediate neighborhood, have to show nothing in common at external similarity together.
Yes, it is questioned, whether a supporter of the one or the other way of painting and thus also
the one or other art, could agree, tying the two artists so to speak into a common consideration.

Christian Wulle is right into this now, too, if he sees the two different modes of expression
as program attitudes for the two essentials of the century. The one, who holds constructive art
not only for a quite genuine art of the century, but wants to award the only claim that also
as art of the century to it, doesn't associate correctly. I don't think so therefore already because
art is to be defined very difficult, because she is connected with alive people, because the
art thoughts are changing subject and are influenceable by different sides.

The single artist who is as a rule a lone fighter provided alone on himself, builds up his philosophy
primarily about in the youth, disassociates himself, to win a conviction on which he can hold.
So individual directions arise within big directions of one century.

The artist reflects, however, his art attitude with the time, he changes.
I thus only would like to say - that it is seen already from the single artist, is difficult and
gets difficult, to appreciate his manner as an exclusive one in the great concert,
however he will always believe in himself so much. The constructive art which wanted
to create the new person at its beginning neither, the new society and thus that was a great plan,
nor going out the one of the subjective, emotional individual layer and with that the
collective movement, learning the big current contrasting art, both of them are big and
essential directions of the thinking and the practical exercise of our time.

So is it possible to bridge such contrasts and to approach every direction, every attitude?
Indeed it is possible to justify, what Christian Wulle sees as essential program attitudes our century.
The one, as one of which we count the work of Christian Wulle, been based on metaphysical-theosophic opinions, as the constructive one, as they were picked up and minted newly by Mrs Blavatsky
in the 19th century and these for example also influenced Kandinsky, which results from his
document "About the Spirituality in the Art ".
Without spreading here these events at the beginning of the century, it can be noticed abbreviatedly,
that the constructive has a linear character. It is the line which moves and limits everything.
It is then particularly the constructive line, the shortest connection between two points which
becomes the basis of esthetics and a teaching. However, the line also is as an arrow direction-conscious.
This constructively-linear was taken once more, once less, into geometry, and is only the result of the
picture practice, the picture construction and the structural thinking. This teaching, these esthetics
has always an historical hour, but it is really a power of the thinking which is inherent
in the human intellect.

Christian Wulle is an example, a recent, firm example of this linear movement style
affiliated to the human intellect. Knowing earlier works of him, one recognizes, that he moved
in a kind of purification process more and more from amorphous, informal representation modes
to definable forms. His colored sticks in the three primary colors red, yellow and blue with the
additional black and white have a linear character and they are judged straight, from the left
below to the right above, this is called in direction striving for progress which
can be interpreted positively, rising, youthful.

These sticks can pre-produced to then be available at the moment of the intuition.
Color areas instead of the sticks are but also formulated exactly.
Christian Wulle is an artist from the large family of the Constructives.
The constructivism is a philosophy, which today, because it is sufficing to the constructive
world plan in the head, to the perception and for computer work, is up-to-date.
The discussion about such extensions shouldn't keep back the observer of single works of Wulle
from having the pleasure, which the pictures and reliefs have, the movement,
the river and the neighborhood problems of the colors,
however not to get in touch with all intensity.

And Ehrenfried Frank?
He talks in an exemplary text about the narrow spiritual affinity between the two friends.
I can repeat only shortly how he sees his work himself. The most important starting point
seems to me, that his work is founded in the observing of the landscape.
But what is landscape today? Is it the current landscape? Is it the parceled out and
dependent on Brussels decisions landscape of the farmers? Is it the old landscape,
the eternal one, which was not felt so beautifully until a few centuries ago
at all like later in the Romanticism? The landscape was terrible, demonic for a long time.

I think, that Ehrenfried Frank sees through the modern landscape and holds tight,
how could be landscape in our thinking. I have experienced it for example - how
the development of the freeway A9 from Berlin to Munich in the section Upper Franconia,
which could change landscape within few years, so as a native one almost doesn't know
any more where one is just driving at the moment.

Or the new water reservoirs in China?
We live in the time of the great interventions in the landscape.
So I must put a question mark if the landscape is regarded as such.
However, I insinuate that Ehrenfried Frank is not only viewing his landscape picture,
but judges, too, just as said, as a thinking landscape; he shares this view with
not only a few artists and is with that on the trace of a up-to-date perceptive philosophy.

However, it is just as much or mainly then the color which he uses as material in accordance
with his own firm appearance. The landscape is present as a large movement, but it is the color
which the landscape produces or reminds of the landscape now. It is also the force of the
movement of the material mass, which has to be only understood as an intellectual act,
which impresses me. It is a wrestling, that we observers are almost directly experiencing.
Then the color is applied in one act, in one painting process. However, also finenesses,
fine structures arise because of the hairs of the brush,
or multi-colored traces grow from raising the color.

Frank says it in an excellent sentence: "The material works. It enjoys equal rights with my design will."
And he says: "The cause gets insignificant, the color as material is important. The color is the picture."

All these statements are of esthetic importance. The Swiss Richard Paul Lohse,
one of the great artists of the 2nd generation of the Constructivie artists,
formulated the sentence few decades ago: "The method makes the picture."
This means the picture was conceived and carried out according to a program.
Everything had to subordinate itself to the chosen method.
Frank also has a concept, yes even a kind of program, however he gives the picture
the responsibility over the color.

We go therefore to the bottom of the two positions, the scissors of the difference
between the two artists and their art actually spreads after the decision of their means
and its application. What seems incompatible for the observer, has place in one brain
at the same time. There are the feelings, the emotions like the intellect powers, which
are containing the pure order energies in common. We have both of them - and of course
still some more, in the head (and not approximately the feelings in the belly).
All the better we should understand this, because we are standing in the decade of the brain.
For many artists were and are such contrasting appearances, how they are introduced
to us from Wulle and Frank, very welcomely. Straight strict concrete artists were looking
again and again for emotional partners in art history; they saw or see in the contrary-ness
the contours of the one also like the other one better saved than under artists like themselves.
There are then two opportunities, which complete themselves. We have the chance of the
self finding in such an exhibition, perhaps the self-assertion and moreover the opportunity,
to get close completely to origins of the art, to the functioning of the art.

[Eugen Gomringer in Gern/Eggenfelden, on 13th feb 1998]

Back