Michal Korman

Nude and landscape painting truly are two themes that seduce me the most in painting. The reason might be the fact body is some kind of reduced scale landscape, but what interest me primarily is the graphic expression in the shape of a human body once reduced to surface. Volumes never were something that excite me in terms of their ‘overwhelming’ tendencies upon the smooth and flat and I have always had the same position regarding light I use only to translate an idea of an volume rather than spacious dimension of an object itself. That is the reason I admire the chromatic construction of ‘flat’ paintings rather than those recreating the true and natural profoundness within a canvas. This is why Duccio or Botticelli are closer to me than for example Mantegna and Giorgione.
I’ve started to work with nudes quiet early, getting my first drawings done after pictures of famous works of art reproduced in books. After that I’ve started naturally to work with my own body. But the first real idea to get deeper into the discovery of possibilities to translate body within a picture came with my first real series of  canvases entitled: White paintings. The idea was to set a body into a white space to better explore the colour relations in this genre, old and noble, of  picturing human beings as their body was art. My research were based on separation of surfaces I’ve worked since 2005.

In 2010 there still was this interest in what body is but the graphics changed and split to two different direction as whole my work did. First has preserved the smoothness of prior painting and the second one has became more casual and less radical in treatment of neighbouring colour surfaces.

While people nowadays feel rather comfortable about female nude, depiction of a naked male still disturbs in some way. I think it may be because of the ‘apparent’ sex parts. And I think balls disturb event more than penis itself. The idea of how to ‘introduce’ male nude into contemporary art without turning to a rather ‘ashamed’ academic was what preoccupied me mostly. There of course is the work of gay artists like Tom of Finland  e.g.but this seems to have some satirical and mainly ‘focused’ undertone. Mapplethorpe’s work on the other hand is far to documentary and I don’t see any way how painting could be involved in such work without being ‘picturing reality’ based. Even Warhol’s  ‘Torsos’ or Sylvia Sleigh’s naked males don’t come with an idea of proud masculinity. Funny that I’ve found most of the inspiration sourcing from Titian, Manet and Matisse – all working almost exclusively with female nudes.

* Chinoiserie /ʃɪnˈwɑːzəri/ a decorative style in Western art, furniture, and architecture, especially in the 18th century, characterized by the use of Chinese motifs and techniques. (Oxford dictionary)

First new chinoiseries are here! Yes, it took me a couple of months to finish them and it was quiet a work. Starting with two Chinese gods of prosperity whom I destoryed shortly after an unsuccess in colour scheme, I painted Chao Kungming’s >Black Tiger<  rather a merry depiction of this mythological creature remining me of famous Blake’s Tyger-Tyger poem. Yes, his saliva and semen do symbolise welfare and prosperity:

The couple of Shishis ( 石獅 ) in gold on black background comes from my personal acquisition of two XVIII century like wooden shishi statues in Beijing earlier this year. I wanted to picture them in very traditional gold-black lacked furniture like way, adding a bit of trash-like feel to each composition making these gremlin-shaped fellows looking more funnier. The result is a very lovely pair of ‘pendants’ that would nicely decorate an chinese/chinese-eque room.

The last chinese-esque creation yet is a japanese-chinese thematic mixture titled >Moonless night in Shanghai< as hommage to ‘Paris of the Far East’, this huge city so inspiring and attractive by her singularity within China. Two bats – again symbols of good fortune – are the central theme of this painting, together with plum ( 梅 ), highly valued for it’s beauty blossoming in the middle of the night becomes a synonym of Shanghai, her vitality, and her capacity to attire. So the city lights attract people in the very same way as a simple lamp hypnotise moths or a frangrance of a flower attires bees. There can – of course – be felt a strong influence of japanese art, especially in composition own to ukiyo-e which I admire and collect since two years already. The colour scale of the background is very japanese-like too so the picture is kind of ‘bringing China and Japan together’ .

‘Early Spring morning in Beijing’ a pendant of above pictured Shanghai painting is at once more decorative and more western-minded. No japanese influence but vivid chinese-esque colours are here to frame an empty hutong street scene under red morning sun dominated by mythological Fenghuang or Hoho bird, symbol of virtue and yin-yang union, seated on the branch over the death body of a bluebird. Just as grey clouds are there to remind of decorativeness of the work in ‘Moonless night in Shanghai’ four flowers of Beijing composition adorn grey hutong atmosphere and express the peaceful transition in which the chinese phoenix replace the bluebird’s domination over the curved branch of a death tree.

Yet the last of this series entitled ‘Spirit of the Night’:

Moscow-affair (2010)

The origin of this painting is to be found in my short voyage to Moscow in autumn 2009. This huge city left in me many impressions and I wanted to work with this russian capital as with an object for one of my paining unsuccessfully for several months. Being a fan of Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (1958) I re-viewed the movie once again in very beginning of 2010 and I have decided to reinterpret the opening scene of this master-work of French cinema in which two main characters of the movie, Julien and his mistress Florence have got a telephonic conversation just before Julien is getting ready to murder Florence’s husband. The second inspiration was the world-famous pop-art painting M-Maybe by Roy Lichtenstein and it’s heroine a blond girl waiting for a man who for an unexplained reason doesn’t come to an appointment. Well, ‘Moscow-affair’ is about cheating and about the secret relation between a man on the phone and someone at the other end of the line. The fact that the hero portrayed is married can only be understood if one sees a ring on a man’s hand.
With the spying clichés creating the suspicious atmosphere all around reputation of Moscow I put all this inspirations and elements together to create a painting of big narrative importance – quiet
unusual within my recent work.

DIGJ (2010)

This painting largely corresponding to my ‘Moscow-affair’ in terms of narrativeness and representation, was the last one of this short series and precessed the B&W series of painting I begun in 2010 with the close-up painting titled ‘Les Heures’ (now in private collection in Paris) inspired by Viginia’s Woolf phenomenal story of Mrs. Dalloway. Nevertheless the title of this picture as well as the portrayal of it’s heroine find roots in one of most significant works of classic European modern: August Macke’s Woman in Green Jacket. This painting (today in Cologne) pictures from back a lonesome lady in green jacket in a lovers wood either waiting for her lover or abandoned by him. Despite of vivid and joyful colours the whole feeling of this masterpiece is rather melancholic or even sad. I decided in my ‘DIGJ’ to imagine the lady of Macke’s painting and to give her a face and so I tried to introduce to painting the expression of her hidden face.
I was profoundly moved by expressions of Warhol’s female models and a quiet melancholic once of certain of them like on Mildred Scheel’s portrait or on one of Princess’ Caroline portraits and I wanted to work on this in my paintings as well and I actually did because both of my paintings ‘DIGJ’ as well as ‘The Hours’ handle with female melancholy and with moves in mind of a woman. ‘DIGJ’ is also in certain regard an homage on August Macke’s work and first wave of German expressionism but can also be seen as an artist’s whim and nothing more.

Blow Job & Shot (2010)

No, it has got nothing to do with Andy Warhol’s silent film, it only is a close up picture of a whore giving a blow job; and Yes, the man on this painting is reduced to the simple idea of a penis as well as the woman is to the simple scheme of vanity with her ear-ring and her flashy red lips. The pendant of this painting  is the ‘Shot’ picturing expressive face of a man looking from above to the unseen figure – what is going on? Is she/he offering him sex services? Or did he just figured something out about her/him? Is he looking to her/his eyes or her/his body? Can we be sure she/he is alive? What shot it’s going on here – a gun shot or cum shot? What happens is only to be imagined – the inquiet features of his facial expression make us think that something has turned wrong during the action. What it may be is rather unclear and invite to a personal interpretation  of the scene.

It took me more than a year to realise a tatooed male nude painting I was bearing in my mind since my first trip to Japan. The design wasn’t very clear hence the fact of not being able to get to the expression until I’ve met my model as well as commissioner of this painting I’ve decided to entitle ‘Tattoo’. Getting back to my 2008 graphical style of painting developped during my work on ‘White paintings’ series I present on white background canvas this beautiful and sensuous back covered with tattoo. Yes it’s looking hot and that’s exactly how I meant it!

Based on eastern masculine pictural sensuality the model is here to represent an image more than a individual.
Look at this Goh Mishima’s stamp ( Wakamono series – detail)  –

– reminding that in Japan as well as in Occident the tattoo stands as a symbol of sensuality. Despite the fact of my model being a Malayan Chinese I decided to confront his tattooed body to pure, immaculate background: more japanese- or corean-like artistic expression. The tattoo in my painting replace the identifiable features of face imposing it-self as a dominating mark over the whole body or if you want over the whole personality of my model. Interesting…

White paintings series was my first real intellectual effort to create a homogeneous universe using picture as a bearer of some aesthetic idea. I started to work on it in 2008 developing structural language of flat chromatic surfaces neighbouring in harmonious way and putting aside all true perspective or natural light creating volumes. My painting has become extremely smooth and quiet, almost cold and impersonal. The series I’ve explored all possibilities of graphic style inherited from expressionists and fauves in pop-art manner, exclusively was oriented to picturing of a body. The core of the series was made in Brussels between summer 2008 and spring 2009, but some later addition were made in Paris between fall 2009 and fall 2013.

Yes, I am a chronic traveler. It has been like this since my late 17 when I get abroad alone for a first time, hitch-haking from my home-country through Austria to Italy. My first travel painting dates back to this summer spent in port of Leghorn ( Livorno) and Tuscan countryside.  I was infected by chronic travel fever during this adventurous enterpise that inspired me deeply. It was in 2005 and in December of that year I rushed to Scotland, another inspiring country I dicovered in wintertime atmosphere in northern lights.  Edinburgh, in the same title as Florence was a great revaletion to me. Two years laters later, missing Italy terribly, I travelled to Rome. The first travel canvas is dating back to march 2007, executed shortly after my return from Eternal city:

Strongly motivated I returned to Tuscany in the summer 2007 and got to Bavaria returning back from Florence home. In Budapest in Autumn. In Naples and Pompei in December just before moving to Belgium where from very beginning of 2008 I work on small canvases. In Brussels I started to work and produce as much as never before.
I started with souvenirs of places I have visited. Naples, Pisa, Pompei, Budapest, and Florence and Edinburg – two cities I was moved by:

We are still in 2008. I am in Marrakech in March, discovering for a first time not only coulour of another continent and those of Arabic culture, but at the same time landscape and the most important of all: the Sahara desert. I work on a series of paintings immediately after my return from Moroco:

Paris in September, not very impressed, but I am back in November and change my mind about La Ville- Lumière where I moved in march 2009 shortly after my first exhibition in Brussels. Prague, Geneva, Moscow – I was working on paper mostly during 2009.

Back in Marrakech in March 2010 and a Grand Tour in Israel in May-June. Encounter with new, Middle-eastern aspect of Arabic culture in Acre and Jerusalem, modern architecture in Tel Aviv.

In mid-2010 I abandoned coloured composition for black and white creations for a while and in 2011. I split with my graphic style in lanscape painting, producing works more naturalistic such as ‘Grand Tour after Corot’ trilogy, exhibited in Italy in 2012, ‘The castle’, and ‘A Garden’, today in private collection in Slovakia.

A good taste paintings are reproducing, for one the interior of Rome Musei Capitolini hall in which the Marcus Aurelius’ equestrian statue is displayed, second one shows the Michelangelo’s Hall in Louvre and another one the Room of Venetian painting in Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, or grand hall of Marrakesh city museum.

The ‘Black fire’ painting dates back to 2010 when once arrived in Paris I started to look for new style, more casual and decontracted.
There is a story behind: the hunk trying to get a contact with a prostitute – well, as we can see neither his face nor the prostitute it is up to the observer to decide how the story will continue. Are you the prostitue?  And yes, the cigarette represents what it represents.

Les Heures (2010)

This Paintig (now in private collection in Paris) inspired by Viginia’s Woolf phenomenal story of Mrs. Dalloway pictures and human being lost in his/her’s thoughts awaiting or apprehending an unspecified/unexplained event. The obvious androginy of the character pictured was suggested to me by novel itself and by Warhol’s famous Blow-job movie.

So here it is – the image of Virgin Mary with a big red heart in her hands (I think this painting is due to the a very special and authentic maltese religiousity): Maltese Madonna:

I did already work with christian themes in the past and did two paintings themed similarly quiet recently, the ‘Burning Virgin eastern-canon imago’ in early 2011, a canvas titled ‘Superstar’ picturing a head of Christ, exhibited in New York in Septemberof that year, and the Bust of San Prisco in gold and silver which became a part of the Nocera Inferiore cathedral collection. Under all the impressions from the Museo Diocesano of San Prisco and all magnificent Napolitan churches splendidly decorated I am ready to start working with religious objects and works of art. I am thinking namely about some Stella Maris composition or work with Assunta or Immaculate Conception – may be.

>Superstar<is another christian-themed painting dating back to 2010. Dispalyed in New York the same year, it’s inspired by Spanish golden age Vailladolid school sculpture.

Well, here it is: Viva l’Italia!
Two years ago there was a plan born in my head to work on an important male nude canvas and I took for this a picture of  quiet an ordinary  gayporn movie actor I wanted to pictue in very masculine and bossy position in the same way as old masters did with female nudes. I always loved to look at the Manet’s Olympia in Musée d’Orsay and on Goya’s Maja Desnuda and I wanted to do something in mid-way between these two painitings. Of course that I knew from art-history lessons that painitng Olympia Monet has been inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino who himself has been inspired by Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus now in Dresden but I have never payed much attention to Titian until couple of weeks ago when clearly decided to visit Venise once again this year. The old project I have put apart for a while now came to the light of the day to me with re-exploring Titian’s work and as I said at the beginning here it is:

And my Viva l’Italia preparation sketch.

I have always been inspired by work of Henri Matisse. Here is the pochoir work on paper infuenced by his famous Madame Matisse portrait now conserved in Copenhagen titled: La Raie Verte. The japanese influence ( quiet obvious ) is not due to any empiric far-estern inspiration but to an uknown passing-by in Paris Metro.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. (Francis Bacon)

Once again, I do return to my eternal questioning of the relation between understanding the cultural heritage and re-using it’s traditions in painting. Having fallen recently under the spell of some nietzschean philosophical ideas on eternel recurrence I return to my idols and feel once again very palpitating need of turning my attention to old masters and classical academicism. Of course, manners and oppinions have obviously changed to a point that the attitude towards the picturing of nude in art must have been re-thought and re-newed in the very same way as the everyman perception of it. I think that the nude in art today isn’t only the result of continuos research on artistic heritage but has been in very important way marked or if you like – has evoluated under the pornographic industry. This only does witness the remaning taboos in our society concerning the nudity and the body just in the same way as it ever  has.