ART OF TJAARKE MAAS

 

Tjaarke Maas was a women of remarkable beauty: tall, slim, a body that seemed a home for the soul, big blue eyes, lily-white skin, a mystical expression. Her “reaching upwards”, both in life and in art, was always a search for elegance, for excellence, a tendency towards elevation. It was impossible not to notice her, or to take your eyes off her, turning your head as she passed. When she lost a button she would replace it with a safety pin, and everyone would begin to wear safety pins as if they were precious brooches. She would hide her face, covering her hair with a hat, becoming even more beautiful. Tjaarke was Dutch. She had married a Russian actor and clown, with whom she lived in Italy, where she had attended the Academy of Art in Florence. She had only just graduated, almost receiving an ovation for her “chamber” paintings full of mystery. Those shown in New Jersey** and in New York*** did not at first seem different from the others, but they captivated because of their mysterious and manifold pictorial qualities. … in the opaque, ancient panels with grey patches lies the fire of the “Lotus”, the “Onion” is reminiscent of a lime tree, vestiges of ancient still lives… This, perhaps is how she sees them on the canvas, or they are precious alms for the wretched grey panels, some even found in the street… She cleaned and painted them carefully, without using chemical substances, with garlic and vinegar; in an entirely natural manner the living colour made from egg-yolk coincides, penetrates the base, until the pockmarks, cracks and splits revealed the richness of its structure. Where communication pulsates from on high. The structure is subject and content, and also form. A play of innumerable layers can be seen in the pastels “Fish”, in the slivers of the rainbow obscured against the cosmic white-and-green of the background, in which the fish will swim once more as soon as they are recondensed. Or a simple “Fish-head” on the table, solitary. Probably terrible, with signs of torture, it is made flesh through a clot of extremely delicate nuances of colour. Only those who really know how to use it can reach such extremes of pastel technique. It is the same magic as Morandi, but the fish-head was suggested to Tjaarke as a source of artistic torment by her friend the Russian painter L. Meshberg. The “Grey bird with violet claws” is a true pictorial triumph: a luxuriant rustling mass of feathers in the infinite diapason of a magical chromatic scale of silvers and greys. The “White birds” series takes a specific theme. They are full of sadness, of daytime gloom. The dirty, uneven background, with divergent blacks and whites, beiges and grey-blues here and there, and dots, patches, like sparrows that encircle the hieroglyphics of the pigeons, their outline, more precise or barely setched, patches in the centre, or in a corner, at the bottom… Oriental birds painted in ink, with the technique of drawing or painting, suggest a fine handwriting compared to the cursive of the pigeons… When the synthesis touches apology, with dark fear we suddenly feel that together with the artist we have entered another reality. If we tried, coming back to ourselves, to decipher it, we would perhaps say that it is a world of ideas, no less than our own, the sinister hell regulated by an impeccable composition, that golden section from which chaos is governed. The paintings were preceded by careful preparation. Of 300 or 400 drawings on wrapping paper, only 90 were chosen to continue to work on, in a full-fledged ritual of structural acceleration. Earth was glued onto the paper. Using both a brush and her hands, alabaster powder was mixed with the glue, and then tea, which gave the paper support a uniform colour. Then it was the turn of stomatological adhesive to glue the whole to the canvas: the frame was lowered onto the paper, then it was turned upside down, and the result was smoothed by hand. A technique such as this derives from icon painting, one of the very first and most powerful impressions left on Tjaarke by a pictorial technique. She began to study the technique with the artist and icon painter V. Andrejev. The gold that once formed the ground of icons, symbolizing heaven, is thus transferred to a portrait gallery to illuminate a completely ordinary human being. The “Golden Logic” emanates from, or is explained by, by the “Portrait of My Husband”, a pensive Jew with black eyes and curly hair. She considers him the Beloved in the Song of Songs. His head is gold, finest gold; his locks are like palm-fronds, black as raven. His eyes are like doves…* But at the same time the portrait is reminiscent of a Byzantine icon (from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum), that of the ”Man of Sorrows”: a feeling of sadness, lips half-closed showing his teeth; the red ground hints at the blood that flows from the wounds. It was a prophetic work… Unintentionally Tjaarke reminded her husband of the sorrow of the Cross. Among the few works marked by light colours, almost cheerful, are “Mamulja” (Mummy) with powerful golden, sunny glints. In “Self-portrait” (Without a drop) coldness prevails: turquoise, light blue and black, as in the frescos of Fra Angelico, but the neon-red flight and the engrossed concentration of the image make her increasingly far from expressive pacification. The opaque, delicate colours of the “Flowers” (Never reproach beauty) are pervaded by melancholy: bare, shabby bunches that pierce the rustling structure of the masks with their pattern. They are mixed with cigarette ash, dropped rhythmically on the filtered image. It is as if the artist had been frightened by a sudden vision, by splendour, or as if some familiar features had suddenly re-emerged, and so she extinguishes them or cuts them out ruthlessly. While our eye proceeds to dig in innumerable miniature Pompeiis … Ashtray-paintings? Tjaarke, however, is far from post-modernist parody, or citation. She brings the ancient tradition back to life, albeit in a different iconostasis: she makes her own colours, because using ready-made colours is like playing out-of-tune instruments. The result is the almost forgotten miracle of colour. “Mamulja” continues to complain that she has not washed the dishes, that she neglects the housework… But she, by celebrating a different kind of cuisine, is putting together and working on a different kind of pasta. And if she conveys an emotion by means of a gesture, the result is all the more precious.

 

* (Apart from one or two alterations, this essay was written before the premature death of the artist) Nelly Rakovsky, art historian New York, 2004