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Arie van Geest
ALICE (HIGH, LOW
AND IN
BETWEEN)
(Catalogue from the exhibition in 2011-2012)
Arie van Geest
(Text: Wouter Welling)
The Broken Promised Land
Van Spijk/Rekafa Publishers bv, Venlo, 2016.
ISBN 978 90 6216920 7
Arie van Geest (1948) is a Dutch visual artist who met Alice for
the first time at a very early age, four years old … and he taught himself to
read! Also in 1952, Donald Duck was
published in The Netherlands, the famous weekly “happy magazine” for children.
Soon, reading Disney was followed by reading Cervantes, Andersen, Grimm and of
course Lewis Carroll: a terra incognita behind the mirror!
Not only Alice in
Wonderland has had a huge influence on his paintings since 1968, so have
Les chants de Maldoror by Comte de
Lautréamont. However, over a decade Alice dominates his work and she comes to
represent his alter ego more and more: it tries to put our so-called reality
into perspective in a clear and classic design of surrealistic sceneries. After
an absence in the eighties, Alice returns in the mid-nineties, but in the
“Neverland of the art of painting” she is now accompanied by for instance
Pinocchio, representing the “lie”, and Peter Pan, the eternal boy without a
shadow.
The series Desolation Row
(Bob Dylan has become another source of inspiration) arises in 1999. It
takes stock of imaginary beings from the domain of mild insanity … “we’re all
mad here”!
Between 2009 and 2011 Van Geest works on a series of twelve
paintings called ALICE (HIGH, LOW AND IN
BETWEEN), a “quest” through the history of art closely intertwined with
Tenniel’s illustrations.
The summer of 2011 marks a new period with another series:
The Broken Promised Land. In France,
in the garden between his summer-residence and the river Vienne, his heroes and
demons play a prominent part in the imaginary circus of the mind, surrounded by
proliferating plants in bright sunlight! However, an undeniable danger lurks in
the woods of the children’s lost paradise! Moreover, “Everything is
interconnected” (one of Van Geest’s one-liners), so the echoes from the past are
still resounding: the child is the father of the man!
ALICE (HIGH, LOW AND IN
BETWEEN)
In ten of the twelve paintings (125 x 170 cm, oil on canvas)
there is an illustration by Tenniel in the centre, in silent homage to the first
illustrator of “Alice in Wonderland”
and “Through the Looking Glass”. Each
painting is a closed domain in itself … though it is in search of a connection
with and a transformation into the next. You might say it is a kaleidoscopic
merry-go-round, a message made up of fragments of reality in which the language
of dreams is essential.
Most of the paintings are accompanied by fragments of letters
Van Geest wrote to some of his friends. Letters in which he writes how Alice
confronted him with a private-tsunami of enigmatic impressions that were to
claim the direction of his activities for nearly two years! The series becomes
an expedition through a continually changing and expanding
“Wonderland-labyrinth” in which Alice is desperately searching for the emergency
exit. There are several references to illustrious colleagues in the history of
art: Pieter Breughel de Oude, Henri Rousseau, Johannes Vermeer, Giovanni
Battista Piranesi, Magritte etc. . Alice is not the only motivation for his
work: “Life itself, with its melancholy versus its emotion as the two most
important players, was the real starting-point for my artificial crusade against
logic.”
The catalogue comprises 24 pages only, but browse it every day
and you will discover something new each time and wonder about all that was
inspired by Carroll’s Wonderland!
THE BROKEN PROMISED LAND
The title of this book is also the title of yet another painting
(2011, oil on canvas, 125x170) from the series
Alice (high, low and in between). There are four image-elements in a large room: a window in the wall looks out on the Tower of
Babel by Pieter Breughel de Oude. In the centre there are fragments of Tenniel’s
Alice in a shattered mirror: her reflection is also broken! To the left and
right of Alice there are paintings by René Margritte:
Le Miroir Vivant (1928) and
L ’art de la conversation (1950). It
is impossible to describe all the associations when considering these four
elements, but this painting gives a beginning.
Of course my first association was a ”religious” one: the
promised land … the Israeli people leaving Egypt to march to their “promised
land”. Later on, in your childhood days, that land may have evolved into
“paradise” or “heaven” and now it may be Dreamland, Neverland, Nowhereland or
Wonderland for you. However, Van Geest derived this title from a lyric by Ry
Cooder about migrants leaving their
homeland: When you reach the broken
promised land …
There are more than 30 paintings in this book, the first dating
from 2011 and the last one from 2016, all oil on canvas and most of them are
much larger than one square metre! Nearly all of them depict Van Geest’s garden
in France, his beautiful garden … but is it a “Garden of Eden” or a lost
paradise, a garden of evil or a “locus amoenus”, or is it a
Toovertuin, an enchanted garden? Is it
a secret garden, a “hortus conclusus” … is it guarded and, if so … who are the
guards? I don’t know. You have to find out for yourself. Your perception might
be strongly influenced by your mood! To me it is a fairly friendly jungle and I
think it is disappointing that there are so many Disney characters in this
“miracle garden”. Even Alice is the blonde “WD-Alice” dressed in blue …
Nevertheless, her confrontation with the Dodo in “Rendez-vous” is full of
eloquence and reveals they are discussing Darwin. The paintings I like best show
real people: Van Geest and his wife Berneja in the”Pool of Tears” or his
granddaughter Moana in “Songbird”. Moana reminds me of beautiful Alice Liddell.
In “Songbird” there is Moana, “lying on a wooden ‘altar’,
surrounded by watery blue and lit by rays of light radiating through an abundant
green, [she] is a reference to Ophelia” by John Everett Millais. Van Geest’s
painting, though, “celebrates life”. Lewis Carroll met several famous artists;
Millais was one of them … he photographed the painter, his wife and two of his
daughters. Not just coincidence? It might be interesting to find out if there
are more similar “interconnections”.
“Songbird” (Moana), 2015, oil on canvas, 110/140 cm, collection
artist.
This book also provides new associations every time it is
opened: the holy grail and a ferryman, a building resembling an Auschwitz shed,
Martin Luther King and Jimi Hendrix , etc. … wandering in a wonderbook.
In both books much is said about Van Geest and his paintings:
the way they were created and a lot about what they show. For me that is very
helpful; I would not recognize many elements. The more you know, the more you
see! There is also a lot about what the paintings are trying to tell us. I think
that the “message” often is hard or even impossible to understand … language can
never explain all that art tries to tell. That’s why art exists … painting,
music, dance … maybe poetry can, by nót mentioning! The author Wouter Welling
writes on page 20: “This meaning must not be defined (…) A painting remains an
illusory surface (...) it compensates actual reality, which may be experienced
as harsh and meaningless.”
Another interconnection: I have just read a poem by one of my
favourite poets: Herman de Coninck (1944-1997). Yes, it is about “Alice” and not
… and it is in France!
Poetry.
Not Alice in wonderland,
but Alice arrived just
now: is this again
a new wonderland? No, this
is just
reality, after a long
absence.
If only politics were like
this
arriving in reality as in
an
old fermette, and say:
this is a
supporting wall, it must
remain,
this wall and that must go
we’ll create large rooms.
Arie van Geest is a great painter and I was surprised that as a
Carrollian I had never heard of him before! When I met him in January at the
meeting of the “Nederlandse Lewis Carroll Genootschap” he showed both books and
I asked him if he would let me write a small review for the Lewis Carroll
Society. All Carrollians can now get acquainted with his imposing work!
See: www.arievangeest.com
Thanks to Ron Stans for his correction of the text.
Franke Koksma
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