On observing the creative process
Speech Hürth 13.3.1983, Kreishaus, recorded live

Well, I planned to show slides from the creation process of this painting, and now I want to try to relate that with words what I planned to show with the slides. When I painted this picture, some others too, around 1976, I tried to find out about the creative process. I was eager to know what really happened when a picture comes into being, taking a snapshot every time something important happened.

I worked very long on this picture, around 7 months, the single dates are marked on the back, and I've shot 120 slides during the process. I quit this way of working very fast later on as I found out, that this hampered me a lot, this watching myself. To these slides I wanted to tell you that by no means this happens always that way, but that accidentally I have slides to this painting. I learnt thereby, through the work on this and other pictures, that it is very harmful for me to watch myself this way, and rather find out in time when I start thinking about what really happens in the picture, to better take a walk than hamper myself in this way, because that's just what I did back then.

Now this is not the rule, that it is so higgledy-piggledy and difficult as with this picture, it is only that I was so blocked up, hence it was so difficult. In the beginning, you have to imagine, it starts with the empty canvas, totally white.

This would have been the first slide, to see it really, it is just a white plain, no more. That's where the problem starts that modern artists have in a much higher degree as, let's say, in the renaissance, because nowadays the artists don't have a theme proper, they have no commissioner, Leonardo i.e. never had such a problem, he always knew what they demanded from him. Very often you see that artists watch out for a theme of their own and then work at that, we all know cases of that. I worked that way myself formerly and was very discontent at it. Later I found out that I could not experience something new in this way, rather that which I knew beforehand, being able to look at it physically afterwards.

It is more than 10 years that I work differently, I really start with nothing. The empty white canvas, take a brush, dip and start drawing. In this case there was that drawing after maybe 5 minutes on the picture, this head was already there, the figure was different though, a woman sat there, a naked woman with straddled legs, breasts right under the chin, on a male sphinx, stretched over the whole canvas, looking to the left.

Now this was a completely different start as that what you can see now, quite obviously, and in the next slide you could have seen that I corrected at that, i.e. I didn't like the face of the sphinx , so I changed the nose, and this and that, and it became more and more black and dirty and while working on it I found out that this didn't work out at all, I would not get it right with all my tricks, I would not get convinced by this, that had to be erased.

So there emerged new figures, I will not go into the details now, rather show you at a certain point somehow clearer what really happened.

If you look at the striking animals here in the middle then you might arrive at the conclusion, this has to be arrived at by thinking, the fish swims in the water, the snake crawls on the ground, the bird flies in the sky, all is arranged on a circle, that looks as if constructed. But actually I did not think this out, as said, I would not have been satisfied by that, but things were very, very difficult here.

It was clear that something had to be there, there was nothing of interest, I tried out a lot. Therefore I was totally helpless and, in those days, tried to get to this case by thinking also, this dame had to do something, she was standing there, the hands did not convince me, how can you do that, how do you lay a hand on the hip or so, she can point with a finger or else do something or put the hand any other way, I tried very odd ways, it was all junk, you can see plainly that this in not ok.

Well, some day something happened which I did not understand at all at first, I was totally exhausted and strained, that conscious control discontinued for a moment, and in that very moment it happened, something emerged; the woman had quite at the beginning, when I was still at ease, mostly it is easier at the beginning, when I am totally loose, then things just emerge, and only, when I stick obstinately to it it's getting hard, well, the woman had kind of an oak leaf in her hand, and I had tried several things out and began with that oak leaf again and tried a flower and then, without my conscious realizing, as said I was kind of impaired in my attention, the stalk became thicker and thicker, and suddenly the snake was there, exactly the way you see it right now.

The snake impressed me so much I stepped back from the canvas, if I had to paint a snake it would certainly not have been that convincing, and thus I was quite enjoyed. I did not know how I had gotten that snake, but now it was here.

Then I thought I had solved my problem, I will make that tail longer, this way she will hold the snake with the other hand also, I have solved the problem of the other hand, and then the empty space around here will be filled too, I have a near circle being a complex symbol, the snake quasi biting itself into the tail, and hence all my problems are solved at once.

But alas, the whole thing did not look right as could be seen immediately, that was junk. So I tried to put in a little curve here and there, making things more lively, I tried anything, it was all nothing. Finally I erased the long tail suffering enormous anxieties that this short tail would not be so convincing as at the beginning.

The next day or the day after that, while concentrating on the other hand, being stuck again, something very similar happened, I sagged, wow: the bird sat there. Again I was very happy, but the problem with the other hand was still not solved, and then I tried the first time something I never do but knew from a friend 20 years older than I, whose method is letting his hand go at will through which lines appear, of course, which he contemplates, then states: up to that point they are holy, the rest is junk, which he erases, and works so long until the whole picture consists of holy lines only, so to say.

This is what I did then too, I wondered that lines of similar characteristic and quality as in his work appeared, but at first this was no way. This got darker and more and more black, so I had to erase everything, trying to begin anew, when suddenly I saw in these lines produced there a very abstract fish, and it was at this moment that I realized that the film roll in my camera was not thread right, that I inserted the film into this camera I was working with for 5 years already so clumsy that all the snapshots of the snake, that I told you, which was highly dramatic, that this is not documented at all.

Today I think that this was quite ok, I have understood the tip somehow, anyway, there is a photo of this somehow abstract fish. I erased him and then, one-two-three emerged this fish that you see here, and this is not a fish either as one would invent it if somebody wanted: paint me a fish! Rather a very peculiar invention.

With this the picture was not finished, things went on, what I wanted to say with this is that the problem for the painter is to let the picture come to him.

You have just heard in the speech of Mr. Flemming about Rembrandt, I was very much engaged with, among others, Rembrandt or Leonardo, you probably know that he painted 4 years on his Mona Lisa and then declared it unfinished, one could very well ask: what is he doing all the time, or people accused Rembrandt in his late years that he worked way too long on his paintings becoming thicker and thicker, looking like the work of a mason throwing the plaster at the wall, what is the painter actually doing at work?

You have to imagine that with every line that the painter draws, the whole picture changes. It begins with the white canvas and all the time it is nothing. Permanently it is not really something, nothing good, and as long as it is nothing, the painter keeps on working. With every stroke the picture changes, it is always in a fluid state, until finally through the work of the hand, not the head, through the work of the hand something for the painter convincing emerges, something that satisfies him, that moves him, and then the picture is finished.

In the case of Leonardo the conclusion may be drawn that he himself was not totally satisfied with that what he produced. In teaching I had the opportunity sometimes to relate this experience to pupils, i.e. if they sat down in front of a mirror to draw a self portrait, that they found, painting, drawing the mouth, i.e., that the whole expression changed when they shifted any line for a millimeter or even a fraction of a millimeter. This is what a painter works with daily, he puts colors, lines, and all the time everything changes, sometimes dramatically, sometimes only gradually.

When the picture is finished, it begins a life on its own, it is then that I as a producer can find a relation to the picture, take position to it, can think about what it is actually on the painting, I take a close look, expose myself to it, and then sometimes I notice eventually things, I am very cautious giving interpretations, generally I just expose myself to the pictures, because pictures are something that work through the eye and not through language.

Therefore I do not try to translate that in language, rather I try to see as exactly as I can what is to be seen in the picture, it begins with simple facts, so and so many figures, and then passes very fast to things that are not even grasped at by language, i.e. the emotional expression or the kind of relationship shown between the persons etc.

Mr Dr. Benz and Mr. Flemming too have emphasized that the pictures make statements on the relation of a person to himself and to others, and in this way the pictures are an instrument for me to find out about me and my relation in the world, to others, I not only feel related to the presence but also to the past, and maybe there is much of our whole history of evolution in these pictures.

I like to wish you personally to take gain from looking at the pictures too, joy and delight. I thank you.