Calendarium

This series of paintings was begun in 1994 with one picture for each month and a thirteenth which formed the frontispiece of the limited edition print sets. The artist assigned to each of the monthly pictures a song by Robin Williamson who performed them at the opening in S E Gallery, Darmstadt.

The detailed background below is taken from a taped conversation between Hans Diebschlag and Peter Siebenhühner which was reproduced in the booklet distributed with the limited edition prints of the Calendar.

In 1993 I had completed a cycle of paintings which dealt with Rüsselsheim, the town where I grew up. After this retrospective engagement with my own development and the various social realities of the fifties and sixties in that town so marked by contradictions, I wanted to alter the outlook of my work both in content and style. I wanted to immerse myself in a more spiritual realm in order to find out, through a definition of my position, how far the wheel had turned for me. This is what prompted the creation of this annual cycle.

It has grown with the year. Not everything was premeditated. In January 1994 I had initially just planned to paint one picture for each month of the year which would specifically deal with that month. I was fascinated by the notion of working on a painting for one whole year, the single paintings of which would constitute facets of one entity, would reflect one another and comment on one another.The first painting in the cycle already contains a series of motifs which were then followed up, varied and developed further in the later paintings.

One of the principal motifs has a long history. In the seventies I had been very much impressed with Tibetan meditation images which have the purpose of excluding all external influences and calming and focusing the mind of the viewer. For more than twenty years, I have been trying to imagine corresponding meditation images for Western culture, to find a way of translating this world of ideas into a Western context without plagarising or imitating the originals.I wanted to try and paint a meditation image for 1994, a painting that is not meant to be glanced at in passing but that may assist the viewer in collecting himself or herself. Thus the paintings came to be modern meditation images.

They possess a double significance as calendar pictures and calendar stories. From my own point of view, working on these paintings was a meditative occupation within the dynamics created by my concrete personal circumstances and experiences during that particular year and the much older and deeper traditions connected with the seasonal cycle.

Playing with the idea of the calendar, I added little comments on the days in a separate margin on the painting. In this personal calendar of mine only the days when I worked on the painting are recorded and the ones where I did not work mostly Saturdays and Sundays - are missing, as the truly experienced days are only those which found me engaged in this exchange with and meditation on the paintings. In the beginning, these comments in the margin recorded political or other events that occupied my mind, but later they exclusively state what I did on that day and what the weather was like that is to say they deal with the specific non-repetitive chance variations within the unvarying process. Thus, the calendar also represents a diary, a part of my personal biography and of my involvement with the myths relating to the year.

The painted frames are not meant to be decorative borders, but aids designed to help the viewer to focus more easily. They are trapezoidal, so that the viewer sitting at an angle to the painting still sees it as a perfect rectangle.

My aim was to represent archetypal experiences by means of symbols that are not exhausted. If the old symbols are used, an in-depth engagement with the picture becomes impossible. The viewer is in the picture too quickly. Once the underlying idea is understood, the image is rendered superfluous if the symbols are employed as interchangeable cliches. I meant to create work that is on the one hand precise in its meanings and on the other hand vague enough to allow for multi-layered interpretation.

Certain motifs and figures constantly reappear in the paintings. Initially, they were quotes of and allusions to the fixed structure and certain pictorial motifs in Tibetan tankas: in the centre of a star-shaped city, representing paradise on earth, sits the Buddha, surrounded by gods and saints; in further circles, formed by ditches and banks, there are demons, people and animals. The centre presents the spiritual core,and the further you go outward, the deeper you enter into the material world. This image was turned into the "red city" in the January picture, which then reappears in subsequent months. The various human and animal figures which will then evolve into the protagonists of many paintings are already present in this first picture. I was interested to see what became of them in the course of the year.

The figures I chose are "modest" symbols, and have, as yet, rarely had the pleasure of acting as signs or as mythically endowed characters. Still, they do possess archetypal qualities for me. Hare and Hen are not generally counted amongst the noble, but rather amongst the "dumb" animals; the Hen with her over excited cackling, alarmed fluttering, scraping and picking, and the Hare with his running, darting from side to side, hiding. In my view, they personify non understanding, they are symbols for the terror and constant anxiety of living in the material world.

Two figures each personify contrasting male and female aspects. The Butcher, the Machismo, Father of the Gods, King and Slaughterer, who, cleaver in hand is constantly running after the Hen, and who represents an aspect of the creative and at the same time destructive male energy. He decides between life and death and yet he does not, as life and death exist alongside one another. He enacts what is necessary, but he also sees through the game. His hat in the shape of a cloud hints at his expanded mind.

The counterpart male figure is the Diver, the Explorer, the Scholar, the Wise Man who tries to get to the bottom of things, who wants to examine the connection of mind and matter, but who still protects himself from any all-too direct contact through his cap and goggles, his mask and blinkers.

Woman as Venus, as archetypal mother, goddess of love, the threefold white goddess as described by Graves, generally appears as an elderly lady, not infrequently wine glass in hand, but sometimes also in a younger guise. Lastly the woman as Cook, as the nurturing woman who takes care of growing children and the growth of the plants of the year.

I believe that something similar is being attempted in modern popular art, especially in music. Frequently, artists have condensed the zeitgeist in one sentence which subsequently became a standard quotation. Today, we don't recall quotes from Goethe or Shakespeare, modern folk poetry consists of rock and pop songs. Certain lines are so deeply ingrained in me that they spontaneously arise in certain situations, and they accompanied my thoughts during the act of painting. Thus I assign to each of the monthly pictures a song by Robin Williamson, a Scottish-Celtic singer to whom I feel very close and who gave the concert on the opening night of the show.


NOTE
All the paintings in this series have been sold. A numbered limited edition of boxed set of prints of the entire series was also produced one or two sets may still be for sale. Please get in contact if interested.
Single prints of individual months may also still be available so please get in touch if interested. 

Text and Images Copyright Hans Diebschlag All Rights Reserved