(5). Working

 

 

I thought these two clips of very different paintings make for a nice juxtaposition. Above we have "The Taverne"/ L'estaminet by FRANS MASEREEL, a Belgian artist (1889-1972) whose whole work focused on the average Joe. Seamen, dockworkers, big crowds, women next to big strong dudes, harbor and bar scenes. He was a peace activist, perhaps not the greatest painter I'm sure, but did amazing wood cuts as well as drawings, much done for newspaper articles. Our tavern scene, painted in 1929, looked first like a work cantine to me, men on their break, but then I saw the window behind, the ship smoke stack and cranes. And since there is a woman in the background, too, it must be a bar scene. Only WHERE IS THE BEER? The colors are gloomy, but I am sure Belgian harbors in the 20s weren't too cheerful. He depicteds moods, doesn't he? Masereel certainly has a very distinctive style. And so does THOMAS HARTMANN:

This is a contemporary German painter born 1950 in a small West-German town near the North Sea. In an art magazine I tore out this page for the exhibition "Direkte Umwege" (direct detours) at the Gallery Nothelfer in Berlin 2013-14. Later the same was exhibited 2017 in Vienna. First it made me think of those nuclear power plants where the white coated engineers sit in front of huge computers, but looking closer and considering the year he must have painted this, Hartmann probably was just overwhelmed/disgusted or intrigued by everyone suddenly sitting in front of a monitor. I noticed it too then, whenever you saw an open office, it was people in front of big screens. Looking at his entire work and his artistic devlopment is possible cause he has a great web site where you can see his beginning works to now, very honest I thought.

100 years are between these works and it shows how our work life has changed from harsh manual labor to an isolated digital world.