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
The Dutch painter, Arie van Geest (1948) met ‘his Alice’ early on in his life, when as a four year old boy 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! Over a decade since 1968, 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 arises in 1999 ... Bob Dylan becomes another source of inspiration. 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 the start of
a new period leading up to another series of paintings: The
Broken Promised Land. On these canvases Van Geest transforms the garden of
his summer house in France into a land of wonder, that is both bright and dark
like Carroll's is. His heroes and demons figure in this imaginary circus of the
mind, and though they are surrounded by proliferating plants in bright sunlight
one cannot deny a certain danger lurks somewhere in between the shrubs and
trees. Moreover, “Everything is interconnected” (one of Van Geest’s
one-liners), so we may still hear echoes from the past. The
child is the father of the man.
Arie van Geest, Manifesto, 2010.
Arie van Geest, Rise and Fall, 2009.
Arie van Geest, All along the watchtower, 2009.
Arie van Geest, The girl with the mirror, 2009.
Arie van Geest, The orphans of the sea, 2010
Arie van Geest, Visions of Johanna, 2010
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 oneof 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’.
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 allthat 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 just read a poem by one of my favourite poets:
Herman de Coninck (1944– 1997). Yes, it is about “Alice” and not ... ànd 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, there
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
(Retired senior lecturer in Dutch language and (youth) literature.)
Arie van Geest, Pool of Tears, 2013.
