Archive for the 'kultur' Category
Tiger walk. 4.
October 30, 2008YELLOW-BLUE-RED
September 15, 2007TRIVIA
Three Ways – Three Colours
by Uffe Christoffersen
Many-headed beasts occur in many places in mythology. Each head symbolises one way in which this beast can behave, a special power it has, for example a god with three heads can have three kinds of power. An example of this is found in Græco-Roman goddess Trivia, who has three heads. Trivia is the goddess of ghosts and magic. She is especially worshipped at crossroads, where she shows herself on moonless nights accompanied by mares, dogs and she-wolves. Her name, Trivia, means ‘three roads’ in Latin. She therefore symbolises a choice between three possibilities, or worlds as the Greeks saw it: Hades, the human world and Olympus. She also has three sides to her personality: a good side, where she among other things gives birth to women, protection on one’s travels, riches, victory and consolation, – and an evil side, awful and infernal, where she rules over spectres, nightly visitations and terrible demons. She is the witch who symbolises the unconscious, where savage beasts and monsters roam.
YELLOW
Whether it be intense, powerful, so sharp that is screams out, or wide and dazzling as molten metal, yellow is the most informative and most burning colour. It is difficult to extinguish and breaks all the bonds one tries to tie it down with.
The sun’s rays break through the azure of heaven and show the power of the divine sphere above: Amongst the Aztecs’ gods, Huitzilopochtli, who is the victorious warrior and the god of the midday sun, is always painted yellow and blue in the pictures.
Yellow is the masculine colour, which brings light and life into the yellow/blue duo, and cannot be made dark. It has such a tendency to remain light, that no dark yellow exists. Yellow is therefore closely related to white. It brings youth, strength and youthful eternity.
Golden yellow is often a means of communication between humans and the gods: In India they used a golden knife in the great horse sacrifices. In the Mexican cosmology the golden yellow colour is the colour of the ‘earth’s new skin’ at the start of the rainy season. It symbolises therefore the mysteries of renewal. For this reason Xipe Totek, also called the ‘skinless’ or ‘skinned’ ruler, who is the god of spring rain, is also the god of the goldsmiths. At the spring festival his priests bore skins of the executed human sacrifices, which they painted yellow to enlist the help of this terrible deity.
BLUE
Blue is the deepest of all colours. It lets one’s gaze penetrate without hindrance and lose itself in eternity. It is as if it is constantly fleeing.
Blue is the most incorporeal of all colours: In nature it often occurs as transparency, like a concentration of a vacuum which for example could be air, water, crystal or diamond, which have no colour in themselves. A vacuum is precise, pure and cold.
Blue is the coldest of all colours and when it occurs alone, the purest, apart from a total vacuum, which occurs in neutral white.
Djengis Khan, who founded the great Mongolian dynasty, was the son of a wild deer and the blue wolf. The Turkish and Mongolian literature is full of blue lions and tigers…
The idea that nobility should have blue blood in their veins comes from the fact that it was a mortal sin to swear in the middle ages. The common people avoided swearing as a result, but the nobility took no notice of the prohibition. But one day a Jesuit enlisted the king’s help and forced them to cut out the name of God from their oaths. Therefore they replaced the word ‘dieu’ (or God) with the word ‘bleu’ (or blue). In this way ‘par la mort de Dieu’ (by the death of God) became ‘Morbleu’, ‘Sacré Dieu’ (Holy God) became ‘Sacrebleu’ and ‘par le sang de Dieu’ (By the blood of God) blev ‘Palsangbleu’. Even though the servants heard this latter oath, they only noticed the ‘sang bleu’ part (Blue Blood), and as they didn’t swear themselves, to separate the nobility from the common people they called them ‘sang bleu’ or ‘blue blood’!
RED
Red is universally acknowledged as a symbol of life because of its power, its strength and its glow. But red, which is the colour of fire and blood, has the ambiguity of both of these, depending on whether it is light or dark.
The clear, light red colour, which is rich and extrovert, belongs to the day, is masculine, fresh and incites to action by covering everything with its glow like an enormous invincible sun. The dark, heavy red is on the other hand nocturnal, feminine, secretive and almost introvert. It is not a symbol of expression, but of the mystery of life. The former pulls one along with it, it is the colour used for flags, advertisements etc, the latter holds one back: it is the colour of ‘prohibition’, it is used for the red light bulb which prohibits entry to a film or radio studio. It is also the colour of the lamp outside bordellos. Its role was to draw people inside, which may seem a contradiction, but it was the most prohibited thing at the time.
3 Watercolors – IV
September 12, 2007
TIGER on PAPER
The Tiger and the Rat
The Tiger and the Dolphin
The Tiger and the Archer
4 Drawings of Tigers – Painter
September 10, 2007
3 Watercolors-II
September 10, 2007
The Heifer, the Goat and the Sheep together with the Tiger
The King’s Son, the painted Tiger and the Horoscope
The Shepherd and the Tiger, the Tiger and the Hunter
…
TIGER FABLES
If tigers could paint…
Tiger fables is a common title I have given to my 42 watercolors inspired by Æsop and Jean de la Fontaine’s fables. I have selected about 200 fables which I think are interesting and suited my painting language. Many of the fables seemed to be similar when they were translated into Danish, French and English. It turned out that there were sometimes up to 6 variations of the same story. but I realised that Æsop is the original master of animal fables, which have later become an inspiration to most of the animal fables in Europe.
Through a thorough study of these selected fables, I experienced more and more how profound they were in their content, and I wanted to interpret them in my own way. And they became pictures…
During my work with the animal fables I have had many experiences in connection with the world we live in. This is partly true of the great international political problems, partly the close day-to-day situations which I have experienced in a different way seen in the light of the fables.
To get as close as possible to the original text of Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695) I have read these in the original language. This is Old French, but I was so lucky as to have Anna Christoffersen to make a Danish translation as well as write the short texts to each picture. La Fontaine’s fables are originally written in verse and are often cryptic even surrealistic. There are ambiguities in the selection of the animals, – they can have different symbolic meanings than they do in Danish.In the case of Æsop (about 600 BC) I have chosen the fables that are about animals. The short and precise texts of the fables contribute to opening the action in the pictures and give meaning to the different animals’ interaction and symbolic meaning in the picture.
Via these numerous drawings and pictures that I have made, I have moved further and further inside my own fabulous world. So that the lion has been replaced by the tiger.
Watercolor – A fugue for Several Voices
September 9, 2007 
TIGER
Painting with water colours is marvellous.
The secret to all water colour techniques is getting the colours to light up by allowing the paper to shine through them. If you mix white with water colours, the colours become ‘floury’. If you shut out the paper with a covering of paint, it is all over with the timbre of the colours.
Therefore I find it challenging to paint a tiger lying by a water hole. The animal makes a reflection of itself in the water – this element which is identical with the water colours I am using. I often use the water to allow the colours to flow over the paper and into each other in new combinations in an attempt to give the picture an impression of contrasts between hard and soft transitions.
A fugue for several voices.
Ambiguity…
September 8, 2007
Tiger 10. -50 x 50 cm. 2007.
…
At the moment I am working on a tiger’s head. It snarls and spits at one. With its jaws open. It is making a signal.
It has its eyes closed.
But there is also a smile, even though it is ambiguous.
An ambiguity reflects the tiger’s character.
Once I was visited in my studio by one of my friends, a French psychiatrist. No just any psychiatrist. He is among other things a great admirer of Jean Dubuffet’s art. He looked at my animal pictures amicably. After a while he looked at me and said, “Uffe, you don’t paint animals at all. Has nobody ever told you that you have been painting human beings?”
Maybe he is right in that I search to find the balance between the presence and the absence of various characteristics.
…
One Man Show
Uffe Christoffersen
“THE SEVEN TIGERS”
In the period: 29th September – 13. October 2007
Galerie Birch
Bredgade 6,
DK- 1260 Copenhagen
Denmark
Tuesday-Friday:
11:00-17:00
Saturday:
11:00-15:00
www.galeriebirch.com
Catalog:
Download PDF. 744 KB
uffe-christoffersen-the-seven-tigers-2007.pdf
….
…
3 Watercolors
September 6, 2007
The Horse and the Tiger
The Hare and the Tiger’s Justice
The Hare and the Tiger
Tiger fables is a common title I have given to my 42 watercolors inspired by Æsop and Jean de la Fontaine’s fables. I have selected about 200 fables which I think are interesting and suited my painting language. Many of the fables seemed to be similar when they were translated into Danish, French and English. It turned out that there were sometimes up to 6 variations of the same story. but I realised that Æsop is the original master of animal fables, which have later become an inspiration to most of the animal fables in Europe.
Through a thorough study of these selected fables, I experienced more and more how profound they were in their content, and I wanted to interpret them in my own way. And they became pictures…
During my work with the animal fables I have had many experiences in connection with the world we live in. This is partly true of the great international political problems, partly the close day-to-day situations which I have experienced in a different way seen in the light of the fables.
To get as close as possible to the original text of Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695) I have read these in the original language. This is Old French, but I was so lucky as to have Anna Christoffersen to make a Danish translation as well as write the short texts to each picture. La Fontaine’s fables are originally written in verse and are often cryptic even surrealistic. There are ambiguities in the selection of the animals, – they can have different symbolic meanings than they do in Danish.
In the case of Æsop (about 600 BC) I have chosen the fables that are about animals. The short and precise texts of the fables contribute to opening the action in the pictures and give meaning to the different animals’ interaction and symbolic meaning in the picture.
Via these numerous drawings and pictures that I have made, I have moved further and further inside my own fabulous world. So that the lion has been replaced by the tiger
5 Watercolors
September 6, 2007
TIGER FABLES
If tigers could paint…
An unnecessary bother
The sick Tiger
The old Tiger
Four Bulls and the Tiger
The Tiger in Love
Focus of Attention
September 6, 2007 
I live in a village which functions for part of the year as a collection point for sheep. More than ten thousand sheep arrive at the place in great lorries. The lorries have several storeys so there can be quite a lot of sheep in them. The columns of lorries always arrive in the autumn after the sheep have been up in the mountains to graze. After arriving they are divided up into smaller flocks which go round the countryside, driven by a shepherd and 4-5 dogs, which are unbelievably good at defending their flock against attack from strange dogs, foxes and thieves. The dogs keep the flocks together, too.
Sheep are exposed to many dangers, animals of prey are not limited to one place. They are everywhere, disguised or not so disguised. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. You can recognise them by their instincts. by their ruthlessness. Here and now. By their mode of attack.
My own dog once ran off to chase sheep. It came home covered in blood to be met with a face expressing surprise and worry. I thought I knew the dog. But nature has its own cycle. Even though a dog can be calm and disciplined, a role model for other dogs, it has its aspects, just as other species have theirs. Its behaviour can seem unpredictable and intangible. My eyes seek out this focus when the schism between nature and culture has to stand its test.
One Man Show:
Uffe Christoffersen
“THE SEVEN TIGERS”
In the period: 29th September – 13. October 2007
Galerie Birch
Bredgade 6,
DK- 1260 Copenhagen
Denmark
Tuesday-Friday:
11:00-17:00
Saturday:
11:00-15:00
www.galeriebirch.com
Catalog:
Download PDF. 744 KB
uffe-christoffersen-the-seven-tigers-2007.pdf
….
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