The qualities we associate with the pastel color pink are quite diverse. They range from sensitive, tender, youthful, artificial or unreal to eccentric, sweet, vulnerable, and pleasurable. The color is at home in both “high” and “low” culture. Pink may be perceived as unpleasant, perhaps even embarrassing at times, or as appealing and enjoyable. And it is quite simply associated with the idea of beauty.

Pink, with its emotional and often contradictory components, has been given little serious attention until now. Yet, visual artists, both past and present, have produced a number of powerful, striking works that display this subtle color brilliantly. One attractive aspect of works with pink is the color’s inherent ambivalence. The driving force behind efforts to come to terms with pink in art is the desire to explore its subtlety and reveal its many distinctive characteristics. With pink, artists take a position. According to Sigmund Freud, “our behavior is ruled not by reason but by emotion,” and recent research on the brain confirms his claim.(1) Pink is more closely associated with emotions than any other color. It appears to be a color that addresses us with such intensity that it poses a genuine challenge to our emotions. If this is true, then pink is one of those colors that clearly influence our behavior.

Feelings and sensibilities differ considerably from one person to the next. They are complex and difficult to communicate. Artists are among those specialists who work with the instruments of “emotions and sensibilities” in a professional context. Works of art are comprehensive. The capacity to perceive and interpret color is the product of interaction involving physiological, visual processes and an individual’s learned responses to previous visual experiences. Quite often, different meanings overlap and form a complex web of relationships. Pink addresses our senses in more ways than other colors. Our eyes blend white (the color of brightness and light) with dominant red (which radiates warmth and vitality), and elicits the sense of touch (the human skin, the organ responsible for physical feeling), the sense of closeness, the sense of taste (sweetness and fruitiness), and the sense of smell (the fragrance of blossoms). The scale of social attitudes toward pink runs to extremes. People seem to know exactly where pink belongs and where it doesn’t. Remarkably, genders respond differently to pink. Women tend to find pink quite interesting, while very few men wish to have anything to do with the color. Most men reject pink categorically.(2) Reassessment, upgrading, and reevaluation are fundamental working principles in art. Worthless material becomes valuable when used in the context of art, as aspects other than conventional ones are discovered and appreciated. The same could apply to pink. Its inherent qualities are merely waiting to be explored under different conditions. But what is its inherent nature? Color has no linguistic correlative. And thus, the unique characteristics of pink can only be approached through the works and contexts presented below.

Pink Vista—High & Low
Pink rarely appears in nature. It is not a spectral color of the rainbow. Yet, there are manifestations of light in which this color range can be found. The evening sky at sunset tends toward a yellowish pink, and the light of dawn appears in shades of pink. The often cited, “pink clouds,” reflect the color, and snow may sometimes give off a pink hue. Pink light reflected in the aggregate states of water has been depicted in many works. Here, we are reminded of atmospheric morning and evening scenes of mist rising from a body of water. The darkness of night disappears at dawn. Coolness gives way to freshness. Dark blue turns pale. Pink shades begin to appear, and herald the sun’s rays of light and warmth. At this time of day, no longer is the sky so infinitely vast and distant. It appears to move closer to the earth as it takes on a pale reddish coloration. These are moments of promise!

In contrast to the bright light of day, pink appears when light emerges or fades. This fleeting manifestation is an important connotation of the color. It appears in a brief, passing phase that is often almost overpoweringly impressive. During these periods, pink assumes a more profound existential meaning. In its constant, inexorable process of transformation, pink light is a memorable sign of the beginning or the end of the day. And with it comes glimpses of something more—transience! Pink alludes to earth-bound existence and mortality. Through its association with the transient nature of life, pink relates to the themes of Romantic art. We experience the manifestations of natural light less powerfully in our cities. Yet, something of this sense may remain in our consciousness.

Every experience of happiness or enjoyment is truly that, only if it is limited in time. Pink is fleeting, not only as a color of light. This quality is evident in nature as well, wherever pink appears as the color of blossoms, and—above all—pink is associated with blossoms. In many languages, the names of colors relate to the most common blossoms of this color—the rose or the carnation. The vessels of color, blossom petals, are delicate and sensitive. Light is captured in them; they first become brilliant, then wither. The processes of blooming and withering pass quickly. The lifetime of a blossom is short, unlike that of green leaves. As well as in other contexts in Japan, the color pink is associated with Sakura, the blooming of the cherry blossom. This natural occurrence is also a major cultural event. Every year, people devote considerable time and energy contemplating the clouds of pink blossoming trees and the petals that fall like snowflakes after but a few days. They are a symbol of the death of young warriors—the Samurai—who fell in battle while in the full bloom of their lives. Looking at cherry trees, it seems that universal feelings of beauty and pain play an essential part. The awareness of transience intensifies the aura of pink. Worth noting is that Japanese people tend to associate this rather delicate color with masculine themes.

Pink anticipates the shift to milder temperatures. It is the color of spring and plants in bloom. The “blush” of blossoms conveys a tender, erotic message. With their color and fragrance, they beguile both the insects they lure, and our human senses of sight and smell. The fragrance of roses is one of the oldest ingredients used in perfumes. Other beautiful pink blossoms, which are greatly admired and even worshipped, include the lotus blossom in India, the peony in China, and the carnation in the Mediterranean region. Pink appears in bizarre and unusual natural forms in the world of water and seas: corals, seashells, and snail’s shells. Marine snails and their nests have the shape of blossoms. One can almost imagine them swaying gently in the water. They appear to take the delicacy of the color one step further. Incidentally, pink pearls are quite rare. We know of one land animal in particular that often has pink skin—the domestic pig. Presented in immaculate pink, it has advanced to the status of a good-luck charm, unlike its wild, unimposing-colored relative. Another animal associated exclusively with pink is the flamingo. Without its pink feathers, it would probably be just another bird, but its pink plumage makes the flamingo the ultimate symbol of exotic regions of the South. Pink flamingos are a kind of bird of paradise that we associate with our longing for a dream world. They possess many of the characteristics commonly associated with the color pink: a hardly earth-bound lightness and a physical palpability in their soft feathers. When they fly in flocks, one is reminded of a passing “cloud of feathers.” Pink is a warm, soft, and light color. Materialized in the form of feathers, the color’s smooth, supple appeal is almost physical. The British fashion designer John Galliano must have had this light, erotic intimation in mind when he placed pink feathers beneath the skirts of his models.

Sensitivity is one of the most important emotional qualities we associate with pink. Part of this association results from the knowledge that pink can be the color of the skin and the body’s openings and orifices. The skin, our largest perceptual organ, feels the properties of substances, states, and conditions. We use it as a means of orientation. Also worth noting is that this perceptual process works in reverse. Through our capacity for sensory perception, we gain self-confidence and a sense of ourselves. The condition of “nakedness” is equivalent to vulnerability. Human beings are born naked. In light-skinned people, the color of the thin layer of skin tends toward pink. It is extremely vulnerable to injury. In situations where great courage is openly demonstrated, it can be reinforced by nakedness. Unprotected and unarmed, the vulnerable body is exhibited demonstratively. Aggressive displays of nudity play upon these associations. Strength, eroticism, and power are united in many allegorical figures of liberty. Pink offers a veritable El Dorado of possibilities for painting the nude figure. This is the stage on which the color of flesh can be presented, and it becomes quite evident that pink can appear in an extraordinary range of nuances. Since it is a pastel color which contains a great deal of white, it provides an ideal basis for the most delicate blends. Pink encompasses a diverse color spectrum in which the most delicate modulations can be expressed, and recognized by the viewer.

Beyond the sphere of physical sensations, the skin also reveals emotional states. Inner conditions are reflected outwardly. When blood “freezes” in our veins, we turn pale. When the opposite occurs, we blush, activity becomes apparent. These reactions can be extreme when we are enraged or frightened, but also, when we are embarrassed or in love. As blood rushes through our veins, inner feelings influence our views of the outside world. Our surroundings appear rosier. The pleasant feeling of being in love changes our outlook. Pink is a precursor of red, which signifies great, fulfilling love. The color can progress in that direction. Pink embodies suspense, longing, promise, and the hope of fulfillment. It represents the spiritual and the emotional realm of love. Pink is erotic. Pink is global in this context. Pink offers other pleasures through our senses of taste and smell. Unlike other colors, it tastes sweet and smells flowery. Sweet things are universally popular, and sweetness is a primary taste sensation conveyed through the taste buds on our tongue. Sweets and sweet desserts are less important in a nutritional sense. They are something special and intended, above all, to satisfy our yearning for pleasure. The consistencies of cakes and desserts are often soft and creamy. They melt on the tongue or are sucked, intensifying oral gratification. These pleasant sensations may also contribute to the popularity of pink being associated with children. Sweetness becomes cuteness when connected to children. Cute little children are sweet! Plastic toys and dolls for little girls exhibit a striking amount of pink. In this way, little girls come to associate pink with the color of femininity.
Historically speaking, connecting pink with the feminine has varied in terms of intensity. In the Rococo period, when pastel colors were in vogue, even boys and men wore pink suits. Courtly society displayed its sensuality to the point of eccentricity. Today and in the recent past, pink has been worn primarily by girls and women. Despite all the progress made towards emancipation, rarely is the color found in the clothing of men and boys. Isolated attempts to introduce pink have been made from time to time. Current trends in the male fashion favor pink shirts. They give those who wear them a softer, more approachable look. In women’s clothing, pink is most often used in especially delicate fabrics. These textures enhance the soft, delicate character of the color. Color and material allude to qualities girls and women are expected to embody: sensitivity, gentleness, friendliness, and eroticism. It is generally recognized today that external appearance influences internal behavior. Dressing is also a form of acquired learning. However, women also select this dress color for strategic, subversive reasons. During the heyday of the women’s movement, pink came to be regarded as a sign of self-assurance. Pink has long been associated with homosexuals. It has become a color that demonstrates difference. Pink also enables those who wear it to set themselves apart from the conventional male image.

Rarely is the color found in architecture or design. In most cases, buildings with pink facades represent deliberate attempts to evoke a sense of the extraordinary. While still a relatively unknown young architect, Frank O. Gehry stylized his unpretentious private home in Santa Monica, California; into a playful architecture by surrounding it with fragmentary architectural details, and painted it in pink. Some time earlier, Louis Barragán pioneered the use of pink as a radiant, self-assured color on the plain, large surfaces of his architecture in the San Cristóbal Stable and Egerstrom House and Los Clubes further South in Mexico during 1963–67. Numerous pink houses can be found in Florida and California. It is no coincidence that so many examples of such houses can be seen in these States. They demonstrate the expectations people have about life in these areas. People who live there are doing well. They enjoy a pleasant life in a kind of “dream world.” Pink gives architecture an effortless, floating quality. Buildings seem much less ponderous. It is difficult to ascertain whether Douglas MacRae, a printer by trade, and owner and publisher of the Financial Times, was acquainted with pink as the “color that makes everything lighter.” In 1893, he decided to print the newspaper on pink paper instead of the traditional white. A spokesperson for the Financial Times in London simply informed me that the move had been made to set the paper apart from competing business publications. Whatever the reason, the change in color paid off. From then on, the Financial Times outsold all of its competitors. Some things are more pleasant to read on a pink background. Indeed, pink makes things look more beautiful, a phenomenon that is quite easy to demonstrate. One simply puts on the proverbial “rose-colored glasses,” and suddenly the world appears in a more pleasant light. It is the filter effect that eliminates disturbing factors. The picture revealed to the viewer is thus beautified. Astonishingly, even chickens prefer to see the world in pink. An article from China reveals that researchers gave 180 chickens pink contact lenses in an experiment. They became calmer and produced more eggs.(3)

“Think Pink” is a slogan intended to banish doubts and worries from our thoughts. It was coined in the United States during the nineteen-fifties and must be regarded within the context of creativity research. Doubts associated with reality are set aside to keep them from suffocating new ideas before they develop. Pink was meant to inspire the imagination. The musical Funny Face popularized the slogan “Think Pink.” In the film, editors of a women’s magazine begin producing new, interesting fashion features with imagination and élan as soon as their office is redecorated—and painted pink. Derek Jarman also alluded to this film sequence in his movie, The Garden, by incorporating, among other references, pink as the color of the gay community, as an “homage” literally bursting with pink.(4)

Pink is the color of the fantastic. Boundaries are crossed. Pink animals become less animal-like. Hasn’t the flamingo always been more of an art figure than a real animal? That is certainly true of the “Pink Panther.” The typical example is a cartoon figure. The animated cartoon is a genre in which the impossible becomes possible. Pink represents emancipation from the burdens of reality and traditional norms. Pink appears again and again in its role as a means of achieving distance from reality. What is displayed in this context is extravagance, and the extraordinary. At the court of Louis XV of France, it was his mistress, Madame Pompadour, who cultivated pink as her favorite color. In more recent times, female stars have often presented themselves in wild combinations of revealing, yet at the same time, innocent-looking gowns. The first manifestation of the trend was the pink corsage designed for Madonna by Jean Paul Gaultier. Peaches, Pink, and others then followed in pink-colored outfits. But there are also classics. A small group of very wealthy, elderly ladies dress constantly and without inhibition in pink from head to toe. Some of them even design their surroundings in matching colors. They allow themselves to wear pink, which they actually should avoid, as it is reserved for youth, as a way of demonstrating resolve, independence, and power! One particularly resolute woman, who ran her own business empire for decades, was Elisabeth Arden, founder and owner of the cosmetics company named after her. She also loved surrounding herself lavishly in pink and was even buried in a pink dress created by the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli in 1966.

One of the unique characteristics of pink I would like to emphasize is its peaceable quality, which, however, should not be confused with powerlessness. In an art action in 1991, the Czech artist David Cerny painted a Soviet tank pink on the base of a monument. The tank was a memorial to the first Soviet tank which came to Prague in May of 1945. There is hardly a more dramatic way of changing a symbol than by using pink as a demonstration of harmlessness. The olive-green military camouflage had clearly outlasted its usefulness and was transformed into its opposite for all to see. What followed was a genuine painting battle. Some days later, the Czech army repainted the pink tank in dark olive-green. That brought the deputies of the Federal Assembly (Parliament) to action, and they repainted the tank pink. Today, the tank is exhibited at the Museum of Aviation Kbely.

As it appears in nature, we associate pink with flowers, with the sweet, light, transient, and rare. In the cultural context, we associate it with the pleasant, the delicate, the erotic, the dream-like, the unreal, the false, the artificial, with exaggeration, excess, eccentricity, and luxury. But we also associate it with poverty and pain, and unimaginative mass-produced goods. What is unique about pink is that it is assertive in whatever context it appears. Pink is the way it is and it makes no attempts to disguise itself. It is vulnerable to attack, and it tends to polarize. Its increasing popularity as a modern color in recent years may be attributable to its challenging and complicated qualities. People were aware of that even during the Rococo. One has to know how to use pink. Pink is revealing. What this means in art is that the color can be used to develop unusual and ambiguous congruencies and contradictions. Because of the intensity of possibilities for sensual perception, the cultural factors, and the social implications associated with pink, the color can be used in particularly sophisticated ways.
Aesthetics relate to the senses. If we consider the sheer abundance of possibilities for experiencing pink cited above, it is reasonable to conclude that pink is an especially aesthetic color: “Pink is beauty.” The longing for “La vie en rose” is a yearning for life in perfect beauty. That is an ideal. And it can also be the reason why so many people reject pink. After all, who wants to be perceived as a naïve dreamer? Has this something to do with a hostility to the pleasures of life, or to the urge to having everything under control? No, that does not go far enough. Pink is simply too beautiful to be true.
If we associate the concept of truth, not only with “reality” or, to be more precise, with “realization,” then we might develop a different view of pink. The beauty of pink can be acceptable if we understand that truth also incorporates the unreal and the ideal. Here, the shift in perspective takes place. The pink “alpine glow” can be observed in contemplation if one is willing to accept dreams, fears, and longings. It takes courage to recognize feelings. It is no coincidence that pink plays an important role in kitsch. Feelings and sensibilities are deliberately addressed. Longings and feelings are triggered—through manipulation, of course—but at least they are activated. They become visible, and people pay serious attention to them. One of the most famous of Barnett Newman’s paintings is entitled, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? But perhaps we are much more afraid of pink. Do we need to beware of pink? One can confront things that make us afraid by making them appear small and ridiculous. Is that a reason for the rejection of pink? This color, which is so closely connected to feelings, is uncanny. Its radiance undermines the barriers of reason. Pink is subversive and revealing. The ambivalence of the color pink results from the desire to establish harmony between the contradictory factors of social norms and personal feelings. Pink, this vastly underestimated everyday color, touches many of the unspoken things that move people. Pink is unobjective, of course, but objectivity is only one part of life. In a certain sense, pink is a generous color.

Barbara Nemitz

Notes

1. Bas Kast, “Die Macht der Gefühle,” Berliner Tagesspiegel, June 23, 2002, p. 7.

2. Eva Heller, “Die Lieblingsfarben” (Survey of 1888 Men and Women), Wie Farben wirken (Reinbek, 1989).

3. “Rosarote Hühnerwelt,” Berliner Tagesspiegel, February 22, 1991.

4. Conversation between Derek Jarman and the author at the presentation of his movie “The Garden” at the International Film Festival in Berlin, 1991.

Essay published in: “Pink: The Exposed Color in Contemporary Art and Culture”, ed. Barbara Nemitz, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006

The human mind has no logical answer to questions about our own existence. Have we not always looked into nature in order to discover something about ourselves? Work with living plants is both an intimate and a visionary endeavor.

As a component element of works of culture, living vegetation confronts us in the garden with secular, religious and mystical aspects of meaning. Do the works of art presented in this volume, almost none of which are gardens, have anything at all to do with these traditional objectives? The contemporary works with living vegetation featured here have been realized as independent works of art. Which qualities of the plants are used in these works? What connotations and metaphors are associated with them? What new questions are being addressed, what new perspectives opened? What positions are represented by the participating artists who employ living vegetation in their works?

There can be little doubt that the current phase of unrestricted pluralism in matters of style has promoted the inclusion of living plants into the mix. Other motivating factors are as diverse as the subjects that interest artists today. The essential difference we find in works with plants, as opposed to those using inanimate matter, is that the artist's ego encounters something that is alive. Works with plants are dynamic forms that develop within temporal dimensions. They are conceived in the progressive form and involve plans for life. Unlike “dead matter”, plants exhibit relationships of dependence by virtue of the constant need for suitable living conditions.

Work with living plants is an interactive process of communication quite similar to the process of theatre direction. Stimuli and responses form links in a continuous chain. The artist's intervention is a manipulation of life processes which in turn provide feedback which imposes certain conditions relevant to the nature of the artist's work. Form is action. It is reflected in the life process of other organisms. Artists and viewers have an opportunity to experience themselves within the context of a living whole, and the roles of producer and recipient shift towards participation. In an age devoted to virtual reality, the "vital reality” embodied by a plant, with its interactive possibilities, now takes on entirely new meaning as a field of genuine nature experience. In many cases, however, nature is not approached in a comprehensive way but in discreet segments.

Vegetation as medium

Vegetation exudes an aura of ambivalent exoticism. It is both familiar and alien at the same time. In terms of geological history, plant life has existed for a very long time, and it has become a part of our idea of landscape. Vegetation gives the landscape a soft and supple appearance. The sight of vegetation often stimulates palpable responses on the skin. It is the fur that covers the body of landscape.

Plants are radical subjects. The original meaning of the word “radical” – from radicalis, something that is firmly rooted – is indicative of a perspective that is significant to our perception of plants. Plants are ordinarily rooted and firmly connected with the earth. Unlike humans and animals, they hardly move from place to place. Their movements are restricted to expansion and unfolding. The process of growth involves the metamorphoses of birth, development and death, which ordinarily take place slowly but in a continuous progression. Plants change in place, in their habitats. Thus vegetation, plants, appear dependable, despite their constantly changing form. Plants appear to be still. Rustling or other sounds of motion are noises caused by the wind and its resonance in the vegetation. Because of this stillness and the bonds that tie them to a particular place, plants tend to be perceived as passive and therefore inanimate. And that opens up the possibility of using them like a material.

Plants live in a close relationship with their locations. They inhabit regions suitable for them, and they reflect the characteristics of their habitats. They describe the conditions that prevail there and provide clear indications of the quality of life. Indeed, plants themselves are a sign of life.

A vital characteristic of vegetation is its capacity to stimulate the senses in a variety of ways. Scents, odors, colors, shapes and structures combine and merge with one another in a challenging appeal to the senses. Employed as a medium in the work of art, this capacity generates lasting and significant effects. Information broadcast by a work of art with plants gains in density and depth, as it presents not only what a human being has thought and produced but also, ultimately, the inexplicable, the other, as a component of the work. This living substance contains more than we know.

The capacity for expression is one of the fundamental characteristics of life. Reactions may become visible in species-specific “behavior”, for example. This expressive competence is a fundamental part of work with living plants. With respect to the work of art, it means that the work cannot be perceived from the outside only. The dimension that distinguishes art with plants is the fact that parts of a work are capable of perception in their own right and of responding with a degree of sophistication commensurate with the complexity of living organisms. This is communicated to the viewer as well, either directly or indirectly.

The inclusion of living organisms enhances the presence of works of art. Awareness of the changeable nature of their inherent life processes increases the possibility of perceiving the formal relationships of artistic works not merely as static stimuli but in a much more comprehensive way. Interest in living processes is much more direct than that in inanimate materials. Works which incorporate living vegetation take advantage of this opportunity to establish contact by virtue of their ability to appeal for emotional closeness.

For the most part, plants are experienced in positive contexts – they provide nourishment, they serve as adornment and they delight. Generally speaking, vegetation manifests itself as peaceful. People enjoy natural green. Because of this popularity, vegetation is a “material” capable of causing irritation within the context of art. The obvious visual appeal, the beauty of nature presented openly to view is rather unusual in 20th century art. The use of plants in contemporary art recalls long neglected fundamental questions about the field of tension between nature and beauty and thus paves the way for a new approach to a taboo subject. This subject matter has a determining influence upon my own art and motivates my work with the themes of landscape and vegetation.

It was in this context that I initiated the KünstlerGärten Weimar project, of which this book is a part, in 1993. I am interested in an undertaking in which the goal is not to complete or realize a work of art but to make itself visible in living forms. The work on Künstler Gärten is the experiment with a form of existence as a process of cognition. The term “ Künstler Gärten" was selected as a working concept that designates an open field of activity. In this project I see my own art-work as an effort to initiate structures and basic conditions that will form the foundation for the presentation of the positions of contemporary artists who employ living vegetation in their work and to heighten awareness of its special qualities. The project as a whole is still in progress and, as is appropriate for a garden, is conceived for the future as well. In order to make this complex theme accessible from several different perspectives and to allow for different modes of reception at the same time, the KünstlerGärten project comprises not only works with living plants realized in areas within Weimar, where a total of 20 works have been installed since 1995. Several parallel, interrelated levels of work and activity exist as forums of exchange within the project as a whole: a lecture series for artists and scholars, the project journal wachsen, the teaching project in the Art Department of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the print edition, the guided tours and, finally, the archive entitled "trans PLANT - Living Vegetation in Contemporary Art", from which this book has emerged.

In the course of my work, I have become aware of many more works of art on this particular theme than have been included in this volume. In many cases, it was the artists themselves who pointed me toward works by other artists. Apart from the artists to whom I am very grateful, a number of other people have also assisted me in my research. I would like to take this opportunity to express sincere thanks to my project staff and to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar for their support. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the committed students who are now gathering experience in art within the context of the project. This complex theme continues to invite new enquiry, thought and practical experimentation.

Barbara Nemitz

Published in: Barbara Nemitz (ed.), trans’plant—Living Vegetation in Contemporary Art, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2000.

English Translation: John S. Southard

What was the starting point for work on your project Artists' Gardens Weimar?

More than ever in art today, it is possible to work with the greatest diversity of methods and means, artistic and non-artistic. This considerably extends artistic content. I make a fresh decision as to the working forms or media I employ for each work.

I use art as a setting for my own, personally selected conditions and expectations. For me, the concept of art is not located at the end of a work, I place it at the beginning - as a module which may be elaborated upon. It is required in order to open up possibilities.

Artists' Gardens Weimar is a work during which I assume the roles of different activities and employ these as an artistic means. All the time I see myself as a participant within a living system into which I intervene from various standpoints. I am interested in allowing forms to emerge whose effects goes over and beyond that in the artistic sphere.

My activity is integrated into the system "garden". It does not remain isolated. Actions trigger reactions. Acting is at the same time being. The garden is the setting for the activity. Artists' Gardens Weimar is a living work in a state of constant transformation. It is a process involving known and unknown participants.

Are you more concerned with immaterial, communicative working structures as artistic strategies, or do you use them primarily so that in the end realisations such as the planted works of art in the Weimar park may take place?

In my opinion, both are significant. The project has many layers which penetrate and complement each other. There is no hierarchical structure. The Artists' Gardens Weimar is itself one work of art which in turn brings together many individual and completely independent works by other artists. I don't want to use the word contain here, but shall try to be more precise and speak of aggregation.

Artists' Gardens Weimar is both a theoretical and a practical forum for the exchange of information. Varied experience and a wide rage of standpoints encounter each other there. Artists' Gardens Weimar is an indoor and an open air laboratory with changing participants.

There are aereas where theoretical debate takes place; for example in the series of lectures by artists and mediators of art, the office with the archive "trans ' plant" from which the book of the same name emerged, the journal "wachsen" (growing) which has been published parallel to the project, the programme of the study, the tours around the gardens, the lectures and presentations of the project which I give outside of Weimar...and there is the area of practical debate.

Up until now, 20 international contemporary artists have realised works using living vegetation in the Weimar park "Villa Haar". An encounter with them has considerable non-verbal experience and insights to offer. Employing different possible approaches, Artists' Gardens Weimar is concerned with all contemporary art with living vegetation.

There are themes which are directly connected to the living plants and there are those connected to the artistic project as a whole. There are economic, social, political and artistic questions. Gardens and works of art using living vegetation are special forms of art in public places because they have to be constantly realised. They place considerable demands.

The project Artists' Gardens Weimar became public very quickly. It also has levels which function with referece to usage.

Could you sketch one of those contexts?

The archive "trans ' plant - Living Vegetation in Contemporary Art" supplies information, and it is receiving increasing interest. Up until now, art historians, exhibition makers, garden architects and artists have been the people showing an interest. My perspective for the future is for interest in it to also come from less related disciplines and for the artistic work with living plants to also be seen and used from points of view further remote from art. There should be more cross overs. Many unusual combinations may be created by using what can be found in these works. the works themselves give this stimulus. That is their true merit.

And how did it actually start? Why did you decide that all the artists who participate should work with living plants? You could also have integrated other media or disciplines into your garden?

No, it is important to me that living vegetation be the focus of interest. I wanted a concentrated image of this, with the greatest imaginable diversity. My starting point was landscape, which has great significance for the content of my work. I use "landscape" as an image of the universal beauty. So for me turning to living vegetation is a possibility to work with more attention to detail within this complex. Working with living plants, one is very closely bound to the landscape.

I feel that plants are a form of life which, at a transit point from man and animals, points to elementary matter such as rock and water. For me they are the living organisms "in between". Some plants are closely bound to matter. In the case of early evolutionary plant forms such as algae, moss, lychen, fungus, the forms of connection are real permeations. In addition, the process of plant metabolism transforms matter. That is a very direct connection. I have become very interested in that threshold where inanimate nature meets the animate.

That sounds rather scientific. Has this always been your interest?

At the beginning of the project I was not interested in these questions. My interest emerged when I had noticed the universal quality of work with living vegetation. Through the project, it is possible to come into contact with a great many current social questions, and you have to face up to these and find answers. For example, the first cut of the spade means you notice that with this intervention into the earth something is immediately disordered. What was in the dark now has the sun shine on it, what was living in the damp becomes dry and so on. Something will die. And the opposite will happen, too. What roles does man have with respect to nature? You can ask yourself the small and the big existential questions. You also encounter key words such as genetic technology, selection, control and others. The garden is a very up-to-date field in which art can concern itself with universal possibilities.

Did you start off from these considerations, and was there any other background which lead you to realize the Artists' Gardens?

Artists' Gardens Weimar summarises the basis of my artistic work as a whole because it is a universal one. I have never been interested in individual questions of form. For a long time, what has concerned me is the aesthetic sense of landscape in nature, as an image, a vision a recollection, in fragments - for me landscape is the most fitting image of beauty. Beauty is one of the great themes in art, and it is often depicted in a reduced and stylised way. I wish to counter this with the notion of a timeless and culturally universal beauty. I mean beauty in a universality which can not be depicted. Artists' Gardens Weimar is my work on what can not be depicted.

Unusual descriptions for the quality of reception are chosen in connection with beauty. "To be stirred by beauty" points to a proximity between the viewer and what is viewed. What is special is that we can be "touched" by it. That which takes place between the "beautiful" and the viewer is a primarily affective occurence. And our perception wins duration as a result.

What moves and touches people constitutes the bonds - with all their effects - in a society. What "gets under our skin" has a considerable driving power for the dynamics of global development. This is the context in which my use of living vegetation as an artistic medium should be seen. It is something which creates proximity, for plants cannot simply be seen, or observed. The process of perception is of a greater complexity than in the case of inanimate material. Plants can be experienced. That is the possibility which is employed in these works of art. The intensity of the process of communication is increased by using living organisms. The possibility of meeting with a true response is increased by identifications and affinities.

Barbara Nemitz

Catalogue "LA VILLE/LE JARDIN/LA MÉMOIRE"
Académie de France à Rome, Villa Medicis, Rome 2000
Curators: Laurence Bossé, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Hans Ulrich Obrist
Translation: Lucinda Rennison

In 1989—90, Barbara Nemitz created a large-scale, painted installation which she entitled In the Cathedral of the Forest, so bringing to mind German nature-Romanticism. It addresses the senses, emotions and recollections of the viewer, conveying an impression of an landscape in the Harz Mountains taken from the motif of an old photograph.

Those who approach this work of art with receptive eyes and a receptive mind, those who are prepared — in meditation — to abandon themselves to visual and emotional sensations, will realize that Barbara Nemitz is not interested in reproducing a landscape, but in its meaning for the individual. Her installation In the Cathedral of the Forest has associative links with the view of nature expressed by German Romanticism. In his essay On German Architecture written in 1771, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe compared the architecture of the Gothic minster in Strasbourg to a forest, and during 1798, in a description in his novel Franz Sternbald's Wanderings, Ludwig Tieck saw the naves of Gothic churches as shady, twilight groves.

After Romanticism, the «German forest» became a setting associated with the finding of national identity. Romantic poets sang the praises of «forest delights» and «forest solitude». But they also described the forest as both enchanted and enchanting, full of archaic nature mysticism, populated by witches, fairies and goblins. Barbara Nemitz' Harz landscape In the Cathedral of the Forest recalls, therefore, that Heinrich Heine described this wild mountain region with its dark firs in his poetic work Journey in the Harz Mountains. Goethe, minister at the court of Weimar and fascinated by geology, and Joseph von Eichendorff both sought out this mountainous forest landscape, giving animated expression to their impressions. This tradition of German sentiment for the forest still has echoes in a modern longing, although over a hundred years ago — when the popularity of the «German forest» began — it lost most of its innocence. Today it is, in part, an ecological reflection of human nature.

In 1987, Barbara Nemitz adressed this emotional reference to Romanticism and our present day, dulled feeling for nature with her painted, transparent, tempestuous Night-Landscapes. These were hung at night in the park landscape of Berlin's Tiergarten, lit from behind by dancing flames and atmospherically accompanied by song. But in 1987 Bernhardt Buderath wrote of these works by Barbara Nemitz that «the rebirth of Romanticism is not the solution, not the solution at all. On closer inspection, we see the artist does not actually cite anything, instead she hints at motifs which can be traced back to those of Romanticism. She uses romantic vocabulary, but she incorporates it into a new language with new rules. It is the language of compilation, of accretion, of excess, and — as a curbing moment — the language of quiet, of composure in the face of the world's polarity.» The atmospheric painting In the Cathedral of the Forest also triggers similar sentiments. The rows of tree trunks rising like pillars and the sunlight falling diagonally through the imaginary tree tops at the top left convey the impression of a misty, cool, yet verdant church nave.

In addition to this guiding of light within the motif, Barbara Nemitz also incorporated daylight streaming into the room through a skylight into her composition. In this way she also demonstrated the inclusion of reality which was practised in earlier installations and productions.

The effect of the six silk tulle strips — painted with a spraygun and at varying distances from the viewer like a stage set — is enhanced by a wealth of aspects resulting from movement in front of the image and from changes in the intensity and quality of light. The innumerable alterations of atmosphere conveyed by the image in artificial light or, by natural light, at various times of day and in different weather conditions are quite striking. (…)

The fine strips of tulle in the composition In the Cathedral of the forest are therefore actually only an aid to our visualization of this atmospheric manifestation. They are scarcely existent; they are air like the space in which they float; all in all, they are the bearers of a manifestation; a medium for the true subject in light and colour, resembling a mirage, a fata morgana in true space. The swaying of the light strips of tulle bearing the «image in space» underlines the weightlessness of this «painting in air», in which solidity is only an association; a hazy illusion. A silent breeze, if it were to waft through the six tulle layers of the Cathedral of the Forest, would only meet with the notion of an image in air, distantly comparable to a hologram.

The airy, gentle materialisation of the image and the cool colouring in blue and yellow, sensitive green or violet provoke meditative contemplation. But the natural impression given by the image influences the mood of the viewer more intensely. This is particularly true when he feels alone and uninhibited, for the composition is one of considerable sensitivity and a person is more likely to admit to his deeper emotions in an intimate setting. The interested viewer can penetrate deep into the Cathedral of the Forest in his imagination. He can intensify the colours by overlapping, can experience them as lighter or more clear. He can permit the image to effect him as he will, and is not only the astounded viewer, but an active figure within it. And he can — something already permitted by «romantic irony» — reemerge from this journey of the imagination and recognize that this is a painted image and that he is standing within threedimensional reality.

The painted installation In the Cathedral of the Forest makes the question of the spatial extent of colour and our uncertainty with regard to the distance and position of the fixed object into a visual voyage of discovery. This is because the optical clarity of the image's depth cannot be so easily reached or determined as it can in the usual process of seeing in space. The ethereal quality of the entire slightly misty, luminous vision, which may be likened to imagination materialized, is carried over into the viewer's emotions during intense contemplation. There is so much which is visible, but not everything is tangible. The idea is most expectant as long as it remains in the mind. In the same way, this painted installation by Barbara Nemitz is actually only a hint at the formulation of an idea.

As might be expected from this observation, Barbara Nemitz did not emphasize the reproductive aspect of her work, but during the process of painting she already arranged the subject as an informal, abstract structure of light and colour interwoven in space. Our associations, our imagination, our position, our awareness and our movements in front of the motif, — and the significant, active light factor — permit us to apprehend whatever we want to see. The diversity of our findings entirely depends on the individual. Nothing is completely formulated by Barbara Nemitz, nothing is ideologically fixed. Whilst experiencing her works, the act of seeing becomes a voyage of discovery within our own consciousness.

Gerhard Kolberg, 

Published in: Catalogue “Barbara Nemitz”, Landesmuseum (New Museum) Weimar 1995
English translation: Lucinda Rennison

Living the Beautiful

My work is concerned with the depiction of beauty as a universal dimension. For me, landscape is an incarnation of beauty. I explore the substance of landscape in painting and in mise en scènes. My work "Artists’ Garden" is a further approach to and encircling of the significance of landscape.

My starting point is my attitude to the work. It is only possible for form to follow when I am in tune with my activities. Work on the Artists’ Garden means an experimental mode of existence as a cognitive method. It leads me into the garden, because there I can be different.

Artistic working methods transcend and deform the everyday. Traditional contexts of meaning receive new definitions. Turning to plants means thinking in terms of habitat an aiming for form within change. It means the opposite to standstill. Interactions develop. Forms emerge and are transient.

Things planted are a radical opposite. The literal meaning of radical radicalis, that which is rooted, concurs with my feelings in this respect. The radical is a deeply-felt form of connection. The starting point of my work is to be in a natural setting, to be in the landscape and to become connected to it by means of planting.

What is vegetation? What position does it occupy between human beings and material? It exudes an ambivalent exoticism. It is both strange and familiar, for it has existed for so long, like the landscape of which it is a part. Vegetation makes a landscape appear soft and smooth. Looking at it evokes perceptible sensations on the skin. Vegetation is the fur on the body of the landscape.

The radiation of sensual stimuli is a vital characteristic of vegetation. Lush blooming and growth indicates well-being. The biblical notions of paradise demonstrate this promise of happiness. Vegetation adds to landscape, transforming it into something pleasant and exuberant.

The depiction of beauty is the classic theme of the arts. My concept of beauty is comprehensive. In this totality, it is impossible to depict. I am interested in timeless beauty without limitations. I sense this in nature. The experience of beauty in its universality demands an attitude with a capacity for dedication and love. For this, the garden is the ideal setting.

Artistic planting reflects a sublimated perception of beauty.

Barbara Nemitz

Published in: Magazine „wachsen“, Nr. 1 (growing) Work at the Atists’ Gardens Weimar, 1995

English Translation: Lucinda Rennison

Landscape in Swing

Once again, interest in landscapes is on the rise. Landscape gardens such as Wilhelmshöhe or Wörlitz are seeing an increase in visitor numbers, and more books on the subject are being produced—and people are buying them. Normal people are taking pictures of landscapes on their holidays, and they find them so wonderful that they are willing to subject friends and neighbors to endless slide shows. Only art seems to have banished the landscape from its repertoire.

Or it the opposite the case? In Berlin, Barbara Nemitz is quietly building a body of work that seeks to make the landscape accessible to viewers in a whole new way. Nemitz’s landscapes are staged experiences assembled from old paintings or photographs from the age of the pioneers that then appear in installations. The artist gives her landscapes a purifying bath in abstract painting before they are reborn in a new concept comprised of forms and references.

Despite their analytical composition, Nemitz’s landscapes are integrated and integral manifestations in which the viewer is intended to delve. This is also why she presents them in installations outdoors or in large rooms, and it is also why—in the case of her upcoming action in Kassel—she offers visitors the opportunity to sit on a swing affixed to the ceiling. The swing has (at least) two functions. First, it blurs the viewer’s position or point of sight, as it is known in the study of perspective, thus shifting the depth of the virtual image. The effect is supported by several layers of veils, which Nemitz uses as either as canvases for her paintings or as a surface for projected imagery. Second, the sensation of swinging—a feeling so loved by children—caresses the body and elevates the spirit, providing both levity and a sense of weightlessness.

During her large-scale performance installation Nachtlandschaften (Night Landscapes) in the nocturnal landscape of Berlin’s Tiergarten in 1987, the artist displayed landscapes painted on semitransparent material that were illuminated from behind by fire. During the performance, a hundred singers wandered along their own isolated path singing away to themselves—all according to a precisely determined “random plan.”

For her landscape paintings, Nemitz uses second-hand landscape imagery, such as trees painted by Claude Lorrain or old photographs. She then works this imagery into “real” paintings, in which she shifts the colors, reduces all to a muted slate blue, or obscures the painting from the viewer by means of transparent veils. These interventions enhance the works’ significance: the paintings are at the same time both familiar and entirely new.

In our current era of landscape destruction, the longing for true, undisturbed nature, Barbara Nemitz provides us new experiences at the artistic level. The unachievable, the reconciliation of culture and landscape, is reflected back at the viewer in the form of a playful and contemplative action.

Lucius Burckhardt

Published in: Magazine „Kassel kulturell“, 1991

Even the title—Nachtlandschaften, promenades nocturnes (Night Landscapes, promenades nocturenes)—could cause one to expect the romantic. In this production set in a park aimed at bringing people and art together and operating at numerous levels, Barbara Nemitz repeats romantic motifs and, thus, our notions of romance. The racing wisps of clouds, the dramatically arranged vegetation, the individual attuned to a night in natural surroundings—not least because of the mysterious nature of night itself and reflected in the night as an artistic venue—and the use of the theatrical and atomistic element of fire: all of these motifs cast the wanderer, both forbearingly and entertainingly, back into the worlds of Caspar David Friedrich or Novalis. A walk through Berlin’s Tiergarten as a museum visit? Romanticism live?

Nothing is lacking when it comes to the artist’s understanding of romanticism. Everything is in place: the red evening skies and moonlight, the reverence for nature and mysticism, the land of milk and honey. But Barbara Nemitz does not employ these motifs for the sake of repetition, for her intention is not a rebirth of romanticism, and it is certainly not offered as a solution. On closer consideration, the artist is not even referring to romanticism directly. Instead she introduces motifs that can be traced back to it. She draws upon a romantic vocabulary, but here the rules are different, and the language that arises is completely new. It is the language of compilation, of escalation, and of exaggeration—but then comes the moment that slows it all down: the language of silence, the sense of calm in the face of the world’s polarity.

But what constitutes these escalations? Nemitz seizes upon the motif of the nocturnal, but she does not simply leave it at that. In painterly terms, the night plunges nature into darkness, it strips the landscape of its color, which is why Nemitz paints nature, or paints the landscape, in black. We thus find ourselves confronted with two forms of decoloration: the decoloration of nature due to a lack of light, and the decoloration of nature stemming from the painter’s brush. It is an escalation of the nocturnal. Bolstered by the silhouetting effect of the fire placed behind the painted landscape, the work appears as a cutout—it seems superficial. This is indeed a romantic moment, but it is something that was born of the spirit of the Rococo. The artificiality of the artwork does not have to be exposed, for it reveals its artificiality from the very outset. This is intensified by billowing of the light canvas and the flickering of the fire to such an extent that the living natural surroundings behind it subtly and sublimely seem to withdraw into the background. This intentional dramatization of the artwork is not meant to convince us of its pseudo existence, but it transforms the artwork into something that is seemingly plausible. As a consequence, this duplication of the nocturnal landscape of nature and art breaks down the relationship between epiphany and diaphany. Romanticism ensures that this breakdown does not result in unresolvable conflict. Much like in English landscape gardens, nature and art enter into a synthesis which leaves both to their own vocabularies.

In addition to the landscape themes and black as the color of night, fire filters through the canvas’s surface, causing it to glimmer in warm colors. It glowingly illuminates the scene, and in doing so introduces another charged relationship: that between the night’s approaching chill and the warmth of the fire. The color black and the natural nocturnal surroundings are introduced as a means of contrast highlighting the nature of the fire projected upon the canvas as a point of attraction. Fire thus makes an ambivalent appearance as a restive and lambent prop, as a kind of spotlight, as a theatrical stimulus, and, then again, as a source of warmth and the primordial point of human affinity and gathering. The fire’s dual nature, too, harkens back to romanticism. One need only think of Hölderlin’s Empedocles, who, desiring to draw close to the origin of life, threw himself into Mount Etna’s flames.

Her purposeful use of fire in this park landscape also allows Nemitz to draw a tacit analogy to the principle of the English landscape garden. The fire is guided by human hands; it is controlled, but it remains chaotic and rampant in nature. The landscape architects of eighteenth-century England also sought to help shape nature’s unbridled power, which to date people had only been able to influence using cosmetic means. Here it evokes human mortality with respect to the elements, even though we are able to control them—as long as they restrict themselves to what is humanly possible.

Many of the lyrics of the songs sung in unison take up this human attempt to maintain moderation when faced with the universe's infinite nature. The nocturnal atmosphere, focused around the fires and the diaphanous paintings, is further reinforced by the wandering and calming singers. The audience members, who are also just wayfarers in this world, also play a part in dispersing these bundled impressions while carrying their own individual experiences throughout the park landscape. This uplifting production, which replaces the act of observation with the urge to participate, harkens back to the pastoral plays of a more gallant era. We see humankind as Homo Ludens, who takes pleasure in nature as well his place within it. But the night’s atmosphere also enables these associations, associations leading us to an enlightening era propagating the metaphysics of light, only to drain off into a climate of elegiac romanticism. The jumping-off point for this is the well-nigh divergent tension which Nemitz construes as a kind of musical production. The singers in unisono play upon our human sense of togetherness, upon harmony and like-mindedness, even though the actors never manage to come together as a cohesive group. It is precisely within this monophony—which everyone carries around with his or herself, so to speak—that their isolation becomes apparent. And once again this flashback to romanticism is thrust upon us, particularly once the nocturnal atmosphere with its calming unisono begins to take on a meditative nature. The landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich showing one or two figures with their backs turned to the viewer spring to mind. But his figures assume another form of isolation that is unlike Nemitz’s singers. Friedrich’s figures appear threatened; they usually look upon the landscape as if it were a transitory space on the way to a distant, unreachable hereafter. Even the ground upon which they appear to stand often seems an untenable abyss. Human beings in an incommode relationship to an inexistent world, the night as a threatening nothingness, inhabited with the likes of Fuseli’s Nightmare and Goya’s monsters born of common sense, but also bristling with the nihilism of Büchner’s Woyzeck.

The same cannot be said of Nemitz’s real living figures. Her singers’ isolation is no mere emotional state, but rather an epistemological formula: the self as, in, and vis-à-vis nature. It is here that the transformation so important for the work’s significance takes place. The isolation takes on an entirely new quality leading away from the self-positing of the ego, as Novalis described in his philosophical writings, towards the self’s being-in-the-world of Heidegger and Gerd Brand. The singing individual may indeed stand alone on his or her own in terms of perception and experience, but the landscape in front of them or below their feet is real. Here romanticism’s undermining nihilism is transformed into positivity. Human feeling and experience discover their evident quality in nature. The interplay of these elements, the interference of art and nature, has become the prerequisite for the “possibility of perception.” The artist brings this Kantian phrase aimed at the critique of reason to life. She counters the sun-obsessed state vision of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain with her heterogenous, but also unisono attuned, nocturnal community. The meadows and lawns, filled with calming song, are reminiscent of the Elysian Fields, but without any sign whatsoever of a romantic hereafter.

Nemitz does indeed promote a vision of this nocturnal production, but she does not seek to be some sort of visionary promoting a transcendent impetus. Her aim is to communicate a holistic experience comprised of people, nature, and the world. […] Like Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea confronted with the universe’s dimensionless nature, Nemitz allows people to grasp their mortality, but she forgoes the dark fatalism. But people can only really guess at this relationship, for the thing-in-itself transcends each individual experience. This was something that Matthias Claudius already understood in “The Moon has Risen”: One half is shining only / Yet she is round and bright; / Thus oft we laugh unknowing / At things that are not showing. Nemitz, however, does not envision anything concrete in her work as thing-in-itself, but as a human nocturnal experience and the human experience of night itself. In doing so she temporarily heals the wounds that romanticism has suffered upon the world, but she does not offer a message of salvation. Instead of evoking nature’s night during a night in nature, she causes people to make peace with one another and with the world—at least for a while. Song and perambulation, this human choreography set in a park landscape, becomes the antiphon of a future relationship with nature. The next step would be the birth of a new utopia.

Bernhard Buderath

Published in: Catalogue "NACHTLANDSCHAFTEN - Promenaden Nocturnes", Berliner Festspiele, Berlin 1987

English translation: Mark Willard

Caresses for the Soul

(…) As I looked at the photographs of Barbara Nemitz’s paintings, I found it difficult to visualize their immense size. If an image exceeds a certain size relationship to the human body, it runs the risk of being labeled superhuman and arrogant, that is, if this unreasonable enlargement is not the work of machines.

Barbara Nemitz paints these huge sheets of cloth, but she paints with silkscreen. Explanation: working from a photograph she makes a sketch in the size of the original, sections it off for the individual silkscreens, produces the stencils, and––no, does not print in the usual manner of layer upon layer with changes of the stencil, but instead pours, drips, and rubs paint into the dry celluloid pattern, creating in effect a hybrid art from a paintprinting or printpainting (occasional misalignments can result in a polarization-like effect).

This technique results in a strange suspension of perception when one views these pictures. Since they are both technically produced print and hand-painted canvas, they show on the one hand the characteristic detail dissolution of an extreme photographic enlargement, and on the other hand possess the monumental quality of a painting.

The sheets of satin hang in large halls. Light does not fall upon them but shines through them, making them luminous. They should offer the eyes a ‘movable feast’ and should “caress the soul of the viewer” (Nemitz). They create an atmosphere of trust, because in them the conventional aura of the work of art merges with that other aura of the manufactures image of our society’s trivial myths.

Ultimately they make it clear that the trivial myth demands to be taken by word, or rather by image. Why indeed should it not be possible to paint simply beautiful, exhilarating pictures of mountains and waterfalls?

I first became acquainted with the small oevre of Barbara Nemitz through my interest in trends in contemporary art which have their roots not just in the abstract expressionism of the 50’s, but go back further to that of the 10’s, i.e. Fauvism and Blauer Reiter. In this context it interests me as a major painting event, an experience of daring use of color and delightful theatrics.

Wolfgang Becker

Published in: Catalogue: “Barbara Nemitz - Malereien”

Neue Galerie – Ludwig Collection,  Aachen, Germany 1979, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum Duisburg

English translation: Lucinda Rennison

„Like a great poet, Nature achieves the greatest effects with the sparsest of means. There only are the sun, trees, flowers, water, and love.

If, of course, the latter is lacking in the heart of the beholder, then the entirety can afford only a poor view, and the sun has a diameter of soor so many miles, trees are good for heating, flowers can be classified by stamen, and the water is wet.“

Heinrich Heine, Die Harzreise, 1824

Preface, catalogue „Barbara Nemitz - Malereien“, Neue Galerie-Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen 1979, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum Duisburg

Pink: The Exposed Color

ARTISTS’ GARDENS WEIMAR

In the Cathedral of the Forest