No romanticism. No German forests, dark cathedrals or myths in which the path through the dense, evergreen forest implies a journey into the subconscious, as if for the soul’s maturing process in relative solitude.
Georg Thumbach is not a romantic, at least not in the superficial sense. But he does lead the viewer to wood, to a tangle of tree trunks, boughs, branches, twigs, towering piles or dense, deep and apparently unending, impenetrable layers. Yet this is not the forest of secrets murmuring of old sagas and myths.
Furthermore, Georg Thumbach presents his viewers time and time again, with tangles of growth and disintegration; he confronts them with a distinct and singular, nearly abstract entirety with which he covers his sheets of drawing paper. But are the complexities of meadow, field, forest (how similar these structures are!) still nature or simply the motions of the drawer springing from his subconscious or through chance? Certainly a challenge to the viewers who may wish to orientate themselves in order to view these images; instinctively the eyes begin to search amongst this chaotic weaving for a familiar focal point. Almost gratefully one recognises tree trunks, branches, leaves and registers overlapping layers as if walking through a deadfall. One searches for the familiar, a recognisable structure in this entanglement. As orientation points, we delight in nameable leaves, fallen trees, snapped branches, heaven and earth and a glimpse of the horizon. One feels one’s way through, wants to penetrate, yet some drawings with their complex density resist. Despite their illusionary depth, they form an impenetrable, almost whirring, vibrating surface. Some leaves have no spatial centre, appear as an entanglement with neither beginning nor end, endlessly extending along walls, floors and into the landscape beyond.
But how, we may ask, does Georg Thumbach cohere the drawing with the necessary tension, strength and dynamism avoiding slipping into uniform ornamentalism? One of many possible answers comes from Georg Thumbach himself: “As a drawer I look from the outside to the inside. I draw from the lightest of light to the darkest of dark, I move towards the depth”.
By now, we have passed beyond the romantic forest. At least that in the painting of which Eichendorff longingly questioned: “Who made you, you beautiful forest, high above so tall?” Without a doubt this is not the theme which preoccupies the drawer as he goes out to search for the most suitable, frequently sunny spot, the right spot and then highly concentrated begins work. There is little time as the sun’s position changes the light and atmosphere.
One could dwell on Georg Thumbach’s attitude to the fleeting of time, an evident theme in all his drawings and even his objects; not only because the tension between light and shadow, movement and calm is visible, but some pictures show a frozen world, still and apparently unliving, whilst other drawings evoke the greatest of dynamism, a virtual explosion of forces. If we look deeper, it becomes obvious, that the artist subtly, as if en passant and at the same moment, questions the existential meaning of life: the coming into being and the passing away.
Reflecting upon the micro in the nearness of grass in a field, as for example in his work “Graspanorama” 2001, or in the macro, the larger view as in a field or forest, were he to draw the worlds of stars he would probably come to similar conclusions. This association we see in his telescopes of bored out tree trunks. All these aspects are evoked as the biblical psalmist poetically expresses: “As for man his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for when the wind passes over it and it is gone and its place knows it no more” (English standard version). This applies to all living things as we deduce from Georg Thumbach’s drawings.
Georg Thumbach’s work does however, have an affinity with the Romantic. In 2002, he showed a small film negative of the famous Caspar David Friedrich painting “Tetschener Altar” through a bored out tree trunk. He called it “Mit Rücksicht auf Friedrich, “(Considering Friedrich). Friedrich’s painting 1807/8 depicts Christ’s cross on a cliff at sunset, framed by evergreens, as was established by the art historian W. Busch. Busch concludes: “The truth of nature, the issues concerning devotion to nature is the inevitable prerequisite for religious and cosmological experience”.
Precisely this truth of nature, the simultaneous passing and coming, of chaos and order in the cosmos is that to which Georg Thumbach devotes his work. Yet each disintegration of former structures into disorder, a jumble, translates into the Jewish notion from the story of the creation as Tohuwabohu and must occur before a new order can be established. This process is apt to Georg Thumbach’s work. It is in fact, one of the central themes in Georg Thumbach’s work. He questions himself time and again: “Chaos and order, where does the boundary lie?” and Georg Thumbach knows, that because both are indivisibly united, this fundamental question will remain unanswered. He can only feel his way from one drawing to another, grasping at both chaos and order to discover different means by which to get closer: how much order, how much left to chance, at least that which will comply. Drawing freely, stepping back, taking distance and maintaining an overall view, in order to later again throw himself into and beyond the drawing.
Working with the concepts of chance and reflection, chaos and order, Georg Thumbach has recently ventured into new directions. A gamble. Resisting the natural structures he finds in nature, he now uses those of industrially cut, pressed, compacted and glued wood (originating from the forest). At this point chaos and disorderly order become one for the artist; sheets of OSB, oriented strand board, produced for building are made of wood which has been destroyed, using the resulting large wood shavings, a new, suitable identity will be produced. A process of: order – chaos – order.
Which structure will result from the chaos of these fibres as they are pressed together is pure chance. Georg Thumbach, following the chance structures whilst developing his own, simultaneously uses the industrial OSB sheets as a drawing board and utilises it as mixed media. Again, he challenges the viewer with his entanglement, a Tohuwabohu which establishes tension through order in which the artist incorporates the concepts using his drawing board and simultaneously his drawing Sheets, yet another way of dealing with the tension between chaos and order to which to artist says: “Chaos and order? I have a tendency to both. Chaos is always welcome, but chaos alone cannot exist”.
(from: Georg Thumbach, Chaos und Ordnung, exhibition catalogue, Kunstverein Passau, Dietmar Klinger Verlag Passau, 2013, S. 5-8)
In May 2007, an interdisciplinary symposium on the topic „The Forest as a Romantic Topos“ took place at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. Georg Thumbach did not take part in this Symposium as the organisers had not been aware of his work. He was however, included in the documentation relating to the event (published by Peter Lang in Bern in 2008). The book included four of Georg Thumbach’s over-sized charcoal drawings and his comment on the works (presented by him at the opening of one of his exhibitions at the Radspielerhaus in Munich in January 2006). The editor of the publication, Ute Jung-Kaiser, had come across the artist in a long article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 24th January 2008 written by Hannes Hintermeier and had expressed her regret that the artist could not have been present at the conference. In her short introduction to Georg Thumbach’s text, Ute Jung-Kaiser wrote about the artist: “He is obsessed with the forest. The forest stimulates him, gives him his subject matter and is simultaneously an inspiration.”
The forest comprises more than just the sum of the trees growing in it. Browsing through the book on the Frankfurt Symposium, you will find a lot of detail about the history of the forest, above all the German Romantic era, a concept which was sometimes uncritically reflected upon. Here, the development of our portrayal of the forest comes alive, from its early appearance in paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer, Wolf Huber and the artists of the Donau-Schule Movement – the forest as inhospitable, threatening and even demonised – in its elevation to both a sacred and questionable idyll. It was finally glorified in the cliché ‘And the forests are forever singing’ and was associated with ideas such as eternity and sanctity.
Georg Thumbach is not simply obsessed with the forest, he is also an expert in the many myths and rites associated with the forest in which the forest plays a leading role. He knows the history of the forest and its idealisation. But he does not dwell upon his background knowledge when working. It is important to note that whenever Georg Thumbach draws, he radically effaces all his knowledge of the forest. Nothing is made up or added to his view. He literally clears his mind and only captures – by using charcoal on paper – what he perceives with his senses.
And even more so: not only does Thumbach eliminate all his collected knowledge of the forest and keep his drawings free of all symbolism and meaning, his image of the forest is neither demonised nor idealised. Thumbach’s forest is very different from the laboriously (or even forcibly) tamed version of the Romantics..It has reverted to its original state without being decidedly hostile to people as it was portrayed in the time of the Donau-Schule Movement. It is rather more dismissive than inviting. Thumbach does not attempt to search for anything, certainly not comfort or warmth (unlike in Georg Friedrich Kersting’s work, in which the solitude of the forest turned into a bourgeois home). Whenever he draws in the forest, Thumbach is not searching for meaning or salvation; his only objective is a momentary capture of his sunject, of what he perceives as undeniably real in the act of his drawing.
Georg Thumbach now lives in rural Fürstenzell near Passau. The subjects of his drawings are not much farther than 10 or 15 minutes by car from his home. He has mounted a wooden frame to the roof of his car to which, upon arriving at his destination he stretches a sheet of paper, (usually 2m x 1.52m in size) on which he will draw, and on this (or a marginally smaller scale) sheet of paper he captures the selected section of reality on a scale 1:1. This is how the artist describes his approach: “Walking or not seldom cutting through the thicket, I look for something to whet my appetite to draw. Such a stimulus is very important but sometimes, for whatever reason it remains elusive. I could have explored in the wrong area of the forest or I am fault as I simply cannot find a connection. I must not however, allow my own drive to become clouded by doubts – and as a human being you constantly reflect and doubt yourself –but this is not the time for major analysis but rather set down the board and lean it against a tree. I position myself as close as possible to my subject as possible. This makes it emotionally more tangible. I drop my rucksack containing my drawing implements to the ground, unpack and get started. There is never that much time.”
Hannes Hintermeier’s article in the FAZ includes six photographs which emphasise this small ‘window of time’ the artist has. They show Georg Thumbach working in the forest and are taken in 15 minute intervals between 11:30 am (when the pristine white paper stretched on the board the artist has brought shines through the thicket) and 1:09 pm (when the drawing is finished and the artist has stepped back). Later corrections are not possible. Besides the fact, that after returning home, the drawer’s mood would be completely different to when working concentratedly in the forest, and that alone is restricted by the material he uses. Georg Thumbach draws – without smudging– using a square piece of charcoal approximately 10cm long, which he holds in his hand without using a charcoal holder or extender.
The photographs prove that Georg Thumbach has a ‘window’ of no more than an hour perhaps one and a half hours at the most for completion of his work. This depends above all on the changing light, for example the position of the sun which changes the proportions of light and shadow . Georg Thumbach can only work on a piece as long as the light conditions remain roughly the same. By then this work must be completed.
What is there to see on Georg Thumbach’s large sheets of paper? Felled or fallen tree trunks with or without signs of sawing, truncated branches, snapped twigs – a hostile and inaccessible reality without any path leading to it and almost impenetrable to our searching gaze. A wall of trees and branches erects itself in front of us and confronts us. Any options to penetrate it are closed off. The views Georg Thumbach offers the beholders of his papers seem unusual. They do not seem to be ‘worthy of an artwork’ at first glance, certainly not at a superficial one. Yet it is these denied insights into the reality of matters which magically attract Georg Thumbach.
He personally writes: “My evaluation has to happen spontaneously and purely visually without any cognitive considerations. I cannot rationally pre-empt what I am in the process of drawing. … I do not reflect. I simply let myself be drawn into it. I react. What I see …, and what I feel, is what I instantly put to paper. Now, I do not let go completely as I do not want to end up purely gesturing and then realising that my subject, which triggers the whole process has slipped away from me. Pauses are required in order to repeatedly collect and discipline myself emotionally. These happen automatically by stepping back from the sheet of paper to gain an overview.”
Stepping back from his work also has another reason: It is not only to gain an overview, but also to perceive the representational character of the drawing. Close-up this is often no longer seen . There are only individual strokes which combine to make structures or counteract them. It is only from a certain distance that the portrayal of a section of the forest becomes recognisable as a wound or a violation of the trees.
What I find really interesting about Georg Thumbach’s art of drawing is not just its subject matter (a new and unexpected view of the forest, the forest as a jungle characterised by scrub and undergrowth), but also – and above all – the attention to detail, the effort, the care the artist shows in his creation, in the process of producing his drawings. Georg Thumbach takes his work very seriously. I am particularly impressed by the consistency with which he emphasises the act of drawing, as if it is all about the drawing itself and not about a certain theme (which does not always have to be the forest – a cornfield or a clump of grass are also considered). And then, last but not least, his complete lack of aspiring to a “deeper meaning”. Nothing is superimposed onto the visible. Paul Cézanne once claimed that an artist must not intentionally get in between his work and his subject. Georg Thumbach meets this demand in an ideal way.
(From: Georg Thumbach, Zeichnungen 2009-2008, Ausst.-Kat. Ausstellungsräume Peter Ottmann, München 2009, p. 4-6)
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