The story Berlin, 2007, Alte Nationalgalerie with an exhibition: works from the 19th century. I rented an audio guide and went exploring for the next three hours. I was fascinated by all the great works of both famous and lesser-known masters. Shortly before coming to the end of my tour, I encountered an inconspicuous picture which was completely unknown to me – Ricordo de Tivoli – by Anselm Feuerbach (Germany 1829 – 1880).
I almost passed it by, as it seemed relatively boring at first glance. Then I saw the number displayed next to the picture which let me know that there was also an art-historical story to accompany this picture. I fired up the guide and was all ears. Only a few seconds into the text I couldn’t believe what I heard: the narrator told of insights into masculinity and femininity in a way which was similar to the ones I myself won in the two cycles I have completed so far, "The Crowning Point of Creation" and "The Lord of the Crown".
I was thunderstruck. Anselm Feuerbach, it seems, also painted my story, and already 130 years ago! I therefore listened intently.
The narrator described the picture, which shows a boy and a girl. The girl is wearing clothes in the colours of the sky – a white blouse and a blue skirt. She is sitting on a rock, a little higher than the boy. Her glance is directed skywards. She is looking upwards dreamily into nowhere. The boy, covered only with a brown-beige cloth, is sitting on a red plaid, at the girl’s feet. He is wearing, if you will, the colours of earth, looking at the ground where thistles and leaves can be seen in the dark. In his hands, he is holding the decisive utensil – a lute, to be precise, or a guitar as we would say today. Of course, you cannot really hear the notes he is playing, but you can imagine them. And: nothing except these inaudible sounds bring the girl and the boy together. They need this medium to be able to communicate with each other, for they are completely different in principle, despite both being flesh and blood. Apparently, communication problems between the genders existed even then.
This is exactly the insight I have gained in my work, in spite of the women’s movement which attempts to make man and woman identical. The phrase equal rights is abused in my opinion, because levelling differences in all areas leads to a fallacy: men and women are the same! But this is not true. And not true in our modern world, either. Anselm Feuerbach provided proof of this 130 years ago, and the reason for his painting, his insight in other words, remains in existence today.
I simply put it like this:
Men and women have nothing in common, except in one area.
Or, more drastically put: man’s view of woman has not changed in 130 years. Wow!! From my perspective, this means: in spite of the felt progress and women’s liberation no truly decisive changes have occurred; there has merely been a deferral of power. Humanity has not really developed any further since those times. We may all grow older than our ancestors did, but we don’t seen to have really learned anything from the past and the efforts to realise ourselves in order to achieve a higher degree of humanism.
As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to translate this picture, Ricordo di Tivoli, into today’s terms. Take retro art literally, in other words. Using this original painting, I can render retro-art explicable to outsiders through painting. In doing so, I was naturally aware that painting a copy of a masterwork is pointless, obviously. I wanted to and had to change decisive details. I therefore decided to show the persons only as shadows or silhouettes and to completely give up representing them in detail. By doing this, I wanted to refer to the graphics and the style used for the launch of the first Apple iPod. Communication is the topic here, after all. But: in this picture, one does not play for the other, and the other is not listening.
This, if you will, is the individualisation of society. But in my painterly, philosophical view, individualisation and feminisation are expressions of the escalation of egotism. For Novalis, the most famous German Romantic poet, already stated that ‘women think individually, men universally’. This means that even the genders’ ways of thinking were different then and still are different today. This is why women need men and men need women. This cannot be made identical, as only in harmony – as an addition of the difference – something positive for society is the result.
No, everyone makes his own music here
Retro-Art Music Edition:
Clipping from "Wingenfelder & Wingenfelder - Die Unperfekten"
The iPod advert conveys this succinctly. I therefore painted my picture intending to do without anything non-essential and not to lose myself in details which I regarded as unimportant. Looking closely at my completed picture, one therefore finds an extremely sketchy representation of that nature which Feuerbach painted in its most minute detail.
But my nature is just fantasy! Forms and colours were freely invented and only loosely follow the original painting. Thus, nothing is real, everything is fake and yet all seems right.
I consciously exaggerated the subject of sky and ground to fire and water and therefore only used blue and orange as colours. I replaced the lute or guitar in Feuerbach’s picture with 2 iPods, which both the girl and the boy are holding in their hands. Each of them is also wearing individual earphones. Read: modern technology certainly doesn’t bring young people together.
Individualisation and separation happen here, too. The shadow figures’ position is like in Anselm Feuerbach. I, too, have an up and a down, since the male view of woman, his adoration of her, if you will, has not changed after all.
I thought it very important to realise in this picture all the things which particularly constitute my painting to date:
Its visualised way of seeing through a man’s eyes
Omission of non-essentials
Abstraction through dissociating objects from their pictorial context
Coloration, which is subordinated to the purpose of transmitting the message
Of course, my subject is also beautifully painted, but the content is nevertheless dicey verging on brazen. In an age of total belief in progress and the sameness of women and men I totally go against the flow and against the self-conception of the great majority of women with my insight. I do this not from ill intent but because I have through my experiences and my painting, which I regard as research, gained insights which have led me to this result.
The fact that I paint having positive opinion of woman and of femininity becomes obvious in the harmony characterising the pictures in my first cycle on femininity. And the title "The Crowning Point of Creation" is, in any case, a seriously intended compliment, not irony.
Conclusion:
I found a spiritual brother in the message of a nineteenth-century painting: the long-dead German painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829 – 1880) must have had experiences on the topic of men and women which were very similar to my own. I was astounded and decided to merge in painting my two completed cycles "The Crowning Point of Creation" and "The Lord of the Crown" in a single quintessential painting, for now I know: Nothing has changed.
I was thunderstruck. Anselm Feuerbach, it seems, also painted my story, and already 130 years ago! I therefore listened intently. 
