morbid forebodings triggered by childish landscape, 2019: a reading in seven lenses
Acrylic on grey carton, 73 × 80 cm (28 ¾ × 31 ½ in). Painting by Yiğit Özen.
At a Glance
In the upper right corner stands a tree straight out of a child's notebook: a thin stick of a trunk, a round and puffy greenery at its top. That tree we were all made to draw at school, the most innocent sign saying the world is safe. The title, though, reports that this innocent landscape gives rise to a bad intuition; the threat is not in the tree itself but in its promise. To the left of the tree a large, olive-ish body crouches, one arm reached out toward it. To hold, to lean, to pluck, which it is is unclear. The hand reaching for the fruit and the hand gripping the branch make the same movement; the distinction stays in the intention, and intention cannot be painted. Where the arm ends and where the tree begins cannot be read, the boundary of the body pierced there.
The colour tension is kept deliberately low. While blue fills the upper half, pink seeps up from beneath on either side, turning to turquoise as it descends. The figure is in a sickly tone between khaki and olive yellow; because it is soiled it separates from the blue but does not spring out of it. The one clean colour is gathered in the acid-green crown of the tree, the paint there clot upon clot, puffy, sitting on the board without soaking in. The small amount of orange, as the opposite of the blue, draws the eye to itself. Below, the hands and feet have turned into branches and roots; every point that touches the ground has become plant, the figure can no longer walk. This taking of root is like a collapse, a weariness; all the volume is gathered below, the head left tiny, a pale pink lump fastened beside it like a second head.
The clusters of fingers on the ground could be roots or hands reaching up from below; the second reading ties the scene to the underground, to the earth at a tree's foot that never comes up empty. The same clusters, to another eye, resemble the city's shrinking park, the small losses that are everywhere separate and singly counted as no news. The making does not fuse the child's drawing with the heavy body, it leaves them side by side; the two languages the CoBrA painters merged here only touch. The thing in the hand of the body, which recalls Guston's clumsy figures holding objects, stays nameless and cannot turn into a tool. At the left edge is a bare strip of board the paint never visited; from two metres it is invisible, up close it brings back that the painting stands upon a sheet of paper.
Form and Composition
A round cluster in the upper right corner, as the uppermost weight, touches the crop at two points, while the upper left corner stays empty with no counterpart. As the silhouette fills one of the diagonals from the cluster in the lower left to the roundness in the upper right and leaves the other completely empty, the dark contour running between the lobes gives the body a twisting motion.
In the upper right corner a round cluster stands at the tip of a thick stem. The cluster is made of short, dense units, its diameter about a quarter of the painting's width. Its stem descends to the lower right and connects to an extension, and that extension is cut off at the right edge. This cluster is the composition's uppermost weight and touches the crop at two points. There is no counterpart in the upper left corner; there the ground has been left empty and is filled with vertical brush marks.
The main mass sits to the left of the centre. The head is a quarter of the way down from the top, with a crest of short, sharp units on it. The body widens quickly from the head downward; its most bulging part stays at a third of the way up from the bottom, and there it entirely covers the middle of the painting. The mass is built from overlapping flat lobes, and the surround of all the lobes is closed with a dark line. This line sometimes also continues between two lobes, that is, the contour works not only outside but inside too. The long axes of the lobes turn to the right from top to bottom, and in total a twisting motion emerges.
On the bottom edge there are three separate projections. In the lower left corner a cluster with fingers, in the lower centre a second cluster, in the lower right the third and largest. All three are of the same texture, made of short bars, and all three spread horizontally. The lower boundary sets up an irregular base with these three clusters; none of them touches the bottom edge, and a finger's gap remains between them.
The ground shows two layers. Above and on the left, vertical marks; below and on the right, broader drags resembling the horizontal. The boundary of the two layers is pronounced on the right side: on the right edge a band descending from top to bottom is dark, and a band inside it is light. Between these two bands a thin, straight line descends and comes down to the cluster in the lower right. It is the painting's only straight line.
The distinction between figure and ground collapses in the left central region. There the edge of the mass and the light value behind mix together, and where an arm ends cannot be read. On the right side, on the other hand, the distinction is sharp, the dark contour holding up everywhere. In the lower right corner there is a small signature, right at the foot of the cluster. The total silhouette of the mass sits on a diagonal. A line beginning at the cluster in the lower left corner, passing through the body and arriving at the roundness in the upper right, goes close to the painting's diagonal. A second diagonal stretches from the upper left to the lower right but is empty; there is only ground there. That is, of the two diagonals one is full, the other completely empty. The weight therefore gathers in the lower left and the upper right. The distance between the head and the cluster in the upper right is close to the distance between the head and the bottom edge; the two ends hold each other in balance.
Colour and Light
The bubble-gum pink seeps up from beneath the blue on both sides and, where they do not overlap, leaves mottled bands, and the softest transitions on the surface are there. Although the figure's khaki olive yellow is the opposite of the blue, because it is dirtied the tension is low, while the acid green of the tree at the upper right is the place where the paint is left thickest and brightest.
The pink seeps up from beneath the blue on both sides. On the left edge it stands as a broad column, at the lower right as a more sprawling area. Its colour is bubble-gum pink, white mixed into it and laid in vertical brush marks. Where blue is rubbed over it, it turns to lilac; because the two paints do not entirely cover one another a mottled band is left between them. These transition zones are the softest colour events on the surface. The blue holds the whole upper half. Between ultramarine and cobalt, at its darkest and most saturated in the upper right; as it descends it lightens, at the lower edge turning to sky blue, almost turquoise. The paint there has thinned and the texture of the card comes through from within it. At the left edge the blue weakens, falling to defeat by the pink.
The figure is painted in a colour between khaki and olive yellow. This is not a clean yellow; green and grey have got into it, a sickly tone. At the middle of the masses it rises to a light lemon, at the edges it descends to a dark olive, and its contours are black. There is a contrast between it and the blue ground, but because the yellow is dirtied the tension stays low; the body separates from the ground, it does not leap out of it. The top of the tree at the upper right is an entirely different yellow. Close to acid green, set thick, the dough of the paint standing in lumps. The cleanest and brightest colour on the surface is there; there is no second place where the paint is left this thick. The same yellow repeats in the small clusters of leaves in the lower corners, thinner and darker.
The orange is very small in quantity, but it does its work. A vertical rust line on the left side of the figure, a few patches at navel height, a thin strip beneath the right shoulder. Because this orange is the exact opposite of the blue and the only saturated warm, it calls the eye to itself. In the lower left corner the same orange widens and, joining with the pink, drops to melon colour. Where the head is the colour arrangement breaks down. The region where the face should be is filled with dark olive and black, a few yellow lines left within it. To its left there is a small light pink patch; that is the only pink in the body and of the same paint as the pink in the background. This repetition builds a quiet bond between the figure and the ground.
There is no sign of the light's source. The light yellow regions in the body do not stand like an illumination, rather they are the places where the paint has thinned. The black contours have taken on all the darkness; outside them there is no real darkness on the surface. The trunk of the tree too is a thin black line, extending downwards and touching the cluster of leaves. On the left edge and in the lower right corner the card's own grey has stayed unpainted. The colours are cut off there all at once, and the surface left beneath stands as it is.
Iconography, Myth and Title
The round-crowned tree from a child's notebook is the sign of the safe world, while the faceless body grown beneath it superimposes the bad intuition of the title onto the landscape. Although the hand reaching for the tree calls up the forbidden-tree narrative, since plucking and holding on are the same movement the intent stays hidden, and the clusters at the foot say that the soil never turns out empty.
At the upper right there is a tree, drawn exactly as in children's notebooks: a thin trunk, a round green cluster on top of it. Toward its left a large, greenish being is crouched. Its head turned to the left, its neck thick, its body gathered from puffed-up parts riding on top of one another. One arm reaches up and touches the trunk of the tree. Below, on either side, clusters of fingers dispersing like roots are spread across the ground. The trunk of the tree is given with a single line.
The tree is the most innocent sign of landscape painting. It is one of the first things a child draws and it says the world is safe. The title, however, says that this innocent landscape has given rise to a bad intuition. Two layers stand at the same time: the round-crowned tree and, grown beneath it, a body overflowing its place. The same round cluster, at another glance, also stands like a cloud of smoke opening upward. The narrative here is not hidden, it is superimposed. In the world the child draws there is no danger, because the one who draws it has not yet seen it; the title marks exactly the moment this not-seeing ends. When the two layers stand one on top of the other, which was drawn first becomes uncertain.
The figure's arm reaching toward the tree is the centre of the scene. The hand reaching for the fruit is the oldest image of the forbidden-tree narrative, and with the reaching of that hand the bad intuition begins. In the hand here there is no fruit, only contact. Perhaps it reaches not to pluck but to hold on. The hand reaching for the fruit and the hand gripping the branch make the same movement; the distinction is in intent, and intent cannot be painted. The trunk of the tree, on the other hand, is thin and does not look as if it would carry the figure's weight. The fragility of the thing leaned upon is the only concrete sign that confirms the bad foreboding.
The clusters of fingers on the ground could be two different things. We may call them roots; entered into the soil, spread, holding on. We may call them hands; belonging to other bodies, hands reaching from below. The second reading binds the scene to the underground. In folk tales the soil beneath a tree most often turns out full; a buried thing, a hand waiting to emerge, a forgotten grave. These clusters being gathered at the foot of the tree and at the figure's feet feeds this reading. The soil beneath the tree, in those tales, never turns out empty.
The figure's face cannot be made out; where the head should be there is a dark, combed mass. The faceless seated being stands like a stranger who has entered the landscape afterward. By the rules of children's drawing there should be a house or a sun there. Instead, a body whose size exceeds the tree is crouched and crushes the landscape with its own weight. The figure that enters the landscape afterward brings its own rules with it. On the left edge there is a small, branching shrub, lying on its side as though torn from its place, its roots left in the air.
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
The end of the right arm passes into a treetop, the boundary of the body has been pierced and the figure cannot separate itself from the world it mingles with. Below, the hands and feet have turned into branches and put down roots in the soil, and where movement ends a body that has become unable to walk is condemned to stay in place.
The right arm has risen up and at its end there is a treetop. I cannot say where the arm ends and the tree begins. The limb coming out of the body, after travelling a short way, passes into the plant. The boundary of the body has been pierced here. A body that mingles with the world around it can no longer separate itself from that world; someone who does not know where they will end cannot know what is happening to them either. The top of the tree is drawn round and puffed up like in children's drawings, and its trunk a thin stick. The same form is repeated once more at the right edge; a second tree stands far from the body.
The figure itself is heavy. The folds are piled on top of one another, the chest and belly hang down, the shoulders have slumped forward. Whether it is sitting or crouching is not clear, but it is certain it has no thought of getting up. This heaviness does not come from muscles, it comes more from a weariness. The whole volume of the body has gathered downward. The upper part has shrunk, the lower part widened; whatever the thing it carries is, it has pulled the centre down. On the back there is a dark line, like a spine; it is the body's only straight line.
The head is small and dark. We cannot see its face, the hair or feathers hang down. Right to its left there is a small pale pink lump, with a single dot on top of it; it stands like a second head, perhaps a puppet's head. This little being attached to the side of the large body stands there silently. There seem to be two parties in the scene, one that has lived and collapsed, the other still small. There is no talk between them. The face of the large head is entirely covered, not a single detail left. On the small one, meanwhile, there is a dot, perhaps an eye.
Below, the hands and feet have turned into branches. The fingers have lengthened and divided, with small leaves or shoots at their tips. Every point that touches the ground has become plant. To put down roots is in a sense to be condemned to stay in place. This figure can no longer walk. Where movement ends, growth has begun, but this growth does not look like something the figure wants. The cluster of branches on the left is darker and more tangled; that part seems to have been in the soil longer.
In the background pink and blue patches are spread with vertical strokes, recalling a landscape. A back garden that could be called cheerful. The source of the bad intimation is not the landscape, to my mind; the landscape is innocent, the threat comes from inside the body. In the same painting a tree that looks as if it came from a child's hand and a body that looks as if it had begun to rot live side by side. In the lower left corner another small cluster of branches has grown, attached to no one. The patches behind have come down vertically rather than horizontally, like rain.
Society, Power and Technology
The tree that stepped out of a child's exercise book tells of the city where every plot around it is opened to development; no one cuts the tree, but twenty years later no room to breathe is left. There is no table to lay side by side the ecological losses scattered everywhere, because the clean way to make a harm impossible to measure is to divide it into pieces.
A tree that looks as though it stepped out of a child's exercise book stands at the edge; a thin trunk, a round patch of greenery at its top. At school they had us all draw the same tree. A hill, a house, and a sun. In none of those drawings was there a shack, a junction, a sewage pipe. This is how they described the world to a generation, then that generation grew up and what it saw when it went outside resembled nothing in its exercise book. That the title speaks of bad forebodings comes, to my mind, exactly from here, the threat is not in the view itself but in the view's promise.
The tree's trunk descends and turns into a thin stick and barely holds on to the ground. The mass beside it, meanwhile, has covered the whole area, spread out, grown layer upon layer. The city's relationship with a green space is set up in exactly this way. Every plot around the park is opened to development, the park remains. Then a cafe is put in one corner of the park, the park shrinks a little more. No one has cut the tree, no one is guilty, but twenty years later no room to breathe is left around that tree.
The large body in the middle has reached one arm out towards the tree. Whether it is holding it, leaning on it, about to break it off is not clear. In the way it reaches there is a taking of possession. This is the most common form of the relationship formed with nature; even as we say we want to protect it, we lay our hand on it. We declare a national park, we set an entrance fee, we build a car park, we plant a signboard. Even in the thing we call protection there is the idea of ownership. To protect a place mostly means to manage it. Who will enter, who will gather what, which villager will graze his animal where is settled by decision, and those who make that decision do not live on those lands.
Down at the bottom tufts coming up from the ground are visible, like roots, like grass. They are scattered on the ground, each in a separate place. They do not form a whole. The hardest side of ecological ruin to describe is this fragmentation; small losses happen separately everywhere and none of them carries news value on its own. A stream dries up, a bird changes its migration route, a field turns saline. There is no table to lay these side by side. And even if there were, gathering them would take years, because each falls within the remit of a different institution. The municipality says one thing, the ministry says another, the company shows a report different from all of them. This scattering is no accident; the cleanest way to make a harm impossible to measure is to divide it into enough pieces.
The vertical traces on the back surface descend from top to bottom and gather behind the figure. This is one way, I suppose, of drawing the sky closing over. The tree's leaves, meanwhile, still stand full, up above, unaware how thin its trunk has been left.
Art History and Comparison
The CoBrA painters would try to unite the drawing languages of the child and the adult; on this cardboard a simple landscape and a complex figure have been left side by side, there is not union but contact. Guston's figures hold objects that have names; the tree here is nameless, the general idea of a tree, and because of its unrecognisability it cannot turn into an implement.
At the end of the right arm stands a round bunch, its stem thin, its top bushy; the very tree of children's drawings. The figure has raised it into the air, not as though carrying a tree but as though holding a stick. In the lower corners there are two shrubs from the same hand, the leaves made one by one with notches. The body itself is heavy, lumpy, sunk forward; its head has stayed very small in relation to the body and has gained an eye at the upper left through a single dot.
Children's drawing becoming material for painting turned into a programme after the war. In the CoBrA circle Appel and his friends consciously imitated the child's hand, because they saw it as the way to escape everything the academy taught. That imitation has a peculiarity: the adult, the moment he decides to draw like a child, loses his childhood. The tree and shrubs on this cardboard do not seem to carry the same problem, because the rest of the painting is not at all childlike. The landscape elements are simple, while the figure is complex and heavy. Two separate languages of drawing have been left side by side on the same surface. The title confirms this division too; the childish thing is the landscape, the ominous thing is the thing that looks at it. The CoBrA painters would try to unite these two languages; here there is no union, there is contact.
The way the body is built brings Guston's late-period figures to mind; there too the body is flat, ungainly, in the form of lumps ringed with a thick line, and it often holds an object in its hand. Guston's objects have names, they are a shoe, a cigarette, a clock; things everyone knows carry the weight of the painting. The object here is nameless. We pass over it by calling it a tree, but it is not a species, nor a symbol, only the general idea of a tree. Once the object loses its recognisability, the thing in the figure's hand cannot turn into an implement either. The arm's being raised this high carries no purpose either; the tree is not being planted, nor thrown, it is held in the air.
Another name that comes to mind for the habit of drawing the leaves one by one is Rousseau. In his forests each leaf is placed separately, patiently, almost so as to be countable; this patience is the signature of naive painting. In the shrubs here too there is a similar placing one by one, but there is no patience; the notches are thrown down fast, some touching one another, some falling into empty space. The same method, applied at an opposite speed.
In the series' 2019 group there are a small number of works made on cardboard, and this is one of them. The grey of the cardboard continues to be visible at the edges, the paint has not gone all the way to the corners. While in the canvases of the same year the desire to fill the background is stronger, here the ground has been left in patches, and the surface seeps between them. The title speaks of a bad foreboding; in the painting the only counterpart of that intuition is the figure's stance leaning forward, everything else is from the playground.
Material, Gesture and the Viewer's Experience
The paint did not go to the margin of the paper but stopped at a broken, wavy border; it is the paint itself, not the size of the card, that decided where the picture ends, and bare ground was left at the edges. While the single black contour drawing the hip covers a path longer than forty centimetres without stopping, the treetop is in an entirely separate technique with raised comma strokes.
Along the left edge there is a strip the paint never reached. The card's own colour stands open there from top to bottom, two fingers wide, and the blue cuts off before that line. On the top edge the same situation; the paint did not go to the margin, it stopped at a broken and wavy border. These edges are not cropped, not closed off. It is the paint itself that decided where the picture ends, not the size of the card. The outermost edges of this seventy-three by eighty surface are thus left outside the work and the ground stayed bare.
The back area is built with short vertical touches. The brush descends from top to bottom, there is no mark longer than fifteen centimetres; each touch is separate and between them the layer beneath breathes. Pink and blue have ridden over each other in turn, in some places pink on top, in some places blue. On the right side the pink is still on top and the blue reads from beneath it. Between them there are orange patches; these seep from an earlier layer and are not added later, because their edges have stayed beneath the paint on top.
The inside of the figure is filled with an olive yellow, by dragging. Because the card is absorbent the paint stayed matt there, it does not shine anywhere. When the filling work was done thick black contours were passed over it, and these contours are the most fluid moves in the picture; unbroken, long, changing pressure. A single black drawing the outer line of the hip covers a path longer than forty centimetres and nowhere stopped and started again. Some contours were flung while the olive yellow beneath was still damp, and at their edges there is a seeping tinged with green.
The top of the tree at the upper right is made with an entirely separate technique. Hundreds of short pressings; a stiff-bristled brush held upright and struck against the surface, the bristles spreading at each stroke and leaving a comma-shaped patch. The paint there is thick and raised, it did not soak into the card, it sits on top of it. The trunk of the tree, on the other hand, is a single long black pull with a slight tremble in its middle, uncorrected. The claws in the lower corners are left at the same speed too, in single flicks. In the claw cluster at the lower left the brush passed over several times and the paint clumped there; in the cluster on the right, meanwhile, there is a single pass and the blue beneath strikes up between the fingers.
When this size comes before you it fills the area from your chest to your head. Looked at from two metres the figure sits within the blue and the bare card at the edges is not noticed. As you come within a metre that bare strip comes into play and the fact that the picture stands on a piece of paper, that it is a surface hung on a wall, comes back. Looked at from thirty centimetres, meanwhile, the card's own grain comes out in all the thinly laid regions and the paint gives away where it struggled to hold on to that grain.
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