April 20, 2006
Visiting German artist paints Emmert, Gates, for interpretive project
As he looked forward to painting a portrait of UW President Mark Emmert last week, German painter Stefan Budian said his main plan was to have no plan at all.
“I have the metaphorical sense that I have to do that what the painting tells me to do,” said Budian, a talented, gregarious artist visiting the UW and Washington State through April and May, a guest of the Germanics Department and the College of Arts and Sciences.
The portrait of Emmert — and another planned for this week of William Gates Sr. — will take their place online with other Budian paintings as part of an ongoing project, which he calls Physiognomic Expedition. Budian describes this as moving beyond the first impressions of a person or circumstance to find a deeper meaning within.
In improving English, he said his work asks, “What is the inner meaning of reality? And, not in a philosophical way, but just” — here he pauses to consider his words — “just let it happen and see that it is.”
Richard Gray, a faculty member in Germanics who studies physiognomics, describes it on his Web page as “the determination of an individual’s internal character traits based on the interpretation of external bodily features.”
Budian’s project is taking place in two phases, the second of which is under way now. In both phases, he creates paintings and then posts them on his Web page for students at the UW and the University of Mainz, in Germany (and Morocco, where he also has worked) to interpret and comment on. The first phase involved his work in Germany; the second phase is his work here in Washington, both at the UW and in Winthrop, where he will paint landscapes and outdoor scenes.
In May, the German students will begin their interpretations based on what he has posted on the Internet. Will he respond to their comments? “I’m just the painter,” he said. “I don’t know words.”
The online presentation of his paintings, however, is done anonymously — the students do not know who he is. “I like it best when they do not know me as a person, do not think what I thought, but keep to their own minds — to let their own imaginations flow and walk and wander.” He refers to the students interpreting his work more as partners than pupils.
To view Budian’s colorful work on his Web site (www.wikliba.net), however, is to see that he does not often paint portraits close enough to show facial features. He said that’s because sometimes he feels the details of the face can take away from the larger meaning of a painting. But in the case of President Emmert, he said he hoped to reveal more facial details, as with a traditional portrait.
On Thursday, then, Budian set up shop in the President’s Office in Gerberding Hall, painting on a fairly small easel while Emmert obligingly worked at his desk. Emmert said the feeling of being painted was “a little odd,” but that “Stefan has been very accommodating so I haven’t had to change my routine much.”
Budian rearranged certain aspects of the real office scene for the benefit of his painting. A large model sailboat mounted on a wall was shown as closer to his subject, and a painting on Emmert’s wall was replaced in Budian’s work by a miniature scene of Emmert in a meeting of the Board of Regents. Later, Budian allowed that the session went well, and said Emmert impressed him as “a very focused and professional man.”
Overall, Budian said, his art is meant to create connections between people, with the aim of greater cross-cultural understanding. He hopes his paintings and the interpretations might provide a platform for this understanding; he said he’d like to see German and American students discussing the paintings together. “They have the illusion that they are quite the same, but they are different,” he said.
Budian’s work will be displayed in two places this spring:
- He will have a solo exhibition of recent work, including his Seattle paintings, starting May 25 at the Gallery FenomenA, 200 Roy St. in Seattle.
- His work will be included in a larger exhibition called Horse Crazy at the Confluence Gallery in Twisp, Wash., opening May 27.
Another challenge awaited Budian this week in his scheduled painting of William H. Gates. The artist will sit in the back of a committee meeting of the Board of Regents for about an hour to get his image. Budian said he will view and paint the background beforehand, to save himself time.
But he is not concerned about controlling things. Stefan Budian goes with the flow, and then paints how it looks to him.
“I would feel I had lost the battle if I didn’t lose control,” he said with a smile. “To give up control is to have a higher control.”
