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| Michael Rothenstein |
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by Eduardo Paolozzi
(20 Nov 2008) |
Michael Rothenstein works with amazing abandon and there are many texts which describe his way of work in exquisite detail. The phantasmagoria scrapes the back of the mind, hinting not only our ancient past but also a string of brilliant metaphors reflecting the lunacy of the tabloids' vision of contemporary life.
Rothenstein was engaged by his first glimpses of Rauschenberg in Paris, but the immense influence of surrealism on modern American art should also be borne in mind. Like the Max Ernst portfolio of 'frottage' - a rich humus for the printer - he has a grasp of the invisible world and will employ any material or use any method to release his vision. At times looking through the work it could be a storyboard for a Derek Jarman film or illustrations for a new edition of Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautrémont. Pathos and the collapse of the European family are presented in a singular way and join the great tradition of the expressionist woodcut.
In Rothenstein's main studio several worlds overlap - a large cast-iron press (the same principle of printing as the Gutenberg Bible), carpentry benches neatly covered with power tools, paint brushes arrayed in order - these fill the working area of an artist happy to stride from master printer to skilled artisan using the power file if necessary to achieve subtleties outside the province of more traditional tools. Perhaps these modern methods had to be introduced to overcome working the surface fo objects retrieved from scrap heaps. Today the public still experiences difficulties realising that the history of modern art is inseparable from the history of rejected material transformed into significant images.
Trapping the subconscious has its history. The silkscreened apocalyptic monochromes are linked with Gothic details. The detritus from the artist's own rubbish becomes interwoven into boxes - the inner world fused with the outer. The discarded paintbrush - symbol in its own right of creativity - amalgamates with that symbol of the ancient world, the cockerel. To unleash all this in the form of lucid metaphors shows a power to be envied.
Eduardo Paolozzi, London, 1992. |
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There is 1 article on Michael Rothenstein:
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