Website

http://www.eckhard-besuden.de

Relationship status

married

College / University

University of Konstanz

Graduation

January 27, 1964

Member type

Artist

If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?

Painting

I am...

I'm just an autodidact. My attempts to become an artist began, when I saw paintings from Peter Kuckei in Emden, and they ended in an artistic disaster. In 1984 I applied for a course of study at the HDK in Berlin - in my eyes then the "only real" University of art.
The first and most simple step in the selection procedure was the submission of a portfolio. In those days all the German modern Artists of choice were abstract for sure. I submitted photorealistic drawings. My portfolio was rejected and on my request I was told mutatis mutandis that photorealistic figurine interpretations in the outgoing 20th century regrettably were absolutely passé and that the university didn't have to make up for the failures of my school.
So I became only a painter, not an artist, but to paint is a thing I simply have to do.

About my artwork

If we observe art history in the 20th century, then in the first fifty years Paris is the undisputable capital of modern age. Anyhow in the afore mentioned period the ‚scene' and thus the entire art industry is aligned in a monocentric manner. You are an artist if you work in Paris. All the main trends spring from the French capital. Here the real important and ideologically correct art is born.
After 1945 until the end of the seventies Paris is replaced by New York. As recently as in the 21st century the monocentric art world is going down, and the monocentric dictatorship in style with it. This development can only be welcomed.
The European art scene experienced its decay during the war in the context of the monocentric perception. In Europe after 1945 rather polycentric art worlds developed with loose relations between the artists, who already due to their urban split-up and also due to lack of money couldn't cause real "trends" in the European art market - with the exception of some shy attempts like for example the "Neue Wilde" ("New Wild"), but to all of them was given only the usual half-life in the ideological age. And let's not forget: The art world of the seventies and eighties still lived from ideological trends, only that these trends changed in shorter intervals, just like trends in the vogue industry, where every week something new has to be invented, and where the trends repeat themselves in cycles of twenty years and then begin again from the very start, just because goddess Pecunia does not tolerate idleness and that lady definitely knows that she can rely on the obliviousness of the public.
At the end of the seventies it was totally clear how ‚real' artists had to paint: abstract. Even ‚heavy weights' like Picasso and the not so alluring but no less profound Picabia bowed to this diktat, in spite of their own stylistic diversity. Only in the early eighties this stereotypic concept of "actual modern art" was finally given up by the public. Not only here but also in New York a resurrection of Figuration could be detected with Basquiat, Fischl, Salle and Schnabel. Soon the label "neo expressionistic" was selected, because the art industry consisting of critics, gallery owners and that sort of people couldn't refrain from categorizing ideologically, which on the other hand caused confusion. Now what is so very new with the Neoexpressionists? Where was the ideological basic attribute Modern Art had to show, the straight development from the former general streams, whose motivating forces are based on a few exceptional artists, who were followed by the art industry and in the end also by an arty public? The stringent succession of necessary stylistic developments and the artistic determinism which should never end according to the disciples of the latter.
But in terms of style among others the ‚new Expressionists' weren't flawless, on the contrary they were obviously inconstant, evenmanifoldly and thus virtually artistically not serious, not authentic, inferior. It was the American public, that recognized the new art early and that led it economic success. Today the icons of this new appreciation for art are obvious. They not just prevent the constant ideological development, they reject it.

Meanwhile it isn't that important anymore, to overload a painting psychologically. The seventies point of view to subject a painting only to total abstraction and to do so in a more and more technically insufficient manner is obsolete. Today abstract or concret never minds. We can paint what we want to. We need no "vita". We need no art-market, and we need no ideology. We need time and ideas thats all.

Thus the major postulate for European art is set. With the possibility of anti-ideological and anti-deterministic Art the way into the 21st century is paved. "Ideology is falsehood, wrong consciousness, lie, it reveals itself by the failure of the artworks ... . The only greatness of artworks consists in the fact, that they formulate what ideology hides. " (Adorno). I call my artwork "antideterministic art"

Artists I like

Peter Kuckei, Neo Rauch, Paul Graham

Interests

Chess

What exhibitions are good at the moment?

www.eckhard-besuden.de

Centre of the artworld:

New York, Berlin, online