Thomas Kemper
Excerpts from Interviews with Hermann Falke
TK: Mr Falke, for outsiders as well as connoisseurs of your work the impression arises that you are willingly withdrawing yourself and your work from the public eye. Would you say that this impression is correct? Are you a misanthropist?
HF: No, not at all (laughs). However, what Gottfried Benn once said is still true: “Animals that make pearls are closed up”.
TK: In a time of exaggerated publicity such a position might seem very anachronistic.
HF: Well, that is something I am willing to accept. I do not care for this development, which also applies to me, towards a completely see-through human that can be observed in many areas. I don’t want to support or even promote this- let’s call it- self-exhibition. The uncovering of the innermost and most private that is often asked of artists nowadays- I’d like to recall the journalistic self-exposure of many contemporary artist colleagues- rather threatens what is left of the human than protects it. Your question about misanthropy should thus be directed at a completely different address.
TK: That your work is published, however, is still important to you?
HF: Please allow me to pose a counter-question, which might be able to further question the self-evident part of yours? Have you ever concerned yourself in depth with the subject of Middle Age church building?
TK: No, not really.
HF: Now, me for example, I am extremely impressed by the strange circumstance that on many of these buildings even the most important sculptures, who’s existence remained unknown until the 19th century, when they were entered systematically into catalogues- cannot be seen by the viewer from down on the floor. Although I don’t know the deeper, metaphysical reasons for this on purpose concealment, I take it as a hint towards the fact that the absolute weight, that is being put on the exhibition value of works of art since many years and especially since the Dadaistic revolution also on the exhibition value of an artist, is not as self-evident as some apologist of the present-day art scene would like us to believe.
To answer your question: Exhibitions are near and dear to me, as they set the preconditions for one day- and it is indeed not important to me whether this happens soon or in 50 years- there to be the ideal viewer for each individual work, who can recognize himself in it. As you can see, I think in completely different time dimensions as is customary today.
TK: This different concept of time that you mention, seems to articulate itself in your work also. “I literally live from having lived already in all previous centuries; otherwise one could not bear living on this completely insane planet”. Could this quote by Hans Wollschläger be analogical to some of your works?
HF: Well, without really knowing the author you are quoting- I have only had a look at Wollschläger’s “Armed pilgrimage towards Jerusalem” many years ago- the experience that comes through in this quote strikes me as something through and through familiar. The remembrance that Wollschläger’s quote seems to point at- is a must for the artist that knows about the threat towards modern existence. The remembrance is directed at the accumulating suffering of nature and the subjectivity of the course of history. It also aims at the forgotten, suppressed and- please excuse this strange term- civilized-away possibility of humans. Art- not only history and literature- need remembrance.
TK: ...which can be seen in your works to an extreme by way of comparison? You show the limits of creation: the “Feast of the Body” dancing, in unison with nature- and the suffering, decaying, the dead.
HF: You see, the fact that in my creations the subject of death, amongst others, has a clearly defined place, excludes me to a certain extend from contemporaneity and can be equated to a violation of cultural norms, as the exclusion of the dead from the scope of view of the living is one of the greatest achievements of suppression in the history of modern civilization. Death- not that long ago an occurrence that partly dictated the everyday rhythm of the individual as well as the community- has been expatriated by society. “Society does not pause anymore. The disappearing of a single individual does not interrupt its continuity anymore. Life in the big city seems as of nobody dies anymore” (Ph. Aries). I take the ad plures ire of the old very seriously: to grasp the puff of air that surrounds what has been.
TK: This intention extends itself also to those works- as for example a large part of the water-colors- where a forgotten possibility of subjectivity surfaces: dissolution of boundaries, spontaneity, instant blessedness, exaggerated lightness. With figures that have no center of gravity, no heavy ego that rather experiences its own downfall in the frenzy of infinite movement, dissolution of boundaries and contingencies.
HF: D’accord. (I agree).
Folder: „Excerpts from Interviews with Hermann Falke“, Hermann Falke - „Alte Mühle“ - Schmallenberg, 1983