Jan Esmann: The Artist
Jan Esmann is one of the leading artists of the contemporary
figurative painting in Europe.
Three Healers, 2007. 130 x 170
cm. Oil on canvas.
Three healers. 130 x 170 cm.
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Three Philisophers. 150 x 180 cm.
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Beating Kitsch. 130 x 150 cm.
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Blue Pearl. 150 x 180 cm.
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Moment of Truth. 150 x 180 cm.
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Four Clones Imitating a Tornado. 150 x 180 cm.
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Four Clones Worshipping a Volcano. 150 x 180 cm.
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Three Clones Contemplating Dead Pregnant Couple. 130 x 150 cm.
Three Clones Contemplating the Soul. 150 x 180 cm.
Three Clones on Chairs. 150 x 180 cm.
Earth listeners (Thirteen Rebeccas). 130 x 170 cm.
Three Healers. 130 x 170 cm.
Three Men with Hoop-Rings. 130 x 150 cm.
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"Contemporarity" is marked by a paradoxical alliance between the most advanced academic intellectualisms and the most incompetent forms of artistic expression. This is undoubtedly so because intellectuals and artists live in fear. Thus artists and intellectuals ally themselves with those from whom they fear the least. Art-criticts ally themselves with artists that have no talent at all, and artists ally themselves with art-critics that have no understanding of art at all.
The artistically valid trends within contemporary painting
have turned towards a renewed interest in the craft of figurative painting. Not because we adore the old masters, in fact we don't care about them one bit, but because it is the only way forward. It is the only way out of the alliance between intellectual arrogance and artistic incomptetence that is the aftermath of postmodernism.
In the name of freedom of expression it has become fashionable to detest competence. This is strange. Lack of skill is the opposite of autonomy, for lack of skill always restricts ones ability to express oneself. I mean, if you don't even know the alphabet, how can you even begin to talk about freedom of speech?
Contemporary art is of course no longer modernist art or postmodernist art, but post-postmodernist
art, and as such a renewed interest in the lost craft of figurative
painting, that modernism and postmodernism killed off, is only natural, though it is
also a very elitist tendency within the so-called "contemporary" art scene.
As contemporary
post-postmodern artists we have to reinvent craftmanship in
a new form of figurative painting. Only this way can we move art beyond
the pompointellectual selfsatisfaction of postmodernism and post-postmodernism. |