Blinky Palermo: A look at art in geometry

Blinky Palermo was a German painter, environment and object artist .

An artist, which is quite famous in the art world, who today occupies 338th place on the international world rankings of art. 338 in the world, that's something, but above all strange, that Blinky Palermo still populated the room for 1,000th place in 2005 ... Actually, the artist, born in 1943, had his best time in the legendary 1968s and surprisingly left us a little later, 1977 at the young age of only 33 (for unexplained reasons, in the Maldives).

If he hadn't gone so early from us, the following scenario would probably have arisen: The richest Germans would not only have Sigmar Polkes, Gerhard Richters (Polkes, Richter?) On the wall, but also Blinky Palermm (Palermo?).

The layer underneath the golf club would express its intention to buy a Blinky Palermo soon ... Since Blinky Palermo has already left us for almost four decades, the Schicki-Micki citizen is spared the verbally embarrassing state-symbol; Many squares and many puzzles remain for the citizens interested in art:

Puzzle about Blinky Palermo

There are already questions from these few introductory rates - which make the artist Blinky Palermo appear even more puzzling, although Blinky Palermo appears to be puzzling from the outset:

Why, for the sake of heaven, someone gives himself the artist name Blinky Palermo?

The artist name "Blinky Palermo" has exactly the mafia reference that he sounds: The young man and artist Peter Heisterkamp had a striking similarity with an Italian Blinky Palermo, Frank "Blinky" Palermo, boxing promoter and well-known mafioso.

This Peter Heisterkamp also ran around with a black leather jacket, sunglasses and (Beuys's) Borsalino as a standard outfit-not very creative for artists, but irresistible: For the friends around Gerhard Richter, Imi Knoebel, Anatol Herzfeld, Sigmar Polke was only called Peter Heisterkamp.

This happened at the art academy, where Peter Heisterkamp has just become a master student of Joseph Beuys . Like all artists who became famous during their own lifetime, Beuys had a very good sense of art marketing , artist marketing , the "artist as a brand".

This subject area also includes the effect of the artist on humans, together with the "People reasonable name", and it is completely free of any delimitation or tendencies to exclusion, neither Peter Heisterkamp nor Andrej Warhola.

If five syllables already, then please keep five syllables, whereby the actual artist name was "Palermo", the nickname Blinky was initially only in circulation among friends.

Riddle No. 2 is the surprising death of Palermo on February 17, 1977. This suffered the artist on the Maldives Island of Kurumba during a vacation trip with girlfriend Babette Polter. How Palermo came to death was never explained; You can choose between car accident, heart failure and "other mysterious circumstances".

Riddles 3: Why, for heaven's sake, does someone get around 700 places in the international world rankings of art with the artist name Blinky Palermo almost 30 years after his death in the course of a decade?

Quite astonishing, hardly to be found in 2005, almost 700 seats higher on the first page in 2015. Will probably have to do with the real value market that flourished in parallel to the downward development of the stock exchange. How much of the "art market as a playground for speculators" and "Escape to the real value of art" may only be assumed.

Palermo's squares have a feature that must have both perfect speculators and the status symbol art for the (normally living) normal citizen: they are suitable for living rooms and are easy to transport. You could only find out more about the drivers of the Palermo's upward trend by comparing all auction results , which are not fully recorded (among other things)-research into the end, inexplicable posthumous popularities and price developments remain a secret of the art market.

Maybe after four decades, Blinky Palermo's climb also has something to do with the fact that he was a master student of Joseph Beuys and that Beuys is completely "in" again.

Perhaps the law is precisely the fact that the Schmock from the day before yesterday (please do not refer to Palermo's nice squares, because worse things regularly come up again) at least two generations later.

Maybe someone has found a lot of Palermo squares somewhere, similar to the happy philosopher, who has just inherited an entire house from his beloved uncle-oh what, an entire cosmos-full of wonderful origami art.

Anyway, the late celebrity of the square artist gives a lot of hope. Depending on the personal degree of optimism/pessimism or affection/dislike for Blinky Palermo squares or squares (in art, in the picture), the view that the purchase of unknown artists can be worthwhile at some point in the future-or a rather cynical view of things about the acceptance/view that crazy investors from foreign cultures will be a billion Provide inherited "deer above the sofa"

Palermo would have liked the number 2 and realization, for his own pictures anyway, but with his own cynicism, also for the deer. As a freelancer, he had little left with intellectual claim for the part of the art business, which is determined “laws of the market”

The laws of the market are only for the greedy, not for people with demands: what is best sold to the market; It is best to sell what as many as possible; The more characterless, more boring a product, the better the chances that many like it - until a deer squares and more displaces.

The special thing about the art of Blinky Palermo

As you have already taken from the previous hints, Blinky Palermo squared:

• Orange squares
• Eis-Aus-Echter-vanille squares
• black-kästen squares
• German-colored squares
• turquoise-red brown-yellow-orange-red-green squares
• a few
squares for red-green blind
• small-kaße-wall squares
• Schöner-Alter-Künboden squares
• striped squares
• yellow-orange-blue-orange-blue-yellow-blue squares

Here you can see the replica of Blinky Palermo's installation Punts Cardinals (cardinal points) in Barcelona, ​​in a warehouse in the Carrer Torres Amat 5, on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition about the artist in the MacBA.

And then there is a triangle, a blue triangle , and becomes the quintessence of all squares ... The wonderful rest of the overall work of Blinky Palermo (which of course made a lot more than square and triangle art) remains to be discovered: there are wall objects , with canvas or adhesive tapes, fabric images made of colorful nettle, wall paintings and metal images of metal pictures of many small pictures.

With a lot of space for analysis, several art experts are still on the trail of the not fully realized talent and potential of this "mythical figure of post-war art" , the "James Dean of the Art Scene" . Others do not draw such far -reaching conclusions from Palermo's early death and counter the mystification machine of the art market that a "interior design with high -flying ideas" should be transfigured here.

For the next "Palermo will be too fragile with many theoretical analyzes for so much strained theory"; It is best to judge yourself.

It is still about the special “blue triangle”, now a look at the geometry in art is due:

Geometry as the motif of art: an amazingly late appearance

A painting gallery of squares, which flows into a blue triangle ... the creativity of the artist does not seem to be beating trees at least when looking for a motif.

If you are just beginning to deal with art, you often have a problem with accepting geometric motifs as art. Of course, geometric shapes can belong to a painting, cubism has given us enough examples; But simple squares, that is no longer a picture of life that should be seen in a painting, but nothing more than a mathematical sketch.

Art connoisseurs only smile, of course geometry be art, how cake and light can be art in layers. And yet geometry is an amazingly late appearance in art, and the free choice of motif in the history of art is anything but a matter of course.

The first artists outlined existential hunting experiences on cave walls around 40,000 years ago. Theoretically free choice of motifs, practical and in fact not because there were typical motifs, the largest part of the artists were based on consumption.

About 37,000 years later, the first early civilizations were created, so it was finally over and over for a long time with the free choice of motif in art. Art became part of the complicated ritual acts with which the early societies sought to ban life.

Only strictly regulated artificial exercise was considered suitable for e.g. B. to prevent the sky from falling on the head to fold the ship back to the harbor and the child from the mother's guts safely from the mother.

This remained the case in the Middle Ages , because the world had not yet become much more harmless, manageable or more transparent. However, the world had grown a lot, the hunters and collectors had become sedentary and immediately started to argue to argue about the most beautiful habitats.

This gave a belonging to a certain group for the survival characteristic, societies with strict hierarchies - in which no longer only the motives were prescribed, but was also strictly regulated, who was allowed to paint these motifs.

Ideas such as free choice of career were only created with the enlightenment; Only with the associated development of a "modern art" or "art of modernity" is it free to use the artist from the whole world of motives that populate his head.

One of the first to paint geometric forms-and thus one of the earliest examples of abstract, not presented to the subject of limited art-was the Russian painter avant-gardist Kasimir Malewitsch (1879–1935).

His "blue triangle" from the work "Suprematism (black rectangle, blue triangle)" should prove to be very viable ...

Malewitsch (Kazimir Severinovich Malevich) also painted squares, or he painted the square, "The Black Quadrat" on a white reason, also from 1915, now evaluated as a milestone of the painting of modernity and worshiped as "icon of modernity" .

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) was fascinated by squares, in several ways: The synesthetician Kandinsky saw certain forms in certain colors, circle = blue, triangle = yellow, square = red. But he also heard the shapes; For him, circles, triangles and squares were affected with a different sound ("Paint your band"). And he smelled it, blue, yellow, red each very different ("shake your scent").

(Although the art exercise must have been really exhausting for him), "Painting squares" a very special freedom for Kandinsky. Kandinsky was 13 years older than Malewitsch and actually painted squares early on like this "color study: squares with concentric circles" .

Kandinsky would have liked to experiment a lot more in the field of abstract painting, but had to go back to conservative Russia due to the war and was reduced to his beginnings.

There was a different zeitgeist away from the Russian province, in 1911 Marc and Kandinsky had launched “Blue Rider” Between 1911 and 1914, some of the most famous works of abstract and abstract art were created.

During this time, Wassily Kandinsky painted the first abstract picture at all: "First abstract watercolor (study on composition VII)" from 1913 or 1910 (possibly pre -dated).

Kandinsky's "abstract break" lasted until 1921, then he had seen and experienced enough restriction of freedom of art by the new rulers in the new Soviet Union, left the country towards Berlin and was allowed to paint squares again ...

Piet Mondrian also painted squares at exactly the same time, the first in Paris. There he was drawn there because of the "squaring" at an old age of almost 40 years in December 1911.

This was triggered by his first touch with the new art of Cubism at an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in October/November 1911, where Mondrian's works were shown alongside works by Paul Cézanne , Georges Braque , Pablo Picasso , André Derain , Raoul Dufy and other modern artists.

Everyone knows the black and white and blue-red Mondrian squares, but Mondrian was also able to make pictures much more complex, often with the insertion of squares:

• "Evolution (triptych)", 1911
• "The gray tree", 1911/12
• "Still life with Gingeropf II", 1912
• "Composition with grid 8: chess composition with dark colors", 1919
• "New York City I", 1942
• "Broadway Boogie Woogie", 1942/43

Mark Rothko (see Mark Rothko: Early Career ), Barnett Newman (e.g. No. 4 of his six Onements) and Clyfford Still also painted squares. These abstract expressionists were a world war later with their squares and painted them as the forerunner of the "Color Field Painting" , the "color field painting" "action painting" at the end of the 1940s .

As I said, everyone painted squares at the time, and because every squares painted, Blinky Palermo also painted squares. Of course, his very own squares, with very own spells and very own interpretation options. But Blinky Palermo was one of the people who made themselves smart before acting, he knew many of the squares painted by his predecessors in the course of the development of cubism and the tract.

So you can assume (and the majority of art scientists do that) that Malewitschs, Kandinskys, Mondrians, Rothkos, Newmans, Stills and many other painted, cast, carved squares have found the square art of Blinky Palermo.

The squares of the artists from Malewitsch to Blinky Palermo have again influenced the next artists, e.g. B. the famous abstract painter Mary Heilmann , an American contemporary Blinky Palermo, who, unlike him, is still among us today.

She only took Mondrian as a model: "Manhattan Shuffle" , 1986, around 2013 in the exhibition "Mary, Blinky, Yay!" with Blinky Palermo (as a homage to his 70th birthday) in dialogue).

Blinky Palermo's squares will all have their meaning. There are many squares, so generations of art scientists can still think about what the respective meaning and purpose of geometry art was and is.

Instead of "Blue Flower of Romance" "Blue Triangle for Freedom"

The mysterious "blue triangle" Palermo, which is now closer, reveals a deep and beautiful sense:

"Blue Triangle" probably has its blue Yves Klein (1928–1962), whose blue it slides when you enter "Yves Klein" + "Blue" into the picture search engine. The triangle could go back to Sigmar Polkes triangle from 1969, in which "higher beings: right upper corner paint black!".

This triangle has now come a little closer to the artistic eternity because the British artist Jonathan Monk himself in the text image "higher beings: paint the right upper corner black!" Accepted again in 2007.

The "blue triangle full of art history" also reminds of the black rectangle with blue triangle already mentioned above. With the Kasimir Malewitsch in 1915, his own style of modernity founded in art, related to futurism and constructivism and with the modest name Suprematism (from Latin Supremus = the highest).

This style produced art in Russia until the beginning of the 1930s.

Blinky Palermo's "Blue Triangle" is from 1969 and brings his entry ticket to eternity. The work of art is installation and wall painting at the same time, it consists of:

• The template for painting the triangle
• Three framed paper work with instructions for installation (e.g.: "Use the stencil to paint a blue triangle over a door.", Or "then give away the original sheet") and to the blue color (placa dark blue No. 35?)
• the blue triangle itself, somewhere over a door
• And finally a "triangle edition" of 50 editions in a folder.

The last time the "Blue Triangle" had a greater framework for Blinky Palermo's 70th birthday in the Frankfurter Städel Museum November 2013: The stencil of the Städel Museum was created over a fall in the exhibition rooms in the gardens and was painted with said blue color "Plaka Dark Blau No. 35".

In addition to the newborn "Blue Triangle", a selection of the minimalist print graphics Palermo from the 1960s and 1970s could be seen in the birthday exhibition of the Städel Museum; The 2013 “Blue Triangle” found its imperishable place contemporary art in the garden halls

Behind the blue triangle is the beautiful basic idea that everyone becomes an artist who can paint a "Palermo triangle" by hand over a door. So "art as an idea" , first German concept art in pure culture - which is also intended by Palermo as a memorial for freedom (art) and as a criticism of institution against an art trade .

With this in mind, we still want a lot of "blue triangles" over the closed doors of the world ...

Blinky Palermo, short short biography

• June 2, 1943 Blinky Palermo was born as Peter Schwarze in Leipzig
• 1943 Peter Schwarze is given by adoption to Peter Heisterkamp
• In 1952 the family moved to the west, where to Münster (Westphalia)
• In 1959 Blinky Palermo graduated from high school
• 1961 Werkkunstschule in Münster, graphic and sculpture courses
• 1962 studied at the Düsseldorf art academy, at Bruno Goller (surrealistic portraits)
• 1964 Change to the class of Joseph Beuys, acceptance of the artist name Palermo
• June 4, 1965 Marriage Palermo + Ingrid Denneborg
• 1966 Palermo is appointed his master student by Beuys, completion of his studies
• 1967 Palermo works as a bartender in the Düsseldorf scene restaurant Creamcheese, separation from Ingrid Denneborg
• June 10, 1969 Marriage Palermo + Kristin Hanigk
• 1969 move to Mönchengladbach, possibility of working in a former carpenter, studio community with Imi Knoebel, Ulrich Rückriem
• 1970 Study trip to New York with friend and fellow artists Gerhard Richter
• 1973 Studio in New York
• 1974 car tour of the USA, UA for the "Rothko chapel" in Houston and the "Las Vegas Piece" by Walter de Maria, together with Imi Knoebel
• February 1975 During a visit to Germany separation from Kristin Hanigk, in New York relationship with the painter Robin Bruch
• 1976 Return to Düsseldorf, acquaintance with Babette Polter, move to Gerhard Richter's former studio
• February 17, 1977 surprising death of Palermo during the vacation on the Maldives Island of Kurumba

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