He can also paint: Dieter Nuhr’s paintings are particularly in demand abroad | free press

2023-05-03 08:30:00

Polished words and contemporary criticism are just one of the comedian’s artistic mainstays. Few people know that you can also hang it on the wall

Exhibition.

During the Venice Biennale last year, Dieter Nuhr’s paintings were on display in the Biblioteca Nazionale on St. Mark’s Square. Directly opposite, Anselm Kiefer showed his huge canvases in the Doge’s Palace. Not bad company for what is commonly known as a cabaret artist. “Can he paint too?” He is asked again and again in Germany, reports his gallery owner Dirk Geuer. “People don’t ask me that abroad.”

They met each other five years ago. At an exhibition by Stephan Kaluza in Düsseldorf. “I was thrilled,” Geuer recalls. “There was Kaluza, the painter, who paints like a photographer. And Dieter, the photographer, who takes pictures like a painter.” The two are now friends. With the presentation in Venice, the gallery owner landed a real coup. The touring exhibition, which was also on view at the Osthaus Museum in Hagen and the Ifan Museum in Dakkar, will move on to the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo in Rome in May. But first, a selection of the latest works can be seen in the Düsseldorf gallery Geuer & Geuer under the title “Distant World”. The cabaret artist, born in Wesel in 1960, lives almost next door in Ratingen. So a home game.

Unknowns from all over the world and acquaintances from art history

On display are 30 photographs that Dieter Nuhr took on his travels and painted over them with digital brushes or crayons. Landscapes from Egypt, Iceland, China and Georgia. But also people he met in Peru, Myanmar and Senegal. In addition, the visitor meets good old acquaintances from art history such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ Odalisque from the painting “The Turkish Bath” (1863) or Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s “Mary with the Child” (around 1670), which Nuhr revised . After all, he studied art himself. Not at the Folkwang School, as is often rumored, but as a teacher at the University of Essen, where the design department of the former Folkwang School was transferred between 1972 and 2007. So painting has always been close to his heart and, to change the title of one of his stage programs, is not “just a dream”.

On the computer, he overdraws and alienates the recordings. Filters and colors superimposed or chemical burns simulated, giving them an antiquated aura. He calls his art “digital painting”. A real Dieter Nuhr costs between 1200 and 18,000 euros. Sometimes the figures, drawn with black contours, stand out against a constructivist bar pattern reminiscent of Piet Mondrian’s late pictures of the neo-plasticist phase. Sometimes the apparently chemical processes that take place on the canvas or on plastic compete with the real landscapes of the photographs and thus evoke associations with Sigmar Polke or the great alchemist Anselm Kiefer. But it comes along more naturally.

Art is what you make of it

Because he couldn’t travel because of the pandemic, Nuhr took old photos again and revised them. The drawing is becoming more and more important to him. The result is decorative pictures that cannot be denied an artistic appeal. Anyone who might object that anyone can trace photos and paint over them is referred to Gerhard Richter, who made it to the position of “the most expensive German painter”. Art is what you make of it. And it’s certainly not a disadvantage if someone is already prominent because they don’t have to make a name for themselves first. Just remember Udo Lindenberg’s Liqueurelle and the paintings of Armin Mueller-Stahl and Sylvester Stallone. In today’s beautiful colorful social media world, being prominent is more important than ever. The art market likes to play along. Don’t blame him. And who knows? In a culture of excitement like today’s, in which making jokes quickly becomes a serious matter, as Nuhr says, does he perhaps give up satire at some point and switch to the serious subject? He has the painting materials for it. But that is pure speculation.

The exhibition “Dieter Nuhr: Distant World” can be seen in the Geuer & Geuer Gallery in Düsseldorf Heinrich-Heine-Allee 19 until May 26, Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.