Frode Markhus (Norway)

Picture that – the story of Solan Hesselberg By Frode Markhus Although Janus was skeptical about the past it was nothing compared to the terror he felt towards the future, or Selfportrait as an ice cold realist - 50x60cm - oil on canvas– 1959 Thesis submitted as writing component to the Master Fine Art Programme, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, NL 2012 Writing tutor: Vivian Sky Rehberg Tutorial support: Jan Verwoert + Hadley & Maxwell Course Director: Vivian Sky Rehberg Part l When I was asked by my editor to do a piece on Solan Hesselberg, I assumed it to be a relatively standard task. Little did I know about him, and my quest for answers indeed proved to take me into unknown and strange territories. What follows is an attempt to unravel the works and life of an offbeat. Solan Hesselberg (born 1922) was an artist and poet born and raised in a small harbor village named Stavgersand on the South West coast of Norway. His family was, in conventional judgment, destitute and poor, and generally uneducated in terms of academic achievements. As a toddler Solan was normal in many respects, raised by a single mother, two brothers, one sister, all older than him. His father, Reodor Kilhavn, jumped ship before he was born, and the father of his older siblings was out of the picture as well by the time Solan came in to the world. This never troubled young Solan, as he saw it he had three fathers and two mothers, more than enough to learn the ropes of life. And so he did, cherry-picking identity traits from his older siblings and his mother like shopping about at the psychological bazar. Having a different father than the rest of the lot gave him a sense of observing someone else's family, as a kind of anthropologist gradually coming to know his assigned tribe. And a tribe to behold it certainly was. Father & son – 60x50cm – oil on canvas - 1958 His mother, Annlaug (born 1894), was the family's most enthralling storyteller, old school of sorts. Where she was from, Pratmykjdalen, there was a long and proud oral tradition, which she tried to pass on to her young ones. Her favorite subjects were stories about derelicts and delinquents, drunkards and dabblers, and their skewed philosophies of life. Her children would be all ears when she habitually were to share anecdotes and chestnuts from these outcasts of mandated living. It was through her he developed his love for the stranger poetics of life. Rejecting the local ideal of the unassuming and hardworking man, he would gravitate towards the peculiarities that fits into the nooks and crannies of things, the dirt wedged in between the behavioural pieces of the puzzle. His brother, Rune (born 1917), known to be the family jester, had an uncanny aptitude of deflating any family crisis by making a charade of the whole thing. For example were the Hesselbergs to enter dire economical troubles, as they frequently did, he would turn it into a kind of domestic one-man-vaudevillan show, making the family at least be happy they were on the VIP list. Anyone got challenged by worldly demands, he would simply put on his too tight suit and set up his Office of Intraexternal Affairs. All questions came in the form of a Chinese style riddle, whereby its due answers were delivered in elegiac prose with a slice of Kafka, making everybody feel as if fictionalized in Runes surreal take on the machinations of an unforgiving society. On the Hesselberg Island they submitted to little more than themselves. Hence, in the instances of their mother's occasional mental breakdowns, when the beach were occasionally invaded by bureaucratic pirates from other islands, it prompted Runes slapstick impersonation of their queen, wig and dress and all, refusing to leave bed, projecting wild depictions of a society not fit for her. Like Madame Bovary on acid. It's hard to convince yourself you’re the one insane in these circumstances. All this made Annlaug feel anchored, though not in solid bedrock, and the rest feel that lunacy wasn't a cop out at all, rather a salvage to the complexities of life. His brother Arvid (born 1915) was a passionate record collector, introducing young Solan to the world of music. He used to DJ at a local bar, Pøbben, many years before any such concept as a DJ was conceived. Every Saturday he would host a night dubbed 'Kumbaya'. The name came from an African-American spiritual song from the 30's and can be loosely translated 'come by here'. Arvid never had much spiritual inclinations, he went with the name out of phonetic qualities, as well as it being a sort of pun on, and invitation, to the local 'bajas'. A 'bajas' in Stavgersand was local dialect for a cocky-looking-for-trouble type of person. Arvid saw great potential in these rowdy guys, rather than trouble. An asset, fuel, antidote to the status-quo of prescribed behaviour. Kumbaya – 85x57cm - oil and Duct tape on paper - 1967 Through his girlfriends missionary father, a kind of Nordic offspring of the American music anthropologist John Lomax' initiative, he got hold of music from all corners of Norway, as well as borrowing records from the international sailors harboring in Stavgersand. Inspired by the British radio host Ray Newby he was also a MC, in between records sharing small snippets of anthropological facts about the villages, counties and countries the recordings were to be from. Annlaug – 60x50cm – oil on canvas - 1954 The nights Arvid spun his records had a tendency to go from disciplined line dance, as improvised as it might was, into some freak Dionysian free style folk dance. Story has it Arvids unveiling of Pacific polyphonic rhythms, African chants, Sami joik etc to the locals also set in motion a hitherto unseen demand for psychedelic drugs, something not all unsupported by police records from local archives. The sailors that supplied him with all this exotic music often had mind-expanding supplements to go with it. Peyote from Mexico and Iboga from Amazonas were poisons of choice, untill some local farmer, Ronald Felgen, by accident discovered the mind expanding effect of the homegrown Flein mushroom, as potent as anything. One day his wife told him to go to the nearby forest to get some mushrooms for dinner, an elk stew. Lazy as he was, and being a culinary simpleton, he picked the first mushrooms he encountered on his grassy, cow patty covered way to the forest and happily wandered back to the pots and pans and wife. Flein grows on cow patties. The dinner proved to be both unusual and mind altering. Kumbaya would soon be melting. Anne Gro (born 1912), his sister, was the deep philosopher in the family. All of them was somehow into reading, way off canon though, but Anne Gro set out to get to the very essence of, particularly, Western thought. However, alas, in her quest for clear answers, she got all messed up and ended up in a destination she couldn't find a reasonable departure from. Once she came upon the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard and related existentialists, she embraced the pure biblical jest of it all, and jeez did religion have clearer answers than she had ever encountered in philosophy. Kierkegaard's intentions sullied at whim, the endlessly fruitful doubt/faith nexus squandered in a dive into biblical doxa, as if it ever was one. She started the local affiliate of a Jehovas Witness reading group, soon to attract local devotees of other Christian congregations. Traditionally the Christian, mostly Protestant, congregations in Stavgersand was known to be, well, traditional. Pietist preachers spewing visions of hell for the unworthy and promising a life of unfulfillment for the devoted rest. Jehovas Witness is all this on crack, but this particular witness had a god-given knack for salesmanship. Inspired by her family's various performative talents, she would construct her very own way of conveying the word of God, totally emulating the various apostels as she told their gospels. Intimate with the lure of existential philosophy and the doubt and angst that comes with it, she would go for the full entertainment factor and conflate the congregates lust for spiritual fulfillment with their craving for sheer shindig. Gospel style preaching and Jehovas Witnesses are two components that traditionally don't go too well together, especially in these days, especially in Stavgersand, but that mattered little to Anne Gro, as she went all prophetic immersive on the impressionable audience, thirsting for spiritual kicks. The town needed to be emancipated from their hollow existence, whether through comedic, corporeal or spiritual means, and the Hesselbergs were there to intervene. Part ll According to his mother, Solans interest in art started when he was 9 years old and spilled chocolate milk all over his poetry home assignment from school. After having a hard struggle to get the slippery words inside his head fitting together into a coherent text living up to his teachers expectations, it all got re-animated though this accidental chocolate milk intervention. How the blue ink bled out into various degrees of haze, contrasted with the bleak brown, the ‘the’ flowed into the fold, the ‘love’ got pastellish branches, the word ‘roses’ seemed to soil itself. The serene paper bungled into waves, as if a sudden storm hit. The letters clinging to their survival gear. The innocent, bluish white paper sea molested by Solans first naïve and clumsy attempt at poetry. ‘The love roses’. The stalled continuation interrupted, ambushed, saved really, by the spill. He never realized letters, or for that sake, chocolate milk, were of this capricious nature. Convinced by his gut instinctual feel for the beauty unfolding before his eyes, combined with being genetically prone to laziness, he decided he just made a masterpiece. The teacher was not impressed. He didn’t really follow much up on this ephemeral revelation in the coming first years. It was only when he became acquainted with his substitute music teacher in his 8th grade that his artistic inclinations were rectified. The substitute, the brawny, former Teddy Tobacco model Arne Sørheim, had a tendency to take the approved music curriculum on a ride, by for example performing abstract poetry on top of records of the Norwegian folk music composer Eivind Groven. His chalky voice conjuring up broken images of magical roads to nowhere. Grovens universe of music were already shuffling genre boundaries; in juxtaposing the principles of Flemish Renaissance music with instruments like harmonica, the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle and the string instrument Langeleik of his home county Telemark, Groven did a metamorphic and home brewed take on his heroes. Sørheim, a Stavgersand native, was a regular at the Kumbaya nights, something that had a profound effect on his eclectic way of utilizing the schools very limited musical vaults. He figured the vinyl and tapes he had at hand would need some boosting. Knowing that substitutes are traditionally subjected to gleeful heckling, he chose to go ‘all in’ from the beginning and see where it went from there. Nothing to lose. To go with the assigned curriculum would surely not work, and even if the pupils would be fine with it, Arne wouldn’t be. It needed some mischievous improvising, as he wasn't paid enough to not crave extra fulfillment. This playful and inspiring take on limited base material and its immediate effect on young Solans sensory apparatus triggered him to pick up on his revelationary experience 6 years earlier when his simple three words on paper got animated into full 4 dimensional fiction. From now on nothing was sacred. Anything and everything would be decontextualized or defaced. Wherever he failed, in text or life, life in text, text as life, he would go to grand, albeit simplistic, measures to turn it on its head. With little or no achievement to show for he pretended to be the savior of Western poetry, without ever really reading any of it. Text was now his weapon of choice. Eiving Groven playing with his organ, 1929 On Sørheims suggestion, encountering Apollinaires poetry had a great affect on Solan as well, how he used words for conjuring images out of words, how words and letters were animated into Paperist natives. He would start cutting up texts from household packagings and rearrange them on the kitchen table, shuffling them back and forth, never really settling for the right combination. He went with his gut, but the gut proved to be a rather unreliable ally. But something just felt right, in between, so he was to keep on. To his family’s growing concern. They were all fond of playing with words and language, but the intensity and fervour young Solan had about it was a bit unsettling. He seemed a tad too much hell bent on outwitting the rest of them. And wit was all they had. One day after class he noticed a book with poems of the French poet Mallarmé on Sørheims desk and asked what it was about. ‘Sound’ replied Sørheim. Solan, becoming something of a devotee of this unusual teacher, was at loss how to follow up the reply, not wanting to flash any sign of immaturity. But before Solan managed to follow up Sørheim did: ‘It’s in French. I don’t understand French at all but it just sounds amazing’. And then he proceeded reciting a quote from the Dadaist Tristan Tzara: "Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding." Solan was not sure what to make of this. Mallarmé, he later learned, surely never intended to make works solely for himself, and for French speaking people it of course had other meanings than for the non speaking only immersing themselves into the phonetic wonders of it all. He gradually understood that Sørheim had a natural inclination to see everything through a peculiar prism. His stance was that an authorship generally starts with the reader, or beholder. Confused by this weird take on the idea of artisan identity Solan started to question his own poetic explorations. Coming from a rather ‘loud’ family, and being the youngest of the lot, he finally wanted to be heard, on his own terms. It was quite a challenge, his siblings and his mother being as assertive, yet aberrant, as they were. Was his own whimsical pleasures with the fluid materiality of texts justified by his own pleasure alone? Or was his need to be recognized as a voice, as a subject, more important than to be comprehended? Was he to only serve linguistic ingredients for the reader to bake a edible cake out of? Let them eat cake? After graduating from preliminary school Solan, for reasons of wanting to make it quick and lucrative to gain the space he needed to explore his poetry, signed up for a fishing and cargo vessel. He never suspected that he would fall totally in love with the sea, the vessel, the crew, the nightshifts, the sore hands. The stories fishermen tells. The machinist, Thor Klemetsen, an old man with the most amazing red beard and protruding belly, had been to most corners of the world known to man, and was a source of endless inspiration. For example, in Tangier, long before the Beat poets would positively lose their minds there, he was a attaché to the Norwegian embassy. Desperate for a job, he basically went into intense sunbathing, dyed his hair and beard, faked a Moroccan descent, as well as an university diploma in foreign relations, and was duly hired. For Thor faking was as real as anything. His crewmates soon stopped speculating about whether his stories were true or not, the entertainment value overrided any petty demands for authenticity. Alvhild – 60x50cm - oil on canvas, 1955 The 57 feet long boat, ‘Alvhild’, was a Nordland cutter of the finest sort. Built in wood, the same year of Solans birth, double hull, two gaff rigged masts, all glazed in the finest lacquer. It leaked as a sieve but shone as a diamond. Alvhild in the North Sea, 1947 Alvhild in Luperon, Dominican Republic, 1950 Akin to Ludwig Wittgensteins exile to the remote Norwegian fjord cabin in Skjolden, the drastic change of scenic impressions had a profound effect on Solans thinking and writing. Wittgensteins search was one of total solitude to release him from the constraints of approved philosophical thought, and Solans was of a break with steady ground, to give his floating words an environment to thrive and prosper in. When he was off shift he would spend his time soaking in the tales of his shipmates, as well as sharing his own fabulist tales with people who had heard it all. Never finding the expected space for really materializing his poetic pondering though, but nonetheless the setting indeed functioned as a very fertilizing ground for his endeavors. That he was surrounded by wordsmiths of their own right was both unanticipated and thrilling. In the summer of 1954, when Alvhild was unloading its North Sea cod in the French coastal town of Brest, Solan never came back to the boat after a night out. He hadn't actually been on the boat for many years prior to this, but suddenly signed on again for unknown reasons. By the accounts of his shipmates he was in unusually high spirits when he embarked on this trip, a trip regarded as rather routine for the haggard crew. Most of the crew that was on the ship when Solan left it in 1938 was still there, all running out of stories. They all noticed a considerable change in Solans behavior. He was definitely not the reserved but attentive young deckhand they remembered, but more a man of the world, and more or less giving a lofty and sardonic impression. These old crackers could sniff out a poser from a mile and a poser was what they sniffed. From being all ears he was now all tongues. Like he could all of a sudden learn them something. With these guys, under these circumstances, it wouldn't fly. Solan didn't seem to care much about this lack of recognition, he was now fishing in different and unknown waters altogether. Crew of Alvhild in the harbour of Brest in 1954. Solan number 3 from the left. What really happened upon touching French soil is unbeknownst to anyone but Solan himself, but much point towards him boarding a ship to Mexico in an attempt to find the poet Arthur Cravan. Cravan, born in 1887 in Switzerland and an idol of the Dada and Surrealist movements, believed to have drowned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico in 1918 attempting to sail alone to Argentina, was Solans new infatuation. However, Solan heard rumors that he was indeed alive and kicking, now under the literary guise of B.Traven. Something substantial must have happened. The following year he had his first show, at the gallery NoSe! in Paris. He never in his life painted prior to a couple of weeks before the opening. If we don't take the childhood chocolate milk incident into consideration that is. We know he was loosely affiliated with the CoBrA movement for a while, but eventually had a fallout with some of the core members over their infatuation with Marxism and left the group for good. Whenever he was meeting any of the other members he did his best to keep his trap shut but normally to no avail. Someone would bring up the proletariats need for blablabla and Solan would flaunt his disapproval immediately and in this den of Alpha Males that would just provoke avalanches of manifesto like 'arguments' and headache would soon set in. Politics and art didn't mix well in Solans opinion. Yes he belonged to the proletariat, yes he didn't give a damn. However he was very much on CoBrAs side on so many other issues, and especially Asger Jorns critique of the authoritative nature of art. The all too obvious paradox of Jorn being, eh, quite authoritative forwarding these issues himself was of lesser importance. As an artist Solan had several outputs, though he focused mostly on poetry and painting. He found these two mediums as part of the same genome and would normally not distinguish between them at all. Very little of his poetry is published in any archival manner, but one poem, functioning as a press release of the exhibition Postcards from Nether Nether Lands in 1957, might be a pointer to as what his positions and non positions were: Krust By farm, cabin and shed
 By rail, bus and krusty nails
 By the lonely graves of our brave dead Up-Country. Off-Country. Køntri Out-Whack. 
 Dry moldrid-leatherish so to spijk and down where the glittering klustred stars
 Atomize your heart into fractaltype
 And the beaming forrests expands to the iniksplikibils There.
 There lies my home
 A thousand mile wide and crack Installationshot of Postcards from Nether Nether Lands - 1957 Installationshot of Postcards from Nether Nether Lands - 1957 This was the last official sign from Solan and was from this point nowhere to be found and literally forgotten. Only anecdotal flotsam and jetsam floating around on the fringes of art history. Until now. Solan Hesselberg came upon our story on him on our website, and he doesn't seem to be particularly pleased about it. Not at all. It all starts off rather bumpy with an email, reading, in telegraph style: GO TO HELL BASTARD--STOP--REFUSE ATTENTION--STOP--NEVER ASKED FOR IT--STOP--AGAINST ALL DECENCY MIX ARTIST AGAINST HIS WILL IN YOUR PUBLICITY--STOP--I WANT PUBLIC CONFIRMATION NOT TO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN YOUR RIDICULOUS GAME. Where the hell has he been and why has he had the world believe he was dead? And why throw out this bait of reply, even if he literally tells me to go stuff it? It must mean he’s ready to speak at some level. Gradually I started to suspect it was all a prank. How green can a poor journalist be. But no. Or yes. He proves to be real and alive all right. After spending the day anxiously at loss as how to proceed with the development of the story, around midnight I get a new email: Sorry for the cranky message, I didn't really mean that, I was just quoting someone dear to me for the fun of it. Really I'm pleased to see that you have taken such interest in my story and will be happy to give you an interview if it would be of interest. S. Hesselberg Part lll Interview with Solan Hesselberg, by Skype, from an unknown location: FM : First of all: where the hell have you been? You haven’t been heard of in ages. SH : I never disappeared you know. FM : What do you mean? SH : You disappeared. I made you disappear. Like in a cheap card trick. FM : But life is no card trick. SH : Exactly! FM : No but seriously what happened? SH : I got lost. FM : Where? SH : In the doldrums. FM : Can you elaborate on this? SH : I'll try. FM : Ok then, what and why and where? SH : That’s a very good question. I have been on an extended holiday so to say, in the doldrums, and I had a lot of non-catching up to do. FM : Can you elaborate on this non-catching up? SH : I got to know my real family. FM : But not your family family? SH : No? FM : Ok why did you choose to go off the radar this way? SH : I just wanted to tune in on a different channel. FM : But what about your actual family? According to them you haven’t given a single sign of life since 1957? SH : Hehe they are all such splendid liars, they love this stuff. The fact is that I never really disappeared. I even had shows and published things. Well under alter egos but still. Inspired, or corrupted maybe, by Thor, who you mentioned earlier, I let my poetic wanderings seep into my own biography, and as this slippery slope progressed I was soon to find myself literally unhinged to any real concepts of truth. FM : You think the world is a lie? And why would you now all of a sudden give up your carefully crafted deceit for this, let's be real, insignificant magazine? SH : The world means the world to me. FM : Are you being ironic now? SH : Are you being ironic now? FM : This is turning out to be the worst interview I ever conducted. SH : I won’t disappoint you. FM : Ok let's see if we can get this train wreck on it's rails again. Spontaneity is clearly important in your work, for example it is said that you habitually were to let your cat Sofus determine your colour schemes by throwing a multitude of dyed cotton mice on the floor and see which he went for. Can you tell us something about how you balance control and randomness in the face of the material you work with? SH : Can you tell me, instead, where you get your stories from? FM : I’m pretty sure it came from an earlier interview with you. SH : Ah. Yes Sofus that furry devil was quite the colourist! Sofus FM : Okeeey. What made you start painting in the first place? It seems your writing are somewhat biographically grounded but the reasons for starting to paint seems a bit more elusive. SH : Well, in 1942, after encountering Asger Jorn in a detour with Alvhild to Copenhagen I was totally sold. To a Japanese pervert who wanted to eat my feces while I was singing ‘A String of Pearls’ by Glenn Miller. I was only 20 years old, the images just won’t go away. FM : Very funny. But ok, you started to develop a taste for painting after encountering the works of Asger Jorn? SH : Yes that’s right. At home I grew up with these very poor printed versions of paintings of crying Gypsy boys and girls. I later found they were originally painted by one Bruno Amadio. I always found them rather uncanny, and it didn’t help at all when my brother told me the kids portrayed were snatched from the streets and held captive during the months long sittings. That was why they were crying, he told me. So there you go, my first impression of the Artist. Much later I was to get an add-on to this mythos, though being a grownup and not quite as gullible, I found it very enthusing nonetheless; in the 80s, in Britain, these paintings were said to be cursed. It all stemmed from an article in The Sun where a Yorkshire fireman was claiming that undamaged copies of the painting were frequently found amidst the ruins of burned houses. Article after article on this made it into a pretty widespread belief. To lift the curse one was to give the painting to someone or reunite the boys and girls by hanging them together hahaha!! That the paintings were covered in high grade fire repellant and the poor cotton string in the back would quickly cause them to fall face down on the floor and thus be protected from the flames is totally beside the point here. FM : But yes Solan, Asger Jorn? SH : First thing I see in his studio is a version of this very painting, ‘Crying Gypsy Boy’, deadpan title as it is, defaced, or detourned as he would have it, with a smudgily painted depiction of a kitten over it. I mean, what genius. It was like we were meant to meet. My childhood nightmare of being abducted by an Artist, deflected by a single stroke of a kitten. Sofus perhaps, slowly starting to finding his artistic mission? I found this very intriguing. More than that I had heard about Tachism and that the CoBrA guys were into that. Tachism comes from the French word for 'stain' and I figured my own works at that time were mostly build up by various stains so I got curious. I later realized the Tachism tag enveloped a very wide variety of expressions. It was all quite confusing. Crying Gypsy Boy – Bruno Amadio FM : CoBrA was a movement that wanted change in society, and where the association between life and creativity was the antithesis to the capitalist machinery. Is your work a reaction and rebellion, and can you say something about the function you want your work to have? SH : I don't think any singular work can move the world in any noticeable way, hardly any artists body of work even. And I for sure have no ambitions to do so either. But I think most artists see themselves as part of a recipe for change, like a grain of salt in the revolutionary stew. I certainly admire artists that feel akin to a broader artistic mission, who on a deeper level identify themselves as agents of change. But me and most people I guess are quite pragmatic, not to say cynical, about these issues these days. When I was younger on the other hand, oh the sweet days of true agency. And by the way, even back then if someone on rare occasions were to buy my work I would high five capitalism from here to Babylon. FM : So what is the artists mission if not to change the world? SH : Well of course we change the world but so does everyone. I just don't see that art has any more agency than any next guy. The most depressing thing is when you have scholars and journalists and politicians etc in actual high and influential positions who are crying out for the artists to bust out of their studios and take more responsibility in pointing out what's wrong with this world. I mean seriously? A profession that get its wings clipped by the very institutions who are meant to represent them. When did you last go to a show and felt that the world was about to change? I'm not meaning our own private bubble world but expanded from that? We pat ourselves self congratulatory on the back and cheers buddy I haven't seen you in ages and enjoy the show did you see the last article in Artforum on Post Colonial guilt and hey there I haven't seen you in ages how are you very well how are you. Woho I'm sure our bleeding hearts are shaking things up around! FM : So you are disappointed about the political potency of art? SH : Not really, sorry I was just carried away for a bit. If art had that kind of inherent political potency it would of course come with some hardcore responsibility. However, realizing this impotence of our profession, speaking for my own capacities at least, gives us great freedom to indulge in banalities, whacky desires and irresponsible behaviour instead. Like perpetual toddlers ever so proud of our shit. Cheers. FM : Eh cheers... In an interview from 1954 in the German art fanzine Art und Angst, you mentioned the death anxiety as a kind of impetus. Anxiety is said to be the source of the development of German Expressionism. The American art critic and historian Hal Foster also mentioned recently that the anxiety and pressure from the environment as in postwar Europe, may be the source of the animal in man emerge. What do you think about this? SH : Meeeeeow!! Voff!!! FM : ? SH : Voof ? Meoow ? No? FM : Jeez…. SH : Ok seriously I believe most tendencies of animalistic behaviour and/or expression in art today are instantly and intrinsically domesticated, as political motives are, at least within the confines of the art institution. However, as an artist I still believe one should feed the inner animal, or your death anxiety for that sake. Fun fact: another Hal Foster, an illustrator, drew Tarzan in the 30s. Or maybe you are mixing these up? Makes sense... FM : Hmm don't think so, but thanks for the fun fact. SH : You're welcome. Selfportrait as two rabbits wondering what the fuck is going on – 50x60cm – oil on canvas - 1969 FM : The requirement to be innovative can be experienced as being something of a trap for artists. What do you think about the relationship between recycling style set against art's potential to act critically and comment on the perilous questions of our own time? SH : I want to answer that with an anecdote; the painter Philip Guston once recalled something that John Cage told him: "When you start working everybody is in your studio - the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas - all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.” For me that sounds critical enough really. FM : This for some reason reminds me of your painting titled 'Selfportrait as two Rabbits wondering what the fuck is going on'. SH : It does doesn't it. It's like Freud and Jung was conflated into one delusional entity. FM : I sense a romantic, or frankly, naïve drive in your paintings, even when you touch upon historical characters, you seem to assign them to a more vulnerable state, like in 'Djengis Khan getting lost', or suggesting Billy the Kid had a impressionistic sensitivity to him. Combined with their dead pan titles I'm not sure whether you might be taking the piss out of painting and it's subjects, or if there is another type of charge there? Little was known about Billy the Kids impressionist years – 70x60cm - oil on canvas - 1970 SH : I do my best to give an honest account of my mental sitters, but my failed technique sometimes wants it otherwise so I'll go with the skewed flow. Most of my works tend to be ambushed by my fallacies, taken hostage and then simply have to go with a new set of demands. FM : That both sounds beautiful on the one hand and like total bullshit on the other. I suspect a veil of self constructed lingo from you in between, not that I don't enjoy talking with you, but there is a feeling you talk like you paint sometimes; slightly gestural, slightly jesterish? Two headed Dog - 84x108cm – oil, spray paint, acrylic on found cardboard - 1971 SH : Oh thank you. FM : That wasn't necessarily a compliment. SH : What, 'thank you'? FM : Forget it. In 1954 you did a painting of your mother titled 'Annlaug', and, if I'm not projecting too much, 'Father and Son' from 1958 depicts you and your father? What made you paint your parents and have they seen the works at all? SH : They generally don't know and don't care about what I'm doing. I think they might be proud about the fact that they had an artistic gene to pass on, as a novelty, but both of them, in each their way, are lost as to what art would or could encompass. I'm not sure why I painted them, perhaps out of sentimental reasons. My father was, and is, a rather distant entity in my life, so there might be a sort of longing there. The painting titled 'Annlaug' was originally titled 'Grandmother', so I wouldn't necessarily claim a very direct painterly negotiation with my family on that one either. But there perhaps is a general sentimentality going on, and not only in the works you are mentioning. FM : Yeah I come to think of some of your landscapes and nudes too, where you seem to present a quite Luddite take on already Luddite traditions. I get a feeling that you disregard a more dialectical negotiation with these, after all, very burdened repertoires, and that you instead serve us side stepping pastiche and insular quixotics? Mermaid – 60x50cm - oil on canvas - 1959 SH : Yes and no and maybe. Side stepping is still taking steps, even if they lead up your own ass. However I agree that my own ass is not a preferable destination. By the way when did you decide to become so critical in your questions? I'm not sure if I appreciate this development. FM : I didn't mean to say I disregard your artistic dispositions, on the contrary. However there are obvious fault lines in your work to be pointed out. That being said you seem to thrive in some kind of art historical limbo and try to make the best of your holiday. SH : It’s the works in ‘never work’. Admittedly there is a coming and going feeling that I should start to focus more apprehensibly on the conceptual possibilities laid open. Although recognizing this, I have so far kept kicking the ball ahead of me, feinting, dribbling, and postponing the attempts at goal. It might be relevant to say that in soccer I used to play defense. There is a construction awkwardly falling into place somehow, in anticipation of the architect drawing, or maybe a dubious insistence on making the drawing after the rubble. Tinkering with poetry for example is a consequence and continuation of this, to further liquefy my language and still try to somehow keep it solid. And frankly tinkering is a rather appropriate term for my relationship with painting too. I paint but I don't really identify myself as a painter. I can easily say that 'I'm a painter', but there are layers of identification in everything, and in this particular identification process I'm still in the early stages of the alchemical process. There is still a cognitive dissonance at play; I don't identify myself as a painter more than I identify myself as a cabinetmaker after assembling an Ikea rack. However, I paint, I like to paint, I wish I was a painter. Given it's rickety history, there are some glorious opportunities for capricious play with painting, and that fits me just right. My first girlfriends favourite nail polish on sky blue - oil on canvas – 60x50cm - 1967 FM : So you paint out of distrust? SH : What the hell are you talking about? I trust anything distrusting. FM : That doesn’t make any sense. SH : Sense sense yadi yadi yadi. If you can’t trust distrust you can’t trust anything. It’s a fact! FM : That’s just stupid. SH : That’s just stupid! FM : Are you being sarcastic again? Anyway. In several of your works we are given the impression that you look at the immediate contact between the body and painting as important. For example, you have described the 'body' as naive and vulgar. Can you elaborate on this? SH : Did you know that the word 'doldrum' is derived from the archaic 'dold' meaning 'stupid' and suffixed with 'rum' as in 'tantrum' ? Tantalizing stuff. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote about the doldrums, in his poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner': Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. I don't how this aligns, or if it should. It stuck with me anyway, like an itch. FM : You like things that itch ? SH : Yes they are to itch, scratch and sniff. FM : You also once said something about that painting has lost its memory, and no longer belong to "the hierarchy of representational images," and also you have tried to look at painting from a zombies perspective and that it has rounded a kind of zero, and being perpetually reborn as direct and unaffected. SH : Wow when did I say that? FM : I don't know. SH : Well it sounds reasonable. FM : Will you agree that your work is seen as expressive at all? You have said that it is important for you to work spontaneously and directly with the material. But you have also on earlier occasions stressed the impressionistic aspect of your work. SH : Basically I at first misunderstood the term 'impressionism'. I thought it was about being impressed. So I figured whenever I impressed myself I was dealing with impressionism. Later on I learned I was somewhat misguided in my interpretation of this particular ism, but still I strive at impressing myself. Or rather stump, or ambush myself. Surprisism is maybe a better term. FM : Oh here we go… SH : It was you who asked me for an interview. FM : Really? Epilogue: Two weeks after the interview I get a new email. A poem this time, reading: Golden Retrievers mothership fathers slip Mothers of Invention I call to you in someones mothertongue Tied pipers Hooded hoodlums in salty doldrums Muddy Waters sailing away in the blues of blues of hamstrings in murky bass drums in flaky blazers awashed in Major Lazers in tongues in mothers tongues in mothers in tongues in cheeks in cheeks and chongs arguing with the fish Cheeky bastards speaking in tongues speaking of Babel speaking about the Devil : Mr Belzebub Wuzup? with all these Babylonian fathers fathering tongues all over the place? Speaking in wrongs? Ripping seams? Sippin’ on that gin’n’sap smashing beams West Coast East Coast thinktank tic toc tic toc ticklish clocks of flight taking a nap Talking Heads remaining in light Head and Shoulder Dandruff avalanches something just just right right your Honour about spotless queens Clueless oh Alicia where have you gone? On your Silverstone tyres drifting here and there Polar shift Tokyo Drift fumenee fumenee e e e catching the drift Polar bears burning rubber burning something dreaming about caramel swirls on topless girls Being all curly curly something Furry ferries drifting something about Mary something strawberry dream something strawberry shake something making that mess making that shake the Monkees singing I’m a believer Golden retrievers In goldchains. Getting well fed. Barking up all the right trees Harry Houdini Henry Manchini Pink Panther itchy fluffy golden why don’t you call me Mr Retriever? I feel like flying sippin on all those Tears for Fears Cape Fear Robert De Niro. Why don’t you call me? on high heels high feels low keels slippery eels sniffing the wind sniffing the wind sniffing the telephone why don’t you call me? two for tits three for tats Cats for Kings kingmaker cookiebaker matchmaker catshaker shaking and baking kings shakebaker troublemaker heartbreaker pacemaker doubledipper shapeshifter blockbuster Buster Keaton you're the best Why don’t you call me? I’m drifting