Community Artist 2003

Alfred Graf – A Vision of Landscape

When the Bernheim Foundation invited me to develop a project specifically addressing the local landscape, I decided to trace the parallels between the life of Isaac Wolfe Bernheim and my own approach as an artist.

Isaac Wolfe Bernheim emigrated to America in 1867. Born in Schmieheim, the scion of a Jewish family with roots in the Lake Constance area, he later spent part of his life in Freiburg under the spell of the wooded foothills of the Black Forest and the wide avenue of the Rhine River. In Kentucky, among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and the endless plains spreading at his feet, he established his first anchorage in the New World and set out to create a landscape in accordance with his vision. Charged with the total of his ideals and dreams, the vision necessarily reflected his social and spiritual origins.

Born in Feldkirch, not far from Lake Constance and a little further up the Rhine, my own childhood was spent in rural surroundings. It is quite likely that this background later contributed to an abiding interest in approaching the theme of nature from specific points of view and to re-create landscapes via an artistic analysis of their material components. In the studio, sand, rocks, resins, and lichen coalesced into objects held together by beeswax and complemented by paintings, drawings, and photographs. The specific arrangements of the resulting references to the site in question recast its narrative in a new mould.

The long hikes to his school allowed Bernheim plenty of time to think. . . It is this kind of freedom which serves as a source of energy for my own strenuous hikes to the sometimes remote sites where I collect the materials for my objects. And it is the sheer expansiveness of the landscape which allows me to lose and rediscover myself; to gather experiences under a specific set of conditions subsequently rematerializing in the works themselves. Characteristics find their analogy in rock-formations or in the nuanced monotony of a high-mountain hollow. Micro-environments have large-scale counterparts. The patterns found in lichen and the surface of rocks resemble aerial photographs. With the repetitiveness of a prayer-wheel, they nevertheless manage never to be entirely identical. - those interlacing schlieren of sand-drifts, the flowing images of froth and spray of roaring mountain streams, those moss-cushions, rocky wastelands, glacier crevasses, wisps of clouds.

I.W. Bernheim’s notes “The Closing Chapters of a Busy Life” repeatedly refer to details that demonstrate his pronounced awareness of rivers and streams: Schmieheim, … is in Baden, that part of Germany in the valley of the Rhine, … Through it meanders the Unstrut, an insignificant and lazy creek. Its name does not appear on any of the German topographical maps, which may be construed as another confirmation of the old truth that often in the most inaccessible places there grow beautiful flowers. 

Smells provide another specific characteristic of the landscape, emanating from the wet humus soil, the herbs, blossoms, and the trees in the heat of the sun. Seasons and wind conditions are additional factors, while resins are perceived as a concentrated material state of scent, and as an indication of the region where the trees are found.

The Schwartzwald, its hillsides densely wooded with aromatic pines, and the rippling of the little river Oos outside our balcony seemed alone sufficiently well worth the effort. The pictures of my river series spread fine layers of sediments on primed textile backgrounds. As the eye traces the nuanced colours, the sand becomes more than just sand, becomes multi-layered and full of meaning. By its means, rivers allow information to flow across long distances, with the colour of the sand determined by the geological character of the catchment area. The longer its journey, the more varied its message, though through it all it retains the distinctive quality of its origins

… the sensation of being on my old home soil.

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