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Painter - Ruven Kuperman
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In his poem'The Great Figure', William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) wrote:
“Among the rain/ and lights/ I saw the figure 5/ in gold/ on a red/ firetruck/ moving/ with weight and urgency/ tense/ unheeded/
to long clangs/ siren howls/ and wheels rumbling/ through the dark city.”
There was something in the figure 5 displayed on the firetruck that made it far more important than anything else going on around it.
Shining in the darkness, the number inexplicably turned into a thing of mystery, invisible to everyone but the poet. It was unheeded.
The same thing happens in Ruven Kuperman’s painting. The figure 5 turns into a 'Great Figure'. How does this change take place?
Just like in Williams’s poem, the answer stems mainly from the strange appearance of the number. Both poet and painter realize how
utterly bizarre a number can be when detached from a quantitative context. '5 what?' Of course, it is 'only' the number of a building.
But by the act of framing the building, the painting changes it into something else, and the figure 5 becomes somewhat strange.
After all, in the painting, it is no longer an address someone might be looking for; no one can send the painting a letter. The real-life
role of this number is put in 'parentheses'. Nobody can live here. In that case, what is the number for and by extension: what is the
painting for? If no one can live in the house painted here, it has no practical use. What do we need the picture of a house for?
Just like the poem, this painting perceives the figure 5 as somehow embodying the practical aspect of the situation. In the poem, it
becomes the symbol of the firefighters rushing to save lives. The 5 in the painting may be considered as metaphorically alluding to
a fifth dimension, the very dimension of painting. Beyond the 3- dimensionality of space and beyond time as the fourth dimension,
there exists a place made possible by painting, 'beside' space and time. This fifth dimension is a mystery. Painting is neither time
nor place, yet it acts as a kind of place and actuates some sort of time. All of a sudden, the whole building turns into an odd system.
The motorbike in the yard, like a fish out of water – off the road – is watching us with one eye like a Cyclops guarding a secret; the
air-conditioner and the vent of the shelter are perceived as a concrete expression of inhalation and exhalation (air from outside in:
the air-conditioner, air from inside out: the window of the shelter). The entire building becomes a 'landscape', it comes alive.
Its hidden life is why one should observe any house, especially one’s own, and paint it. It is what makes a figure or form into a
great figure, great form. |
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