After an intensive work period, I no longer found it interesting to continue with collage-like clusters. I had sorted my material. I shifted my focus and began to ponder whether I could capture the tensions of real socialist utopian representation by drawing individual faces, where the model citizen poses as the mannequin of the entire system, smiling, determined, and with a resolute gaze directed towards the future. I started by drawing facial portraits on relatively small sheets of paper. (See Figure 14.)
Then curiosity arose about what the images would look like on a much larger scale. Over about a year and a half (from September 2014 to January 2016), I created six large drawings:
1. Paul Robeson, the singer of peace and freedom (image 15.);
2. Tractor driver Otto Schult Tewswoosista (image 16.);
3. Welder Nikolai Krutšinski (image 17.);
4. Machine operator Petra Biermann (image 18.);
5. Gisela May (image 19.); and
6. Ljubov Antoštšuk, an eighth-grade student at the Žitomir 5th primary school. (image 20.)
The second and third drawings represent relatively common working-class portrayals in socialist realism. The image of Petra Biermann illustrates how only selected individuals who passed rigorous screening became model citizens in the pages of GDR-Revue. Petra Biermann was a member of the Free German Youth, the socialist youth organization, and through this membership, she also became a member of the People’s Chamber of the GDR.
Actor-singer Paul Robeson (1896–1976) is a famous African-American civil rights activist who was persecuted by the US government for his political beliefs. As part of his anti-racist and anti-oppression struggle, he publicly sided with Stalin and the Soviet Union. He was blacklisted, his performance rights were restricted, his records were pulled from the market, and his passport applications were repeatedly denied on the grounds that his activities were un-American and benefitted the enemy, the communist and anti-colonial front led by the Soviet Union. (Robeson 2001; Robeson 2010.) In the Soviet Union and the GDR, Robeson was an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist hero par excellence. My drawing is based on an article in GDR-Revue from 1976 titled “Paul Robeson, Singer of Peace and Freedom.”
Actor and cabaret singer Gisela May was particularly well-known in the GDR for her performances with the Berliner Ensemble. The image of Ljubov Antoštšuk conveys the childhood optimism cultivated in the pages of Neuvostoliitto, along with its associated future orientation. In the sixth issue of 1983, it is expressed as follows: “Childhood optimism! Everything lies ahead for a child, and everything seems interesting. But the future of the child will be shaped by us, adults, through our actions today and tomorrow.”
The six large drawings also represent the conclusions and results of the research, which I will return to later. Before that, I will delve into the craftsmanship of drawing, which is central to my work, alongside the discussions of subject and method. In my ballpoint pen works, I used cheap Bic pens, with the exception of one Japanese pen that felt more expensive and higher quality. When it comes to pencils, I am more discerning. I primarily use Japanese Mitsubishi Hi-Uni pencils because their graphite doesn’t feel rough like coarse clumps of sand while drawing, unlike most other pencils I’ve used up until now. These pencils glide smoothly on paper, making the act of drawing enjoyable. I use pencils on a scale ranging from 8B to 7H. However, craftsmanship is not about gear enthusiasm, “audiophilia,” or a nostalgic yearning for the past. It holds both a cultural and critical dimension. To me, a pencil is part of a culture that I associate with sitting at a school desk in the 1980s. Alongside it, you would find an eraser, a sharpener, a notebook, a chalkboard, and, as a new challenger, an overhead projector. This group doesn’t include the internet, computers, data projectors, mobile devices, or tablets (let alone Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). My relationship with pencils goes further back than the latter group. For me, the act of slow drawing offers an alternative to the rapid pace and instant benefits of the hyper-digitized technological frenzy. Slowness, patience, and perseverance are values I hold in high regard; they are also goals and criteria I set for myself and my work. A relentless work pace, constant rush, and pressure are the surest ways to expose oneself to stress, insomnia, anxiety, and restlessness, ultimately leading to a need for antidepressants. My working method stands in direct contrast to this frenzy and inhumanity; it constitutes a deliberate negation of it.[4]
However, I do not identify as a traditionalist, a technology-averse Luddite, a classicist, or a realist. My drawing is primarily a reinterpretation of photographs through different means, a kind of selective copying. In other words, I don’t go so far as to extend the act of copying to the quality of original, printed analog photographs, attempting to replicate the analog quality, low resolution, or lack of precision with a pencil. I approach copying through values of light and shadow. Copying, therefore, manifests in a way that I don’t crop, omit, or alter anything. I use printed transparencies or draw the entire image (meaning the outlines and overall composition of the subject and background elements) on a transparency, which I then project using an overhead projector. This ensures that proportions and details are placed correctly without personal expression, guesswork, or uncertainty. Tools like these are essential for photorealists; for instance, Chuck Close, known for his incredibly detailed portraits, grids both his copied image and the painting surface in the same proportion to focus on his main task: achieving perfect correspondence. In other words, I see no point in looking at a photograph as a live model – without any aids – as if the model were sitting in front of me and I were trying to visually make everything match.Certainly, after projecting the essential lines onto the paper, my work involves drawing the values and details of the image, or model, but there’s a fundamental difference from working with a live model. The photograph is already flattened. All the information has already been expressed in the language of black and white photography. The illusion of three-dimensionality emerges naturally as I draw the values as they appear in the image. With a live model, the situation is different. Space and plasticity must be translated from a three-dimensional reality onto a two-dimensional surface. Frankly, in this regard – which underpins almost the entire history of Western painting – I have nothing to add.
Tomas Regan, a draughtsman well-versed in optical tools,[5] doesn’t categorize all image-reflecting devices – such as slide projectors or overhead projectors – as part of the group of optical drawing aids, although he acknowledges their close relation. Regan distinguishes them based on the fact that, for instance, a slide projector and an overhead projector don’t reflect a view but an already existing image. (Regan 2008, 14.) And this is precisely the focus of my drawings: the existing, the already captured, realized, and presented.
In art history, optical aids have been used specifically to achieve the naturalness of landscapes, interiors, or individuals. (Hockney 2001.) I don’t aim for the mentioned naturalness because someone else has already accomplished it. I’m not duplicating a view; I’m duplicating something that has already been captured by a camera. This is why I find the metaphor of the digital world’s tool, scanning, apt for describing my reproductive work, as the word “scan” implies both looking and reading. My work can also be approached in a multifunctional device manner, as it can scan, copy, and print. In other words, I deconstruct by scanning what the images represent. This representation-analytical scanning represents the theoretical practice of my research, where data, methods, and the manual, artisanal execution of the research merge into an artistic unity, free from dualisms like art and science, theory and practice, reason and imagination. The “print” drawn with a pencil is the visual outcome of the work: simultaneously the result of my research and the means of its realization.
[4] The term “determinate negation” (bestimmte Negation) originates from Hegelian philosophy and is a central concept in critical theory. In the thought of Theodor W. Adorno, it is connected to the Jewish theological prohibition of images. (See Adorno 2006; Lampela 2015.) In Enlightenment’s Dialectic, Adorno and Max Horkheimer also discuss “determinate negation” and the prohibition of images when addressing language and representation. (See Horkheimer & Adorno 2008, 45–46.) In general, within critical theory, “determinate negation” holds ideological-critical significance, but it also signifies a radical ethics that refuses compromise with capitalism. Essentially, “determinate negation” symbolizes an unwavering critique of the prevailing reality and a refusal to construct simple political alternatives.
[5] “Regan” refers to devices with optical aids that reflect a view onto a surface using mirrors, lenses, or other light-bending tools, from which it can be replicated by drawing.