Robert Janitz: The Dandy Painter

Collecteurs: Let’s start with a bit of your background; you were born in Germany but then moved to France in 1994, where you also had your first solo show. Later in 2009 you relocated to New York and just recently to Mexico City. How have these changes affected your work? Do you find that your work reflects the changes within your environment and cultural surrounding? Let’s start with France.

Robert Janitz: That was a long time ago. I had lived in Berlin on and off, so that had already introduced me to the idea of the metropolis. But then I realized there weren’t many options there.

Berlin was a place that, as soon as it became the new capital, it was just a magnet; everybody went to Berlin in the ‘90s. They were all looking for something. And so I figured, if I go to Berlin I’m going to be stuck in how the new Germany is going to be, and I had no idea what that would be. The city was in a process of transformation. I also was in the process of looking and searching. I was already painting but, I mean, in painting, you can go so many ways and you can do so many things. So where do you find something that means something to you? It felt like a mathematical equation with too many variables. 

In Berlin, the whole thing was like a mish-mash. I was sort of experiencing confusion. And then I had some friends in Paris and I thought if I go there, at least I will confront myself with something fixed. Paris seemed to be more set in the way that I could grow differently. And it was extremely different—which I hadn’t seen in the first place—but it’s a religious thing in a way, Paris being profoundly Catholic. Not that they all go to church, but the image culture is Catholic. Also historically, it was at the center of the art world at the beginning of the last century. 

I don’t know, it’s funny. The French have really good painting, but not now. And I think it’s somehow the fog of Duchamp and the ready-made. 

C: And painting shifted to New York, after that, with Abstract Expressionism.

RJ: Exactly, painting somehow left France. And then I was in France. Maybe coming up out of Germany with my German ideas and running into this knife, which is the Duchampian ready made. And I’m thinking: “But I’m a romantic person.”

C: It sounds like painting is influenced by what the artist is surrounded by, in terms of architecture. Now that you are in Mexico, are you observing more open fields, open spaces? Even within the city there must be more light, more openness, more color?

RJ: Also dimensions. It sounds super cliché, but there are a couple of times I remember where I thought; “Oh, this is maybe why I’m interested in painting.” One was an early experience of  sitting in a landscape and experiencing it as a landscape, which was a painting in a way. But that wasn’t about light. Later on in France, maybe because the light is different, and also France has the whole Mediterranean side where the light is again, very different. So that was another sort of eye-opener; thinking about all these things you read about light and so on. But then actually in experiences—things all look different.

C: You have said that being in New York brought you a lot of freedom from the restriction of European culture and emotion, its repression. How did moving to New York change your perspective in how you relate to your paintings or just in terms of observing your surroundings?

RJ: I mean, Paris is gloomy in winter and you hardly see the sun for weeks. In New York, it’s cold in winter, but the sky is always super blue. Christmas gives you energy. I mean, I think New York is really impressive because of the huge buildings. I love these bridges—what a fantastic experience. Paris doesn’t give you that. Everything is condensed and low. New York is exploding into the sky.

I think there is something oddly physical about being in the city. Seeing something with just your eyes is not the same as seeing it in person because you are either sitting or you’re standing when you are just seeing it on a screen. It’s another kind of physicality. I am especially drawn to the idea that you stand with your shoulders and your head up and there are tall buildings next to you.

C: It makes you feel more elongated physically, because you are in a very vertically aligned space. In an open space you feel more horizontally aligned perhaps? 

RJ: I do have issues in super open, empty spaces. I guess it’s called agoraphobia, where all of a sudden that space becomes like gelatin, and I almost feel panicked. But it’s the opposite when you are walking in Manhattan; you feel good as a human walking there. I wouldn’t want to be a dog walking in New York, but being an upright creature there is kind of fun.

C: Does this kind of vertical physicality affect your paintings?

RJ: I think they deal with verticality a lot. That’s maybe another conversation, but I think at some point the diagonals I introduced came to basically relate to the act of walking. Two legs that are joined at the hip and they do a step.

C: I’ve read that you’re a scholar of Sanskrit as well as comparative religions and art history. Looking at your paintings I see gestures that could read like abstractions of language or letters. Do you think about language when you’re painting? Maybe scrambling words, separating them or bringing them back together?

RJ: I think so. I hesitate to say. When I think of my recent works, the way these lines embrace the edge of the canvas, almost designed for the curve, which is repeating. I accept the rectangle as a frame and that these lines behave within that makes them almost become hieroglyphic in a way. So yeah, totally. Why I’m hesitating to say that now is because I think, as much as I’m curious about my sources, I tend to obscure them to myself in order to protect the mystery of it. I’m afraid that everything is going to dry up and I will have nothing else to paint. I play cat and mouse with myself. 

For the longest time, I have been asking myself that same question: “What is my fucking inspiration and what do I actually do when I do it? What gets me started on this?” And I think for years, I was basically sitting around all day until five in the afternoon. I would then finally make up my mind. So I have no idea. This is all probably self-doubt. How big of a deal is mark making? How afraid am I to see the process grow?

C: There must be hesitation before the first mark. Does it become easier afterwards?

RJ: I remember I would think: “Maybe I’m good at writing.” And then I would start my novel and say: “You basically have one word. It’s already a big deal, and then you put another word, and if you add more you have a phrase.” Then you realize, this thing can go anywhere. And that wasn’t very helpful.

I don’t know, maybe we are back in New York again, thinking about this fantasy of the high rise. I would say I create something about who that person is. I think, of course, every painter does that; you look at the mark, you make the designated painting, and then you have the marks on your palette and at some point they become equally important. Or even the palette becomes more seductive because it has less of your input.

Maybe you’re like a trained dog when making the painting and the real live person on the palette, the conscious and the subconscious. So maybe this fantasy high riser in me, being the dandy painter, playing his role, it’s just a big trope, a façade that is a stand-in for something else. I can build this structure for me and almost believe it myself. It liberates me so I don’t really look at what I really do. 

That may be the very inner way of reflecting on myself but at some point when you start seeing yourself from the perspective of another country, another culture, you don’t stop there. With every language, I also acquired a different me, sort of. Maybe that’s where this actor originates. You switch personas. Ultimately, is there anybody at home or is it all just an empty shell that you try to desperately stuff content in?

C: So you find yourself experiencing and observing different cultures to reflect something different about yourself as well? 

RJ: One of the main tasks of culture is probably to rein in emotion. A fine intricate structure as a channel. People are not concerned when they are in this kind of untamed wild state—you know, the savage. I feel very savage somehow. [laughs]

C: Maybe that’s also the artist’s state of being too, because you always find the need to delve deeper into your own emotions and the emotions of people around you, the surroundings. Is it about finding yourself within that raw emotional state?

RJ: Yeah, for example, when you write you are dealing with a different grip on the world, because you’re dealing with it when you have your words already. And I think painting is before words. You deal with it without even shapes existing. Shapes may arise, but the whole thing is much more [abstract]. The poet may be closer to a visual painter than to an essayist. 

Well, I thought to myself, if I do this on a limited rectangular surface where is the freedom to explore? And I guess I’m exploring mixing my own stuff while also using my recollections. I remember at some point I was already experimenting with wax and turpentine and I had this whisk and then I thought it was exactly like when I was a kid and we were making pancakes. And then it gave a whole different idea of what’s happening. I’m not making art, I’m actually back in mommy’s kitchen and it became much more fun and playful in a way. That’s where the flour also came in, and I said “Why not use flour?”

One thing I found exciting when I started using flour was that I realized it chemically reacts within a day or two after applying the paint mix. The paint itself transformed. So there was something happening outside of me.

C: I was wondering about that too, does the flour mix change over time as it stays on the painting?

RJ: Once it’s set, it stays stable. People ask, “How reactive is that organic material?” Wax is an extra good preservant; the flour wouldn’t get moldy or anything. I basically do something and then it is almost like going with your analogue film into the dark room and then the film finally develops so you see what really happened at that moment. In a way, I find that liberating. It takes a bit of the performance anxiety away.

C: So is there a little bit of unpredictability right before you apply it, and then you see the process coming through very slowly?

RJ: Yeah, when the paint is fresh, it’s more translucent. The wax is translucent. The flour is not so visible and as it develops, it becomes opaque. It’s a very big change. And it’s like, Christmas is the next day. Everything is on the floor to dry. I put some fans on, I switch the light off and I leave. The next day I come in and I go: “Ah!” I’m now at a point where I can know what to expect more or less. But I guess it puts the emphasis more on the process than on the final results. 

C: You’re also painting on the floor, right? So the painting is on the floor and then with the canvas you’re on level zero. And then I guess you are building on from there?

RJ: And where is the elevator? [Laughs] The gradient was a big step in the way. And I resisted it for a long time, because I thought of it as a cheap thrill. You just do a gradient and then all of a sudden you have this exciting pictorial space instead of a monochrome background.

Imagine a plant in a room. In the same room in Germany, that plant wouldn’t make it. In Mexico, there is so much light coming in. I guess they found a different approach. My palette has clearly changed.

It’s odd how exotic something becomes, maybe at some point it becomes redundant as a word. Because I think exotic is from within the culture.

C: The word “exotic” does place the culture on the outside of the norm in a sense. Something that is a natural part of the culture becomes exotic through a Western lens.

RJ: This is of course colonialist. Super colonialist. There’s a Romanian poet, Gherasim Luca. He was a weird person, but he found this incredibly important idea that one learns how to stutter in their own mother tongue. You know, it’s just like you step out of yourself at this very deep level. And the closest thing to you to your heart is your mother tongue. Yet you speak it like a foreigner.