Give My Regards to Painting

Within modern and contemporary Western painting, paint became more than a means of representing something. Its material properties, its application, its support, its colour, its surface and the conventions surrounding its use could themselves form the subject of a work. Painting could ask questions about its own conditions.

The Japanese Lacquer Series starts from a comparable position. But as soon as the same question is asked of lacquer, it is clear that the conditions are very different.

The difference is twofold. The first has to do with the medium itself. Japanese lacquer, urushi, is unlike ordinary artists’ paint. It begins as the sap of the lacquer tree and has its own chemistry, behaviour and rhythm. It is applied in thin layers and cured rather than simply dried. Temperature and humidity affect the process. Layers may have to be built up slowly, then ground, polished or otherwise worked before the next stage can begin. Colour behaves differently in lacquer, as do transparency, depth and gloss. 

The second follows from the first. Because lacquer is so technically demanding, a highly specialized culture of making has developed around it. In other words, lacquer is embedded in its own set of conventions, quite different from those of painting.

These conditions are precisely what make lacquer so interesting to me as a subject of artistic inquiry. For my practice, however, they have far-reaching consequences because I approach lacquer as an outsider to that tradition. The works require skills that I cannot hope to possess at the level required for technical self-sufficiency. I am therefore dependent on the expertise of lacquer practitioners. Their knowledge and my intentions together determine the course of the inquiry.

As with paint in modern and contemporary painting, the medium itself can be questioned. The questions may be comparable: what can this material do? What are its essential properties? What follows from the way it is applied, layered and finished? But lacquer answers those questions on its own terms.

Harmen Brethouwer