PRESENTATION: Michael Armitage-Pathos and the Twilight of the Idle
Michael Armitage is one of the most important painters of the present day. He gained recognition with large-scale paintings that depict figures in somnambulistic landscapes. In them, paint is applied in several layers, scraped off, and reworked anew. Armitage’s motifs are marked by history and current political events. He studies local rituals and political demonstrations, in addition to plant and animal life. Velvety on the surface and awash with formal beauty, his pictures possess an unsettling ambiguity.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Kunsthaus Bregenz Archive
Michael Armitage;s solo exhibition “Pathos and the Twilight of the Idle” takes its title of one his works from 2019. It is a vertical-format painting of considerable size. In the center of the image is a figure that strides toward the viewer. His facial expression and hunched shoulders convey a certain readiness to accuse and fight. Attached to his chest and waist are two cans of tear gas. In his hands, which have strangely multiplied, he holds sandcolored slings. In the background, countless colors mushroom into one another. The artist created the painting after seeing a demonstration by Kenya’s largest opposition party in Nairobi in 2017. Several of the depicted demonstrators are dressed in a grotesque manner, donning costumes, wigs, or crowns. One person waves a flag. The muscular figure in the upper center wears a bikini top. Armitage’s paintings are intensely colorful, rampant, and moving. Events and imaginings are woven together into rich narratives. Traditional motifs from European painting enter into the scenes, creating instances of déjà vu. Édouard Manet, Francisco de Goya, the Fauves, as well as R. B. Kitaj, Egon Schiele, and Paul Gauguin are recognizable in formal elements and the choice of colors. In another large-scale picture, “The Fourth Estate” (2017), the political demonstration – which took place in September 2017 is likewise depicted. Several of the demonstrators have climbed onto a tree. They are sitting on a branch fork as if in a nest. Visible in the background are palm trees and the Nairobi skyline. Although photographs served as the basis for the painting, surreal elements – like the toad on the flag –and once again references to Western art history come into play. Francisco de Goya likewise depicted a group of people sitting on a branch. His print is titled Ridiculous Folly, 1815–19. Armitage’s painting takes its vitality from complementary colors – such as yellow and purple or salmon pink and green – and from its break with established ways of seeing. He depicts people close to the picture edge or from below. The inversion of perspective implies a reversal in the balance of power. The painter also gains motivation for his works from pictures and videos that he encounters on social media. Time and again, people are publicly condemned because of perceived weaknesses. One moving example is the case of the Kenyan boxer Conjestina Achieng. After the end of her career, the several-time boxing champion suffered from psychological problems. In “Conjestina” (2017), Armitage shows the boxer naked and exposed. This is one way, the artist explains, to remind us of her vulnerability and represent the collective defamation that suspected her of embodying a malicious spirit. Compared to other paintings, “And so it is“ (2015) is in vertical format is considerably more structured. Michael Armitage painted a balustrade. Two microphones are set up on a yellow podium for an address. In front of the stage, arms can be seen raising glass spheres with animal motifs into the air. Armitage exposes the rhetoric of political seduction in this work: speeches by political leaders essentially amount to what is expected of them. The artist depicts the figure speaking as a silhouette, as an impression and blank space, bleached out and abraded, similar to a frottage. The colors of „Holding Cell“ (2021) are of cold – blue or gray like slate. Layers of people with closed eyes interlock like the teeth of a zipper. They are wrapped in cloths and immobile as if in cocoons. The figures’ pale heads tower up in ghostly fashion. Their gestures and faces have fallen silent. The picture rouses memories of piled up corpses. We find ourselves somewhere between life and death and something imagined.
“Tea Picker“ (2023) is noticeably smaller than the other works. Scale is also the point in terms of its content. A person’s financial income is often the factor that determines his or her esteem. Tea pickers represent an occupational group that performs hard, poorly paid work and is particularly underappreciated within Kenyan society. Michael Armitage has portrayed a neighborhood tea picker. Like a giant, two-headed balloon, a mirrored bust in complementary colors floats above the landscape. Doubleedged, the public and inner images of the tea picker are juxtaposed with one another. A naked woman stands broad-legged in the center of “Conjestina” (2017). She has positioned herself like a monument and nonetheless appears vulnerable. Behind her, monkeys stare, making malicious grimaces; on her shoulder appears a nightmare that could have sprung from the dark fantasies of Johann Heinrich Füssli or Francisco de Goya. The person portrayed is Conjestina Achieng, a Kenyan boxer who achieved great athletic success. She became Africa champion and fifth in the world middleweight rankings. After the end of her athletic career, she suffered from psychological problems and became the victim of a smear campaign that accused her of having a connection with evil spirits and defamed her as a witch. In “Dandora (Xala, Musicians)“ (2022), a landscape expands into a vast panorama. It is Michael Armitage’s largest painting to date. In the foreground, a group of musicians has gathered into a semicircle. One figure is strumming on the strings of a yellow xalam lute, another is drumming on a tambourine, others are singing. On the left, a man is dragging a goat out of the picture. Many of the faces are vividly rendered. Armitage derived the motif of the group from a 1975 film by Ousmane Sembène denouncing the corruptness of the West African governments. Music and community are the themes of the painting, as are pollution and poverty. The audible and olfactory come into focus. In the center of the painting, a pig springs from the head of one of the figures. To the right of it, a cow’s anus is conspicuously on display. A seam of the tree-bark cloth that Armitage uses as a painting ground runs vertically downward from it like feces. In the middle ground, streaks of green and purple well up like rivulets of a poisonous swamp. Dandora is, in fact, a huge landfill site in Nairobi. Tons of trash are dumped there every day. People scour through it, looking for electronic waste, used plastics, and metals to resell. Several people have climbed onto the branch fork of a massive purple tree trunk in “The Fourth Estate“ (2017). They are sitting there as if in a nest. The Lubugo bark cloth is raw and patched. Holes gape like in the artworks of Alberto Burri. A person on the left holds a banner. The tree climbers belong to a crowd of people at a rally in Nairobi in 2017 who have gathered to see the top candidate of Kenya’s largest opposition party. Michael Armitage, who was on-site for a radio interview in Uhuru Park during the mass gathering, rendered the motif on the banner in surreal manner as a crouching toad. How can a ruling power be confronted? With aggression and a readiness to fight or with disguise, carnival, and clownery? The title of the painting, “Pathos and twilight of the idle“ (2019), which also preceded the entire exhibition in Bregenz, alludes to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (1889) and to resistance derived from passion. A figure with a saffron-yellow turban has dressed up in a brassiere. He carries canisters of teargas and holds slings in his hands. Below him, several fellow protestors have gathered into a dense crowd. They wear wigs and colorful costumes and carry a blue and yellow flag to demonstrate against the abuse of power and corrupt politics. Michael Armitage’s models for the pictorial content in this work include religious motifs. The man laid out in the upper center of the picture was adapted from Hans Holbein’s “The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521–22) in Basel. The entire composition is reminiscent of Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin into heaven”, popularly known as the “Assunta“ (1516–18), in the Frari church in Venice. “
Photo: Michael Armitage, Installation view first floor Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2023, Photo: Markus Tretter, Courtesy of the artist, Pinault Collection and White Cube, © Michael Armitage, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Info: Kunsthaus Bregenz, Karl-Tizian-Platz, Bregenz, Austria, Duration: 15/7-29/10/202, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at/en/
