Denmark in the wintertime is cold. The sun rises late and goes to bed early. And the sky changes tones like an Agnes Martin painting, subtly, with radiant whites, bluish grays, and soft yellows. In late December, right after the Christmas holiday, I took the train from the Danish countryside, where I was staying with my family, into the capital of Copenhagen to meet the artist Tal R at his downtown studio. The studio visit is a ritual of sorts in the art world. There, surrounded by various works-in-progress—attempts at capturing the ephemeral and turning it into something more permanent—you, the visitor, are ushered inside, offered something to drink—water, tea, or wine, depending on who you are and the time of the day—and a seat at a table. It’s not usually a very glamorous visit, not much about the actual act of art-making is, but the artist’s studio is a kind of home for the creative mind. Whenever I’m in one, it feels not too dissimilar to stepping inside a library, where I sigh in silent relief to be surrounded by so many books. Tal R, at 47 years old, is only half Danish—his father is Israeli—but he is practiced at making me feel hygge as he offers me tea, a plate of dried figs, and discusses his work. (There’s no real English equivalent for hygge but the closest word might be cozy.)
Opening today, a new show called “Altstadt Girl,” featuring Tal R’s paintings and drawings, will be on view at the Chelsea gallery Cheim & Read. The paintings and drawings are all of women—some acquaintances, but mostly, it seems, strangers. For the past two years, Tal R has approached various types—on the street, at a café, in a hallway—and asked if they will sit for a portrait. The show is titled “Altstadt Girl” because Tal R was based, until just recently, in Düsseldorf, where he taught painting for the past nine years at the prestigious Kunstakademie, the art academy with a faculty roster that has included greats (and alums) such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Joseph Beuys. And while Tal R is working in a medium centuries old, his approach has a contemporary ring to it. “If you want to draw somebody, you can just use a photo or your imagination, right?” Tal R explains. “Does it have anything extra if you have them in front of you? I hadn’t been doing that since art school and years ago, I would have said that’s a ridiculous thing to do today; it doesn’t make sense anymore—but then I started doing it. And it means the process is that you have to ask somebody.” Just in the way Miranda July or R. Luke Dubois use iPhone apps or modern interactive technology, Tal R is interested in exploring how his medium can force us to make contact with another person. “I want to see if this awkwardness is productive,” he says.
All good portraiture is storytelling, and in the studio, brushes down, and away from the canvas, Tal R offers anecdotes of his experiences. He has the narrative pacing of a short-story writer. “In the street here two summers ago,” he says, “there was this girl standing outside the café, and she was smoking a cigarette the way you can only do when you’re around twenty—when you have the whole world in front of you. And you are arrogant in such an elegant way, because you just look at everybody in this way, including me, every day, walking in, getting their coffee. And I love that kind of arrogance. But it will only last a few years, and if she doesn’t change it, this arrogance will become stupidity. So I wondered, with that kind of arrogance, what will happen if she sits in front of me and I have to draw her?”
The challenge, too, was in forcing himself to draw. And here, he exhibits the patience of a practiced professor. “I really have to sit there,” he says. He is wearing a beanie and crosses his arms, leaning forward to explain his idea of craft. “It’s like if somebody at a wedding stands up and they want to make a speech—there are two types of speech: one, somebody prepared something, and maybe they prepared it well but they have nothing to say. Or, two, your drunk uncle stands ups and he doesn’t know how but he has a point—and you will forgive him a lot because you feel that there is a point there. I think that is a little bit similar to how I try to draw.”
Other drawings are more personal—instances where Tal R was aware of capturing a precise emotional state. “My little brother broke up with his girlfriend,” he says. “The moment he broke up with her—it’s kind of a weird feeling, but something about her was perfect for drawing. And all the conversations that I had over the years, seen in the light of the breakup, all the sorrow, it was exactly right in the drawing. There is tension, she’s very angry at my brother. And there’s me looking like my brother, sitting there.” Later, I ask which of the drawings is her, and he points to one hanging at the top of a pillar. The expression on her face is complicated—stern and a little impatient. She sits on top of her bed, her hand rests on her knee, and she is topless underneath a leather motorcycle jacket. Her pose is compelling and contradictory—soft and tough, bare but closed-off—despite or perhaps because of the simplicity of Tal R’s lines.
Tal R’s own use of color—burnt reds, bright yellows, and jungle greens—is excellent. Neither decorative nor exaggerated, they complement his form. His paintings, in particular, echo twentieth-century masters such as Matisse or Bonnard, even though many, including myself, might prefer the drawings, sketched a little bit more hastily, with black ink on paper painted with a dusty rose paint. After seeing MoMA’s “The Forever Now,” where emerging artists such as Oscar Murillo and Joe Bradley are pushing at what we can comfortably embrace as defining a painting, I suspect Tal R’s gallery of faces and nudes—beautiful for their strange intimacy, but still familiar—will be a popular show against the austere January landscape back here in Manhattan.
Tal R’s “Altstadt Girl” opens January 15 at Cheim & Read. 547 West Twenty-fifth Street, New York.