The past will almost always shine through. Also in art. Sometimes artists and historians have to work like forensic experts hunting for the smallest of traces. Sometimes the remnants of the past are so overwhelming that this very quality becomes the subject, like in Henry Fuseli’s drawing “The Artist Overwhelmed by the Grandeur of Antique Ruins“ (1778). Some say that the fascination of ruins and the aesthetics of decay are rather recent phenomena, but this is definitively not true. We have been familiar with that since the publication of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1) in 1499, we know the atmospheric images of ruins by Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691 – 1765)  and of Caspar David Friedrich (1774 – 1840), to mention just a few examples. The depiction of ruins and the fascination of the aesthetics of decay is a venerable  tradition indeed.

Romanticism had already turned ruins into symbols of artistic creation as such. Ruins and decay symbolized the superiority of the power of nature over the gewgaw made by men. Inherent also was the foreboding of the principle of entropy and the course of history as an inevitable race for catastrophe and doom. Ruins became objects of contemplation, a constant memento mori embedded in contemporary life.

In contemporary art the aesthetics of decay is mostly found in photographic art. Examples are the work of the Spanish photo artist Angel Marcos, who approaches his motifs with a certain magical realism and establishes, in his personal iconography, relationships with memory. Or the equally haunting images of American photographer Brian McKee, who reflects the collapse of old and modern societies, often at historic locations. McKee’s work, however, is characterized by a conceptual meaning, too, with an importance beyond the beauty of the images. In Germany we find, for instance, the industrial chronologist Holger Mühlenbeck and the equally melancholy and at times almost lyrical interpretations of decay by Astrid Padberg.

One would, however, fall short if one reduced the work of Christine Schindler to exercises in the aesthetics of decay. This is an aspect, even an important one, but her approach, as it manifests itself in her Ibiza series, implies a philosophy of history and a social commentary, too. Her pictorial strategies are both classic and innovative, a very fruitful combination.

A classic choice is the close-up, which Christine Schindler tends to combine with oblique angles. The view is dynamized, it changes radically, and details usually overlooked all of a sudden stand prominently in the foreground demanding attention, conveying messages.

The opposite of that is the application of an overall structure, which necessitates a far view, although it has to be carefully chosen. The objects contained in the field of view thus combine to form a serial (or contingent) structure dominating the image, engendering insight into the nature of landscape.

The central position of the motif is also a strong element of composition emphasizing the importance of the object. It serves to give things a somewhat monumental character, placing them in a new context of attention. Sometimes a haunting, fairy-tale-like mood is invoked. A closed gate as an entrance to an unkempt, overgrown park: The beholder will inevitably wonder, what hides behind it, what horrors lurk in the enchanted park. Or what joy can be found there.

Choosing perspectives that result in a presentation of things in a horizontal array is another strong strategy. It bestows stability on them, heavy sturdiness, endurance. Maybe also as a symbol of resistance to the almighty forces of decay. Christine Schindler embraces the aesthetics of decay, also in the highly poetic images of details of buildings, where she is almost a photographic forensic expert. But for her this is clearly linked to the development of the society they form part of, as the traces of treatment or, as it were, neglect embody a human dimension. It is a kind of historical philosophy: We could make it, if only we wanted to. We may, however, not have enough staying power; as our interests are shifting, accelerating progress leaves a lot behind, just good enough to be totally consumed, like the destruction of a potential architectonic jewel by misusing it as a racecourse. (2) We tend to destroy grown structures, but seemingly have nothing sensible to replace them.

What’s strikingly innovative is the blending, the combining of images. They usually bleed into each other, so that they definitely differ from the traditional diptych. What they share with it, is the fact that, while both images form a focus of attention, the combined image is a visual and semantic entity of its own. Something unexpected and new appears, which is larger than the parts it consists of. This means a new way of seeing, a new explanation, a new pictorial fact--and this new fact is both the tertium comparationis and the result of the comparison. And it is only art which can achieve that.

Notes

 (1) Francesco Colonna: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Aldus Manutius, Venezia 1499; facsimile on the internet: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/HP/hyp000.htm. Also see Liane Lefaivre: Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Recognizing the architectural body in the early Italian Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass. [a.o.]: MIT Press 1997; Alberto Pérez-Gómez: Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1992.

(2) Cf. Reinhard Koselleck: Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten , Frankfurt am Main 1979; Johannes Rohbeck: Technik – Kultur – Geschichte. Eine Rehabilitierung der Geschichtsphilosophie , Frankfurt am Main 2000.

Translation: Mason Ellis Murray