Never say never

The easy to digest road novel “A Tree grows in Brooklyn” by the Pulitzer prize winner Betty Smith is required reading for schoolchildren in the Brooklyn district of New York. Those who live in the colorful quarter on the other side of the East River only rarely venture into Manhattan and have otherwise adapted to their neighborhood between friendly shops, trendy restaurants and at all times well-stocked 7/11 stores. Here, New York is quite different – there are no skyscrapers. In addition to the well-established residents of Brooklyn, the district has also been attracting long-term visitors from the world of music, film and the arts in recent years. As the hub of creative art output, the Williamsburg quarter in particular attracts artists from around the globe.

In the summer of 2005, the Munich artist Charlotte Eschenlohr also found herself right where it’s at. Not far from crowded Bedford Avenue, situated between galleries and lofts, she played for time at a studio right in the center of Williamsburg. During this time, she created the cycle of work “New York Paintings“ – highly colorful, gesturally expressive acrylic paintings, which capture the fever and scenery as well as the people of New York City in all their vibrancy. “Margarita and the Pink Cadillac” is a portrait from this series and shows a happy, confident young woman in a witty tank top and with two sassy black Pippi Longstocking braids. Behind her is an enormous ‘Pink Cadillac’ – an automobile made for the movies, which is said to once have belonged to Fats Domino. Charlotte Eschenlohr came across the legendary car in her loft studio community and positioned the good-humored Margarita in front of it right there and then. The car and the protagonist are representative of an entire district, of the city of New York and actually the self-image of an entire nation. An enlightened, self-determined woman of ethnic origin along with a distinctive car full of nostalgia, elegance and history. The dynamically powerful painting is based on a montage of two photographs. The actual backdrop in situ is the envelope for a subject that is the central theme of all Charlotte Eschenlohr’s paintings: The picture of a free, self-confident woman.

“Pictures of women are an important aspect in my painting”, says the woman who has carved out an independent position for herself in the course of her life. “What interest me is the free woman”. While painters in the 80s like Elvira Bach invented striking female characters or like Katharina Sieverding repeatedly depicted her own face on her large picture tableaus, Charlotte Eschenlohr uses varying male and female models to discover the

personality of individuals. Be it the taciturn, seemingly rigid Richard, the playfully erotic Emily in New York or the seemingly androgynously insolent Hanna in Salzburg, who cuts an unwieldy and ultimately also vulnerable figure.

The “Self-portrait in a cab“ shows the artist in the back of a yellow cab on a journey through New York at dusk. A woman alone on her way through the big city jungle, perhaps on her way home from a party or on her way to a glamorous dinner. The brushstroke is calm, the palette of colors warm and restraint. The picture captures a moment of suspense, expectant anticipation or an exhausted pause in the safe capsule of the comfortable car, behind her the lights of the mega-city, ahead an eagerly anticipated array of events.

But the artist from Munich is interested not only in the city’s protagonists but also places that encapsulate the appeal of New York for both first-time visitors and locals alike: A pair celebrating high above the city in the legendary Rainbow Room in the Rockefeller Center, a casually dressed man in a typical diner (“Doug in the Diner“) or the breathtaking skyline of Manhattan, reproduced in countless photographs, recognizable and yet interpreted completely new in the artistic approach of painting. Garishly colored embedded particles, dynamic brush strokes and a quick, gestural application of color ensure a liveliness and strength which confirm that Charlotte Eschenlohr has been infected by the verve and intensity of the city that never sleeps and these have taken on form in her pictures.

Back to the old continent. The Salzburg pictures series was created a little while later and, how else should it be, naturally again directly on the spot. The combination of colors used in this series is predominantly two-dimensional and daring. A calmness befalls the subjects and the protagonists of the paintings become less sophisticated. Austrian tranquility instead of New York City vibrations? A pointed clarity of complete pleasure in expression and precise power of observation manifest themselves in the loose sequence of drawings and sketches created in addition to the paintings. Here, we meet the well-known models again, who at times appear with intimated and at times exaggerated personality characteristics. The letter once written by the

painter Maler Max Beckmann to a female painter to give her heart on her chosen path also included the following lines, which can be perfectly well applied to Charlotte Eschenlohr: “Let others roam around confused and colorblind in geometry books or in problems of advanced mathematics. We will enjoy the shapes given to us – a human face, a hand, a woman’s breast or the body of a man, a happy or sad expression, the endless oceans, the wild cliffs, the melancholic language of black trees in the snow, the natural strength of spring flowers and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer’s day, when Pan, our old friend, is sleeping and the spirits of the height of the day are whispering. This alone is enough to let us forget the sorrow of the world or to give it shape.“

The figure, the city and color – these three characteristics are the foundations in the paintings of Charlotte Eschenlohr. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Texts on the theory of color” published in 1810, one can already read: “When the artist gives over to his feelings, it immediately gives rise to a colored object. As soon as black passes over blue, it calls for yellow, which is then instinctively distributed by the artist who partly applies it pure over light, partly reddish and dirty as brown in the reflections to enliven the whole, as he deems most appropriate “. Charlotte Eschenlohr too counters the physical limitation of colors that are actually seen with her very own, exceptionally varied range of colors and sensory perceptions. Her paintings reflect the emotionalism of the characters just as much as the direct integration in their particular environment. The melting pot New York is more than just a backdrop – New York is the subject of the paintings and, let’s not forget, the place of their origin. For the time being, the chapter New York has come to an end. It remains to be seen if it will be an unrepeatable episode or develop into a serial. In any case, the potential is there. One should never say never to a land of unlimited opportunities.

Nicole Büsing & Heiko Klaas 2005