The Light of Existence - The Paintings of Reinhardt Sobye
by Shigeo Chiba

1. The Disenfranhised Reinhardt Sobye depicts people who are weak, socially weak, oppressed, in adversity, or disenfranchised. We can state this about his work. A simple look at the words used in his titles reflects this idea - war, retreating armies, Auschwitz, Jews, the Dakota Tribe, gypsies, sickness, death, ruins, isolation, fire destruction, silence, overlooked lands, wounded angels, leukemia, AIDS, land mines.
He expresses these subjects in extremely realistic, almost hyper-realistic, indeed "veristic" forms. And we can say that the combination of these topics with this stylistic form can prove quite a shock to his viewers. Given that the major trends in 20th century art, at least in artistically advanced countries, can be defined by such terms as "autonomy" and "refined, polished" (in a general sense), frequently the subjects and motifs which reflect actual social conditions and world realities have been given a wide berth. At the very least, painters have found it difficult to express these subjects in a direct narrative approach and have tended to avoid them. Of course, this does not meant that in Europe, for example, it has been solely a case of "form for form's sake." Even if we only consider the western European region, there has been a ceaseless influx of artists from the surrounding areas (northern Europe, eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and what was formerly identified as "the Orient"), and they have huffily continued "form for form's sake. " But, in the relatively stable region of Europe, the central themes of art have tended to be less about the external (such as human realities, social realities), and more often than not about the internal, about "art in and of itself." In a region undergoing a relatively stable period (or what we might just say is a region that has reached an advanced state of capitalism), there has been and continues to be a strong tendency for art to be turned inward upon itself, and we can consider this a particular characteristic of the 20th century.
Japan also demonstrates such artistic trends. While achieving modernization, Japan established a western individuality that is still somehow not in the form of western citizen-based society. Art which directly expresses "human realities" or "social realities" has not been greatly fostered in this setting. In spite of the fact that Japan has experienced the conundrums of rapid modernization, fascism, war, and a warped post-war form of democratization, there has not been a full, direct expression of these experiences. Thus Reinhardt Sobye's paintings have provided a full shock to Japanese art which has avoided such expressions. And undoubtedly, Sobye's works were fully shocking even in Norway. 2. Portraits Sobye's particular talent lies in his ability to express the disenfranchised in portraitform, In other words, while he only depicts faces, he expresses the brutal realities of humanity and society. Even if most viewers (with the exception of those with specialized medical or legal knowledge) can't tell if physical scars visible in these human faces are the traces of torture, of accident, or even those brought about by the model's own inattention, there are differences between that which remains on a human face after torture, accident, or inattention. The human face, of course, expresses the suffering of the heart, or sadness, but it also expresses the suffering of the body. It is not unusual for us to recognize these scars on people's faces in our daily lives. But, the expression of these scars in paintings - the will to express such images in paintings - is a completely different issue. Europe holds a long tradition of portrait paintings, this form of expression chosen by Sobye. The history of portrait painting is based on the development of techniques necessary for the recreation of the ideas formed through the thorough observation of the subject. Clearly Sobye is connected to that tradition in this sense, Japanese portraiture, on the other hand, is completely different from western traditional portraiture, and there are very few portraits in Japan in the traditional western sense.
An ordinary portrait literally provides a depiction of the physical image of a person. And with the exception of Christian personages, for most of the history of portraiture the subjects of portraiture have been limited to the royal and aristocratic classes, expanding only in modern times to include images of the bourgeoisie. While of course there were exceptions to this rule, it wasn't until the latter half of the 1 9th century that what we consider "ordinary people" became the subject of portraiture (until that time, portraits only portrayed their commissioners). Further, the intentional depiction of the disenfranchised as portrait subject matter only began in the 20th century.
And that is not all. As can be immediately recognized if we conjure images of Pablo Picasso's Guernica, paintings on the subjects of the Korean War, or Kathe Kollwitz's works, most depictions of the disenfranchised came about as part of the depiction of an accident, an incident or event, not as the depiction of human "faces." We must thus consider Sobye, who expresses images of the disenfranchised solely through the face, a very rare case. 3. Illusion and Reality Sobye paints faces. This is not to imply that he avoids the depiction of other themes. And undoubtedly he will continue to take up a variety of new motifs in the future. But if we look at his body of work up until now, Sobye is a painter of faces. More than calling him a portrait painter, he is a painter who paints faces. The viewer who enters Sobye's one-man shows thus encounters the life of a single individual person through each painting. While there are occasional instances of calm, or gently smiling faces, the majority of Sobye's faces and the eyes in those faces are such that it would be extremely difficult to directly confront them as living human counterparts. No matter how truthfully they are depicted, we are looking at a painting, and thus we can continue to look at them. Even though suffocating, this is not reality, it is illusion, we can tell ourselves, and through this illusion we can face the reality of its subject, whether that of Auschwitz, the refugees of Iraq, Rwanda, and Kosovo, gypsies, American Indians, child prostitutes, army deserters. To state it in somewhat diagrammatic form, when we think that this is not reality, it is an illusion, we place the emphasis on the modeling, the formal qualities of Sobye's paintings. And when we cast a glance at the reality (the disenfranchisement of people) that is beyond illusion, we emphasize the expressive content of his paintings. It is not that easy for the 20th century painters and art viewers who have come to see art which divides form from content - for those who actually create the painting and those who simply view it - to recognize and to search for the synthesis of these two - to place our emphasis squarely between these two poles. Sobye himself, an artist living in the latter half of the 20th century who will live into the first half of the 21 st century, is not unrelated to this issue, this separation.
While we consider Sobye to be a painter of the latter type, one who balances form and content, and also one who is, of course, superb at form, more than anything else he is an artist who excels at the expression of the disenfranchised. And yet, for me, it is really not that simple. Sobye's paintings of faces are, in my eyes, quite a complex painting experience. 4. Faces Let us stand once again before Sobye's paintings. While it is not easy to confront them directly, what occurs when I look at these faces - to state one effect I feel and to use a somewhat old-fashioned word is a feeling that is somehow like a sublimation. Or we might say a sense of purification occurs. And I have the sense that this occurs simultaneously in both the painting and in the viewer.
For example, one single old woman is depicted in On the threshold of perishing, Solitude ///, and Solitude H. Due to age and infirmity she is being cared for in a nursing home, and because of the effects of a severe brain hemmorrhage, she is unable to speak. Regardless of the fact that she is fully aware of what is going on around her, this person is locked in a situation from which she cannot communicate with others. But, as I continued to look at On the threshold of perishing, the title of the painting seemed to disappear for me. Then, the unhappiness or misfortune seen in this old person's face becomes not particular unhappiness, but something more general, the unhappiness that appears as people age (or that which comes with illness). Indeed, the specific unhappiness layers with the more universal. Yet, this kind of generalization does not weaken that which is conveyed to me by the painting, indeed the exact opposite occurs, it is made all the stronger.
And yet, that is not the end of it. As I continue to stare at the work, how do I express it?, I get a feeling, a sensation, that some sort of faint light is coming from the depth of the work. I don't think I am mistaken in this, and it does not mean that I want to say that the more profound the suffering, the more profound becomes the person, the more the true value of that person is heightened. It is nothing that conventional. My eyes which have continued to look at this painting have already gone beyond knowing who is this woman, what is the misfortune of this person. And indeed, I don't even know if this is, in fact, misfortune. The old woman is not an old woman caught up in unusual unhappiness, I come to see this person as one absolutely ordinary old person, one who has aged in the ordinary manner. My eyes are surprised by something that is like a faint, shining light. What is that glow? How can I express it?
The left eye of the old woman is almost completely shut, her right eye is quite wide open, and her mouth is slightly open. The slightly open mouth, depending on the viewing angle, might look like it is faintly smiling. This old woman could also be seen as having almost completely gone beyond pain, hardship and unhappiness. I do not mean that she is aloof from them, has taken a philosophical view of them, but simply that her existence has completely understood them, taken them in, passed beyond them, surpassed them. And isn't that faint shine of light coming from those accomplishments? 5. The Light of Existence Realities such as title, episode, and model are all surpassed and extinguished from my eyes viewing this painting, while on the other hand, almost in concert with the above extinction, the painting becomes all the stronger, all the deeper, awash in an almost religious atmosphere. I have tried to describe this personal physical experiendice as a sublimation, a purification, but if we were to state it exactly, Sobye's painting is sublimated, while 1, the viewer, am purified. The depicted old woman is sublimated from a specific woman unable to speak into a model of human existence. My vision as the viewer is purified by this sublimation. Sobye's talent lies in his ability to depict a single old woman, and then bring about the expression of something completely different. Or, we could say that his talent is his ability to go beyond the named to the unnamed, the anonymous, and then go even beyond that, shedding something even further to arrive at yet a new form.
For example, we watch the pitiful state of the refugees in Kosovo on television. Of course we are saddened, anguished by what we see. We may even want to try to do something to help. But no matter how good-willed we are in this regard, no matter how humanistic, these flames do not fall out of the sky onto our bodies, these flames are not really hot for us, we are not injured by them. As testimony to this fact, we can turn off the television, eat our supper, drink some beer, have a good night's sleep. And we are not criticized for this behavior. While the methods of a single painting differ from those of television, experientially speaking, no matter how critical of reality or critical of society a painting might be, that alone, at that level alone, that painting does not become a superior guarantee of that reality. Subject and theme do not guarantee substance. The painting stops at the level of the images which flow from our television screens, they do not stimulate us, they do not remain in the hearts of their viewers. Thus we can say the painted picture must be self-purified, sublimated, and while an old-fashioned expression, it must go so far as to give a sense of the universal. This is what we see in Sobye's paintings. Sobye's paintings do not stop at expressing the disenfranchised, criticizing the realities of society and the world, or raising questions about the methods of contemporary civilization. They go far beyond that. Or we could say that a single person - for example the old woman who cannot speak - returns to a place far ahead of a single individual. The return does not stop there, it descends even further into the depths of mankind. And the image of the disenfranchised stays strongly in our minds because of this plumbing of the depths. To the depths of a single old woman, to depths that penetrate through that person. And this faint light clearly rises from these very depths.
The light of existence - this is the name we can give this light. Human existence does not differ that greatly, no matter what its circumstances. The misfortune of the old woman is no different from Sobye's misfortune, or our misfortune. It is all relative, Indeed, the old woman might see it completely differently, she might think that this misfortune is projected by Sobye or others. Sobye has depicted the isolation of a single old woman, and yet, at the same time, this isolation surpasses that of the old woman, it is also the isolation of Sobye himself, of each individual who views this painting. Franz Kafka once wrote that Franz Kafka is so solitary just like Franz Kafka. When we continue to look at the painting and begin to sense the faint light which comes from the depths of this old woman, we see the darkness of our own existence. Then we are intuitively aware that this faint light is truly the light of existence. These two things, light and darkness, are actually the same thing. Light and darkness, on an existence level, are the same thing. When we stand in front of a painting by Sobye and continue to look at it, at last we all begin to recognize this as the anonymous existence of all of us, of the old woman, of Sobye, of us the viewers.
In the same vein, while some of the people depicted by Sobye are specific, actual models, such as the old woman, in other cases, such as The forsaken war-hero W, the model is simply an anonymous drunk. Sobye often used the people around him as models; for example, his former wife in War, his sleeping child in The dead child, and his friends as seen in Madonna from Screbrenica. In other words, he used the absolutely ordinary people around him to express the disenfranchised. Yet, it would be a mistake to simply say he chooses models for convenience's sake. What Sobye sets out to depict is the ordinary people found in the faces of the disenfranchised, the hidden human estrangement hiding in the faces of ordinary people, the darkness of existence. 6. Nameless Days Once again I stand in front of the painting of the old woman and look at it. The old woman wrapped in the faint light which we can call the light of existence is quiet, in spite of her total misfortune and suffering. No, the quietness is more than the woman herself, it is the air that surrounds her. The faint light which shines there is gentle. We might be able to describe it like that. Then, that very quietness, the gentleness makes Sobye's painting something richly shadowed. No matter how severely the con tents of the painting criticize reality, no matter how scathing a denunciation of society, aren't these elements of quietude, of gentleness part of what captivates us about his paintings? This is not to say that these factors, the quietness and gentleness, act to mitigate the severity and the harshness. Even under severe, hideous conditions, even if there is nothing we can do about these conditions, the gaze which witnesses these conditions, the gaze that notices, the gaze that does not forget is always present somewhere. That quietness and that gentleness are proof of this presence.
We all know the expression "in front of your eyes." The eyes, in fact, look out to what is spread before them. Thus, as far as eyes are concerned, brutal social realities and human misfortune are things that are spread out before them. The painter depicts what he or she sees with their eyes, and thus paintings which criticize society or denounce brutal realities are actually quite easy to paint, they are simply depictions of what the painter sees. In my way of thinking, the more diligent you are in seeing what is before your eyes, depicting what is before your eyes, the more you become negligent of that which is behind the eyes, not before them. What I am calling "behind the eyes" is, of course, nothing other than the painter. While it might be accept able for the news photographer to only shoot what is before his or her eyes, the painter must be able to simultaneously see what is before and behind the eyes. If the painter is able to see in this manner, is conscious of being able to see in this manner, then from that moment there is born a greater depth to the painter's vision, a greater heartfelt quality to the painter's expression. Once this depth, this heartfelt quality is born, then the painter is on the path to being able to actually reflect those qualities in his or her paintings.
Thus we can say that a painter's vision requires the creation of a gap - one neither too wide, nor too narrow - between that which is before the eyes and that which is behind the eyes. The painter must then be able to come and go in that space. While there are a great many two-dimensional works which give a glimpse of reality, there are also those works which are able to express the gap between reality and self. Art is that " gap. " Regardless of the subject matter of the work, the necessary stipulations or conditions required for the creation of a painting as a painting are what give birth to this gap. While it may sound contradictory, it is the insurmountable distance or gap between other, subject, and reality which gives the potential for expression. Expression, in the end, is distancing, distancing and yet touching. The distance from other, from subject, from model, and indeed from reality. Both distance and contact. Peeling oneself away from reality, setting up a distance, forming a gap, a space, and then touching, making contact.
In his message for this exhibition Sobye has stated: "There are two parallel universes; one is your own life as a limited biological lifespan, the other is the archetypical universe of ethics, serenity and eternity. Art is a bridge in between."
The relationship between these two "universes" the relationship between Sobye and old woman, painter and model, can all be considered relative. As a "bridge" Sobye - extremely autonomous in terms of his art and artistic methods - is a person (painter) with a finite life, while the old woman with a finite life is heightened to a model existence (eternity). While we continue to see her as the "woman next door" (morals), gentle (peaceful). This is not to question what can be done in a painting. But, as in Sobye's paintings, the light of existence can be born, the painting can bring about a quietness and a softness. That is something. There is probably something inherently wrong in asking what can a painting do, there is probably something inherently wrong in the way we ask the question. A painting simply is something. Rather than stating that Sobye's paintings are something that "makes reference, brings up a matter" they are something for nameless days. Even though there are special days, they are born amidst ordinary days, nameless days. The days in the past when the old woman was happy, the days since she became unhappy these days are all dissolved into the nameless days. Sobye's paintings convey to us a hard-to-grasp response from those days.