THE ART OF LYDIA SCHRUFER
Robert J. Lewis
Salzburg-born
Lydia Schrufer was 10 years old when she became aware of her drawing skills
– and has been honing her craft ever since. Exhibiting since 1985, her
paintings are found in public and private collections both here in Canada
and abroad. That her life and art are exceptionally intertwined speak to the
difficult circumstances life has forced upon her. “I have always tried
to give full aesthetic value to the ordinarily dry details of daily life.”
From turning an ice-storm felled branch into a copper coated chandelier, to
winning, in 1997, Le Prix Regionale de Jardinage Quebecois, for the
best garden in the region, Lydia’s life and art are indeed inseparable.
She proposes that we are all artists in the sense that anyone who has ever
furnished or arranged a room is doing installation art?”
Lydia’s next exhibition will take place in March,
2003, at the Arts Station Gallery in St. Hilaire.
I spoke with her in her studio in St. Bruno.
MONTREAL SERAI: Is it not unusual to be so
taken up by art at such an early age?
LYDIA
SCHRUFER: Perhaps, but there were reasons for it. I was six years
old when my parents moved from Austria to Canada. In those days, there was
no Medicare, no safety net for immigrants. It was a difficult transition especially
for my parents and also for me. I had to learn English and French, I was an
only child, and was caught in the crossfire of an unhappy marriage, between
guilty parents competing for my love. I felt very isolated, and at that time,
art was an escape, a beautiful escape: it became my way of dealing with everything
that was going on around me that I would understood only much later in life.
I left home at the age of 17, never to return, and thanks to art, I didn’t
self-destruct, but managed, while having the kind of fun most people were
having during those years, to stay focused, and have one eye on my goals in
life.
MS: So your childhood was unhappy?
LYDIA SCHRUFER: I would say more difficult than
unhappy. Both my parents were frustrated artists: my father could draw very
well and had considerable ability on the piano while my mother was a creative
designer. Each in his own way felt short-changed or betrayed by life which
didn’t help their marriage, all of which became the content of my childhood.
MS: After painting for many years, you decided to burn almost
everything you had ever done before 1998. Why?
LYDIA SCHRUFER: Even though my work was beginning
to enjoy some critical acclaim, I felt it was becoming formulaic, that I was
becoming a prisoner of what I was doing well, that my art had become too comfortable
a place. Then one day I realized I wasn’t taking any risks, that what
I was doing didn’t have anything to do with what I was feeling inside
– so I decided to get rid of it all because it wasn’t me, or if
it was me, it was a lesser me which I didn’t like anymore, which was
an embarrassment.
MS: What distinguishes what you’re doing
now from then?
LYDIA
SCHRUFER: My new work is more about color and less about narrative;
it’s less didactic. I’m only discovering that my true voice is
a voice that is in constant flux, which is constantly reacting to a world
that is always changing: it’s only natural that my art reflect these
changes, and changes in myself and my life situation.
I’m able to choose my battles better than before. I
once felt compelled to change the opinions of other people: now it’s
enough to know what I believe in. I’m finally getting glimpses of what
is meant by inner peace -- and I would hope that my art reflects this.
MS: Are you concerned about what’s happening
in art today? Is there a crisis in the visual arts?
LYDIA SCHRUFER: There’s a lot of great and
innovative art out there, so if there is a crisis it perhaps lies with the
viewer, and before that the pretentious art critics who have done nothing
to prepare the viewer for modern art. It seems that today’s critics
(I make an exception to Montreal’s Henry Lehman) are more interested
in showing themselves to the world than making the art they review more accessible
to the average viewer. I believe the critic, using his high falutin language,
has put art in the upper stratosphere, has alienated the viewer, has made
him feel that he’s incapable of appreciating art. Art critics assume
that the average viewer is familiar with the trends in art, the reasons behind
the various movements; so they find it beneath their dignity to refer to what
is, in their view, self-evident. As long as this attitude persists, the viewer
will be left in the lurch in terms of his ability to appreciate art.
And
then there is a tendency on the part of critics to canonize certain artists
while ignoring others: this celebrity-making doesn’t help the viewer
who is already confused about what distinguishes good from bad art. On the
other hand, it must be said the modern viewer is also much changed compared
to the 19th century viewer of art. All of us are raised with the expectation
of instant gratification, so when we look at a misshapen head and don’t
understand it, we call it bad art without having made the effort to understand
it.
MS: I know you’re a great admirer of
Barnet Newman (1905-1970), and the National Museum’s controversial purchase
of Voices of Fire, a work comprised of 3 stripes which cost 1.7 million
dollars. What attracts you to his art? Someone might ask how can 3 stripes be
art?
LYDIA
SCHRUFER: Barnet Newman was arguably the first mature, hard-edge,
color field painter. As mentioned before, historical context is essential
in the appreciation of what Newman was tying to accomplish, which was to vanquish
the illusion of perspective in art. He wanted what you saw to be the thing
you actually saw. In figurative work, when you see a tree in a field, you
aren’t seeing an actual tree in an actual field, but a representational
illusion of it. In Newman, what you see is what is there: it’s a plane,
an environment with total integrity, the movement of which anticipated the
environments produced by installation art. As someone once said: just because
there is no object in painting doesn’t mean there’s no subject.
There
was time when the viewer of art could be satisfied by a picture, even a small
one, hanging on the wall. Today, all sorts of things are competing for our
attention: TV, movies, music videos, billboards, all of which have desensitized
us. Art has to be bigger, and louder and always different to get our attention.
The viewer now wants to be engulfed by art, to be integrated into it: that
is why installation has become so popular. Barnet Newman was a pioneer, a
precursor to the idea of art as environment.
MS: How does your art fit into all of this?
LYDIA SCHRUFER: I can’t worry about that. There
is a world out there which I care deeply about, and as long as I react honestly
to what’s going on in the world, my art will reflect my passions as
well as a certain integrity to which I hope others will be able to connect.
All images Copyright of LYDIA SCHRUFER ©
THE END
Voice Your Opinion
- Return to
the Table of Contents - HOME
