JASPER KRABBÉ

CLOSER TO YOUJA

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JASPER KRABBÉ

CLOSER TO YOU

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Closer to you

“You can never find someone’s identity in a single fixed image,” says Jasper

Krabbé’. “Today, in this era of Facebook and instant information, there are

hundreds and thousands of images out there, often showing exactly the same

subject. Like on a Google search, I was interested in discovering whether from

a huge number of images, one complete picture can finally emerge. From my

many images of Floor, both exuberant and withdrawn, I hope what comes out is

the reality of who she is.“

Whether highly realistic or merely a few minimal lines showing a profile,

Jasper’s recent drawings continue the long tradition in which the portrait

represents the purest relationship between the interpretation of an image and

its context. Employing various materials, in a mismatch of styles and framing,

two hundred of his portraits of Floor, most of them reproduced in this book,

are also installed in broken order in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. He decided

to limit his series to a precise period – twelve months in the life of the woman

with whom he has been together for 15 years. He set out to encompass all

the emotional subtleties and exaggerations, honesty and secrecy, to overlap

the territory between intimacy and public behaviour. The result provides a

panorama of visual obsession, close surveillance and undeniable affection. She

is shown with make-up, and without make-up, wearing fashionable clothes and

nude. Sometimes she poses with confidence, sometimes she appears uncertain.

“I’m fascinated by all the different appearances she has. Floor has so many

distinct looks, from melancholic and silent, to being brutally shameless in-your-

face. This is also reflected in the way each portrait is made. Some are confined,

literally boxed-in with paint. Some are isolated in solitude, others are open, less

cropped, more relaxed. The difference in her mood is translated through the

technique, although sometimes it’s the other way around.”

This creates an ever-changing point-of-view, a celebration of diversity, free from

repetition. Each sequence of portraits is created using different techniques and

shifting moods. Images and references are combined, the perspective is altered.

The atmosphere partly depends on the way each scene is set-up. The narrative

lies in the intimacy itself, focusing on the small moments in a larger life-story.

“It’s a declaration of love, and a method of research, but it’s in no way scientific.

I’m trying to get closer to the woman with whom I live. It’s about getting

through layers to find the true identity.”

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In Jasper’s imagery, Floor’s attitude ranges in scope from the brazenly sexual

to the bored, as she undertakes the casual activities of domestic life. The artist

himself refers back to Bonnard’s wife portrayed in the bath, or stepping out of

the bath, and the women in the paintings of Balthus, combing their hair. Jasper

notes that he has been partly inspired by artists long gone, by the shadows

and silhouettes of Modigliani, Schiele and Munch, and the erotic drawings

of Ingres, but also by his younger contemporaries. However, he is equally

inspired by the visual language of film-posters, street art, old trading cards and

packaging.

In many of his early paintings, Jasper depicted objects and architectural details

including Thai statues, Moroccan arabesques and Italian columns to fix them

to precise geographical locations. In his recent portraits of his wife, this is less

obvious. She has been depicted at home in Amsterdam, in London, in Spain,

in the south of France, in hotel rooms, and in such hopelessly romantic places

as Bali, Biarritz and Curaçao. The location, however, is less important than her

reaction to her surroundings, seen in the angle of her face, the tilt of her head,

the direction of her gaze. We often see her located in transit, in unscripted

moments such as when she is looking for duty-free lipstick at Schiphol airport.

Jasper’s representations themselves cross many stylistic boundaries, the

academic versus the refined versus the rough. Many take a graphic approach.

These are far from romantic, resembling instead instructional illustrations or

meticulous sketches for a brochure.

Other works are not strictly classical portraits at all, maybe only showing the

back of Floor’s head, a highlighted limb, or several superimposed images.

Reveling in their own brand of originality, some of these works are like those

out-of-focus snapshots you immediately discard, but which in fact might be

more honest representations of a person than the flattering, staged photos

shown to friends. However, even with only the use of a few lines of dull colour,

the close bond between the artist and his subject is immediately evident.

“Some of the pictures are almost deathly portraits, in which the light alludes to

life. I wanted to freeze the silent atmosphere. Floor is asleep. In my mind, this

also incorporates the emotion of being able to think that she might not be here.

You try to put this emotion of loss into the image. So I think that several of my

drawings reveal a morbid feeling, perhaps with a mask-like face.

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I have also made a few pictures in which I think she is hiding, moments in which

she doesn’t want to be seen. At these times, she seems very distant. In a way, she

can be very shy. But it’s still all part of me being continually on her case, non-

stop.” Jasper pauses, then he shrugs with a smile. “You don’t want to make your

own wife into an object, but ….”

I’ve known Jasper, and followed his work, since he was still a teenager. I’ve been

Floor’s friend for as long as she has been together with Jasper. And from the

very beginning, I’ve also known her through Jasper’s eyes, mirrored, reflected

and transformed in his watercolours, drawings, rushed ink sketches and rough

paintings, as well as in a couple of his large-scale portraits on canvas. Over this

time, in different cities, I’ve also curated several shows of Jasper’s paintings and

drawings.

Today, Floor is cooking in the kitchen. She is using several pots and pans on the

stove at the same time, plus lots of chopped garlic. I’ve flown in from Rome and

I am visiting Jasper and Floor in their Amsterdam house. We’ve just shared a

bottle of red wine together. But now, Jasper is driving one of his daughters to a

dance-class on his motorbike.

So here I am, alone with Floor and a couple of ginger-coloured cats. Sometimes,

the joy of being an observer, like the thrill of being an artist, is that you don’t

necessarily need to be impartial.

The fact that Floor is a beautiful woman is an objective truth. The fact that in

her professional life, she is a doctor specialized in aesthetic medicine, makes

this anatomical focus additionally fascinating. She is a beautiful woman, in

no need of cosmetic help, working in the field of making other women more

beautiful, and feel more attractive. She is a natural beauty, assisting in the

rejuvenation and synthetic beauty of other women. And she is the ongoing

subject of an artist, her husband, who sees this beauty in all its many facets and

moods, on a daily basis. Jasper even paints Floor while she is dreaming.

So I mention to Floor that in the 1960s and 1970s, David Hockney regularly

drew his young Californian partner Peter Schlesinger while he was asleep, or

laying in the sun, or reading, or whenever else Schlesinger wasn’t aware he was

being scrutinized. Hockney turned Schlesinger into his complicit model, and

one of the few authentic male muses of the 20th century. But eventually, this

constant attention made Schlesinger feel that the artist’s voyeurism was invasive

and intrusive, even an imposition.

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Floor responds. “I don’t feel that I am being watched, not at all. But if I was,

I would like it. If I’m reading a book, and Jasper is making a portrait, that’s fine.

Sometimes I don’t even realize that he is drawing me. I trust him. I trust that he

won’t make me scary or ugly. We’ve been together so long, I find it unusual that

he still spends time looking so closely at me. Even after all these years.”

“Of course, I like some of his images more than others, but even so, I still have a

distance from them. They aren’t me. They are pictures of me.”

Jasper Krabbé is best known for his vast oil paintings of sparse landscapes in

bleached colours and his composite works, resembling schematic diaries, in

which hundreds of pages from small notebooks are affixed in neat rows to broad

canvases. The human figure often appears as a fragment in a larger setting.

He also produces reams of smaller works, including jewel-like self-portraits.

Five years ago, one hundred of these self-portraits were gathered together in a

book, as a volume dedicated to the equal roles of artistic perception and self-

perception, as a manual of gestural bravura.

Jasper notes that a sense of confrontation exists in his paintings of Floor,

revealing different layers of annoyance and aggravation to those which are

present in his self-portraiture. “When the subject is outside of me, it clearly

gives me distance. The subject is over there, not in your own skin, not pricking

at your nerves. So my pictures of Floor are not as introverted as my self-

portraits. They don’t seem so lonely. They are softer, more gentle, caught with a

looser hand. With myself, I seem to be tougher, constantly angry.”

In the series dedicated to his wife, the materials and frames are almost always

used, second-hand, or found. Her face emerges from the surface of torn

cardboard, handmade watercolour paper, wooden panels, and note book

pages. Her features are outlined and shaded in lead pencil, crayon, watercolour,

gouache, charcoal and thin paint. The techniques are opaque. The finished

works often appear damaged, oxidized, fragile yet resilient.

“I am drawing on paper which is not meant to be drawn on. It’s too thin and

it tears. Or it is a strip of hard cardboard that shows rubbed marks and dents.

The ink catches on the paper. I achieve these effects for free, from these older

materials I use. Chance helps the end result. The pencil line doesn’t stick

properly to the raw cardboard. The paint forms a pool. It gives a disturbance

which I really like, and it adds to the idea that the picture belongs to the moment

in which it is created. It’s also connected to the idea that Floor is ageless, so a

portrait of her might have been produced in the Renaissance, or in the 19th

century, or ten minutes ago.”

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In some portraits, the paper provided the starting point, in others, the painting

was inspired by a particular junk-shop frame. The more elaborate frames make

a bold statement, others draw little attention. Some are made from plastic and

cost 50 cents to buy, others are antique, gilded and expensive. In their diversity,

they punctuate the wall like Morse Code.

“I bought several Indian frames from a store in Paris. They were meant for

devotional images, or holy texts, the focus of a daily offering, to be worshipped

every day. They spoke to me about the spiritual aura of a physical object.

Besides their age, their function was very much in line with my idea of my

portraits of Floor as being part of a shrine. The Indian frames show the signs

of change over time. The varnish has peeled off. Some of the glass was already

broken, so I have left it that way. But I also like the humbleness of someone who

has bought a cheap frame from a supermarket, not as an aesthetic choice, but as

a practical one.” For Jasper, it is essential that all the works come together in the

single idea that Floor could have been born at any time. She is an ageless beauty,

simultaneously ancient and contemporary, depicted using the aesthetics and

incidental beauty of chance.

“I like the space, the shift, between all the different styles I use. For example,

an abstract, primitive mood in one painting only becomes apparent when the

work itself is finished. In retrospect, I see the influence of African sculptures.

I suppose you can say that the true link filling all the spaces in between, is my

hand. And how I see Floor, through my portraits of her. The more personal it is,

the more universal it becomes.”

Jonathan Turner

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