Immaculate White: Art and the Drama of Winter
Their allure is here again: the ski slope, the glacier landscape, the charm of
the little mountain huts. Brilliant sunshine, deep blue sky, pristine
slopes, and powdery snow - that's how we're used to seeing the winter
presented in the pamphlets and brochures of the tourist industry. Artists
are also fascinated by the chilly season, albeit usually in very different
ways. For them, winter can be a period of threat and harsh contrast, a
time of drama, loneliness, and the passing of life. An essay exploring the
icy regions of photography, painting, and video art by Ulrich Clewing
Tobias Rehberger: Untitled, 1992,
Deutsche Bank Collection
February 14
2005, an urgent report issued by dpa: according to the German Press
Agency, the Arlberg Pass, the Lechtal Pass, and the entrance to the
Tyrolean Lechtal are closed to traffic. Around 15,000 people were stranded
in the winter sport locations of Stuben, Zürs, and Lech on the Arlberg.
Due to further snowfall, a rapid improvement in the situation was not to
be expected. There it was again: for a few days, normal rules were
suspended, the smooth functioning of things was interrupted, and the
winter had shown itself from its more ruthless side.
Gert Rappenecker: Untitled (notes), 1992,
Deutsche Bank Collection
News reports of this
kind don't tend to make much of an impression on
Walter Niedermayr. Niedermayr, born 1952 in Bolzano in Southern Tyrol,
knows the mountains well; he lives there year round, beyond the winter
holiday season. And he's photographed them, the first time more than 17
years ago, and repeatedly ever since. He's made hundreds of pictures of
them, combined them in series, shown them in galleries and museums, and
published them in books. The sun seldom shines in his photographs, and
when it does, it can't be seen; nor can a deep blue sky.
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Walter Niedermayr: Jungfraujoch II, 1998,
Deutsche Bank Collection
When people do
appear in his pictures, then they're usually very small, not much larger
than ants. What can often be seen in Niedermayr's photographs are what
people have left behind, the things they've build into the landscape to
make their stay there more comfortable: chair lifts, self-service
restaurants, and viewing platforms, for instance. The artist tends to use
a frontal or close-up view, which might not have the beauty of a panorama,
but offers a clearer portrayal of the details, all the lost perspectives,
empty corners, and other absurd constellations resulting from the
collision between architecture and nature in the high mountain landscape.
Sometimes, Niedermayr depicts the mountains without the accompanying
infrastructure. Then they seem huge and uninviting, rugged and karstic. At
the same time, they possess a breathtaking natural magnificence. The
snow-covered mountain cliffs, the deeply cleft and fissured glaciers are
completely covered in patterns, none of which is like another, as unique
as fingerprints. The light that shines there is usually diffuse, but
always bright. Sometimes it's so bright that it hurts the eyes.
William Wegman: Dusted, from the series
"Elephant, Bad Dog & Dusted" , 1988,
Deutsche Bank Collection
This domination of
the color white most aptly, perhaps, illustrates the ambivalence in
Niedermayr's images - as a symbol, it is multifaceted. In western
cultures, the color is mainly associated with positive properties and
states such as purity, virginity, joy, and elegance.
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