现实的原始、古朴,贫瘠的日常生活,存在的神秘感,都给维尔纳·贝格的生活和作品打上了深深的烙印。从他的作品里我们可以看到一个古怪、内向,不断追问自己和环境的身影。他刻意选择了一种离群索居的生活方式,与世隔绝和毫不妥协就是这种生活的最大特色。他尝试着将生活中那些脆弱的场景捕捉下来,还要保存下它们原本的贫穷、纯粹、自然的风貌。他放弃了传统的艺术惯例,期望远离大都市,摆脱各种人为的影响,在原汁原味、自然而然的世界里过着自给自足的生活。

　　维尔纳·贝格(1904-1981)是家中幼子,出生成长在莱茵山区爱伯菲尔德的一个富裕的资产阶级家庭,高中毕业后旋即离开德国前往维也纳学习宏观经济学。读完博士后维尔纳分别在维也纳和慕尼黑艺术学院学习绘画,不过两位绘画老师卡尔·斯特雷、卡尔·卡斯帕尔对他的影响都非常有限。倒是新交的一群朋友对他和他的大学同学、后来的妻子阿玛丽·库斯特产生了重大影响。这群朋友对文明持批判态度,拒绝资产阶级的生活,追求简单、真实、意义丰富的生活。这样的思想促使维尔纳于1931年搬进了鲁塔农庄。鲁塔农庄位于偏僻的坎顿,总共不过二十二公顷,坐落在德劳河谷上方光秃秃的砾岩、碎石梯地上,每年收获甚为微薄,农庄的房舍铺之以木板,到二十世纪六十年代尚未通上自来水和电。在这里维尔纳和家人过上了更贴近自然的生活。

　　围绕着原始、古朴的农民生活维尔纳创作了一些单调但却令人过目难忘的作品。在自己的油画和木刻作品中,维尔纳连续采取明确的构图和近景手法。这些作品的主题无一例外是斯洛文尼亚-奥地利边境的风景和人物,让观众不得不直面最真实的生活。木刻这一最古老的雕版技术也频频为他所用。

　　“没有什么比清清楚楚更神秘”——在这个思想的指导下,醉心于寻找一种简洁、清晰的绘画语言的维尔纳开创了比同时代其他画家更内敛、低调,更脆弱的画风。虽然受到了周围环境的直接影响,但他采用的普通色调以及严格的界面让人乍一看去还以为是后来的波普艺术。二十世纪六十年代,瓦罗尔和列支敦士登等艺术家将放大数倍而后异化的普通人日常生活发掘为自己的绘画主题。与他们不同,维尔纳用平面、醒目的方式再现了自己周遭的世俗农民文化,并且借此寻觅自己独特的绘画语言。漫步乡村的过程中,维尔纳用素描记录下了自己的所见所闻所管所感。画室里的艺术创作最后都归于油画和木刻的清晰平面。正是凭借木刻这项出色的技术,维尔纳精确化,或者更确切的说把自己笔下对象的清晰推向了极致,达到了如同象形文字一般明晰的地步。

　　时代的动荡与冲突也给维尔纳的作品打下了印记。1937年他被诋毁为颓废艺术家。战争里发生的暴行与罪恶都被他用素描或者油画的形式记录了下来。1947年维尔纳成为奥地利公民,其后的很多年他都拒绝举办展览。不过作为一种式微的农业生活的见证人与记录者,维尔纳的作品直到今天仍然保留在大量艺术馆里,频频出现在各种艺术展上。为维尔纳建立的布莱堡博物馆便长期展览他的作品。

　　固执己见、毫不妥协不仅主导着他的艺术创作和生活风格,也决定了他和其他艺术家的交往。特立独行、离经叛道的维尔纳常常在很短的时间内和老朋友恩断义绝。比如他与库尔特·萨克斯、埃米尔·诺德、维尔纳·舒尔茨、奥托·迪克斯、赫伯特·波克尔等人的友谊就是这样画上了句号。埃米尔·诺德是德国表现主义的代表画家,介绍维尔纳进入了柏林商业艺术圈子。维尔纳与妻子和孩子也时常产生矛盾,比如二十世纪五十年代初他爱上比自己年轻十一岁的女诗人克里斯蒂娜·拉万特后竟要求妻子容忍自己的婚外情。

　　维尔纳晚期的作品主题越来越凝练,手法越来越简洁,与早年清新、天真的风格形成了鲜明对比。这些作品呈现的是一个日薄西山、渐行渐远的乡村世界,透露的是悲悼、死亡、时光转瞬即逝的信息。油画和木刻作品的共同点是他对典型、对样本的寻找。他认为把一切简化至最核心的精髓就是理想的表达方式。在他上下求索、不断追问的过程中一直恪守着这个目标。他的座右铭是:“追求安全感的人永远理解不了激情澎湃的惊涛骇浪。”这句话不仅揭示了真理,而且在探讨存在的典型、初始、本质上直到今天也有其合理性。

　　伊蕾娜·舒茨、约瑟夫·舒茨 维也纳 2012年10月

　　“ARCHAIC REALITY”- LIFE AND WORK OF WERNER BERG

　　Archaic reality, the frugality of everyday life and the mystery of being are the essence of the life and oeuvre of the artist Werner Berg. In his work the eccentric and at the same time introvert perspective of someone, who is constantly questioning his surroundings, becomes visible. Isolation and unwillingness to compromise are what determined his consciously secluded lifestyle. He tried to capture the fragile scenes of life in all their simple and natural clarity. Against the usual customs of artistic lifestyle and work, he wanted to live, far from cities and all artificial influences, self-sufficiently in an original, natural world.

　　Werner Berg (1904-1981), born as the youngest of four children in the Bergisch-Rheinisch village of Elberfeld, grew up in a middle class family and left Germany after his graduation from high school to study Political Science in Vienna. After his graduation from university he studied at the Academies of Munich and Vienna. However, the influence that his art teachers Karl Sterrer and Karl Casper had on him, is fairly minimal. More important, however, was his and his fellow student and later wife Amalie Kuster’s friendship with a group of socially critical students, who believed in a search for a fulfilled, true and simple life as a rejection of all bourgeois ways of life. In 1931 this led Berg to move to a remote farmhouse, the Rutarhof, which was only 22 hectares in size and situated above the valley of the river Drau. The fields were on conglomerate and gravel terraces and the harvest was poor. The farmhouse, which was covered with wooden shingles, was without electricity and running water until the 1960s. There he led a life, together with his family that was “near to things…”

　　Following the archaism of farm life, barren but impressive works were produced. The compositional clarity of Berg’s oil paintings and woodcuts is characterized by consistent close-ups. His motifs, almost exclusively the landscape and the people of the region around the Austrian and Slovenian border, confront the viewer with an immediate authenticity of life. The woodcut, being the oldest form of printed graphics, helps Berg immensely in this sense.

　　“Is there anything more mysterious than clarity?” Following this thesis, Berg developed an original characteristic, obsessed by his search for a simple and clear imagery, which seemed more brittle and fragile than that of contemporary artists. Even though he was strongly influenced by the experiences of his immediate surroundings, the often monochromatic and sharply framed areas seem like a predecessor to the bold directness of Pop-Art. Artists like Warhol and Liechtenstein discovered around 1960 the most trivial representations of everyday life as being nothing more than motifs alienated through their extreme amplification. For Werner Berg, however, the two-dimensional and bold representation of peasant trivial cul­ture served as a means of finding an incomparable imagery. In quickly drawn sketches Berg notes down his immediate experiences when wander­ing through the villages. The artistic formulation in his studio produced the clear dimensions of his paintings and woodcuts. Especially in woodcut, the expressionist technique par excellence, Berg made the directness of his representations more precise, even perfect, like a pictogram.

　　The turmoil and adversities of his time left a deep mark also in Berg’s opus. In 1937 he was defamed as being a degenerate artist. Experiences of war, atrocities and crime, he captured as a painter and illustrator. In 1947 he became an Austrian citizen. For long periods of his life, Berg refused to participate in any exhibitions or galleries. Nevertheless, he is represented in many museums and important collections today, also as a chronicler and keeper of a peasant form of life, which has long since disappeared. The museum in Bleiburg, which is dedicated to him, has his work on permanent display.

　　The unwillingness to compromise, not only influenced his work and his unconventional way of life, but also his contact with other artists. Defi­ant, headstrong and unconventional, Berg ended his friendships mostly within a short period of time. Despite initial empathy and closeness, his relationships with Kurt Sachsse, Werner Scholz, Otto Dix, Herbert Boeckl and also Ada and Emil Nolde, all broke up. This most important German expressionist had opened the doors to the commercial art scene of Berlin for Berg. Also in his family serious conflicts surfaced from time to time, not only with his children, but also with his wife, whom he asked to tolerate his love affair with the 11 years younger poet Christine Lavant at the beginning of the 1950s.

　　Contrary to the refreshing naivety of experiences in his early years, the last period of Werner Berg’s work is characterized by the increasing tight­ening and density of his motifs. Sorrow, impermanence and death form his representations of a disappearing peasant world. The important trade mark in Berg’s woodcuts and oil paintings is the search for the exemplary, the original type. In concentrating on the essence, he found his ideal way of expression. Always questioning and searching he stayed true to this aim. “The prodigious will never capture the certain” his erratic maxim has proved to be true and valid until today, in his engagement with the exemplary, the elementary and the existential of being.

　　Irene and Josef Schütz, Vienna, October 2012