A Double Act
By Jurriaan Benschop

“The painting should not become a story,” Robert Muntean remarked in a conversation. We were in his studio in Berlin, looking at some recent paintings, and talking about to what extent a painting should be defined and legible. Muntean does not want the painting to present a completed narrative that the viewer can read as if it were a story in the newspaper or a graphic novel. What counts for him is the appearance, the presence of a human figure, and the sensations that the painting evokes. The artist is intent on what he calls the “sound” of a painting. But what is sound in the context of painting? Is that not an odd description, since painting is a silent medium? To be able to understand the artist, we are helped by a closer look at his studio practice, and at what can actually be seen in his paintings.

It has always been clear to Muntean that he profits from having a motif in mind when organizing the paint. He usually starts with a hint of the human figure, or maybe two or three, and then he develops it further while he is working. This idea of the figure works like an anchor. It has a double function: it establishes a relationship to the outside world, plus it offers a formal starting point to organize the paint. The challenge is to let the figure appear during the painting process, which is not the same as depicting a certain person in a preconceived way. Muntean’s paintings cannot be read as portraits that refer to specific individuals. Rather, they appear as situations caused by the figures in a space. Or life situations, in which the figures find themselves. The paintings show human presence with all its inherent tensions, coloring, and contradictions. Sometimes there are solid bodies to be seen; in other cases, it looks more like silhouettes. Some figures are realistic; others are only faint apparitions, whereby gestures, body language, and position in space are defining factors. In a piece such as Storm (2016), there is expressive anger but also grace and containment. All the color facets and the movement they create reflect a restlessness around the figure.

It can hardly be a coincidence that the painting Disappearer (2016) has the same title as a song by Sonic Youth, one of the No Wave bands which emerged in New York in the 1980s, and which Muntean likes to refer to in parallel to his practice. The emanations of sound is something he also wishes for in his paintings. This involves harmonies but also dissonances, or soundscapes without a tonal center. Wondering how this works in painting, I would replace the word “sound” by “color,” as to me, Muntean is essentially a colorist. It is in color that he can create friction and harmony, counterpoint, and chromaticism. The paintings work as thoughtful color configurations.

There are good reasons to connect his work to Impressionism, not because the artist looks at Impressionist painters in particular (he looks more at other painters), or because his style looks Impressionist (it comes closer to Expressionism), but because the handling of color gets so much attention, just as it did for the Impressionists. It is all about sensation, about slight differences in color. The gesture is different than the Impressionist brush stroke, and the whole is not so much about a dense field of small patches of color, but rather more about layers of transparent colors, brought up in larger gestures. There are a lot of layers that are not on the surface anymore. And then, in the end, it is about the blend that this produces, the harmony, the friction, or even the resistance of colors that do not want to blend together. Now it becomes more clear what Muntean meant with the sound of his paintings. What may have started as music at some point dissolves into a complex field of sound.

The alternation between tonality and atonality seems to be the focus here. Having digested Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and other lessons of the 20th century, Muntean comes up with his own type of figuration. Over the years, he has proven himself to be cautiously balancing contradicting forces and moods within a composition. In a life-size work, such as Disko (2016) the figure is almost (but not fully) abstracted, as if it were a hidden agent organizing the image and giving it urgency and coherence. In Pink Moon (2014), a standing figure appears in silhouette, as if there were a light source behind it. Upon closer examination, the body of the figure becomes visible; it seems to have absorbed all the colors from its immediate environment.

What marks the difference between the individual paintings is the way one color is laid out in different gradations, and the expression that this brings forth, be it fierce, melancholic, edgy, or gentle. There is a whole spectrum, from the smooth fading of one color into another, through to collisions of colors that do not like each other. Each painting has its own key and turbulence. Into the Groovy (2014) shows a standing figure, and the lower part of the painting is dominated by a mix of red, orange, and pink, while in the middle part, a dark blue dominates. It is interesting that the figure has absorbed both of these color areas and brings the conflicting moods together. In Master and Everyone (2014), the setting looks less hospitable. Two figures are engaged in what could be a harsh conversation or discussion. They are much more solid and heavy in appearance.

A lot of decisions, if you can call them so, are made with the brush in the hand, poised before the canvas. There is not a pre-existing design of how the final image should look, just the notion that a figure will “appear” and develop during the process of painting. To work in this manner, without knowing exactly what the result will be, and allowing for accidents, a painter must be willing to surrender to the act of painting and to “not knowing.” Building up and scraping down layers is part of this process. A lot of paint has been taken away from the surface by the time the painting is finished. The reward for this can be discovery and surprise, new formations (rather than compositions) inhabiting the canvas.

In a work called The Austrian Painter (2014), a man looks into the mirror and sees only part of his reflection. It is not just one green that defines this work, it is a chromatic set of greens. The work is loosely based on the photograph of Egon Schiele taken in 1915, where the famous Austrian painter is looking into the mirror. In Muntean’s version, the figuration and the narrative have been reduced to indications. The work is translucent and light in execution. Important is the principle of mirroring, which shows up in Muntean’s paintings more and more often as a compositional tool with existential implications. This can be seen in the work Stage (2016) which is based on Luigi Pirandello’s novel One, No One and One Hundred Thousands, published in 1926. In the book, the mirror functions as the main instrument for self- questioning by the protagonist, and also for alienation.

There are diverse artists who have been occupying Muntean’s thoughts in recent years, such as “American” painters like R.B. Kitaj, Joan Mitchell, Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning—artists who of course have a history of migration and spent only parts of their lives in the US. Similarly, Muntean left Austria to continue his studies in Leipzig, and he later settled in Berlin. He sees himself less an Austrian painter than an European painter, living between and interacting with artists with a rich variety of cultural backgrounds. There is not one main culture, or tune, but more like a complex sound of influences. In 2008 Muntean found a spacious studio in the midst of the lively neighborhood of Kreuzberg in Berlin. The light is favorable, and the studio is quiet despite the density of city life at his doorstep. And somehow this setting fits the mix that can be found in his work, which combines stillness and turbulence, harmony and conflict.

Muntean’s painting is dynamic and sometimes even noisy, to the extent that figures are surrounded by swirling energy and forces. They appear in and from a world full of different impulses— confusing, contradictory, colorful, and hard to keep together. A sense of the present tense (and tension) is evoked. At the same time there is a classic feeling of order; the work has the reflectiveness typical of painting. The viewer is alone with the work, which means in a way being alone with him- or herself and the thoughts that come up while looking. Painting is not a medium that draws the viewer into oblivion, like a movie can do. The viewer is also not immersed in musical development, but rather alone and self- aware with a silent, meaningful image that somehow works as a mirror.

Impressions from city life, from literature, from music listened to, and from other artists looked at find their way into the work and are transformed into color, form, and paint. The figures depicted, as we observe them, are surrounded by color clouds, formations, and occasionally a storm of particles. They appear from and in those complex configurations, whereby figure and background are not clearly separable. It is interesting that the figures can be seen in the act of appearing, but also the other way around, as if they are disappearing and not tangible anymore. The point of painting here is as much about covering the figures as uncovering them—a double act.

Muntean’s paintings are not necessarily accessible. One will not really see them without some time and effort, since the layering in figuration and color requires an unstripping of visual information. It all starts with looking—not only the pleasure of looking, but also the challenge involved and the patience needed. If looked at only briefly, the paintings may look rather dense, not the easiest to talk with if you picture them as characters. But in time, they turn out to be more gentle and coherent. They are, in fact, a lot of things at the same time, in terms of sensation. They can be down to earth or poetic. One needs time to go through the works and experience these different mindsets and sensations.

One of the works in Muntean’s studio is Against the Grain (2015), based on the novel with the same title by Joris Karl Huysmans, first published in France in 1884. The painting has a stripe in the middle, cutting the canvas vertically into two halves; it has an infinity sign, suggesting endless movement going through the work; and it has a small crucifix, posing the question of if some religious reference is meant to be explicit here. Not a typical Muntean painting, it has an open character, untouched in parts, with white spots left blank. The symbolism seems to be rather an exception; it is the result of the fact that Muntean used a photo of Huysmans posing under a cross as a point of departure. Looking back and forth between this painting and other works, there does turn out to be a correspondence. The clear structure reveals something of the coherence that is inside other paintings as well, even though it is usually more hidden. Quite a lot of Muntean’s works, especially the ones made in recent years, have a similarly rough compositional outline, a basic direction that functions as a start of the painting. The outlines have a bold solidity, being the foundation of the compositions. And from there, the play of nuance starts. The pairing and fine-tuning through small color patches attaches itself to this structure, like the leaves of a tree connected to the branch, covering it, and changing its form through constant movement.