Paul Rotterdam

Paul Rotterdam (born 12 February 1939) is an Austrian-born American painter.

Werner Paul Zwietnig-Rotterdam was born and grew up in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, (heavily bombed during World War II). He moved with his parents to Leoben where he attended Elementary and High School. In 1960 he moved to Vienna, briefly attended the Akademie der angewandten Kunst and enrolled at the University of Vienna to study philosophy. In 1961 he had his first exhibition of paintings at the Galleria Numero in Florence. He had an exhibition for the first time in Vienna in 1962. Three years later he was selected to represent Austria at the Fourth Biennial of Young Artists in Paris and at the Eighth Biennial of International Art in Tokyo. He also had exhibitions in Vienna, Graz, Milan, Rome and Venice. In 1966 he received a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Vienna. Daughter Charlotte was born in 1968.

At the age of 28 Paul Rotterdam was appointed Lecturer on Visual Studies at the Visual Arts Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. He delivered lectures on theoretical issues of 20th-century art and conducted studio courses on drawing. His first museum retrospective took place in 1970 at the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, MA. The exhibition continued to Kunsthalle Freiburg, Germany, the Museum Joanneum in Graz, and the Stadtmuseum Leoben, Austria. In 1973 he moved his studio to a loft on West-Broadway in the Tribeca section of New York City. He continued teaching in the spring semesters at Harvard University. In 1975 he was included in the "Whitney Biennial of American Art" (New York City), "Artist-Immigrants of America, 1876–1976" (Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C), "Drawing Today in New York", (Tulane University, New Orleans, 1976), "Eight Abstract Painters", (Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia,1976) and other exhibitions of American Art. In 1996 Rotterdam married the painter, Rebecca LittleJohn. In 2007 there were retrospective exhibitions at the Leopold Museum, Vienna and the N.Oe. Landesmuseum, St.Poelten Austria. Paul Rotterdam was awarded the medal of honor for science and art from the Republic of Austria. From 2007 his work was permanently exhibited by Galerie Erich Storrer, Zurich.

2014: Hirmer Verlag (Munich) publishes Wild Vegetation, From Art to Nature in English (distr. by University of Chicago Press) and German, a selected group of public lectures given at Harvard University, Columbia University, Portland School of Art, Maine (commencement address 1992), Cooper Union School of Art, Benedictine monastery Seckau, San Antonio College. In the Fall of 2014 he lived in Vienna, Austria, to deliver book presentations and lectures at the Joanneum Graz, N.Oe. Landesmuseum, Stadtmuseum Leoben. In November 2014 he had a public discussion with the philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann at the Leopold Museum in Vienna covering the topic of the sublime which in Modernism has become an important criterion to measure progress in art. Immanuel Kant’s thesis in the Critique of Judgement that " the sublime is what pleases against the interest of the senses" and presents itself as nature was interpreted by Formalist critics as the demand for a high degree of abstraction. Jean-Francois Lyotard goes so far as to claim that future painting will be "white like Malevitch’s squares".

Zwietnig-Rotterdam and Liessmann agreed that the post-modern and contemporary view of the sublime does not depend on the degree of abstraction but on the constellation of pictorial elements which form an autonomous nature. Today it is no longer a question how far a painting can be removed from the representation of reality but how autonomous it is as a nature in itself accessible to empathy and contemplation.

2015: Exhibition of 7 paintings and 4 drawings at the Galerie Erich Storrer, Zurich.

Rotterdam's paintings are generally abstract and mostly monochrome or reduced in color. Three-dimensionality is an important feature in his work with forms often protruding from the pictorial plane into actual space. The art critic Dore Ashton has written about his style: "His vision of the mission of the painter is similar to the statement of Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to his wife, not a reality that remain in dreams, intentions or moods, but their implementation in real things. Rotterdam is a modern painter (though he doubts its modernity) with images that represent closed, physical entities in themselves. He is forced to put his strong feelings in things." From about 1980 Rotterdam became less minimalist and included more naturalistic forms. Konrad Paul Liessmann in Morbus Metaphysicus [5] : " Without doubt, the seriousness with which Paul Rotterdam’s paintings address the substance of things is directed less toward Nietzsche’s amoral Artist’s Metaphysics than towards concepts that seek a sui generis reality within a pictorial space. What sort of world is this, apprehended through a confrontation with art , that at first sight appears hermetic and only at second sight unveils a finely spun web of connections to the visible world ?" " The relationship of the modern artist to nature is characterized by an attempt to disregard the classical dictates of imitation and create instead a world beyond nature". "In a group of late works, Paul Rotterdam approaches with care and sensitivity a concept that includes both nature as the intrinsic condition of the work and nature as a reminder of a precognizant world. These pictures appear self-evident and mysterious in a forceful manner, impossible to classify as pure abstraction or described as representational in a mimetic sense. They certainly are not figurativ and the expressive element appears more as subtle gesture than as an emotional outburst. While these works depict no landscapes , something seems to be inscribed in their monochrome surfaces that evokes nature from a distance. Here is some grass barely moving in the wind , there a gentle curve of a hill, possibly a horizon, clearings warily coming into view , glints of reflecting water, an endless expanse of sky". " The paintings of Paul Rotterdam lay a path to the phenomenon of nature so that art can find content without compromising its autonomy and natural quality." Alvin Martin in Paul Rotterdam’s new Romanticism [6]: "Rotterdam’s new acceptance of nature and history has also created for him a new philosophical attitude toward illusionistic space. Elements of illusionism have long been present in his work. Previously, however, these had been abstract allusions to his own spiritual voyage into an existential void , an eternity of nothingness. His new works still engage cosmic vastness , but now on a level of the romantic notion of the sublime. His metaphysical amalgamation of earth, plants, sky and water, punctuated by indications of temporal man-made things or myths , represents for him an eternal unity not only of man and nature but also of past,present and future. The artist gives himself and thus the viewer access to these mysterious landscapes of the spirit. The observer enters these images like some Berkelean perceiver, giving reality to these entities. He has produced images which are at once abstract, spiritual and humane". Joachim Roessl in L’equilibre mental [7]: " I consider it to be at the least a very conservative interpretation, if the label of "new romanticism" (with a bridging link to C.D. Friedrich ) is applied to Rotterdam’s work. Far more important are the positions formulated by Kandinsky and particularly Mondrian. That is where the point of departure lies for Rotterdam’s work. Kandinsky advocated formlessness, Mondrian favored rigid formalism. Both were of the opinion that the task of modern art was to reach the universal through the particular and thus to arrive at a view of the inner being of things. The aim was to overcome the exterior object world. By progressing into an interior zone, potentialities of expression previously inaccessible to painting are to be explored. " If you represent something that can be perceived through the senses, you express something human , because you know these things from within your own self. If you do not represent things, a space will remain for that which is divine". ( Mondrian, Diary, 1914). How,then, are Rotterdam’s visual creations to be interpreted against this theoretical background, and what is their relation to Piet Mondrian’s work? Without a doubt, Rotterdam’s crucial concern is to view the essence of things through the medium of art. This is an attempt at objectification of the metaphysical, in order to make it communicable. Because behind every external form of appearance stands the reality of an inner essence. At its most extreme consequence, then, the picture is an expression of pure reality. Rotterdam, for this reason, often refers to his works as painting of the real. …..What is fascinating is the splendor of these picture plates as well as their poetic qualities… Rotterdam has carried out the crucial step towards a humanization of the art object. His works, while of a high intellectuality, can be experienced primarily emotionally. This in spite of their formal purism and indeed because of their lack of gestures. These images achieve their effect solely through their very clarity". Manfred Wagner in Paul Rotterdam [8] : " Paul Rotterdam’s thematic interest does not concentrate on representational content but on a substance principally understood as something three-dimensional, manifested or at least projected. His path of development leads from Klimt’s persuasive concept of flatness to the concept of the sublime in a literal sense rather than as a metaphor. Autonomy of the painting is sought by means of a self-contained system of form concerning the entire compass of the work rather than from the limited space within the frame. A visual structure is not only promoted as a new way of transforming nature, but also presents a challenge for the ongoing creation of paintings existing seemingly previous to the hand of the artist - an idea often embraced by African art. A painterly ambience is not the issue, but a psychic state, a kind of enlightenment caused by a pictorial structure unconcerned with figurative content."

Townsend Wolfe in cat. Paul Zwietnig-Rotterdam, A drawing retrospective [9]. “ In the early 1980s I first experienced the drawings of Paul Rotterdam. I experienced them rather than saw them. The work totally embraced my being with a presence. Nothing entered my thoughts; not the image, the technique, or the composition, not the theory, the history of the maker. I had no compulsion to analyze; I was absorbed by the compelling mystical atmosphere of movement , sounds, darkness and light before me. Shortly after this first encounter I began exploring Rotterdam’s drawings. I found that works created both earlier and later than those I had first seen possessed a similar and consistent aesthetic power. During this period of exploration , The Arkansas Arts Center acquired two Rotterdam drawings , Rosebush I, 1983 and Unicorn, 1985 , both graphite on paper. These two works were included in the international exhibition Revelations: Drawing/America, …..”

Dore Ashton in Paul Rotterdam’s Drawings [10]: “ I do not mean to suggest that Rotterdam is wholly moored in early Romantic feelings about nature. Certainly in many recent drawings, his response to the feelings of other artists, such as Heckel and Van Gogh enters. The late Van Gogh drawings of cypresses in various seasons, for instance, are there in his visual memory, as are certain of Paul Klee’s approaches to the landscape in which the pattern of trees is set in a coursing sequence of strokes suggesting the rhythms of nature re-ordered by man. Klee’s diligent research into the dynamics of nature - he said “ every seed is cosmos”- is also a modern adaptation of early Naturphilosophie speculations. How Rotterdam fuses all his intuitions, perceptions, and precise observations is most moving in his drawings of the past few years. I think of Erasmus, that mysterious double image of a tree,at once instantly identifiable as a naturalistic study, and gradually, as one looks carefully, identifiable as an allegory of nature.Erasmus, as Rotterdam speaks of him, was a man given to seek the universal. He was, Rotterdam says, “a scholar who wanted to unite philosophy, art and religion.” I believe that Rotterdam’s highest aspiration is to follow suit. This is sensed throughout his work, in which what we can only lamely call the creative principle is sought each time, and in the process of drawing, is reaffirmed.”

Albertina, Vienna; Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, Ma; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Al; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Cornell University Art Museum, Ithaca, NY; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Ia; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Ma; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz; Leopold Museum, Vienna; Metropolitan Museum, NYC; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee; Musée de Nice, Nice; Musée l’Abbaye Sainte Croix, Les Sables d’Ólonne; Musée d’Art Moderne-Beaubourg, Paris; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal, Montreal; Museum der Stadt Leoben, Leoben; Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St. Pölten; Ohara Museum, Tokyo; Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Ark; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; The Power Institute of Art, Sydney; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minn;

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  "Blenheim", 2003, Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 150 cm

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  "Garden", 2006, Acrylic on canvas, 244 x 155 cm

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  "Night", 1996, Graphite on paper, 88 x 567 cm

• Paul Rotterdam. Ausstellung 1965. Katalog, Galerie im Griechenbeisl, 1965.
• Carl Aigner (Hrsg.): Paul Zwietnig-Rotterdam. Worklist. painting, sculpture, projects. Werkliste. Malerei-Skulptur-Projekte. 1953–2004. Mit Essays von Alvin Martin, Kenneth Wahl, Dore Ashton, Konrad Paul Liessmann, Joachim Rössl, Manfred Wagner, Prestel, München 2004 und 2007, ISBN 978-3-7913-3286-4.
• Alvin Martin: Paul Rotterdam: The 14 Stations of the Cross, The University of Texas at San Antonio, 1982
• Carter Ratcliff: Paul Rotterdam. Selected paintings 1972–1982, Storrer Edition, Zürich, 1982
• Joachim Rössl, Dore Ashton: Paul Zwietnig-Rotterdam. Ausgewählte Arbeiten, 1969 – 1989 Hrsg. Von der Kulturabteilung des Landes Niederösterreich, Wien, 1989, ISBN 3854600054
• Kenneth Wahl:Paul Rotterdam: Selected drawings 1974–77, Storrer Edition, Zürich, 1977, ISBN 3-85908-001-X.
• Townsend Wolfe: Paul Zwietnig-Rotterdam, A Drawing Retrospective 1969–1994, The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, 1995
• Paul Zwietnig Rotterdam: Wild Vegetation – From Art to Nature, Hirmer Verlag, Munich, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7774-2219-0
• Gotthard Fellerer: Paul Z. Rotterdam schreibt ein neues Buch, BravDa, 3/4, Wiener Neustadt, 2014