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Miriam Vlaming
The Glancy
2006
Egg Tempera on canvas
110 x 140 cm |
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Art Interview: Are you originally from Leipzig?
Miriam Vlaming: No, I’m originally from Düsseldorf, that’s where I grew up. I grew up speaking Dutch and German because my father is from Amsterdam, and I spent part of my childhood in the Netherlands. My mother always wanted to be a painter. When she was young she did some design and she was good at it. But she was born in 1944 and after Germany’s defeat in World War II there was no room to be creative. It was a time when people really had to concentrate on earning money because they needed to have security. So she became a filing clerk. But, if she had five extra minutes on the weekends she would create something. This influenced me and I went completely into my own world of art making. I got really good at painting and drawing as a child because I was so in love with it. As a kid I collected all kinds of images. I got into this girly Posey stuff and I loved it. I still have my old sketchbooks from when I was very little.
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Miriam Vlaming
Compagnie
2005
Egg Tempera on canvas
110 x 150 cm |
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During the holidays and in the summertime I went to my grandfather’s home. He had collected all kinds of colored pencils for me. This may sound strange but the most beautiful smell I can remember from my childhood is the smell of pencils, especially the cheap ones with all their colors. The outside of the box was so beautiful. Fourteen different shades of yellow, like the citron yellow, and a little more yellow, and a honey yellow. But of course they were cheap and it was such a disappointment because half of the yellow colors didn’t work at all. They made me crazy!
Art was my world from the beginning. I really wanted to paint, I actually had to paint and I was always very focused on this; no matter what was happening in my life. Because of this one thing led to another and I became a professional artist. In the beginning my parents said, “You are not making your Arbitur (the highest high school degree) to become an artist!” They told me I couldn’t make a living from it. So I said, ”Okay, I will make sure I have something to fall back on while I paint. Maybe I’ll study graphic design”, but luckily they didn’t select me for the design program at the University.
Art Interview: What did you end up focusing on in your studies?
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Miriam Vlaming
Minorities
2006
Egg Tempera on canvas
130 x 160 cm |
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Miriam Vlaming: Since they didn’t accept me in the design program I had to do something else. I was still living at home at the time and my mother wouldn’t let me just hang around painting. So, I decided to study education with a focus on sociology and psychology because I was interested in examining human nature closer. After I received my intermediate diploma I realized that I had looked close enough in this direction. I was never interested in becoming a teacher. Studying further in this direction would be a compromise for me. You have to understand that during the three years I studied education at the Heinrich Heine University I never stopped painting: I took private art lessons, I painted every evening in my first studio and I put on small shows. I knew that this was my way and I began thinking about how I could further my art education. I had considered going to London but I was always interested in the human reality and I knew that in order to develop in this direction I had to understand the anatomy of the human body. During the 1990s the best place to study academic art was in East Germany. And I jumped on the opportunity when a friend said: “Let’s go to Leipzig.” So, I applied to the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig (HGB) and the first day I went there I completely fell in love with the city and the beautiful old school, a classical academy with huge spaces to work in. It gave me the feeling of being a completely free soul.
After you apply and send in your portfolio the school invites selected people to come in for a very intense portfolio review. It lasts about a week and you work the whole day. From your performance they decide who can attend the school. Luckily my work was interesting enough and I showed enough aptitude that they told me I could begin classes that winter. It is not that my technique in drawing was extraordinary. Technique is some they could easily teach us anyway. I guess what caught their eye was the way I went about approaching the assignments. For example, when they ask us to paint a tidal wave I painted someone waiting for a wave. I never approached the assignment literarily.
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Miriam Vlaming
Falling Apart
2006
Egg Tempera on canvas
80 x 120 cm |
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They start you off with 2 years of academic art and they really push you. After finishing the second year you can begin your main focus. At the end of my second year I was working on a huge sculpture and it was the only artwork that I will never give up because it has become something like a good luck charm for me. It has somehow become a symbol and reminder of the effort and focus necessary to put into your work.
It is a two-meter high self-portrait made out of wet earth and it weighed 500 kilos! Just as I was finishing the piece it started to slowly shift and completely fell apart before my eyes. It took me another two weeks of working every day to get the piece back to where I wanted it. I was very angry frustrated and distraught while I was rebuilding the piece. From this I realized that intense feelings like anger leads me to push my art to the next level powerfully. When things don’t work out as you expect, as they should, opportunities open and take you to a place that is unknown. You take chances you ordinarily wouldn’t be able to make.
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Arno Rink
'Rot' of the series 'Frauen'
1998/99
Gouache, chalk and pen on paper
110 x 130 cm
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Neo Rauch
Demonstrations
2004
Oil on canvas
118 1/8 x 82 3/4 inches
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Luckily during this time, I had the help of a great sculptor who teaches at the HGB Leipzig, Karl-Heinz Apfel. In the end we had to cast the piece because the weight was just completely impractical. You couldn’t move it. I nearly didn’t get my ”Vordiplom” because some of the painting professors wanted me to concentrate only on painting and asked me: “Do you know how many paintings and drawings you could have made instead of working on that sculpture?” But for me it was very important to physically understand the figure with my own hands, building it in all of its dimensions. In professor Arno Rink I found a teacher who not only understood this but also was able to take me further in my development. So, in 1996 Arno Rink became my advisor together with his assistant Neo Rauch. So one week Rink would advise me and the next week Rauch. It was annoying switching between two different conflicting opinions. Sometimes they would even argue with each other right in front of my pictures. For example; I would work on a painting and one of them would say you can do anything but don’t get rid of this orange at the bottom of the painting, it is what makes everything work. So I would spend a week arranging everything around the orange. The next week the other teacher would come in and say: “It’s a beautiful painting but come on, get rid of that orange – it’s awful!” In the end I just said fuck it, I’m going to do what I need to do and trust my own opinion because you people are diving me mad! I’m not sure if their teaching method was intentional but the end result made me more confident about myself and my work. Never the less I ended up working closer with Arno Rink because he helped me to understand myself and bring wisdom to my work. He looks at the whole of life with a high sensitivity that inspired me. He talked about following my instincts.
At a certain point I went to the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie (Art Academy) due to an illness in my family.
Art Interview: Did you meet Jörg Immendorff while you were in Düsseldorf?
Miriam Vlaming: Yes, but I didn’t like his karma. When I went to see if he would work as my advisor I walked right into the middle of a scene that made me very uncomfortable and I realized that such events were daily life for him. But there were several well-known artists teaching there at the time such as Marcus Lüppertz, Dieter Krieg, Jan Dibbets and others.
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Jan Dibbets
Perspective Correction - My Studio II, 3: Square with Cross on Floor
1969
Black and white photograph on photographic canvas
43 3/8 x 43 3/8 inches |
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Dibbets, was Dutch and I was interested in working with him. He had a good sense of humor and was someone whose opinion I trusted. At the time I wanted that second voice of opinion on my work. He told me similar things to what they were saying in Leipzig: “Go in that direction, work bigger, trust your drawings, and go your own way.” During this time in Düsseldorf, I also started writing a 300-page thesis of interviews I had made with museum curators and art dealers. It was the theoretical part of my diploma and I received an honors award for it. After that I went back to Leipzig and studied two more years for a master’s degree with Arno Rink, which I received in 2001
During the second year of my master’s program I did a three-month residency program in Africa. I wasn’t able to paint there, but I made drawings and collected these funny postcards with clichés on “Out of Africa”. Although the trip was inspiring and brought a lot of color to my work Africa was not a subject that I could work with. I did make some works during the remainder of my time in school that were inspired by my trip; working with patterns, literature, some commercial things, and different elements, but I didn’t continue with that style.
After that I went for three months to America for a residency there.
Art Interview: What was the process to get the residency?
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Miriam Vlaming
Raststätte
2007
Egg Tempera on canvas
150 x 200 cm |
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Miriam Vlaming: Well, I realized that if I wanted to take part in a residency program I would have to apply. So, I started sending out applications to various places. I couldn’t believe it only took one year to get accepted into a program. I got the Dresden/Saxony Artist in Residency through the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Saxony State Ministry of Arts and Sciences. I was so happy. It’s small compared with New York City, but it was great. It was nice to be in Columbus. The surroundings were nice and there are good people there.
When I came back home to Germany, everybody said, “Oh, they have no idea, they all love George Bush”. But the people I met there were actually really critical of him and rightly questioned what was happening with the politics in their country.
Art Interview: How did you find your first gallery?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Miriam Vlaming on October 13, 2007. The interview took place at Vlaming's studio in Berlin, Germany and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine. The biography introducing Miriam Vlaming at the beginning of this interview was written by Steve Schepens and Ekaterina Rietz-Rakul for Art Interview Online Magazine.
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