“His paintings are not image-based at all. They are like real living things.”
– Dana Schutz, artist
Few artists leave a permanent mark on art history. One of these is Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943). Born into a poor family in a shtetl near Minsk in present-day Belarus, Soutine moved to Paris in 1913 to join the myriad of artists who lived in Paris during the nineteen-twenties. Soutine was an outsider who stood out from the crowd, going against the dominant trends toward abstraction; he painted his immediate surroundings and people who, like him, found themselves on the lowest rung of society.
Today, Soutine is known as an “artist’s artist”; a prolific and influential painter whose work left an indelible mark on the world of art. Soutine’s unique style and ability to capture raw emotion on canvas made him a source of inspiration for fellow artists, including the artist group CoBrA, and the School of London, who chose Soutine as a model of inspiration. Other artists who took inspiration from Soutine were Willem de Kooning (1904–1997, NL/US), Jackson Pollock (1912–1956, US), and not least Francis Bacon (1909–1992, UK).
In this video, seven contemporary artists, Dana Schutz (1976, US), Amy Sillman (1955, US), Emma Talbot (1969, UK), Leidy Churchman (1979, US), Thomas Hirschhorn (1957, CH/FR), Chantal Joffe (1969, US/UK), and Imran Qureshi (1972, PK), talk about their fascination with Chaim Soutine and his work. Sitting in her studio surrounded by oil paintings, Chantal Joffe reflects on her long-time admiration for Soutine: “It’s easy with painting to think ‘oh a lot of people do that,’ but really there is just no one like him. There is no one who paints with that kind of specificity and yet the freedom to hold the kind of passion in check.”
Soutine’s subjects include cooks, altar boys, chambermaids, and bellhops, as well as tottering landscapes and slaughtered animals. What he captures is an attitude toward life in an era marked by wars and feelings of a world in flux. His paintings reflect a vulnerability that, in many ways, speaks to the existential anxieties of our time. Painter Leidy Churchman explains: “Rembrandt had done the hanging cow at the butcher, but in this way of redemption and to say we can be saved and go to heaven. Soutine took that and was talking more about the human level of life as it is: ugly and beautiful and vibrant.”
The video is made in collaboration with Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Kunstmuseum Bern, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in connection with the exhibition ‘Chaïm Soutine Against the Current’. The exhibition is on view at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf until January 2024 and will be viewed at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk and Kunstmuseum Bern in 2024.
The seven artists were interviewed by Nanna Rebekka in their homes, galleries, and studios between April and May 2023.
Producer and editor: Nanna Rebekka
Cinematographers: Philip Peng Rosenthal, Kyle Stevenson, Sean Hanley
Curatorial consultant: Kirsten Degel
Additional photography: Achim Kukulies, Düsseldorf
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2023
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling, and Fritz Hansen.
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