Dr. Erwin Treu: The path of a Painter
1955-1968 Kunstmsueum Basel
1968-1971 Director of the Museum für Gestaltung Basel
1971-1990 Director of the Ulmer Museum Ulm
German
Michelle Bird, born in 1965 as Michelle Lynn Garrett in San Francisco, is an exceptional person in many ways. Her life’s path has led her to more than three continents, through numerous countries and cities, and has given her many unique impressions and experiences. As a result, her art is not easily categorized or analyzed; Bird’s expression is always the unexpected.
Bird grew up in San Francisco, living there and elsewhere along the West Coast of the United States for 25 years. In 1982 in San Francisco, her daughter Gretchen came into the world. Blessed with her mother’s talents, Gretchen would go on to become a painter herself.
Early on, family ties brought the young and highly gifted Michelle Bird into the world of art in its broadest sense. Her mother, an American with northern European roots, is a successful designer who majored in political science, European history and German at the University of Oregon. Bird’s father, a Mongolian Chinese from Shanghai, was a painter, photographer and politician. This inherited ‘DNA’ not only set her on the path towards artistic endeavors, but also meant a life full of cosmopolitan attitudes and unstoppable determination.
As a schoolgirl, Bird enjoyed a creative education, which aroused her curiosity for the surrounding arts. Yet it was more than an education in art that guided the development of this artist; it was also her enthusiasm of architecture, photography and music, interests that were strengthened by her parents’ activities. The multiple talents of her parents nevertheless continually obstructed her path as a painter. Bird explored arts and crafts, such as silversmithing, leather crafting and ceramics. She was drawn to diverse interests including computer programs, architecture and design. These eventually led her to an architecture firm where she began to make her living.
Bird has always been fascinated by architecture, and her sketchbooks are filled with architectural ideas. However, it is interesting to note that her paintings contain no such constructed elements. In fact, her paintings are not ‘constructed’ but, rather can be seen as mental explosions, always with a certain sense of inner liberation.
Immersed in the blossoming local art scene of the American West Coast with its numerous international artists, composers and writers, Bird recalls fond memories of her many experiences and how she has benefited from the lasting impressions of those years.
Great American art of this time, with artists like Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, awakened her enthusiasm. Bird appreciates this Hard Edge Art with its characteristic abstract compositions of chromatically colored fields as much as she appreciates contemporary figurative work. Since we do not know her early work, still we do not know if this genre of American art influenced her style. Yet it seems unlikely. If any American artist has evoked lasting impressions on Bird then it would be Sam Francis; the most ‘French’ amongst the American painters would have had an effect in the earliest of her work.
It is likely that with her first artistic efforts Bird took a unique path far from all the movements and groups of the era. Despite the views of several art teachers, she remained unconventional in her artistic expression.
In addition to her versatile artistic interests and activities, there was time to attend and graduate from sailing school with a skippers bay license. At the same time, she renovated her own wooden ketch.
In 1990, at the age of 25, Bird left America and moved to Amsterdam. She looked back on this move as an escape. She immersed herself in the vital and interesting cultural life of Amsterdam. As in the U.S., she was interested in everything: music, opera, dance, exhibitions and further removed fields like computer science, bronze casting and restoration techniques. But painting remained her most important calling.
In 1998 the tragic death of an intimate friend marked a turning point and a change of direction in Bird’s life. She became aware that painting was her authentic art form. In it she found consolation, a new life awakened, a new joy and satisfaction, and a life purpose. She recalls that after her friend’s death she painted almost every day for six years.
During this time she also fled deeper into the world. She traveled to India, visited Bali, pursued batik dying in Indonesia, visited artists in Java in Indonesia and acquainted herself with local contemporary art.
Upon her return to Amsterdam, Bird immersed herself in painting anew. She visited various academies and schools, yet found no satisfactory answers for her art. Consequently, she took the time to travel where she visited many important art museums in Europe. Her artistic travels lead her to England, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania.
Back in Amsterdam again she felt the weight of disappointment over the art academies. She sought a mentor and, with luck, she met the painter Anton Martineau. Her studies with Martineau from 2001 to 2004 changed her world.
Martineau was born in Amsterdam in 1926, and while he belonged to CoBrA (the generation of artists that led the local art scene at the time), he clearly distanced himself from the movement. The CoBrA group was founded in Paris 1948 and existed only up until the 1950s, yet it continued to have an influence on art decades later.
During the time she studied under Martineau, Bird’s artistic development appeared to be threatened by two influences. On the one hand was her mentor, Martineau, whose method of painting was stylistically informal, yet processed elements of Folklore, primitive art and ‘Art Brut’ in an unconventional manner. On the other hand was the art of the CoBrA group with its most important members Karel Appel, Ansgar Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky. Their manner of painting was a process of impulsive gestures, vehement lines and explosive colors—an informal expressive manner of painting, similar to the art of Martineau, but with certain elements borrowed from primitive art and the mentally ill.
Bird’s manner of painting is frequently, but incorrectly, associated with the CoBrA painters. Her art cannot be classified to any movement. The avant-garde CoBrA group certainly interested her and she examined their work. However, it left no lasting mark on her manner of painting: Bird’s artistic world is based on color and not gesture. Her art expresses a joie de vivre and has no connection to the sentiments of departure with which the CoBrA painters were associated after the catastrophe of World War II.
The contrast in the following statements helps to illustrate Bird’s spiritual distance from the CoBrA painters. Karel Appel, one of the most concise CoBrA painters, said of himself: “I am a barbaric painter in a barbaric time.” Compared to Bird’s quote: “I paint fervently for long intervals, as if I were walking blindfolded through nature, feeling the color with my skin.” Even if decades lay between both statements, they illustrate different artistic and spiritual worlds.
Even her admired mentor Martineau barely left tracks on her artistic development, which is surprising as not only did he have a strong artistic influence on Bird, he also worked very closely with her. Bird describes her work with Martineau as an enduring, crucial and inspiring collaboration, “In the morning we began with painting...in the afternoon the work was analyzed... we observed strengths and weaknesses...to understand what was my own handwriting...” A pupil offering a beautiful and appreciative description of her mentor.
Yet, despite their close artistic relationship, Martineau’s manner of painting remained absent from Bird’s art. It was not the American art of the era, the CoBrA painters, nor even her own respected mentor Martineau that left their imprint on Bird’s work; it was always her own unique artistic strength, her artistic will and unbending instinct to seek her own path.
Even though Bird has found a unique style of painting and paves her own way, to understand her style it is helpful to consider artists with similar or related characteristics, even if Bird had no direct contact with them.
So where do we find comparable artistic statements? As difficult as it may seem, artistic parallels can be found with the painters of the École de Paris – the group of French artists who created a new vision after World War II. In blatant contrast to German abstract expressionism, with its crude and coarse gestures, and similar to the painters of the CoBrA group. The École de Paris group worked in the French tradition of colors, methods and quiet forms. In this sense we can view Bird’s manner of painting as a continuation of the French artists from the 1950s through the1970s.
During her time in Amsterdam, Bird befriended an American journalist who gave her use of a studio in Paris on the Ile Saint Louis. Bird worked in Paris intermittently for the following two years. During this time she visited museums, galleries and studios, drawing closer to the French manner of painting. It was here in Paris that she may have found the nuances reminiscent of the École de Paris in her own work.
We can also mention Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), who lived and worked in Paris, and maybe also Alfred Manessier (1911-1993), but most importantly, Jean Bazaine (1904-2001). Bird did not borrow directly from École de Paris, but it should be noted that this trend comes closer to her work than any other.
Bird is a painter of color and paint, rather than gesture. Her palette is as colorful as her paintings. She uses black sparsely and never allowing it to dominate. Her brush stroke is short and only rarely violent. Although her paintings are predominantly abstract, she also loves the figurative and this is where she comes closest to her teacher Martineau. Her abstract paintings are full of vitality and zest for life. When her work is figurative, it expresses transcendental and enigmatic themes. The most beautiful description of her work comes from Bird’s own words: “I love to play with rhythm, depth and light, juxtaposing complexity and harmony. I paint with flowing strokes which are rich in colors. My art and manner of painting are intuitive and my relationship with color is tactile erotic...”
As stated earlier, not only does Bird’s art display an orgy of color that includes anthropomorphism, as well as synthesizing colorful abstractions, it also contains figurative elements.
We must not overlook the fact that Bird is also a remarkable illustrator. Her sketchbooks are filled with magnificent drawings. Her autonomous drawings show great mastery. Bird’s portrait drawings are proof of her skills. Her drawings reveal no mistakes or weaknesses, confirming the high quality of Bird’s painting, whether abstract or figurative.
Bird lived in Amsterdam for 15 years until 2004 when she followed a “cri de coeur“ and moved to Winterthur, Switzerland, where she has her own studio. Bird has had numerous exhibitions of her paintings, both at home in Switzerland and abroad. She is an astonishing painter whose name should be noted. Wherever she and her art are found, there is sure to be a high degree of zest for life.