On the occasion of Andrew Huston’s exhibition Citizen Paintings, at Spazio Salenbauch in Goppingen, Andrew and I talk about his recent work, his ties to Byzantine art, Kazimir Malevich, and Joseph Beuys, and art’s role in a moment of crisis.
The Citizen paintings are very reduced works with a single motif running through and uniting all of them: a cord. The motif is taken from the fresco Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Siena town hall. For me, the cord also beautifully ties together different strands in your work, both formally and conceptually. To start with: what associate with the cord?
With the Citizens, I focused on Lorenzetti’s cord, appropriating it and using it as a model to generate an ongoing, even endless array of paintings. I title each work ‘Citizen,’ so in this view the cord is like a surrogate for a figure or person. In earlier paintings, I have used the cord as a pictorial device, for instance to break up the picture plane. We spoke about Barnett Newman’s Zip; this was a charged moment in 20th century painting which I like to refer to. I also use the cord in a kind of Iconic mode: the repetition of the same image in a search for truth. I don’t mean to suggest a grand TRUTH, but a small one, for me and my practice.
In Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco the cord is issued by Justizia – Justice – and handed over to the Republic, represented as an elderly man on a throne, by the citizens. Contrary to your paintings, the cord is hardly visible in Lorenzetti’s fresco and mostly alluded to by the row of hands. How did you know that you wanted to concentrate on this motif or how did you extract it as your central theme?
It took some time: first, I was taken by the allegorical figures. From our point of view, there is something almost comical and innocent in reducing an allegorical idea into a polite and idealized figure; but the motivation to point out the elementary principles of say Peace, Fear, or Charity, is a strong pictorial impulse. I’m not interested in painting the figure – that is not my program. So initially I focused on the words, the allegorical concepts. Bringing text into my paintings was something I had not attempted before, and I was mindful of not straying too close to the territory of design or didacticism. I wanted to treat them more as their own abstractions, adding an arbitrary shape to each figure. However, this strategy ultimately proved to be finite, so I turned to the cord as a more open motif that could continue ad infinitum. The last step was titling each painting ‘Citizen.’
The Citizen Paintings function as single works – individuals – as well as an ongoing series of a group of very diverse parts forming a whole. In that sense they acknowledge and defend every citizen’s individuality while appealing to and giving a beautiful example of unity. I know that the paintings have been conceived in close relation to newDemocracy, a foundation promoting citizens’ participation in governmental decisions. Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, the founder of newDemocracy, has contributed a text to the catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition, so I was wondering whether you would like to say a few words about your relation and its influence on your practice.
This relationship was borne out mostly in conversations I have had with Luca over the past few years. Until meeting Luca, I wasn’t aware of the concept of Citizen Juries as a solution and alternative to local government issues. These discussions started before I first went to Siena. Once in front of Lorenzetti’s fresco about good and bad governing, some of those discussions came to mind – to my surprise.
You mentioned the work group preceding the Citizens, featuring allegorical figures in bold letter writing and single geometric forms such as a square, a circle and semi-circle, a triangle, a rectangle, and a cross. The geometric forms and writing give a Suprematist air and I know that Kazimir Malevich is a main reference for you. As the driving force behind Suprematism, he was one of the first to introduce an idea of abstract forms expressing a specific spirituality, as opposed to religious, and notably Christian spirituality. While researching and considering your work, I came to understand it as a core theme within your work. However, we never spoke about it explicitly: is this relation between abstraction and spirituality something you resonate with and which has been on your mind?
This is a big question which I find the hardest to speak about. As you point out, I am in no way interested in making religious paintings; I am not affiliated with any religion or ideology for that matter. The benefit of religion, of course, is to have generated stories and a language around spirituality. As I do not subscribe to those stories, perhaps my studio practice has an unconscious desire of creating my own personal language around the fact of being human. We are all aware of our mortality, curious about what lies before and after.
That’s beautiful. Now, many of your recent works feature a gold ground, notably your Crosses, large paintings showing a black cross on gold ground or vice versa. The gold ground is a Byzantine technique which served to represent – again – divine light. When did you start using this technique and what were your motivating reasons?
I instinctively started using a gold ground after moving to Venice in 2017. First, as a means to bring the magic of light into an otherwise monochromatic painting. But then I spent more time looking at and thinking about the early pictorial traditions which shaped Venice, notably the Byzantine mosaics and Icons. Venice was built out of the symbolic shift from the Byzantine tradition to the Renaissance. I feel we are currently living a similar change from analogue to digital visuality. I was drawn to look more closely at late Byzantine image-making, perhaps in order to better understand our own times.
The gold ground is particularly striking in The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, a folding screen created upon the occasion of the exhibition. You also produced a mini version of the paravent sharing the same characteristics. Both works are double sided, with bright and vivid colours on the one, and a gold and copper ground on the other side. One could interpret the two sides as worldly and divine – would you see it this way?
When I was making the paravento, I was working instinctively and wasn’t consciously thinking about the earthly and the divine. But now that it is finished and out in the world, I can see that this is a perceptive way of understanding it.
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly strikingly combines the different elements in your work: the cord, free floating forms, writing, and the paravent. It is at once an embodiment of agency and unity, and a call to action: the sliding shades are “paintings taken off the wall,” as you say, going into the ground and confronting us. Moreover, they manifest a flexible unity of different parts. The written virtues and vices, and notably the motif of the cord, on the other hand, appeal to our integrity as civil members. This is serious content presented in a playful and enchanting form. Where do you see art’s role today?
The world is a mess, as is obvious to us all, and art is not going to provide answers or hard solutions, nor should it try to. But through poetry, by posing questions and creating new models and ideals, artists can express – for the viewer and the community – their anger and frustration, while offering visions of who we really are and of possible alternate existences. Art can be used to heal, but it can also be used as propaganda. The most compelling art is that which speaks both to the current moment and to future times. We cannot know what shape the future Zeitgeist will take or what will move those who come after us, but there are artists out there making that work. I subscribe to the view that we are entering late stage of crisis, which will soon end in an ultimate conflagration. The good news is that it will pass and may be followed by calmer times in which a renewed sense of civic solidarity can emerge. I hope that the Citizen paintings will continue to speak to that future.
In the catalogue essay, I describe your work as a form of social sculpture with reference to Joseph Beuys who believed that everybody was an artist. Beuys is very present in Norbert’s collection. What is your relation to his art and practice?
Some of the loadstars of Norbert’s collection, Beuys and Fabio Mauri, are artists whose work and practice were confronting the causes and effects of fascism. Within this context I would like to think that, at best, the Citizen paintings can work as a prophylactic to future fascism.
I am sure they can!
The catalogue Andrew Huston. Citizens, Cittadini, Bürger offers a compelling introduction to Andrew Huston’s work.
The exhibition Andrew Huston. Citizen Paintings is on view at Spazio Salenbauch until September 30, 2026.