Coherences 1935

Walter Kurt Wiemken made this painting, Coherences, with oil on canvas. The painting is a dreamlike construction, like a theater set made of memories. Wiemken’s art is full of these flat, architectural shapes, and objects like the Swiss flags hung on a washing line. See how the paint is applied thinly in layers, in a way that suggests both precision and uncertainty? There’s a back-and-forth here, a kind of visual stutter. Look at the dark, almost stage-like area on the right. What is it? Is it a room, a doorway, or simply a dark patch of the artist's imagination? The way the paint pools and gathers here gives the impression of something half-formed, as though the image is still in the process of emerging. It reminds me of Giorgio de Chirico, an artist with a similar interest in the uncanny atmosphere of deserted places. Art is like that - a constant conversation across time and space. It's never really finished, is it?