If you feel as I do, and as you stand here before these imposing masterpieces you find yourself asking first of all, is everything here that glitters really gold? Then the answer is yes. Otherwise, the exhibition title Gold would hardly be justified.
Admittedly, it is a superficial question. And superficiality is certainly not what Hermann Staudinger’s art is about. So allow me to elaborate a little by beginning in the artist’s earliest childhood: many people dream in their lives of successfully searching for gold. The artist is no exception. But unlike most, his motivation was not monetary. No—Hermann Staudinger’s search for gold has always been a technical one.
At the age of ten, he does what many children love to do: he paints and draws. What sets him apart from most, however, is that he keeps doing it. The solitude of the process—without ever feeling lonely—awakens in him a sense of comfort and security. Visual art becomes, early in Staudinger’s life, a kind of refuge, and it is destined to remain so.
Back then, at the age of ten, he was illustrating the fairy tale The Frog Prince. We all know it: the beautiful princess drops her beloved golden ball into the depths of a well. Only the frog who lives there is capable, in a heroic act, of retrieving the treasured object for her. In return, he demands a life by her side—to sleep in her bed, to eat from her plate, and yes, even a kiss, which is ultimately meant to transform the repulsive amphibian into the handsome prince he had, in fact, always been. They live happily ever after. All’s well that ends well.
But not in the case of the young Hermann Staudinger, who at that time fails in his attempt to illustrate the golden ball—he can achieve no more than a glowing orange or a blazing yellow. The radiance of gold simply refuses to emerge. Otherwise, Staudinger might have become an alchemist.
But he does not. At the end of the 1980s, the Upper Austrian-born artist decides on a career in the arts. He studies graphic art and painting at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna under Ernst Caramelle. He creates cloud pictures composed of gentle circular pencil movements and photographic series, for instance of sleeping dogs. Keep these in mind: both techniques remain of central importance throughout Staudinger’s oeuvre.
Yet as so often, the grass appears greener on the other side. A friend and fellow student, who is studying in Bruno Gironcoli’s parallel class, teaches Staudinger the technique of gilding. Eureka! Gold succeeds. And from 1995 onwards, it becomes an omnipresent constant in the artist’s work.
What fascinates him about it is the permanence and beauty of this radiant precious metal—not its instrumentalisation as a symbol of status or even power. Staudinger uses it for its chromatic qualities: he wants to capture the warmth of the sun, to allow light to enter his art, and to open spaces for viewers that resonate emotionally. Spaces that reveal more than what is merely obvious. Spaces of transcendence—beyond the conscious mind. Not unlike those found in icon painting.
Is he concerned with continuing deeply rooted art-historical traditions? No. Does he wish to shut himself off from them? Also no. Is gold, in Staudinger’s case, iconographically overloaded? One final no. But may art be pleasing? Yes. “Art must be allowed to be beautiful, without necessarily being merely pleasing,” Hermann Staudinger once told me.
But how does he achieve this balancing act—or rather, this walk along a narrow ridge? His answer: by taming the radiance of gold. By integrating it in such a way that it never becomes too overtly foregrounded.
And here the circle closes: Is everything that glitters gold? Yes. But also those surfaces within the composition that recede quietly and without shine, that calm or indeed restrain the whole—yes, they too are gold. Gold that does not intend to be obtrusive. Gold that slows gold down.
Whether gold shines or not is ultimately a question of gilding technique. So let us take a closer look for a brief moment. Let us enter into resonance with the luminous spaces of his individual groups of works: here, in the case of the Gold Walls, which represent the abstract culmination of Staudinger’s oeuvre, thousands of small squares of gold leaf are applied to a previously monochromatically painted support—in this case a hardwood panel—using the time-honoured traditional method of chalk gilding. Through gentle sanding, the gilding remains only in those areas where the gold leaf overlaps. Elsewhere, the underpainting emerges, slowing and softening the effect.
This underpainting brings me directly to the group of Gold Ground Photographs, in which the motif—photographs from the artist’s personal environment—is printed via inkjet onto a previously gilded support. In painterly contextualisation, the gold functions here as a kind of luminous underpainting. It is the printed motif that reins in the composition and ultimately shapes the narrative of the image.
And finally, the Gold Ground Embossings: what you see here is neither drawing nor painting, nor is it printmaking. What you see here is pure light—at times broken light. To achieve this, the motif is first processed, then printed onto paper and stretched over a gilded softwood panel.
And then the magic begins: using a pencil, the black areas of the photograph are embossed into the gold ground through tens of thousands of tiny strokes—without transferring any pigment. What emerges is a relief-like structure on which the incoming light breaks, ultimately making the motif visible.
So, I have spoken enough, and I would suggest: let us now allow the works themselves to speak.
Immerse yourselves in this El Dorado—and should you be seized by gold fever: yes, all of the works shown here are for sale.
Thank you very much!
Patrick Schuster