New Page 1

A LINE ON

MARIE ANNE JAKOB

By Rodney Wallace

This is a start paragraph. It has little to nothing to do with the rest of the article but I am putting it in because it seems to be an annoying trend on the web to have a start page. They usually take a long time to load and then have the audacity to tell me to “Enter Here”. The simple act of going to the URL should let it know that I really wanted to see what I came for - now. It may only be a little pet peeve of my own but it is my peeve and I love it very much.

Enter Here.

Okay, Marie Anne Jakob has a start page. This start page does three things. One, it takes time to load. Two, after it loads it gives you the option to surf through her site in English in the event that you just are too tired to think in German. Being from Hamburg I would think that the German language site is a walk in the park for Marie even with minimal sleep. Three, it starts what I picked up as, a reoccurring theme in Ms Jakobs site. Motion. Everything moves. The artwork moves. The color backgrounds of the menus move. Letters move and for reasons that escape me, the universe moves too.

Let’s talk art here. Immediately upon starting at square one, off of the “Pictures” category on the upper menu, Zyklus 7, Symbols, you see something usually not associated with expressive painting styles. Line. Serious, pure, uncut line. She uses silhouette images that appear to float on a painterly background. Simply dropping cut out figures onto a pictorial plan is not as easy as Ms Jakob makes it appear. What makes the elements work is the line. Whether she uses line sparingly or just an edge defined by color, the line is organic and so far from an institutional tool enhanced border it works on that background. But the paintings move.

It was once said to me that great painting starts with great drawing. Since Marie gets props on the line you just kind of feel that she was not going to drop the painting ball. Clicking on to Zyklus 5 Figures in the “Painting” drop down gets you to some brushwork. Deep, rich, textured surfaces that show a real confidence in technique. But the paintings move. A little observation about her painting is that Marie used to allow the palette to boss her around a bit. It is a subtle thing on the Figures page but is very apparent on the Zyklus 6, Form page. When she changed palettes, the style and technique changed dramatically. She has since taken control of that issue and has come out of the other side better for it.

Ms Jakob shows her work in an “installation” type setting and that’s not all bad. The Symbols paintings rock when shown in her original vision. Marie’s Installation archive of plants requires the viewer in a gallery to pull the paintings out of cabinets to see them. Not to worry dear web surfer for here on her site, they move. Her site even has pictures of one of her traditional installations, as defined by the “I Hang Out At Coffee Shops And Talk Art All Day Dictionary”, under “Cell” on the menu. Off of the Cell menu on the Text I and Text II pages we are given a lot of information about the universe and the universe moves too!

The Drawings 1 is a mild let down. Marie uses the isolated image technique employed in her paintings on some of the works but with out the painterly background the pieces never seem to gel. Now the page mentions that ” the works are running to a total of about 1000 pieces” but they move. Not very fast at that, and to tell the truth, my short attention span only got through a few before I gave up and moved on. This page needs a love scene or a car chase to perk it up a little. Drawing 2 does it. Even with great economy of line Marie nails form, shape, weight and motion on sheet after sheet. This series uses gouaches and watercolors for a background so they look complete and sweet.

Marie’s prices for the oil paintings are between EURO 2500,00 and 5000,00. Her drawings run about EURO 500,00 to 1000,00. I’m not batting an eye at this. The next few years could swing wild for this artist. As mentioned before, she did let the palette rule her in the early years and she does appear to be coming into her own. When, and/or if, that line thing meets with that painting thing, on a regular schedule, it will be a good thing.

Ms Jakobs picture files are not a lot to speak of taken out of their element and that is a shame because as mentioned earlier there is some damn good arting going on here. You can right click and save the images to your hard drive even though they are moving. It is difficult to file and recall them because they self title with the sites filing system. They save as z1b3, z5b2 or untitled. You can enlarge the image to just south of two hundred percent before it starts to break up in most simple viewing software. Hitting the “Sharpen” tool once helps but after that the image distorts. Putting them through editing software like “Photoshop” and such does let you see some of the nice subtle work but it is a lot of work. Luckily I get to use the top secret, X4500 View All, version 2.4. This is special software that is only distributed by governments to international spies that dress really suave and drink exotic cocktails and art critics. I love this gig!

You Can Visit Marie Anne Jakobs Official Site at:

http://www.mafjakob.de

Rodney Wallace, Web Art Critic. Rodney surfs the web reviewing artists work much the same as the local critic wonders the galleries of their cities and reports. Rodney is an artist that works mostly in the objective, academic genre of color theory and compositional formulation. Rodney’s work is currently being represented by the Andenken Gallery in Denver and can be seen on display at Studio A in the Andenken building. He also runs RAW ART, a national artist and object de art management organization.

Awards Received | Subscribe | Advertise With Us | Site Map | Link to Us

Helene Black Artist Interviews Magazine 2003

ENVER LARNEY Artist Interviews Magazine 2003

Thoughts On The Rise Of The Creative Class. 2003

YOUR BOARD - TransWorld SNOWboarding 1995

My Blog

HOME PAINTINGS PORTRAITS DOCUMENTATION WRITINGS