Master Art

The present sheet is a portrait of Christian Rackow (born c.1965), the elder of the artist's lover Viola Rackow’s two sons. The torn and reassembled paper of the drawing, as well as the introduction of a pressed leaf at the lower right of the sheet, is characteristic of Horst Janssen's approach to his drawings. As Reinhold Heller has noted, ‘Janssen accented the material presence of the paper on which he worked. Foxed, torn, weathered, and aged, the sheets of varied papers attained a reality that exists in visual counterpoint to the image; tactile, material existence provides a foil for the shadows of illusions. The physical impact of the work’s totality thus becomes augmented to the point of saturation and creates an artistic dialectic on several levels...The aged paper suggests the paper of old master drawings, an allusion supported by the quality of Janssen’s graphic technique. It also recalls modernism’s practice of collage with its fascination for discarded, discolored, decaying bits of paper through which the art object gains the presence of a relic having survived past abuse and activity. Such a dialogue between elements of history attains the distinction of being a hallmark of Janssen’s attitudes and testifies to the distinct intellectualism of the work.’


The paper torn and reassembled, and laid down on a backing board, with a pressed leaf (a four-leaf clover?) at the lower left.
Signed with monogram, dated and inscribed 15/4/77 / JH / Rackow. at the lower right.
Further dated and inscribed 1.10.77 / glaubst du / Vriederich / mir jetzt meine liebe zum Tagebuch ?!. at the bottom of the backing board.
Inscribed Viola on the reverse of the backing board.
325 x 249 mm. (12 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.) [backing board]