London, January 2000
INTRODUCTION
Painting cityscapes familiar to a large number of people is a risky business, which could easily degenerate into mere topographical portraits. Bernhard Vogel escapes any possibility of such a charge by his supreme technical skill with watercolour and, more importantly, by the imaginative reinterpretation with which he imbues his subject, be it London, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Las Vegas or San Francisco: all are infused with a kind of elusive magic which transmutes them into a world apart.
We Londoners think that we know our city through all her changing moods of sunshine and rain, dank cold days and days of starting brilliance, but through Vogel´s eyes we see the familiar sights afresh. The Houses of Parliament have been painted countless times-on fire by Turner, against incandeseent sunsets by Monet, in wild Fauve colours by Derain and, closer to our own time, by John Piper in ruins after an air raid. All these artists brought their own vision to the Houses of Parliament, and Vogel has rendered them again through his transforming imagination. He has painted them in watercolour from the south side of the river Thames, with Westminster or Lambeth Bridge in the foreground, the Art Deco buildings of Millbank fading into the twilight. His large mixed-media painting, seen across an expanse of river and the shifting hulls of boats, wraps the Palace of Westminster in a golden glow, turning the solid stone into something insubstantial, ephemeral, a magician´s castle.
In like manner Battersea Power Station is seen as a fabulous romantic ruin, a hulk standing out against the sky, whilst the London Eye rises like a Catherine Wheel, splashed and spoked with white paint, from the flotilla of craft clustered at its base. More frenetic are Vogel´s paintings of Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street, and yet, through his consummate technique, all mundanity is stripped away and dissolved. The facade of Selfridges, seldom seen from this angle and even more seldom remarked, is invested with a classical grandeur. The familiar red double decker bus and even the advertisements for the most banal consumer products in Piccadilly Circus appear exciting and glamorous. Eros himself is melting downwards into his plinth which in turn dissolves into the pavements. It is this deliqueseent quality in Vogel´s watercolours, the very stuff of colour dissolved in water, pushed and pulled across the surface of the paper, and sometimes running like shining ribbons or forming a web, which is the unmistakable hallmark of his style.
Amsterdam and Venice are perfect subjects for a watercolourist, and here again the shades of Turner and Monet are hovering, both artists having been attracted by the ceaseless movement of water and the consequent impossibility of achieving a state image. In Venice Vogel uses strong colour contrasts, a deep iridescent blue and a fading yellow-gold aura in Sant Angelo, Venice, and on the Zattere the turquoise blue gongola poles stand out against the golden glow of the dome behind. The colder northern light of Amsterdam brings objects into shaper focus,resulting in a keener concentration on foreground boats and buildings. At this point it may be pertinent to observe that nowhere in Vogel´s work does the human figure appear. Cities are teeming with people, people are their lifeblood, yet not once do we see a single individual. The human presence is implicit but never visible.
It is safe to say that Paris, City of Light, has been the subject for more painters than anywhere else in the world. The Impressionists loved it and painted it obsessively, to the point where we almost see it through their eyes. Vogel has taken on that heritage and made it his own. His view of Notre Dame has a freshness which makes us see it anew. The low viewpoint from the river, with the brick-red wall running alongside, culminating in the two towers standing like twin phantoms in the late afternoon light, gives us a new perspective on a familiar landmark. The theatrically lit and extravagantly curlicued lamps on the Pont Alexander III, casting long blue shadows, lead the eye, as in a stage set, to the dome of Les Invalides in the far distance. A new take on a recent regenerated area is his depiction of Les Halles. The foreground, entirely composed of contemporary glass buildings, is contrasted with the bulk of the ancient church which dominates the background. It is a night painting, made, like all Vogel´s work, in front of the subject regardless of the weather, as may be seen from the spots of rain on this and many other paintings, thereby consolidating the spontanety and immediacy of the image.
In America Vogel painted in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of Nevada, whose glitter makes Piccadilly Circus look provincial, and in San Francisco, where he captures the essence of that swooping hillside city. Very similar in composition to Montgomery Street, San Francisco, is Princes Street, Edinburgh, viewed from Calton Hill. The street cuts a swathe through the centre of the painting, the clock tower of the Balmoral Hotel looking almost as grand as Big Ben, with beyond it the dark silhouette of the Scott Memorial. The bird´s eye view of a great city gives us an impression of beauty and splendor. Vogel´s special talent is to present us with his own fine vision of his chosen city, all ugly aspects of human despoliation invisible, leaving us with the happy illusion of urban beauty unsullied by dirt and decay. Through imaginative recreation he has transformed the confused architectural conglomerates in which we live into a kind of urban Paradise.