A worldly monk

Eric Rinckhout: Your exhibition Gethsemane begins with the theme of Christ on the Cold Stone. How and where did you discover it?

Jan Vanriet: It stems from a dual fascination. On the one hand, with a statue I happened to stumble upon in Maastricht, and on the other, from my literary side: the title Christ on the Cold Stone sounds marvellous and immediately appealed to me. I asked myself: “What does this refer to?” The first time I really saw the sculpture was during one of my many visits to the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, where I was once again enchanted by Aldo Rossi’s architectural design. I say ‘really saw’ because, at one time or another, I must have seen a much larger Christ on the Cold Stone. But where and when? Sometimes the brain makes bizarre associations...

Two years ago, I found myself in the large ward of the Hospices de Beaune. There is an almost man-sized statue with the same theme immediately to the left as you walk in. But I had never noticed it before, even though I have been to Beaune several times, and this statue has been there for centuries. I suspected that I may even have seen it in Autun, in an exhibition on Chancellor Rolin, the wealthiest man in Burgundy (ed: in the 1500s) and the patron of Van Eyck and Van der Weyden. In short, you see things, you register them, and then they are deleted. Fortunately, the photo archive in my iPhone confirmed that I had indeed seen this statue elsewhere. But anyway. About a decade ago, I discovered the Neutelings Collection quite by chance, Willem Neutelings’s sublime bequest to the Bonnefantenmuseum. Neutelings was a passionate collector of medieval religious artefacts. They are displayed in dramatically lit display cases. I was captivated by several smallish polychromed 14th- or 15th-century figurines, made from walnut or oak, depicting a man overcome by doubt: a lonely, sad, seated figure with his hands tied. So moving. I was intrigued byk the title: Christ on the Cold Stone. I thought it sounded especially poetic, a whole world opens up. And why the cold stone?

This passion story was new to me; I am not an exegete. I tried to imagine the scorching heat of Judea and how the stones and rocks there glow under the searing sun. Not exactly a place to rest your feet and mull things over. So why this emphasis on the ‘coldness’ of the stone?

ER: So you remembered this representation all this time?

JV: Yes. In autumn 2024, I learned that a similar figurine was up for sale at Bernaerts, the Antwerp auction house. The starting bid was reasonable: it was almost proffered to me, I just had to buy it. Moreover, the quality was superb; it was one of the most moving representations that I have come across so far. From then on, I felt that I wanted to ‘do’ something with this figure. Before I bought the sculpture (yes, mine was the winning bid), I had already done some drawings based on photos in the catalogue, and I painted a self-portrait in the same pose as Christ. It may sound pretentious that I chose to represent myself as the tortured Saviour; it could definitely be interpreted that way... but Dürer also painted a self-portrait as Christ: arrogant, because he portrays himself as a radiant Salvator Mundi. Who would prevent me from doing it? In my version, I see nothing more than an emotionally damaged person wearing trainers. As soon as I took possession of the statue, I started painting all kinds of variations on the theme, but I had no idea that it would lead to this. Cold Stone ultimately paved the way for Gethsemane, a series that would have never materialised otherwise.

ER: Apparently, this depiction of Christ on the Cold Stone is mainly found in the Low Countries and Germany, and even then, only for a limited period: from the 1400s to the early 17th century. It references a passage from The Passion of the Christ: either just before he sees his mother, or after the Carrying of the Cross, just before the Crucifixion. One of the few moments in which he is naked, without a loincloth.

JV: In France, this representation is called ‘Le Christ aux liens’, which emphasises his tied hands and is mainly said to have originated in Flanders. In many of these sculptures, Christ’s body bears traces of blood. So he must have already worn the crown of thorns or have been flogged. I find this representation moving because Christ is portrayed as fragile and human. To me, he is the archetype of the suffering man who contemplates his life, just before its finality. At the age of just thirty-three. “Was it really worth it?” In some sculptures, he seems to be thinking, in the same familiar pose as Rodin’s Le Penseur, with his melancholic face resting on his right hand. Christ’s hands are no longer tied in these sculptures; he is free to think about the deep loneliness he experiences in that very moment and the terrible fate that awaits.

ER: What is it that you find so appealing about this, as an atheist or agnostic, or how should I describe you?

JV: I am not religious. I read this statue like literature. The New Testament is a great story, much like the Iliad and other epics. Or like Radetzky March, Joseph Roth’s excellent novel. I created the illustrations of an errant Von Trotta, the novel’s main character, for the recent reissue by Van Oorschot: a figure who, like Christ, meets his demise – loneliness and debacle, all very universal. But I am particularly drawn to the ending of the passion story: is Christ courageous, or does he undergo the events? At the same time, I want to open up this narrative, make it more relevant to us: it marks the end of a human being. How do you deal with this when this happens to you? This question inspired the series.

In old art, painters often tended to add strapping soldiers to the scene of Christ’s arrest, turning it into a mocking of Christ. What makes this little sculpture so interesting is its portrayal of isolation, its focus on the essence. No point beating around the bush: this man was betrayed for a few pieces of silver. Where are his friends now? Where is everyone? It is this desolation that you see in Gethsemane. Christ falls back on himself; no one wants to sit with him, not even for an hour. You can already sense what Christ will say next, the famous sentence that he proclaimed on the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Despite his anguished scream, there is no redemption. I try to include this in the paintings.

ER: This is not the first time that you have chosen a religious theme, even though you are not religious yourself. Why?

JV: I don’t believe in a supreme being. I don’t create from a mystical experience in order to commune with a higher being like Mark Rothko, who wept when he painted his sacred abstractions. For me, there is no “nearer, my God, to Thee”. However, like Alain Finkielkraut, I do not defy heaven, I am an orphan. ‘Dieu est absent et rien ni personne ne le remplace.’ But the religious tradition appeals to me. It is a fundamental part of my culture, I don’t deny it, it is heritage. As a child, I devoured the myths of the Greeks and the Romans and their many unpredictable gods. Later, I turned to the Bible. Myths are like an incredibly fertile layer of humus and a huge reservoir of stories and imagery that have inspired painters and writers for centuries. Just think of James Joyce and his Ulysses or Hugo Claus, who greedily pilfered the Testaments. I do the same in my own - I was going to say ‘modest’ way - but obviously this is nonsense: it’s my immodest way. So what is it about then? The human condition, the absurdity of our existence.

ER: In 1995, you created Volgens Johannes with Benno Barnard.

JV: Volgens Johannes was commissioned by a close friend: Maurits Sabbe, the theologian, exegete, and an expert on the Gospel according to John. A fascinating figure, the modern theological library in Leuven is named after him. We connected. He was also a patron and very interested in architecture and contemporary art. Maurits had but one wish: that I would be inspired by the Gospel of John. For three years, I put off working on this commission because I couldn’t find an entry point. Then I produced a watercolour with a linocut print in it depicting an eagle: John’s attribute and the symbol of the power and reach of his words. And that was the start I needed. Suddenly, I saw the solution: the combination of concrete elements with loose abstraction. A series that could become more lyrical than anything I had done to date. In the end, ‘Johannes’ resulted in 30 works, all large format on Hanji paper.

ER: Did your love of language help you as a painter?

JV: It must have. If you read the Gospel of John very carefully, you’ll see that it is full of ready-to-use images, especially with this kind of superlative literature. “I am the true vine” or “I am the door for the sheep” are all words that make you think. In the Gospel of Matthew, you will find famous verses like “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”. What a marvellous image! Some people prefer Dionysian artists. Jan Hoet loved the idea of the ecstatic, uncontrolled artist. I am the Apollonian opposite, on a quest for reason and balance. When I start from a literary text, I try to take an empathetic approach, to be loyal to the author, to be as intellectually fair as possible. I want to enter the battlefield well-prepared, so I read up on things and keep checking meanings. Obviously, this influences my interpretation.

ER: You just mentioned Hugo Claus. He was very familiar with the Catholic faith and parodied the texts.

JV: He did so because of trauma, caused by all kinds of shocking experiences in the nun’s boarding school where he spent his formative years. Fortunately, I don’t have to overcome this kind of agony: I was spared these scars. I don’t have a vengeful battle to wage, which is why I feel no urge for blasphemy. I may be a heretic, but in the interest of disclosure, I did my communion. I especially remember the preparatory studies. Municipal and Catholic school children would go to Bible study class together before dawn, for ‘sacred history’ lessons: I worked hard and was deemed an excellent student. I must confess that I found the subject matter fascinating. After my Holy Communion, I even continued to attend church faithfully for one whole year: my a-religious parents had no idea what possessed me. But I was drawn to the ritual, the ceremony and singing together in that wonderful Gregorian tradition - not the postmodernism that became the norm after Vatican II. Afterwards, I ended up losing my religion nonetheless. Despite my many prayers, I failed my Latin exam (laughs). I was not a good student, even though I excelled in history, the only subject in which I asserted myself. It helped that I had two outstanding teachers in my secondary school in Hoboken (ed: a town near Antwerp): Karel Jeuninckx and, above all, Lode Wils, an eminent professor who was known for his reference work on Flamenpolitik. I am still interested in it. I still enjoy reading historical studies. For me, art history and history are one and the same. Studying history at university was one option, the art academy the other. I hesitated for quite some time, then chose the academy.

ER: Is it fair to say that you were and are still attracted to the common human experience in biblical stories? And that this is your way of transcending them? Because art in churches is often dull and uninteresting precisely because it is didactic and purely illustrative.

JV: Do you mean contemporary art in churches? It is lacklustre.

ER: Yes, when you compare it with Caravaggio and Rubens. Caravaggio’s The Entombment is a purely human story: a friend who is interred. This image transcends borders and centuries...

JV: I want to go back even further in time, to the Sienese school and Duccio and Lorenzetti. Or to Rogier Van der Weyden: his Descent from the Cross, which hangs in the Prado, captures extreme emotions that still appeal to us, that continue to blow us away. So powerful... Stillness in grief.

ER: How do you deal with this gigantic legacy of images from art history?

JV: You apply just one brush stroke to the canvas, and immediately a memory flashes through your mind, a reference follows. It triggers you, seems to suggest something, and at the same time, it annoys me. But then I ask myself: why don’t I just give in to it? And then I do, and I let myself be taken by the hand willingly. Who knows where you’ll end up... This is also the reason why I revisit certain paintings. Let me give you an example. I really liked the first version of The Music Boy. But something about it felt unsatisfactory because I ended up somewhere I did not want to be and did not achieve what I had in mind. I was able to attribute this to input from my memory, unsolicited references that rose to the surface and to which I had given in, meaning the intention had gone off track. So I started a new version to return to the original premise, or so I hoped. And again and again, until I stopped at number four, a version of The Music Boy that was finally to my liking.

ER: This reminds me of your Madonna, Closed Doors: it’s about Mary and Christ, but it could also be about migrants who are not welcome anywhere. You have executed this motif in different colours, giving these works a different connotation each time.

JV: After one version, I often feel a sense of dissatisfaction. I find myself thinking: what if I use green instead of blue? What will change? Will the work become more dramatic? More sensitive? What is the impact of colour, and what happens when you change elements of the composition? In French, they call this ‘la recherche’, the research, the quest for the adequate effect. At the same time, it is a game, a restless game, albeit a very serious one. Making the most of opportunities, testing the tools of painting. Hesitating whether or not to add just the tiniest hint of colour, or like the poet Leonard Nolens once said in an interview: “the accurate placement of a comma”. Like that tiny, vibrant yellow line that defines the bigger picture, as in O, Solitude. It requires you to think both visually and about what you are painting at the same time. There is nothing gratuitous about this. Again, I am not a Dionysian artist working in fits of ecstasy. Emotion, yes, a lot in fact. Emotionally charged, but never uncontrolled.

ER: Sometimes you decide to overpaint a canvas instead of making another version. Why?

JV: Because you know that it’ll never be what you want it to be. There’s only one remedy: get rid of the work! This has happened more than once with paintings that are in catalogues and of which, in retrospect, I think that I missed the mark, or could have done better. Fortunately, you get something else in its place, an unexpected gift: you start from an existing structure onto which you apply a new layer of paint. An unexpected layeredness emerges, something mysterious shines through, the history of the work.

I find palimpsest very interesting. Sometimes I deliberately choose to let the overpainted layers filter through; you learn how to do this, it’s a trick of the trade. But sometimes I also turn a work upside down so that the overpainted figure is no longer recognisable. This is not a silly trick to mislead spectators; on the contrary, my intention is to prevent them from misinterpreting the finished painting.

ER: The whole history of art is looking over your shoulder. Do you rebel against this? I know painters, like Walter Swennen, who deliberately create difficulties and obstacles while painting.

JV: I have the greatest admiration and respect for Walter Swennen’s work. Some people think it looks easy, infantile almost. On the contrary, it is very clever and, in its own way, virtuoso. He rebels, but perhaps with a lot of love...

ER: He created obstacles while painting because he did not want to take the easiest, the most obvious path.

JV: But that isn’t how it works, at least not for me. Jan Hoet once reproached me: “You are too much of a virtuoso for me, you don’t experience resistance.” This is nonsense; Hoet obviously never saw me messing about in my studio. I might make it look like a virtuoso work of art... Wrong. I hide the unease and the doubts. Before I start, I know just one thing: what is the inspiration for the primary representation, and what will the subject be? But that’s it. Take Christ on the Cold Stone: a scrawny little man on a boulder. Once I have sketched it, I usually don’t know what to do next. There is no plan. I let it happen, hope for a flow.

The Gethsemane cycle features trees that I know so well that I can paint them almost blindly. But where should it go? You don’t want to repeat yourself. Because then you’re just doing the same over and over again, which soon becomes very boring. In the end, it all happens in the moment, on the canvas. There’s so much going on - you find yourself wanting to cheer - but suddenly new obstacles pop up, and the only way to discover the solutions is by continuing and persevering. ‘On character’, as Herman de Coninck said. (emphatically) But it doesn’t happen just like that... That’s bullshit.

ER: You don’t always paint the same kind of tree. Sometimes they even become skeletons in the Gethsemane series.

JV: That’s right, like a primal form of the olive tree. When we still had a house in Provence, we often saw people plant these young olive trees: gnarled canes as thick as your arm, pushed into the poor soil and managing to survive with very little. But I do have a bit of a soft spot for pine trees. It is such a beautiful word in Dutch: pijn-boom. So tricky to translate. Tree of pain. The English ‘pine tree’ sounds very neutral and lacks that extra layer of meaning. ‘Pain tree’ would be nice though... Because it works perfectly in this series where suffering plays such an important role.

At our house near Mont Ventoux, we had one of those huge pine trees that we had planted ourselves. After about twenty-five years, it had grown tremendously. I found it almost frightening to see how it trashed about in the Mistral winds. I loved staring at this tree and at the birds on its branches. I used him as a model, albeit unrecognisable, in some of my paintings, including in Soleil trompeur. I also described it in a poem:

“A pine cone falls

Resin dispels the slow stench

of death”

This is the first time I’ve thought of this... Perhaps this explains the presence of this tree in this series: its warm resin as a healing balm against misfortune.

ER: But let’s talk about the act of painting itself. And how you plan and develop a painting.

JV: Paintings are really interesting when they suddenly happen to you, the maker. You need to accept them almost. Is this inspiration? Or what they call ‘divine inspiration’? This clearly implies that you didn’t have that inspiration a second earlier. Take the painting I’m currently working on: I put a second layer on it yesterday. And then I find myself standing in front of it again, looking at it and mulling it over in my mind. I have two solutions: a minimal one and one that overruns everything. And I don’t know where my choice will lead me. I also realise that this solution will not be an endpoint. That’s how unpredictable it is.

Today, this particular painting has all the makings of a failure. I tend to opt for the solution that overruns everything. But it also implies that I can take things too far and ruin it. Absolutely. On the other hand, it can also be brilliant... And then people say: It is a virtuoso work of art, it took him no effort whatsoever (laughs). Look, some paintings require almost no effort. They take just half a day to make. Or drawings that you finish in just 15 minutes, should you be that talented.

ER: Is that the big difference? The Gethsemane series comprises oils on canvas, watercolours, and drawings. So are drawings really easier to make?

JV: No. It only seems like it. (sighs and hesitates) There’s only one solution for a failed drawing: to tear it up. Cover it with an opaque layer of acrylic paint and fiddle some more? No, that’s just not how I do things. Cold Stone, Hunched figure is a pencil drawing. At one point, I decided to use a transparent smudge of grey watercolour to suggest a rock, which worked. Very simple. Recently, I was looking at a book by Louise Bourgeois: she would have used bright red, I am sure. But this would have completely changed the atmosphere, making it more aggressive and toxic. In my drawing, by contrast, the tone is intimate and withdrawn: it matches the sensitivity of the medium and is also consistent with the figure’s mood.

ER: You combine Christ on the Cold Stone and Gethsemane with that gigantic reservoir of images from art, but also with images from our contemporary world. As a result, I feel that your work resonates with many meanings. Your Christ on the Cold Stone moves me because it is so profoundly human in its portrayal of ultimate loneliness. Do you also associate this loneliness with yourself, now, in this stage of your life?

JV: I don’t want to apply this theme to myself. I am not someone who is lonely or feels lonely. I also don’t know if the real theme is loneliness... Christ was not lonely; he was surrounded by a multitude of followers. But it is the next phase that matters: the abandonment. A man who has been left to his own devices and did not receive the hoped-for support at that crucial stage.

ER: And then comes the big betrayal.

JV: Yes. Followed by loneliness. His is a different kind of loneliness than the loneliness of someone who feels disconnected for all sorts of relational or social reasons. Human, political: this definitely has something to do with it. Christ on the Cold Stone transcends the personal anecdote. Christ is captured. Inevitably, this makes me think of the World War II camps. Betrayal and arrest. People who were in the resistance and ratted out by an acquaintance, or even a family member. It all happened. When they discovered the bitter truth, it was often devastating. They might resort to blind revenge, but also suicide... That’s what the gaze in The Homecoming conveys to me, that terrible dissatisfaction. It is not he who has left the world, like in Rückert’s Lied; on the contrary, it is the world that has played the most vicious trick on him.

People often say that only the strongest minds survive. I’m not so sure. The structure of a character is complicated. Where does self-preservation come into it? Perhaps strong minds are more acutely aware of the situation and, therefore, of the hopelessness. And maybe that is their undoing.

ER: Following on from this: I see Christ sitting on his cold stone in Breendonk.

JV: Absolutely... (long silence) But I had already done Breendonks Blauw, an exhibition in which I explored the icy world of the camps. Could I have extended this in the context of Gethsemane? No, that would have taken me down a completely different path, which was not my intention. I like what Guido Vanheeswijck wrote in my catalogue for Testamenta, the Jesus I show is “the scapegoat who has been expelled, the defenceless outcast, the prodigal son who goes forth again and again.” Yes, there is no salvation without calamity.

Like a poet, he is after a multifaceted whole

which simultaneously has an impression of transparency

while still eluding unambiguous analysis.

He is aware that the image itself,

when thoughtfully composed,

always elicits more complex associations

rather than schematic intentions.

As you delve deeper,

the cohesion becomes more impressive.

Jan Vanriet is like a contemporary symbolist,

a semiotician with paint,

for whom every reference fits into a hermetic system,

behind which he often tries to conceal emotion and memory.

Stefan Hertmans

ER: How did you continue working on the Cold Stone series after the self-portrait?

JV: In the very first paintings, there is a vague reference to World War II, more specifically to the Siege of Leningrad, one of my previous themes. For that series, Elegy, I painted Russian soldiers watching a ballerina perform, who had been brought in to cheer them up with some cultural entertainment. Like they did in Vietnam and Korea: Marilyn Monroe, who came to entertain the G.I.s. I revisit this concept to some extent in the new work The Robe, where they have become Roman legionnaires. Christ replaces the dancer; he has become the attraction. His red cloak references Ribera’s Christ Crowned with Thorns. Something else that I’m fond of, Spanish 17th-century painters, always interesting, Zurbarán first and foremost. I saw Ribera in Seville many years ago and wrote about Murillo at length in one of my novels. In The Robe, Christ looks out at us, spectators, beyond the frame: his gaze is perplexed and downcast. Floating hands lift his cloak. You sense something that is and is not there. Are these divine hands? Do they seek to reveal Christ’s nakedness, his injuries? The cloak is red, just like the soldiers in the background: I did not want a striking contrast; I was looking for more harmonious shades, tone-on-tone. I thought the painting felt more cohesive that way.

ER: You turned it into a diptych.

JV: Yes, with Blood Tree, a fragile red pine tree on red cold stones. Like in The Robe, the tree stands on a dais with the same soldiers as its audience, this time in green uniforms. The two works were conceived as pendants: their composition and the complementary yet opposite colours are similar. These are the only two representations that unequivocally refer to a modern event, to World War II. I painted this diptych immediately after that self-portrait on the cold stone. That was even before I bought the statue. But I had already focused on the subject.

ER: Still on the subject of that self-portrait: the very first painting you made is Jan Vanriet on the Cold Stone. (The Cold Stone, 2024) Why the identification?

JV: It is not that relevant content-wise. I enjoy painting self-portraits. I like to portray decay in all its stages. (smiles). It’s like a form of self-deprecation. Or disaster tourism. Perhaps people will think I’m being pretentious. But I don’t want to push it that far, to portray the artist as a prophet. For me, it’s more of a formal element. But perhaps you have a different take on this?

ER: Does this abandonment have something to do with the fact that we are all getting older and losing friends?

JV: Most definitely. If you really think about it, yes, your world becomes smaller. This is a charnel house, and many of my generation are teetering on the brink. Every person who dies is like a museum that burns down, they say. You can be sad about the people you lose, but also about the knowledge and testimony that disappear with this person. And I have noticed that I tend to phase things out. The world has become more foreign to me. It feels like you are in danger of ending up in some sort of no man’s land. Reading newspapers takes me less time than it used to: too many sections, too many hypes. The existential woes of a young singer... Hard pass. At the same time, I continue to be inspired by current events and threats to society. This is of a different order and has true meaning. But as a painter, I am not a commentator on events. I reserve this pleasure for the writer in me.

If there is one thing that the statue on the cold stone refers to, it is perhaps to the solitary work I do as a painter and as a writer. You are always alone in your studio. I live in this concrete box with my paints and my paintings. The artist’s isolation. This is not a tragic observation. I liken it to a superior form of the monastic existence: I am a worldly monk. When I close the door behind me, I find myself in that other, more hectic world. One that I long for, despite all the trouble.

“I own an old recording by Claudio Abbado

and the alto Hanna Schwarz,

Fünf Lieder nach Gedichten von Friedrich Rückert.

Track number three unveils Mahler’s heavenly legato.

Stopping short of full darkness[SL7.1].

The shadow of the plaintive sublunar:

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.

Mahler revealed to conductor Bruno Walter

that it was his most personal Lied.”

From: Radeloos geluk

ER: In the painting series, your focus also switched from the solitary image to the world around it. You add Gethsemane, the olive grove, the place where Christ’s betrayal happened. Why?

JV: I started rereading the New Testament. Where did this betrayal happen? That is how I found out about the short prehistory, the events that had unfolded one day earlier, at Gethsemane, this terrible place. Suddenly, nature became important and was given a dual role, both lovely and evil. I was staying in Mazan in the south of France that summer. There is an ancient cemetery there with 5th-century sarcophagi, surrounded by impressive trees. I made a sketch that inspired me to move to larger works. The fact that I chose red for the trees and branches was a visual choice: red against the grey background, a dramatic yet vibrant colour. That way, I was able to link the presentation of the lonely Christ to the man abandoned by his three companions: he leaves and returns to the olive grove, where they are dozing and snoring peacefully. Nobody seems interested in him. For me, it came as a godsend. These sleeping figures broaden the theme, adding perspective to the drama. It presented me with more opportunities on a painterly level. Incidentally, Gethsemane is one of the most beautiful scenes in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo, a feature film that scrupulously retells the Gospel of Matthew.

My next step was a series of landscapes, the result of a visit to the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. In the permanent collection, I saw a painting by Auguste Chabaud that had just been installed, a work I found jarring. Across from it hung a small landscape with a bright red tree in a field of festive, wild dots. I thought it was by Derain, but it turned out to be a Maurice de Vlaminck, Berges de la Seine à Chatou. Generally, I don’t like De Vlaminck, I usually don’t like his way of painting, too brutal and pastuous. I have other French favourites, like Albert Marquet. But this De Vlaminck is truly sublime. Upon my return home, I immediately painted a near-copy, Angelus red, albeit in my own handwriting. I added a stray figure. A blue and grey version followed soon after. This painting by De Vlaminck also paved the way for me to create larger formats, such as The Passer By, with trees that appear evil.

ER: Your trees have almost become skeletons. They verge on the constructivist.

JV: I wanted to avoid an overly concrete recognisability. I started painting umbrella pines and pine trees 20 years ago; they were there in our garden... Now I wanted to deconstruct their form, and my love for Bart van der Leck’s work helped me do that. I envisaged a synthesis of Fauvism, constructivism, and my own style. While working, I realised: this is what taking real, unadulterated pleasure in painting feels like... Even overpainting was a pleasant experience. I painted dots and stripes that were much too big, so I would be able to reduce their size in the next phase, all to achieve an exciting paint structure, something with a swing to it. I thought about how Bart van der Leck painted dots only to camouflage them later, as in his paintings Study for Compositions No. 7 and No. 8 (1917) at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. But when I looked them up on the museum’s website, I realised that my memory of them was different. I wrongly assumed that it was simpler (laughs)... I really like his rather pastuous style of painting, how Van der Leck handles matter and paints rhythms in colour. He reveals a tremendous musicality.

To further complicate matters, a work Piet Mondrian painted in his teens, Dorpskerk (Village church) from 1898, is another source of inspiration. Jagged branches hook into each other, bare trees claw at the clouds. This inspired me to consider trees as torture devices. Stiff and prickly. The branches become like bars. They depict the entrapment of a person, but also the entrapment of society, the oppression by dogmatic thought. This, to me, is the deeper meaning of the gradual evolution in the landscapes for Gethsemane.

ER: The tree’s aggression?

JV: Yes, like in Sunrise, as a harbinger of the crown of thorns, the end of Christ.

ER: You mention Auguste Chabaud and his painting, which you found jarring, both in terms of its colour and form. He is not very well known.

JV: I discovered his work years ago in an exhibition in Marseille. All the big hitters of Provence were there: Matisse, Van Gogh, Camoin, Marquet... But a smaller painting, featuring two hunters, a very simple painting, was the real revelation for me. It was by Chabaud. Afterwards, I discovered that Cees Nooteboom had once sent me a picture postcard from Frankfurt: a red hotel corridor by an artist called Chabaud: Hotel Corridor from 1907-08. A remarkably brutalist and expressionist work for a French painter, lumbering, almost German (laughs). Even later, I discovered the tiny museum dedicated to him, in Graveson near Avignon. His son still lived in the imposing family mas. We bought two drawings and a small painting from him.

In the early twentieth century, Chabaud happened to be living in Paris at the right time, and his work was bought by the major Russian collectors. This explains why it is in the Hermitage. But after his brother was killed in World War I, he was summoned home to run his parents’ farm. He continued to paint, unfortunately without the resonance he had previously found in Paris, and his valuable contacts within the art world petered out. To me, Chabaud is a lesson in simplicity: the hunched walker in Eenzame Weg/Lonely Road is based on one of his drawings, which hangs in my room.

ER: Back to current affairs. The olive grove plays an important role. In Gethsemane, but also in the news... The painted word “Refuge” also references events in the Middle East. There is your dark watercolour: Refuge-rots/Refuge-rock. A wild swipe with small, searching or praying figures.

JV: This drawing is an implicit reference to the sad present. This is the eternal landscape of the Bible, and these are the people who live there today. Olive trees are felled there. When you cut down an olive tree, you might as well have committed a murder; this is something I learned in Provence, and I assume people feel the same in the Middle East. If you really want to hurt someone deeply, you destroy their olive grove.

ER: Olive trees are often centuries old.

JV: But that is what I meant. Some of these trees are more than 150 years old, with impressively gnarled trunks. An olive tree is passed down from generation to generation. They are a constant presence. My olive trees are anything but graceful; they are rudimentary, angular and skeletal.

ER: The olive grove is not a refuge, not even for Christ.

JV: No, he is unable to escape his fate, even though he seeks a refuge, a resting point in his turbulent existence. In vain..

I already referred to influences, like Van Der Leck. But a work I painted in 2013, Rock from the Emptiness series, is just as important in this respect. The rocks, in rough brushstrokes, and the large shadow are actually overpaintings of a motif I considered a failure. In an act of desperation, I used a broad brush with white paint to smear away the originally black shape; suddenly, rhythms of all sorts of grey strokes appeared, which I began to find fascinating as I worked. I started to organise the chaos, and that is how this rock loomed up, a structure or shape that surfaces time and again in Gethsemane.

ER: Another thing that strikes me in your work is a figure that is doubled or somehow reflected so that they are not alone. Why do you do that?

JV: The first time I applied this was in the painting Mirror Men, which featured prominently in Closed Doors, my exhibition at Roberto Polo in 2012: two identical figures stare at their reflection in a pond. I don’t know whether you need to explain the psychology behind it, but I find this doubling an interesting visual. Perhaps it also has something to do with this: what often fascinates me about people, but perhaps even more so about novel, theatre, and film characters, is their inconsistency. How they wrestle with themselves, are not straightforward, exhibit behaviour that is the opposite of what they proclaim. I’m not particularly fascinated by great heroes; I find the side characters and their weaknesses much more interesting. I do not believe in astrology at all, but I’m a Pisces. A de-duplicated sign: two fish swimming in opposite directions. Against the current and with the current. Does this reveal something about my character? I don’t believe in it, but perhaps these contradictions lurk in me.

ER: You also use mirror images in your novels, right?

JV: I used two characters: one, Gaston Boesmans, is a failed, struggling poet who died in my third novel; the other, Louis Zoethout, is a painter who enjoys a certain status. They are mirror images of each other. The backdrop and some side-steps are unmistakably autobiographical, and the time frame is equally recognisable. But I got carried away and imagined a world for them that included a strong woman, Zoethout’s wife, the only morally upstanding character.

ER: I don’t know if this has got anything to do with it, but you chose Reflections as the title for a double self-portrait.

JV: A double meaning: reflection and contemplation. This painting also exudes silence. The pose, hardly more than a profile, is based on Holbein’s famous The Body of the Dead Christ In The Tomb.

ER: In another painting, Schuldige Stilte/Guilty Silence, this same figure appears to be standing against a wall.

JV: Because he doesn’t say anything and blames himself for this cowardice. His silence hints at indifference, making him complicit, so guilty. A sign floats before his mouth; it is the graphic opening in the sound box of a violin, the f-hole through which sounds escape. I think: those are the words that he does not know how to utter. There is a reason why I gravitated towards this shape: I love the violin because my father played it. The link to the camps yet again: my father was in Mauthausen’s Lagerkapelle, the camp orchestra.

ER: Do these associations just rise to the surface?

JV: When I read about the persecution of Jews and the camps, I often think of the murdered intellectual potential, like in music, something in which Jewish artists excelled; they were usually brilliant violinists. How much talent did the Nazis murder? What has humanity been deprived of? There’s no need to be all emo about it, with the tune from Schindler’s List playing in the background. Music gave prisoners courage and encouraged them to persevere and survive. Yes, this is a big reservoir that subconsciously comes into play while painting. I know the f-hole in the sound box wasn’t planned as such. Suddenly, it emerged from my fingers.

ER: This sign is indeed very graphic.

JV: And very useful on the visual level. It breaks up the painting, which would otherwise be too subtle or too bland, and that was not my intention. In Lamento, you only see a sign and text; the word lament is marked in inverted commas that I have accentuated a little more. A subtle painting about emptiness and silence, or being silent, like the announced lament, is not developed or heard. And beyond that, this work is about painting itself, about tactility: the sensitive paint texture of the ground is important and shows the austerity I was aiming for. I like to combine lyrical images with somewhat stylised, almost designed elements. American painters like Charles Demuth created almost abstract landscapes and cityscapes with poetic colours, in which a graphic element would suddenly emerge: an advertisement or a drainpipe. A contrasting element that creates a sense of alienation.

ER: You do the same with the Coca-Cola logo. In Hebrew, at that.

JV: Definitely ‘local colour’... Well, I like that. Sometimes you can’t explain it. Let’s walk across the stepping stones: how do I get to the painting? (Olive Trees, Stones and Drinks) I picture the Holy Land. A desolate landscape, an unbearable drought, along with some spindly trees that barely survive in this hot climate. Perhaps I was also thinking of the preacher who disappeared time and again to meditate, and who returned each time, but nobody would listen to what he had to say. Who tried to stick it out in his peculiar position as God’s son and who was thirsty; he has experienced every human emotion. This sounds banal. Some time later, when he’s already on the Cross, someone offers him a vinegar-soaked sponge on a stick – I also painted the sponge too, by the way, but that’s another story. But this painting does not feature wine vinegar, but a soft drink. Mainly because of its beautiful typographic presence, the gracefulness of the Hebrew. The brand name floats there like a mirage. Why not? There’s a crushed drinks can in one of the rocky landscapes. I don’t consider this an anachronism.

ER: Like the three flames in the painting Trinity, which are in fact the flames of the Union Match logo.

JV: That’s right. I started this work on Pentecost. Initially, I wanted to draw a desert with sparing pastel lines. I found the pure, sinuous lines intriguing and beautiful, but this lone element seemed insufficient. On the wall in the studio, I saw a rigorous abstract painting that reminded me of Agnes Martin’s oeuvre: a fine artist, but not me. And because the descent of the Holy Spirit was commemorated on that day and, according to the New Testament, all kinds of tongues of fire descended over the apostles, I used this very familiar logo as a personification of the Trinity. Coincidence is always welcome to lend a hand.

ER: That painting is part of a mini-series within Gethsemane, four paintings with the largest dimensions.

JV: In two of them, I have repeated these lines but relegated them to the background. In Roman Bottle, I added branches, rocks and an antique Roman bottle from Jerusalem. Mandragora is very colourful and dominated by a stylised version of mandrake, a plant linked to the Bible, where it is described as the love apple. But in the Middle Ages, people also said that a hanged or crucified person experienced an orgasm when their soul was released. Mandrake is said to grow from its seed. Some stories make the connection with Jesus Christ.

ER: The fourth painting depicts the woods at night with something resembling a forest of branches in the foreground. We recognise the pine trees, and there is a house with a window that is lit up. You call it Cena.

JV: The site of the last supper. An inn and thirteen friends out drinking. The betrayal is on the cards. Then they will head to Gethsemane.

ER: I want to talk about the word ‘Guilty’. Why?

JV: Guilty Silence is about turning away from what is about to happen. Earlier, I referred to a cowardly attitude, pretending you’re unaware of what’s going on. Let’s just say that the figure in this painting is one of the friends who keeps a low profile, like Peter, who suddenly denies Christ. As I already said, I don’t find heroes that fascinating.

ER: But do you also apply this to yourself?

JV: Yes, why not? I am an easy character, always available as a model. I have painted at least 40 self-portraits over the years. I tend to paint myself in an unflattering way, rather than putting myself on an idealised pedestal.

ER: So, is this how we should interpret your Zelfportret als Petrus/Self-Portrait as Peter then?

VR: Yes, you can. I am also reminded of the main character in my three novels: the painter Zoethout is a Peter. Peter is human; he has my sympathy. “The flesh is weak” (laughs). Judas is a different story: he is the traitor, the evildoer. And yet: he repents, he wants to return the blood money, in vain, and he ends up hanging himself. A dramatic theme that could work in a veristic libretto.

ER: What stops you as a painter?

VR: Well, I already painted Judas’s death in 2000, a small work on paper in the cycle De Wandeling/The Walk. And only now does it occur to me that this series would work perfectly within Gethsemane.

ER: Does this point to the great continuity in your work?

VR: Yes, I‘m aware of that. The deliberate series of a dozen works, mostly on Korean paper, depicts the same petrified landscapes, rocks and weathered trees. It does not read as anecdotal, and the tone is rather contemplative. A walk that encourages reflection, taking stock. A bit like Jesus, who leaves his disciples in Gethsemane for a moment of contemplation. I wrote a poem for it at the time that perfectly captures this idea.

THE WALK

Do not sharpen these rocks

into a knife, a point

but stack them

border the garden

this fragment

of an ancient landscape

olive trees

like Jewish tombstones

We extend our hand to each other

when we climb

when we descend

and notice: this is what our life

could be -

beaten paths, wordless

in a shepherd’s cabin

sheltering

Could be

But on the crossbar

of the telephone pole

a crow grins

He is the friendly type

looks further

than the other side

that we suspect

ER: In Overgave/Surrender, you paint an almost accusatory gaze. They are the eyes of Cornelis van der Geest from the famous portrait by Anthony van Dyck in London’s National Gallery. With some stones alongside them, which are rendered in an almost abstract way. Why?

JV: Anthony van Dyck has that wow factor. He is brilliant and has tremendous allure. He is more worldly than Rubens; I find it much easier to engage with Van Dyck. Rubens seems to me more subservient to his patrons; Van Dyck dares to be present as a person; he is confident, arrogant even. His portraits are superb; they lack the expected pathos of the Baroque: I find this moving. I wanted eyes. The gaze is very important; it defines a portrait. Van Dyck knew how to capture people’s gaze in the most sublime manner. He was brilliant from a young age. During the pandemic, I discovered the drawings in his Italian sketchbooks. He created these while stuck in a lockdown in Sicily due to the bubonic plague. It was rather strange to discover these works at that time.

ER: Those eyes look at me almost accusingly.

JV: In the exhibition, I combine this work with Soleil trompeur, a little landscape. Burnt by the Sun is the title of a 1994 feature film by Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov, which I found mind-blowing. It made such an impression on me that the title and theme have become a recurring feature in my work, especially in my exhibition at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki. This mainly consisted of paintings and drawings about chaos and persecution, about executioners and servants. The film centres on relatively privileged artists and the terror of Stalinism in the 1930s and 1940s. They live in their dachas and can enjoy the sun, nature and parties. But they live in constant, latent fear that the secret police could turn up and arrest them at any time. In those days, you were usually shot without any trial. Soleil trompeur is a harrowing film. It ties in with a fundamental theme in my work: the falseness of ideologies. I then drag this title along: deceptive sunshine. This is what we see on TV in the news: the sun shines on Gaza and Sudan, but at the same time, the biggest, most horrific atrocities are unfolding in these regions. The lovely sun radiates over bomb craters. So this painting can hang next to this piercing gaze: an accusatory gaze, but also a frozen, distraught gaze of someone who sees the horror unfolding before them. The sun is the eternal witness.

Recently, I read a newspaper article about public executions in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hurrah! This was a record year... The crowds flock to the venue, and a poor sod is humiliated and executed. A great spectacle, popular entertainment. Perhaps this deceptive sun is the very last thing that this unfortunate person saw on this earth.

ER: The colour red is featured throughout the series. Blood-red trees, blood-red cherries. Red is the colour of love and passion, but also of blood and violence.

JV: There are also cherries in Fra Angelico’s The Last Supper. Art history should not paralyse you as an artist. When someone from five hundred years ago taps your shoulder and whispers: “Why don’t you try this...?” Sure, why not?

ER: Here and there, you added a skull in or on the cold stone. A link to Golgotha and to the charnel house?

JV: Yes. Like in Antonello da Messina’s Calvary in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He also does this. Even better: he has vipers wriggling out of eye cavities! His Calvary is an undisputed masterpiece. It was an honour to include it in Closing Time, my retrospective, where I combined it with a typical Lucio Fontana painting, Concetto Spaziale (1965): four evil perforations in a dark brown canvas that looked like the cuts of a lance. That’s why I found this combination particularly fitting at the time: two works that interpret the Crucifixion in their own way and span five hundred years effortlessly. I ended up showing an ensemble of four paintings, including my Three Nails, which symbolise the three crucified people.

ER: These three nails are also present in a different form in your new series.

JV: This is an old Christian motif; there’s no avoiding it. It was especially popular in the early Middle Ages as a symbol, and the number three suddenly became sacred. I discovered the motif of the three nails as a wood engraving in a Book of Hours. I was immediately struck by the simple but efficient visual language from the 11th century.

ER: Another major influence is Poussin.

JV: I saw his series The Seven Sacraments at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. The scene I drew on more or less is the Eucharist, the static representation of the Last Supper, with the apostles lying around a table. In the middle, we recognise Jesus, who is holding the bread and giving his blessing. Poussin’s representation of this scene is particularly subdued; we almost look away from the characters. But it is the sophisticated lighting effect that stands out. Poussin based his work on figurines that he modelled himself in clay, after which he arranged them in a box with windows and directed sidelights on it. He tested how the light fell in, conducting an almost scientific study of it. The painted result evokes a play.

I adopted Poussin’s setting in my work The Meeting. This is the new painting we were discussing earlier, when I told you about my doubts and the crossroads I found myself at: do I go down the austere route, or let the visual overtake everything? I settled on the latter option. After much reflection, I almost overpainted the group of people. Christ’s disciples have become shadows. I found that the anecdote of their presence evolved in a disturbing way, and their faces were too recognisable. I wanted to have an anonymous group amid bright red trees that formed a cage, almost a prison. On the left side of the painting, black advances: for the purpose of the composition, but also to suggest impending doom. But I cannot explain everything rationally: painting is always about feeling and intuitive action. Once the result is there, you start having doubts, you start rationalising and thinking about corrective interventions. Or you decide to leave the work alone, fortunately.

ER: Poussin also provided the subject matter for your first novel Rovers.

JV: The painter Zoethout reinterprets Poussin’s The Rape of the Sabine Women. He should not have done that, because certain people, media figures from the cultural sector, see his art as glorifying misogynistic, transgressive behaviour. They make no distinction between the man and the work; both are toxic. The poor artist has no defence. The smear campaign kills him. It is interesting to compare The Rape of the Sabine Women with a work like Eucharist. The first is a swirling, breathtaking painting, a dynamic ensemble thanks to the figures and the bright colours. No surprise then that it inspired Picasso. The second is humble, sombre and solemn. It never fails to amaze me how Poussin is capable of such variety.

ER: One of the last works you added to the series seems not to have any relation to it. The portrait of Armenian painter Arshile Gorky and his mother. For you, it’s a statement.

JV: It comes out of the blue, and at the same time, it doesn’t. It is so famous, an icon: you don’t touch that! I knew the painting from my first books on painting, and I found it moving from the start. Just look at those frontal gazes: the mother and son stare at us, spectators in 2026, impassively. We continue to be witnesses to their fate.

I could not have painted the four paintings of my series The Music Boy, about my grandmother and her son who played the accordion, without knowing about Arshile Gorky. I was indebted, without realising it: it had gotten under my skin. But now I felt the irresistible urge to create a contemporary interpretation, starting from the original photo on which Gorky based his painting. The picture was taken in their homeland around 1912, after which 15-year-old Gorky fled the genocide by the Turks, with his mother and sister. Their mother never made it to America; Gorky took his own life thirty-six years later.

Arshile Gorky’s double portrait is very flat, very simplified, typical of the ‘modern’ style that was so popular in the 1920s and 1930s. I made a more realistic version of it and smuggled it into my exhibition by situating the mother and son in a landscape with an iconography that references Gethsemane. Armenia is also an early Christian region: Gorky and his mother thus become a version of Mary and her son, I guess. Unfortunately, this image is very current: migrants, reception camps... but also expectation and hope. Curiously, the father is absent here too. I often wonder what the role of the Biblical Joseph is. The old masters also feature him very rarely. When they do, he is portrayed as an old man, but to me, he always seems redundant.

ER: You end with a painting of an Antwerp Virgin Mary. What did you want to convey?

JV: This is a beautiful wooden sculpture. I already painted this Virgin Mary once in 2020; the painting was titled Le pardon/The Pardon. Together with my wife Simone, I sometimes walk to the cathedral to salute her. We have a connection with this statue that cannot be rationally explained; it is almost like a spiritual relationship. The enthroned Madonna is an inspiring presence. This is not just on a religious level; this is definitely related to her serenity and our perception of it. Perhaps it is also sentimental. But do I need to explain my sensitivity?

Moreover, there is my historical interest. In 1566, the cathedral was among the first sites to be devastated by iconoclasm. The fact that this statue was preserved is almost a miracle. It tells us how we should treat our past: not just this beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary, but our heritage in general. And it teaches us that we also had our own Taliban in this region during this madness, this religious war... Today, I find it reassuring that she is still there, like a magnificent part of our collective memory: the crowned patroness of Antwerp. This awareness can hold a community together, I think. So for me it is also about identity, tradition, and the deeper question: what are my roots? Sometimes we light a candle. We don’t have to ask her for anything, unlike the faithful. A simple gesture to give her more light. Because in the beginning there was light.