NEW YORK, NY.- Oliver Jordan is considered to be one of the most important European portraitists of our time. After Portraits Volume I (Kehrer 2020) which focuses on the themes of fine art, philosophy, and literature, this Volume II is devoted exclusively to music. With over 100 portraits of musicians, it gives an insight into the variety of his musical preferences: Iggy Pop, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mille Petrozza, Richard Wagner, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Kurt Weill, David Bowie, B. B. King, Patti Smith, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, The Rolling Stones, and many others
Painting as revolt has been Oliver Jordan’s maxim since the beginning, his constant companion and his absolute elixir of life are classical music, blues, jazz and rock’n’roll:. Bringing music and painting together is a natural process for Jordan. Music and painting become a Gesamtkunstwerk. Over the last five decades, Jordan has developed his own style, which finds its literary equivalent in the term “hermeneutic humanity” and defines the painter’s attitude to the world.
This volume demonstrates both the importance of the painterly portrait and the influence of music in shaping society. In the accompanying texts, light is shed on Jordan’s special painting technique, for that which, after a highly complex painting process, appears to be perceptible on the pictorial surface with regard to the person portrayed testifies to a breathtaking and paradoxical balancing act between abstraction and figuration, which is all but unique in contemporary painting.
From the Summary by Ralf-P. Seippel: From an art historical perspective your pictures are visual evidence of the interpretative theory of the iconic developed by Max Imdahl because in them the recognising view and the seeing view are converted into an identifying view. With regard to music, your portrait painting conciliates harmony and disharmony, converts timbres into different shades, imparts rhythm through gesture, flow and movement. The conductor’s baton becomes a painter’s palette-knife in your hands; hard, metallic rock music becomes a pictorial engraving, contemporary witnesses become timeless. All your protagonists have one thing in common, however. The individuals chosen by you – whether they are philosophers, literary figures, visual artists, actors, composers or musicians – have intellectual and artistic biographies that stand for rebellion, insurgency, change, renewal, and, ultimately, for the creation of a more hu- mane world.
In and with your portraits you preserve the individuals and their works, just as you hold up a mirror to us, the viewers. In the ideal case, the picture and the viewer enter a mutual dialogue, which in your portraits is expanded by those portrayed as well as their work.
