Yves Beaumont

Contemporary painting is doing very well. When it was
pronounced dead due to the storm of conceptualism in the
seventies and eighties, the paint, brush and canvas that had
been handled for centuries seemed to be on the way to their
demise. But we know the rest of the story: the genius of
Gerhard Richter, the conceptual approach of Luc Tuymans, as
well as a number of other factors, put painting back at the
centre of attention. Characteristic for this new generation of
painters was their change in attitude: they no longer (only)
focused on the tension between lines, colours and fields,
between figuration and abstraction, between signs and
meanings; they were specifically concerned with the
reinterpretation of existing images. These images they got
from photographs, videos, clippings, documents and other
media to which they added, in a flash of inspiration, the aspect
of “concept”. They stopped creating individual pieces of art.
Instead they painted series, ideas, strands of thought.

Since then, contemporary painting has fragmented and
scattered itself in a multitude of directions. The British art
dealer and collector Charles Saatchi launched ‘The New
Painting’, phenomena such as the Leipziger Schüle (Neo
Rauch, Matthias Weischer and others) emerged and painters
such as Johannes Kahrs, Thomas Scheibitz, Wilhelm Sasnal,
Jenny Saville, Jonathan Meese, Dan Walsh and many others
stormed the international scene, each in their own way.
Belgium did not stay behind. A young generation of painters
developed their very own thoughts about painting that
centered (and still centers) around the idea: where will you
take this medium? What do you do with the big picture? Are
aesthetics making their return? At this moment the country is
full of young, interesting painters who all approach their art,
which has apparently refused to die a silent death, in a very
individual manner. In this line of contemporary Belgian artists
there is nevertheless a number of painters who, while gladly
picking up the achievements of the new way of painting,
cannot and will not let go of what the past has given them.
Much of this can be brought back to the tradition and
evolution of landscape painting: since the ’Mont Ste Victoire'-
versions of Paul Cézanne and ‘Impression: soleil levant' of
Claude Monet, but also since the work of Constable and
Turner, 'the landscape' in modern art has become a
captivating quest, with the radical abstraction of Mondriaan,
the perspectives of Spilliaert, the earthiness of the Latem
School and the contemporary work of Per Kirkeby and the
aforementioned Gerhard Richter.

One of those contemporary Belgian painters at the centre of
this quest is Yves Beaumont (°1970). Landscapes take a
central place in his paintings. He knows and admires the great
masters, but has gradually developed his own pictorial
language, which, in essence, is "to translate". Beaumont does
not just translate the real picture of a landscape, as he sees it,
to some proper aesthetical interpretation, but uses what he
calls a "pictorial logic": a logic that feels the character of the
canvas surface and of the skin of paint, touches and kneads
the paint and offers the subject to the viewer in an entirely
new form. Thus the painting (or drawing) becomes detached
from the actual subject, and therefore independent. Actually
Beaumont does what is essential to the art of painting, as
opposed to most other forms of visual art: by applying paint
and pigment to the canvas he is creating, with hand and spirit,
a completely new image. Typical for his work is that he does
this figuratively one time, abstractly another - after all,
working with a new image is, always, working with artistic
freedom. And for Yves Beaumont this freedom is very specific:
he looks for innovation in the pictorial language, while
respecting the "old" art of painting.

His oeuvre shows a number of 'milestones'. Take, for example,
the series 'De Nachtdragers' or ‘De Dageraad’: 'black' paintings
that were created around the idea of nocturnal landscapes.
'Darkness' takes a central place here: not the pure black (a
colour he doesn't even use), but the play of minimal light and
and maximal darkness, the usage of colour, light and paint
ensures that the artist is no longer occupied with a landscape,
but with a thorough artistic research into form and balance. In
his lighter works Beaumont applies several layers and mixes
several hues, always looking for the ideal light, which covers
his paintings like a veil. The same can be seen in other series,
such as the Iberic and Ardennes landscapes. In the former the
sun seems not to appear on, but behind the canvas. In the
latter a haze of shadow and darkness predominates. Whether
Beaumont is painting a landscape, a forest, a tree or a branch,
the figurative element continues to exist, more or less, but
unmistakably withdraws itself to make way for all possible
forms of light.

In the 'Waterlines' series this is taken to the extreme: here
one can see the reflections of vegetative forms on the water,
the rippling effect of horizontal lines. Yves Beaumont creates
imaginations, pregnant with the product of six centuries of
painting, but at the same time so concentrated and distilled
that they carry a remarkably strong personal signature; the
master's hand leading the viewer's gaze to where he wants it:
to the world, in a certain place, on a certain day, at a certain
hour, with a certain incidence of light and a certain
atmosphere. The world of light, the light of the world.

(Text from Marc Ruyters “The light of the world“)