Jeannette Fischer Livres

Based largely on four days of conversations between the artist and the psychoanalyst, the book includes excerpts from those conversations

The first book about Wolfgang Beltracchi, painter and legendary art forger from a psychoanalytical perspective. Wolfgang Beltracchi is a phenomenon of the international art world. His name is inextricably entwined with one of the greatest upheavals in the global art market. Emulating numerous world-famous artists, he developed and painted new paintings, continued their narrations and biography, and concluded them with a forged signature. His wife Helene Beltracchi then smuggled them onto the art market. Many experts were deceived by Beltracchi's stupendous skill, and auctioneers cast many doubts aside in the face of insatiable market demand, selling the paintings as authentic works by the purported artists. Reading the artistic handwriting of a painting requires an exceptional willingness and ability to be able to empathize and identify with the artist until you "can feel what the other feels" (Wolfgang Beltracchi). Through extensive discussions with the painter and his wife, the psychoanalyst Jeannette Fischer explored this capability that is so pronounced for Beltracchi. In this new book, she places this capability in relation to the disappearance of Beltracchi's own signature. As with her previous highly successful book about the performance artist Marina Abramovic, Jeannette Fischer has created an exceptionally insightful portrait of a fascinating artist personality.

"Wolfgang Beltracchi ist eine Ausnahmeerscheinung der internationalen Kunstwelt. Sein Name ist untrennbar mit einer der grössten Erschütterungen des globalen Kunstmarktes verbunden. In der Handschrift zahlreicher weltbekannter Künstler hat er neue Bilder entwickelt und gemalt, hat deren Erzählungen und Biografien fortgeführt und deren gefälschte Signatur daruntergesetzt. Seine Ehefrau Helene Beltracchi hat die Gemälde danach in den Kunstmarkt eingeschleust. Zahlreiche Experten liessen sich von Beltracchis stupendem handwerklichem Können täuschen, Auktionshäuser schlugen in einem unersättlichen Marktumfeld viele Zweifel in den Wind und verkauften die Gemälde als authentische Werke der angeblichen Künstler.Die künstlerische Handschrift eines Malers zu lesen, setzt eine aussergewöhnliche Bereitschaft und Fähigkeit voraus, sich in diesen Menschen einfühlen zu können, bis man «das Empfinden des anderen empfinden» kann (Wolfgang Beltracchi). In ausführlichen Gesprächen mit dem Maler und seiner Gattin hat die Psychoanalytikerin Jeannette Fischer diese bei Beltracchi so ausgeprägte Fähigkeit erkundet. In ihrem neuen Buch setzt sie dies in einen Zusammenhang mit dem Verschwinden von Beltracchis eigener Signatur. Wie bereits mit ihrem früheren erfolgreichen Buch über die Performance-Künstlerin Marina Abramović hat Jeannette Fischer ein äusserst einsichtsreiches Porträt einer faszinierenden Künstlerpersönlichkeit geschaffen."--Provided by publisher

In summer 2015, famous performance artist Marina Abramović and psychoanalyst Jeannette Fischer spent four days together at Abramović’s house in the Hudson Valley. Associating freely, they took a psychoanalytical perspective for a lengthy exploration of Abramović’s biography and art and their interrelation. Abramović went into this discussion in hopes of reaching a better understanding of herself, her personality, and her work. Conversations with artists are widely available, she notes, but a chance to use psychoanalysis to put an artist’s life and work in context is much more rare. The resulting book is neither a therapist’s report nor a Fischer’s analysis of Abramović. Rather, it is a search for understanding conducted by the pair, looking for the structures and dynamics that underlie Abramović’s life and art. The dialogues are presented along with Fischer’s comments on them and images of some of Abramović’s performances that are referred to in the discussion.