Mannaheim Progressive Pro-Choice Clinic

Woman’s Medical Centre with 1886 Benz Patent Motorcar (Oils on canvas on wood, 50,3 x 62,8cm)

Photographic reproduction of a painting which is positioned  somewhere on the borderline demarcating the difference between the entirely satisfactory with added interest, and one of the lesser efforts in the field of true painting. Due to experiments with the preparation and priming of the canvas, the behavior of the paint was unexpected. Thus the execution lacks fluency. The technically inferior quality of the photographic reproduction adds to the impression of a very strange atmosphere permeating the picture, ambiguously oscillating between  moodiness and objectivism. The symbolism; moon, spiral, car, and brick, is rather balanced, but with the addition of some sea shells, it is clearly shifted into the realm of female reproduction. (Of course, this is based on highly untrustworthy  assessments of gender-classification of objects. Ed.)

The building does, or at least did, actually exist, somewhere on the British Islands. The photocopy of a photograph of the building from a book on Brutalist architecture garnered at the Düsseldorf Central Library some 25 years ago exists, yet, due to negligence, lacks any inscription for further contextual elucidation of the source. So neither information on the architect nor the actual location of this interestingly proportioned edifice can be provided, much to this author’s disgust.

This painting is based on that drawing. Drawing is finer, possibly more accomplished. Yet the painting adds something. Mostly it adds the je-ne-sais-quoi. Painting and explanatory note © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Pro-Brick Society IPB

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La Machine femelle / Le Reste parfait

La Machine femelle / The Female Machine
(Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 50×27 cm, 2013)

Note that the positioning of these two paintings in one textual context created certain problems for the author, which are reflected in the result.

The clever kind of autoportrait below is a sort of companion piece to the inter-dependent partner painting above, but sold separately…

Le Reste parfait / The Perfect Rest
(Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 43×30 cm, 2013)

In actuality, the top painting is wider, but not as high as the other painting. The second billed painting was painted first. The Female Machine was painted second. The titles are fairly sexist. The phallic machine is resting, exhausted from phallic magic-making, the female machine seems more sturdy and busy, which overall has much to do with world wide reality. Both paintings are fairly small. They are currently, nicely framed, on display at an undisclosed third-party-location in a city by a lake.

© 301.2 by The Instrumentalists, Torsten Slama Historical Society