Tjalf Sparnaay’s work is a direct legacy of the Dutch tradition of meticulously realistic paintings of food that dates back to the Golden Age. Visitors to the Mauritshuis see the glossy fruit immortalized by Adriaen Coorte; in the Rijksmuseum’s hall of honor, a passageway that leads to Rembrandt’s famous Nachtwacht, the first painting in the first niche on the left is the gorgeous ‘Still Life with a Gilt Cup’ by Willem Claesz Heda. There is little continuity between the cozy breakfasts painted by Heda and the cheese sandwiches and salad bowls Sparnaay depicts, however. The renaissance of hyperrealism emerged not in the Netherlands, but in the United States of America.
In the 1960s, when painting had reached the limits to which abstraction could be pursued, a generation started painting with Golden Age precision, capturing everyday objects from that era: cars, store displays, diners, domestic scenes. Chuck Close painted huge, detailed portraits of the people around him. Photorealism was not considered particularly relevant in the Netherlands – all realism was viewed as suspect by quite a few people. With so few roots in tradition, there was no one who was capable of referencing Coorte and Heda three hundred years later, nor anyone who felt the urge. The chain of masters and apprentices, the chain of teachers and students at art academies, that essential chain that guarantees techniques, tastes, and preferences are passed on to later generations, had simply headed in a completely different direction in the Netherlands. Consequently, that step toward extreme realism could only be taken by someone who was not part of that chain at all.
Tjalf Sparnaay is a man who wants to be someone else. It could be said with some truth that everyone sometimes wants to be a different person, but Sparnaay had the courage to give it a try – and not just once, but over and over. After getting a degree in physical education, he became a sports teacher. He initially started painting in his free time, eventually pursuing his passion full-time. Clearly inspired by Willink’s magical realism, he eventually found his own path by exploring American photorealism and embracing it wholeheartedly. Now he can rest assured that he will be able to sell any painting he produces, not due to any immediate acclaim and appreciation in the Netherlands, but thanks to international success through galleries in London and the US. Sparnaay can now fill his life with the painting hobby that has become his primary profession. He also recently recorded his first CD of improvisational jazz music, playing grand piano alongside his friend and colleague Rob Jacobs on tenor sax.
No matter how valuable continuity can be in the arts, the importance of that transfer from master to pupil, sometimes a breakthrough can only be achieved by a person who wants to be someone else, from what a less charitable critic might consider a dilettante, or a self-made man. Someone who starts from scratch and creates a genre in previously unclaimed territory. No one else painted food in such extreme detail. There was photorealism, of course, but one step too close and the realistic illusion was shattered. That step, the transition in which the illusion vanishes or emerges, is the theme of later works by Chuck Close, that brief moment between pixel and picture, where our minds’ desire to fill in the blanks, to comprehend, to clarify takes over; where you suddenly see a glimmer of light reflected in an eye, and one step closer makes that gleam disappear, obliterates the significance of the eye, leaving only brushstrokes and abstraction… but a step back reveals the eye again. In Sparnaay’s work, there seems to be no end to the depth of his fathomless realism. One step closer: you see drops of water glistening on the tomato; another step: a sheen of light on the droplet. Who dares to take an even closer look?
Perhaps you need the boundless energy of the newcomer, the motivation of a man who is not painting from within a tradition, but rather one who has stepped into the Valhalla of painting for the very first time and revels in everything he sees, happy as a child in a candy store, wriggling with infinite delight in his enjoyment of the details. Who else paints a fully loaded dishwasher, where the dishes have been done, but not quite well enough yet, with the occasional tiny traces of food stuck to a dish and, if you look carefully, a self-portrait of the painter/photographer reflected in a spoon? How much secret delight must such a man experience in hiding such tiny details in what most viewers will see as a cleverly painted representation of an original theme, without noticing those details? You’d have to deviate from the norm in some way to enjoy that so much… and Tjalf Sparnaay is certainly anything but normal. He’s simply extraordinary. His work was hardly known in the Netherlands at all, unlike the paintings of Henk Helmantel, whose themes and techniques very explicitly reference the still lives of the Golden Age. Sparnaay’s success had to be sought far beyond the Dutch art world, far from the museums, the subsidies, the reviews. For years and years, the Netherlands seemed to see little difference between the shepherdess with a tear on her cheek and the hyperrealistic sandwiches or fries with mayonnaise.
The history of photorealistic painting has been documented in the massive works by Louis K. Meisel, starting with Photorealism in 1980. (It was that reference book that would provide a major inspiration in Sparnaay’s first forays into painting.) The series now has a number of volumes, all featuring Americans on the cover, but a Dutch painter graces the cover of another retrospective, Hyperrealist Art Today, from 2006. It was Tjalf Sparnaay’s painting of a postcard of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, wrapped in cellophane with a price tag on it, standing on a rack in a tourist shop. It is only right and proper that the Netherlands has finally discovered the hidden treasure we had all along, that a Dutch museum will be exhibiting the first retrospective of the new Dutch master, the new Heda. The man who discovered all on his own how to prepare a canvas so carefully, so very smoothly that the brush can convey the tiniest details without protesting. Who allowed hyperrealistic objects to float against an abstract background of nothing but a vague monochromatic gradient. Who emphasizes perfection through tiny blemishes, forms the ideal by including the ragged edges. Who flirts with aesthetics without making things prettier than they are. Who tells a story in details without overtly seeming to have any ulterior motive, who says everything without conveying a message. You don’t ask a jazz musician what his music means. In its extreme realism, Sparnaay’s art is completely and utterly abstract.
Ronald Plasterk
2014