Albert Lascaux
Albert Lascaux is a German visual artist and author. His work encompasses painting, drawing, photography and philosophical writing. His website, Albert Lascaux – German Contemporary, brings together his artworks, an artist’s blog and independent publications.
Born in 1967, he began studying fine art and philosophy in 1992 at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin, now the Berlin University of the Arts. Albert Lascaux is his artistic pseudonym.
Painting and Memory
German history is a central point of reference in his practice. The question of “painting after Auschwitz” concerns both the possibility of representation and the artist’s responsibility towards memory and his own time.
Alongside this are landscapes, still lifes, sunflowers, figures and life drawings. Their meaning emerges through painting itself: through colour, composition, expression and the decisions that give an image its form. Not every subject can be reduced to a political statement.
The Studio
For Albert Lascaux, the studio means more than a place of work. It is a protected space for thought and artistic creation, before a work is published, interpreted in a social context or offered on the market.
This protection makes it possible to confront a reality for which public discourse often already has its terms and judgements ready. How can one even begin to think about Dachau, Bergen-Belsen or Mauthausen? How can one paint in the face of this history? In the studio, such questions can remain open without immediately having to become a communicable statement, a finished artwork or a saleable product.
Here, possibilities are explored, rejected and decided upon. What later becomes publicly visible as a painting has a history of its own, only partly accessible through its public description.
Art and Philosophy
Lascaux’s philosophical thinking is closely connected to this experience of the studio. A particular focus is the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, with which he has engaged intensively over many years. His interests centre on the relationship between art, knowledge and life, and on the artist’s place in Nietzsche’s thought. Nietzsche’s so-called “artist’s metaphysics” also provides a point of reference.
His engagement with Niklas Luhmann begins with the question of what a sociological account of art can grasp about its creation. What significance does the creative process in the studio have before the artwork appears as communication, an object of exhibition or a commodity?
A guiding idea of his critique is that art can generate order without following predetermined rules. Form, composition and expression emerge through decisions within the work. This artistic formation of order has an autonomy that cannot be explained solely through its subsequent social reception.
In Luhmann vs. Art – On the Blind Spot of Systems Theory, Lascaux develops this critique from the perspective of a practising artist. The studio is a crucial place in this account: it is where that which the public, theory and the market will later judge comes into being.
The Artist’s Blog
The blog is an ongoing publication from the studio. His own images appear alongside readings, music, quotations and comments on political, cultural and economic developments.
The posts deliberately vary in form. Some consist of an extended essay, others of a painting, a quotation or a single word. The relationship between image and text leaves room for interpretations that go beyond an explanatory caption.
Political commentary expresses the author’s perspective. It forms part of an artist’s engagement with his time.
Books and Cahiers
Albert Lascaux’s publications encompass philosophical essays, painting, watercolours, drawings and photography. Image and text meet in different forms: as a sustained argument, an art catalogue or an encounter between literature and visual art.
His published books include:
- Luhmann vs. Kunst – Über den blinden Fleck der Systemtheorie — German edition
- Luhmann vs. Art – On the Blind Spot of Systems Theory — English edition
- Nietzsche on Paper – Watercolours
- Mein Urlaub im schönen Staate Dänemark — a photographic book
- Ein Spaziergang durch das finstere Tal — an art catalogue featuring paintings from 2007
- Winter in the Dunes – Über das Malen von Eisblumen — an art catalogue
- AKT – Zeichnungen aus dem Aktsaal der Universität der Künste Berlin 1992 — life drawings from the Berlin University of the Arts
Available editions and formats are listed on Albert Lascaux’s Amazon author page.
The Cahiers form a separate series of publications devoted to art and essays. Selected issues appear in several languages, offering different approaches to art, philosophy and contemporary life.
Multilingual Publications
Selected posts appear in other languages alongside German. These translations make his artworks and reflections on contemporary Germany accessible to readers who do not speak German.
The language editions contain different selections; not every post is translated into every language. Where a play on words or a historical context requires linguistic background knowledge, the translations include a brief explanation.
“German Contemporary” identifies the point of departure of an individual artistic practice and its relationship to the present.
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