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Seven years ago Taliban militia in Afghanistan destroyed the two largest statues of the standing Buddha in the world. The Bamiyan Buddhas were sacred objects that formed part of UNESCO’s world cultural heritage. Some three years ago the so-called IS destroyed over one hundred cultural sites in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. Other ancient buildings have fallen into ruin over the centuries without any malicious intent by third parties. Hardly a single masterwork from the ancient world can be now admired in its former glory – up to present, that is. When our New World has put undreamt of opportunities at our disposal … 

A few weeks ago I watched the Markus Lanz talk show on German TV for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised. Not just because Lanz seems to me an excellent host with a keen and probing mind but because the round of people he’d invited included the neuroscientist Henning Beck who has the knack of presenting his intriguing findings on how our human brain functions in an entertaining manner.

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. I love this quote by John Lennon. Well, how many of us love making plans? From complex plans for our future lives to detailed plans for our travels or even simple plans for our daily agenda, people have a natural tendency to try and shut out the uncertainty the future holds by making a plan. When we have a plan we feel safe and assured. The only problem is that a) things happen differently and b) to what we expected …

Imagine a lion in its natural state and natural habitat: if you wanted to approach it you’d probably have to be in some protective cage to avoid death or injury. Now imagine a lion in a zoo and you know that you can get very close to him without the slightest fear because it’s now he who is enclosed in the cage. The price for such an easy encounter with a lion is paid by the lion himself. The price he pays for the zoo visitors’ pleasure is life-long imprisonment.

On a recent visit to an exhibition in Berlin’s Alte Münze – the former State Mint – I had an experience of art of a kind I’ve never known before. On the four walls of a darkened room animated large-scale video projections of the paintings of famous artists were playing. Pictures by Van Gogh, Paul Klee, Gustav Klimt, Claude Monet and other artists were moving all around me. Video projections instead of the original works – can this really be good, I wondered.

OUBEYs works were uncharted territory at the time of his death. Neither an art expert nor another artist nor anybody else had ever commented on them – not even OUBEY himself. He never offered any explanations of his work. 

In a market the price of a commodity is mainly set by the relationship of supply and demand. The more people wish to possess an item the more the seller can ask for it – quite independently of whatever material value the item may have.

"It took me four years to paint like Raffael but a whole lifetime to paint like a child again."

This was said by no one less than Pablo Picasso. Even though his paintings had long been ranked by the art world among the best ever painted, learning to paint like a child was apparently a major concern of his.

Just watch children at play. In their games they create their own private world. We grown-ups perhaps don’t take this seriously and think “oh, they’re just playing”.

If we experience and enjoy a work of art through the free play of emotion, the distance between the artist and the outside world can be reduced to the lowest common denominator for this moment of perception.

That this can also function across great stretches of time is amazing yet entirely possible. 

I always was, and still continue to be, continuously astonished, impressed and thrilled by what other people who encounter original paintings by OUBEY discover in them.