%20Kitzb%C3%BChel%20Tourismus%20-%20Michael%20Werlberger%20(2)_JPG.jpg)
The Austrian painter Voka has twelve million clicks on his YouTube channel. His works are sold by renowned galleries worldwide. He is something like the shooting star of contemporary art. In a PANGAEA interview, he provided some insight into his life and his thoughts about art.
NO PICTURES ON THE WALL FOR TEN YEARS
A Swiss businesswoman left the walls of her impressive villa overlooking Lake Zurich white and without any pictures for ten years. In a documentary she explained why: "When someone simply produces three splashes of colour, I always felt I could do that too". But when the lady came across Voka's paintings in an exhibition, she found what she had been looking for all those years. Today, six of the Austrian artist's paintings hang on the once barren walls of her exclusive home.
When Rudolf Vogl (who coincidentally also had established his artist name in the form of his childhood nickname, “Voka”,) was asked about this, he commented that would also insist on only hanging pictures on his walls that he actually liked. The so-called contemporary excesses that exist today, "blue dot, red line, something running down somewhere", have nothing to do with fine art for him, but are rather just the products of a lot of marketing and hype.
ART COLLECTORS ONLY BUY WHAT THEIR EXPERTS TELL THEM TO BUY
Many art collectors only collect what curators and museums tell them to. They are always being told that they have to collect it because “it is good”, even though opinions are subjective, and they might not personally find it appealing at all. I think it's great that lately there are more and more people who stand up and say that they don't want to be fooled by so-called art experts. I think it's important for art to please the individual. Today, the word "like" in contemporary art is already a form of profanity.
TEN NAILS IN A BOARD IS NOTHING PROFOUND
In the past, says Voka, art had to be beautiful, aesthetic, in a word ; "pleasing". But today, in the contemporary phase in which we find ourselves, this concept has completely "degenerated". Anything that emotes causing of physical pain, artists who are only on drugs and splash about, is perceived as "great" by some curators. Voka doesn't understand individual critics who think that he doesn't paint anything profound. "I would question these critics, what is so profound about someone hammering ten nails on a board, painting it white and pricing it at exorberant prices?" This is exactly the kind of madness these "art experts" would then write about and rave about how great it is.
YOU ARE THE BEST IF THEY EARN PROFITS FROM YOU
Voka has managed to become a top paid contemporary painter in Austria without curators and gallery owners who want profound paintings. "From the moment they start to earn profit from you, you are the considered the best - that's what I had to learn," says the painter who grew up in Puchberg am Schneeberg in Lower Austria and also lives from time to time in Greece.
In the idyllic village in the countryside, he earned his income with rural façade paintings for the neighbours in the village and through small commissioned works. The commercial breakthrough came with his self-created style of so-called spontaneous realism. Suddenly, around 2012, things were going well for the 57-year-old. Galleries were interested - and a certain Frank Stronach said on the phone that he liked his paintings and wanted to buy some. In the meantime, the Austrian-Canadian billionaire has taken a liking to 60 of his pieces.
However, Stronach and other well-known personalities did not approach him because any gallery owner or curator referred them to him, rather they sought him out because they personally developed an interest in his works - "and that is the true measure of all things for me", says Voka, who "produces" around 50 works a year.
VOKA ART IS TRADED FOR UP TO SIX-FIGURE SUMS
Voka has been represented for years by top galleries in Zurich, Vienna, the Algarve in Portugal and in Paris. Large-format works by him cost up to 100,000 euros. According to Voka, the price of a painting is determined by how the painter is anchored and networked in the art world. Whether a painting costs 40,000 or four million euros depends only on who would take care of it and where it would hang, and which experts give it praise.
For the trained electrical engineer (who has never worked in his profession) it was clear from the start, ( and much to the chagrin of his parents) that he would become a painter.
Had he been accepted it into the Austrian ski team, he might have instead become a professional athlete. Skiing remains to this day, the great passion of the artist, who created a gallery worth seeing in his home town of Puchberg, where he can also be discovered and represented as a painter and where works such as "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci in Voka's very own style, decorate the walls.
ESTABLISHED ART CAREER WITHOUT AN ART ACADEMY DEGREE
Voka applied to the art academy in Vienna as a 16-year-old "far too early and naive" and was rejected. He is the best proof that the greatest painters of their time can also establish a successful career without attending an formal art academy. Vincent van Gogh was also one of them, Salvador Dali was thrown out because he was too "crazy" for the teachers. Voka is therefore Voka, and not a student of anyone else. As Pablo Picasso put it, “he does not want to swim with the current, but to be the current himself”. For Voka, the art academy should be a place where one learns to draw and can further develop one's own technique from the learned craft.
No one, says Voka, is born a painter. Anyone could paint, but 99 per cent of people simply would choose not to. He himself believes that he had perhaps inherited five per cent of his talent, but the rest (or the majority of his talents, as in every profession, as in every sport - was achieved through hard work. There are thousands of drawings in his house because he always felt the need to draw.
PABLO PICASSO - THE WORLD'S GREATEST PAINTING GENIUS
For him, role models are people who can really show that they do something. His absolute hero is Pablo Picasso. Voka shows a portrait of Picasso, which "the greatest painting genius in the world" (sic:Picasso) completed at the age of twelve. But why strokes and dots were later found on Picasso's works, as well, which Voka explained already that he doesn't like, he tries to justify as follows: "When one is able to paint as technically perfect as Picasso at the age of twelve, one starts experimenting - I always say that whoever can do anything, may do anything!" When Voka sees paintings by an abstract artist today, he looks at what the artist did in the past and the craftsmanship and process that went into it.
IN HIS OWN RESIDENDE: VOKA AND FLOCH ARE DISPLAYED
Which paintings hang in Voka's house? "My own and also purchased pieces that I like and that are by artists who also have something behind them," says Voka, who, for example, appreciates works by the US-American painter of Austrian origin, Josef Floch, and likes to observe and contemplate them in his private surroundings. Would he describe himself as "successful"? Voka: "A friend of mine once said that a person's success is measured by how happy he is - and I am very happy and grateful for the life I am allowed to live!"
COMMENT:
From a vast trove of art, Austrian painter Rudolf Vogl, who chose his childhood nickname, "Voka," as his artist name, has developed a spontaneous realism that is now making a worldwide splash. Inspired by Old Masters that have always inspired him, he pays respect to them with a cycle or creates new works of high artistic quality. Although Voka does not paint anything profound in the sense of self-proclaimed art experts, he does paint pictures that find favor with viewers and are therefore often sought after.
