Notnames

(or provisional names) were given to visual artists — painters, illuminators, sculptors, wood carvers etc. — from already ancient tradition in/from mediaeval times, occasionally also Renaissance and Baroque, who are not or not for certain known. Formed by means of one of their works or typical stylistic features.

“ Partly their notnames may seem a little odd, when for instance there is a Master of the Unruly Children, however, they are binding in art history. However, the position of the term Master usually is facultative. So Master of the Housebook and Housebook Master are synonymous designations and are used equally in art history ” (German Wikipedia, December 28, 2022).

After one of their works or typical stylistic features. Beyond the ignorable average. And by now long general binding certitude of name anyway.

But the tables can be turned.

Where only the name matters, not quality and stylistic features. And in such a way had Jacob Burckhardt sum up by lecture of February 21, 1881

“ The hunting for famous names has considerable drawbacks anyway; it rather would be more correct to love the pictures for their beauty. ”

And by nature more sarcastically Beethoven:

“ ‘Look, my dear Ries! These are the great connoisseurs who affect to be able to judge of any piece of music so correctly and keenly.

Give them but the name of their favorite; they need no more’ ”

(Wegeler-Ries, Biographische Notizen über L. v. B., 1838, p. 90, here after Kerst I, 101 f.):

“ Beethoven arranged an engagement for me [his pupil Ferdinand Ries] as pianist with Count Browne … where for a group of enthusiastic Beethoven fans I frequently had to play Beethoven’s compositions in the evening, partly from the music, partly by heart. Here I became convinced that for most people the name alone is enough for them to find everything in a work beautiful and admirable, or mediocre and inferior. One day, tired of playing by heart, I played a march which I made up as I went along without giving it any further thought. An old countess … went into ecstasies over it, since she believed it to be something new by him. I readily went along with this idea, making fun both of her and the other enthusiasts. As ill luck would have it, Beethoven came himself the next day … When on the evening … he hardly entered the room, the old crone immediately started to talk about the exceedingly brilliant, splendid march … ‘Give them but the name of their favorite …’

“ This march, incidentally, did have the positive result that Count Browne immediately commissioned from Beethoven the composition of even three marches for four hands, which were dedicated to the Princess Esterhazy (op. 45). ”

Not different and across time in painting. Too frequently, too manifold. On all levels. Cud-chewing what other à jourers have chewed for. Until a Vermeer van Delft (1632-1675; his The Procuress “the perfectly mature masterpiece of a 24-years-old [Scorpio]”) after all, or as the case be again as well, is catapulted (back) into the ring.

At which melange 70 years professional experience bestows the master in resurrection of former above name creation with a notname. Characterizing the work not via person, rather the latter by his work. With the result of an old new, merely scrutinized

“ Heckendorf’s artistic rise stood under a lucky star.

Nobody’s pupil,
left to his own cultivation of all [here 1921] the dormant qualities within,

he showed already at the age of 18 or 20 years two street pictures at the Berlin Secession which still stood under the impression of the impressionist manner of painting. ”

So Joachim Kirchner 1919 in Franz Heckendorf and Hans Vollmer 1923 in Thieme-Becker resp.

And with reference to Kirchner’s street figures, generations later Peter Bürgershall speak of “mask-like simpified lineaments” as expression of “a general unrelatedness” (Flaneure überdehnen die Stadt … Kirchner und der Manierismus, FAZ Juli 23, 2001). But already Hogarth made use of this stylistic method of in the end Biblical origin by way of “Times I” (1762) in the person of Lord Temple, that is not to make a picture, just as likewise the children of orthodox Mennonites play with faceless puppets.

“ Pupil of the instruction class of the Berlin Museum of Applied Arts and the Acad., but essentially autodidact [as the contemporaries Heckel + E. L. Kirchner, too, and like these starting from impressionism]. One of the most talented exponents of the young generation of German artists, whose personal style found its most mature expression till now in his landscapes filled by an enormous dynamic of pictorial execution … Coping with all techniques and an exceedingly easily producing talent … besides oil painting H. applies himself to pastel, watercolor, and lithography … « (Vollmer 1923 as before).

Reflected then also by the opus of the Scorpio Master Heckendorf, paired to the opinion here with the artisanal accuracy of a can’t-help-it-at-all as frequently appertains to such type. Shades of scorpio brother and almost age companion Picasso. In this regard recollected here particularly the 100-plate Suite Vollard with its “grandiosely simplified” (Hans Bolliger) portrait Vollard III traded here at an early stage and then … Then of course the 87-years-old (! I) 347 (! II) etchings to the subject The Painter and His Model as his “supposedly most scandalous work”, so he himself, downright spit out from March to October 1968. The advertisement here for its 1971 book reproduction PICASSO 347 ran here as “An EXAMPLE OF UNBELIEVABLE DILIGENCE in our time”.

Decelerated such can’t-help-it-at-all for Heckendorf by dark years. Like his kind already at the beginning imposed with exhibition ban, removal, sale and burning of the works in the National Gallery and Berlin public property followed in 1937, 1940 the expulsion from the Reichskammer der Bildenden Künste and 1943 even quite different, profoundly personal hardship, ultimately grown from the zodiac sign of the Scorpio and by von Winter, see above, spelled out as following:

Here, too, the can’t-help-it-at-all, the Scorpio brother’s Luther Here I stand …:

“ A further rescuing network of refugee smuggling emerged around the art painter and proprietor of a gallery, Franz Heckendorf … in Berlin. He had many Jewish acquaintances to whom he again and again suggested to leave Germany … False identity cards were made and escape routes [to Switzerland] prepared … [and tested] in the disguise of ramblers … The first refugees were Kurt and Hilda Schüler from Berlin. Approximately further 20 to 80 persons followed … In February 1943 this refugee smuggling network was busted after Heckendorf … [was presumably set up]. Four of the refugee smugglers were sentenced to penal servitude and high fines by the Special Court Freiburg (Breisgau) … ” (Hauss, see Literature).

With 10 years Heckendorf was sentenced the maximum penalty, by which an obviously sympathetic court, shifting actual responsibility to foreign Jewish wire-pullers, thwarted the death penalty requested by the public prosecutor. Just as then in the course of the jail stations good people, not self-proclaimed “do-gooders”, helped when the physical strength were on the verge of ruin. Right to the end ultimately even concentration camp Mauthausen.

The way back – although merely as one of the lost generation

(Rainer Zimmermann) – was paved by professorship at the Vienna Academy and teaching in Salzburg. From 1950 then settled down in Munich. And leaving behind an œuvre in which, even though not yet again ex cathedra,

the connoisseur is promised what erstwhile already had been certainty:

“ The leading role [Heckendorf] took already at the beginning of his career among the same-aged colleagues remained with him, and it supposedly means a general acknowledgement of his skill when this year he was represented

along with the most eminent names of the world of German painters

with several works on the international art exhibition in Rome ”

(Joachim Kirchner in Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst 1924, p. 190).