A photograph of Inuit inspired Reinhard Behren’s beautiful pastel & pencil drawing – note the special addition. Behren’s toy submarine also features in his second work for the River Deep Mountain High exhibition which was inspired by John Huston’s Moby Dick.
Ahab’s Frustration and The Big Thaw by Reinhard Behrens
Pastel and pencil on board
“As a visual artist I have spent the last 45 years developing my artistic concept of NABOLAND that features as the main protagonist a little toy submarine that I found on the North West coast of Germany. Over the years it has appeared in all kinds of environments and art historical contexts. For this exhibition I selected the photo of Inuit gathering around an object covered in snow. The warming climate reveals what has been hidden from view for the last century.
The film still from John Huston’s Moby Dick reminded me of the impact that this film had on me when I was about eight or nine, well before the arrival of television in our house. I just cannot remember the submarine being such a nuisance for tormented Captain Ahab!”
Reinhard Behrens was born in Germany and studied art at Hamburg Art College before settling in Scotland thanks to a German Academic Exchange Grant. He studied at postgraduate level at Edinburgh College of Art and is currently a drawing lecturer at DJCAD.
River Deep Mountain High was an exhibition in the University’s Lamb Gallery to mark the Year of Coast and Water curated by Archive Services. Artists, designers and creative writers were invited to respond to the University’s rich archive, museum and rare book collections on the themes of rivers, seas, coasts and mountains. Original photographs, journals, plans, models and specimens relating to whaling, the River Tay, the natural world and mountaineering inspired jewellery, artwork, sculpture, poetry and much more