Lenneke van der Goot (Gouda, 1979) positions herself with the personal visual language of her drawings and installations of drawings within recent developments in contemporary visual art. The first reason for this is the fact that she sees drawing as her principal medium. Since the mid- ‘80s of the former century a considerable number of artists worldwide have turned to drawing as their principal discipline, working on immense formats, looking for the boundaries of the medium and sometimes exceeding them.

We now arrive at the second reason why Lenneke van der Goot is a representative of current developments in visual art. Almost parallel to the rise of a renewed interest of artists for autonomous drawing, there is a recurring interest for figuration, aesthetics, romanticism, craftsmanship, political and social engagement.

Little by little it appears that quite a few artists worldwide feel uncomfortable in the straitjacket of Modernism and Postmodernism. This not only goes for drawing artists, but also for artists who employ other media to tell their stories. In fact, this has been common practice since the beginning of the 19^th century. Since then artists have been looking for new ways to tell their stories, away from the trodden path, looking for possibilities to highlight personal and collective developments and events. In former days this was referred to as avant-gardes succeeding each other. Now, more than ever, it is recognized that artists mirror society. Often artists are the first to notice and reflect on what is going on in society. And just because artists are at the forefront this makes it difficult for theorists to grasp recent developments in visual art immediately in their own time, to define the general outlines and discern parallels between our desire for a better or different world and that which artists show us.

It may strike us that a considerable number of artists who have turned to drawing as their principal medium, also choose for figuration, romanticism, aesthetics and craftsmanship. This may be because drawing was not recognized as an autonomous medium until recently. Thus artists perhaps create opportunities for a new or renewed visual language, that appears to be a collective language though individually generated. A collective language that is not regarded as an Art Movement, but as a structure of feeling of people who do not only see the place where they live as home, but in fact the entire world. And this structure of feeling is called Metamodernism. The ideas of the Metamodernists are much more wide-ranging than the realm of the arts alone. The Metamordernist Manifesto, written in 2011 by Luke Turner and published on the internet, is about a new basic attitude of man towards society, politics and economics. A number of artists, writers and theorists like Tim Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker have transposed this world view to their professional practice. According to them the grand narrative, political engagement, affect and craftsmanship have returned. In interviews and their own texts they lucidly explain how Metamodernism relates to the arts. According to them it represents a renewed enthusiasm and engagement, a regained informed naivety and sincerity. They have a fresh outlook on the world, incorporating the knowledge available: no new dogma, no tabula rasa, but building a new future without cynicism. Vermeulen and Van den Akker observe that Metamodernistic art may often be romantic or optimistic, but never surrenders itself completely to one notion or feeling: postmodernistic relativism has too deeply rooted for that. Attitudes, strategies and artistic practices are accounted for by them based on social economic and social cultural developments of the past decade. Vermeulen and Van den Akker have the idea of a tilting zeitgeist with artists consequently tapping into to a new cultural sensibility: to a new structure of feeling. This is related to the threefold crisis that has dominated the West since the new millennium. These crises they describe as the corrosion of the (geo)political center, climate change and financial meltdown.

Perhaps new in the Metamodernists’ mentality is that it allows for uncertainty and accepts that the world is full of contradictions, possibilities and impossibilities. They embrace dialectics and intend to use the lessons of the past to build a new future. Quite similar to the thinkers of the Enlightenment their focus is on politics, education, science (now: technology, ecology), economics and culture. Our main point of reference of 18^th century Romanticism of course is Caspar David Friedrich: the sublime of nature reducing man to insignificance in the face of the overwhelming beauty and pervasive power of nature. In the mean time we have subjugated nature, now hoping it will be able to recover itself and overcome us.

The drawings and installations of drawings of Lenneke van der Goot show man and beast (wolves and bears) in their abstracted natural environment, querying their place and position. Place and position towards each other: what is the position of a wolf or human being in its pack or his social community? Where do man and animal belong on their own? How do they relate to their habitat or to themselves? These questions are akin to those of the 18^th century Romantics, but raised in a completely different manner. There is no glorification of nature or man, but an exploration of a structure of feeling reflective of the inconsistencies and different stances consciously or unconsciously, temporarily or permanently adopted by man.

As mentioned before the Metamodernist approach is most apparent in the recent revival of the Romantic tradition. This tradition never disappeared; it was just not appreciated in Western art as it was not regarded innovative. The British thinker Arthur Lovejoy notes that there are many definitions of Romanticism. He describes how it may be seen as a period or paradigm, a movement or a trend, a way of life or a feeling. Nowadays some people conceive of it as utterly political; others on the contrary think of it as pedagogical or believe it only has bearing on the arts. The one emphasizes nationalism, the other ecology, the next Bildung/cultivation, and yet another primarily references the Sublime or the Ethereal.

The Sublime and the Ethereal relate to Metamodernism like the Sublime and the Aesthetic relate to Romanticism. Similar characteristics apply, reshaped as accepted contrasts and oscillating feelings. As with Lenneke van der Goot’s work it is about moving to and fro between group and individual, the warmth of the social group and at the same time the alienation from the same group. Man as tiny individual experiencing the group as an abstract jumble that he cannot be part of because his feelings, lifestyle and beliefs set him apart. Man as a lonely wolf: can he survive on his own and develop himself fully? Can you be alone in an overpopulated world or rather: could it be that more people now live in solitude just because of the enormous growth of world population? Can animals, alone or in their pack, survive in a world increasingly dominated by man, in which man and beast are constantly opposed to each other? A world in which animals at the same time increasingly adjust themselves and live together with man in an urban environment.

The drawings and installations of Lenneke van der Goot have been executed with great skill. They represent a beauty that pleases, but also discords through a tense combination of figurative and alienating abstract shapes. The beholder moves through the composition, experiencing moments of tensity and at the same time serenity. He moves to and fro between opposites that at the same time complement each other. Van der Goot tries to give shape to, what she sees as, impossibilities, simultaneously attempting to make the environment more beautiful. In her perception urban man lives in a constructed world, that sometimes seems to go adrift due to the high speed in which the city expands itself. She asks herself whether there is any room left to redefine this environment. Can space again be left in the chaos of a city? Her drawings may also be seen as possible ways to reshape the environment, to bend the world to her own will. Not as a concrete proposition, but as a depiction of a new reality. More like a visual representation of what might be possible, an imaginary alternative, of a potentially impracticable desire. Not-knowing, insecurity is the underlying principle for shaping new feasibilities, as depicted in her drawings. A reality that only exists on paper, in the drawing. Not realistic (measured, calculated, correct), but indeed a convincing alternative. As such it is not about functionality, but aesthetics and experience. It is not an improvement, but something to build on. The beholder has been given room for his own interpretation of what is to be seen. There is room for new beginnings, own ideas and queries.

We perhaps do not feel at home in the world drawn by Van der Goot, but however small man may be in the drawing we can still identify with him. How many times did we not feel insignificant ourselves in the face of a world rapidly changing, that is perhaps becoming increasingly less understandable and taking a shape unknown and abstract.

Vermeulen and Van den Akker write: “In her many forms the romantic sensibility is however characterized by an oscillation between diametrically opposed poles: the eternal and the transient, nature and culture, hope and melancholy, enthusiasm and irony, the extraordinary and the commonplace, etc. The core of the romantic sensibility is exactly in this tension originating from uniting irreconcilable poles, connecting two opposed positions, an impossible possibility, a double-bind”.

This neoromantic disposition has been conveyed in a variety of art forms and diverse styles. In architecture it is sometimes expressed through a tension between the ethereal and the transient; in Bas Jan Ader’s performances through the querying of the rational by means of the irrational; in the works of Peter Doig, David Thorpe and Lenneke van der Goot and others through the recapturing of culture by means of nature; by regaining civilization through the primitive and recent obsessions with mystifying the daily.

These artists have in common that they not only hark back to mythology, mysticism and alienation to define or query daily life, but also to put new meaning on it. Perhaps just because they realize this is impossible.