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Can Modern Unite with the Old Masters in Contemporary Art?
Modern Art began with the Impressionists when the subject of a painting became the light and the way it revealed colors and shapes, rather than what the image seemed to be.
This was a radical departure from the basic history of all previous painting, which was concerned with the subject of the image that was depicted. For example, in the Christian world during the middle ages, when the image of the Madonna and Child was depicted, even though stylized, even abstracted, what was of paramount importance for the artist was the Madonna and Son. With the advent of Impressionism, what was depicted and important was not the image of mother and child but the light and the way it fell on them
With modernity, the obvious subject becomes not actually the subject. The subject is actually about a way or ways of looking at the subject. What is meaningful is what we are not usually aware of perceiving.
This radical shift was a move away from how a painting was created. It was a shift away from the concerns of artifice, from fooling the eye to believing in the paintings reality. Coincidentally the then new visual art of photography was able to document and create realistic images that instantly rivaled the painters from the academies and best schools and teachers.
Plein Aire (painting outdoors as the Impressionists) became popular. Painting in the immediacy of the moment as a method of capturing the interaction of light and place in a brief span of time led the way to Cubism and this tumbled into the rest of Modern Art, which is basically defined as art from the Impressionists to the Twenty-first century. Most of van Gogh's paintings follow the Plein Aire method. Think of his quickly painted portraits, still lifes and landscapes, all seemly created on the spot. His brush strokes tend to be quick and intuitive. Even Pop Art, which diverges from being painted in the moment, still has immediacy, a here and now importance, at least for its time.
In contrast, the Old Masters, like Rembrandt, worked in studios and labored over time on their images. Many layers of paint were built up to convey a realistic image. The brush strokes are not very obvious; in fact many are well hidden under layers of other strokes, glazes which the artist builds to create an image. Their subjects were often eternal, such as the Madonna and Child; but if mortal, then the paintings (especially portraits) were meant to provide a measure of immortality.
The new contemporary theory of UnGraven Image uses the understanding of contemporary are to see things in a new way. The image is secondary to the way it is created (by using strokes that are symbols to create meaning).
Yet, also like the work of the Old Masters, the new counterparty art theory of UnGraven image uses strokes that are interwoven, layered and glazed to create an image of reality. Since the strokes are the letters taken from biblical texts, the subjects are imbued with an eternality.
Thus, UnGraven Image combines the understandings of Modern Art with the image building focus of the Old Masters to depict a new understanding of creation and the world we perceive.
September 9, 2006 |
