Renaissance art
Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 11:36 am
I was certain we already had this topic, but no! Alas, this is to all things Renaissance!
Lately I've been digging more into the Renaissance art era, in various countries, although most my eye is mostly focused to Italy, England and Netherlands. Perhaps some of my ponderings can be beneficial to others interested of the subject, and I would hope to benefit from your thoughts and ideas. It is, after all, such a massively long period of time, which produced such an amount of high culture that is difficult to understand.
As an artist, I applaud the Renaissance period's beneficial effect towards the recognition of my own profession. Before that artists were not respected, and they were considered only craftspeople. Painters were paid for frescoes by the metre, quite literally. I'm sure I've said that before. It's important though.
There are a numerous things which seem beneficial and worth looking into in the Renaissance art period. It quite literally feels like every page in a book on Renaissance art is a pearl waiting to be discovered. In every gesture, position, symbol of these paintings there is a meaning; a secret language runs through them. Although partially lost forever, it can mostly still be re-ropened, studied and understood. (And no, I have not read DaVinci code, nor do I intend to)
I am now really interested of the idea of grotesque art. This comes from the italian word grotto (a cave), grottesco. If we consider this word alone, it can offer queues: a cave is something which is dark, a place outside the normal, where hidden things are. And indeed, that is the way it was first discovered: old paintings that were discovered in old Roman basements. Grotesque art was first referring to these things, with mythical beasts or things that were in the process of metamorphosis. For example, gargoyles are an example of a grotesque. Renaissance art had many examples of an intrigue towards that which is unknown, bizarre or strange -so very much having to do with the same kind of questions that we work with. Grotesque art can refer to something which at the same time makes one feel both disgust and empathy. As an example, DaVinci studied grotesque faces. As a kind of a sitenote, of DaVinci it has to be mentioned that he found being around people quite intolerable, and did at times withdraw away from everyone and stopped painting. Yet it is clear when looking at his drawings in particular, that he was full of the purest possible form of love. Each line of his drawings is filled with it. Hieronymous Bosch, also in some ways a grotesque painter (but of course to most people, to feel empathy for the devils in hell requires more skill than to feel empathetic towards a human being, so this is a little bit subjective view of grotesque)
Later on, the style and use of grotesque adapted. A more contemporary example of a thing like this might be the movie Elephant Man or Freaks.
It's this marriage of repulsion and empathy which intrigues me, and I find it to be quite satanic; and I see this also relating to the ideas of Christ, who would bless and pity those whom others shunned.
Lately I've been digging more into the Renaissance art era, in various countries, although most my eye is mostly focused to Italy, England and Netherlands. Perhaps some of my ponderings can be beneficial to others interested of the subject, and I would hope to benefit from your thoughts and ideas. It is, after all, such a massively long period of time, which produced such an amount of high culture that is difficult to understand.
As an artist, I applaud the Renaissance period's beneficial effect towards the recognition of my own profession. Before that artists were not respected, and they were considered only craftspeople. Painters were paid for frescoes by the metre, quite literally. I'm sure I've said that before. It's important though.
There are a numerous things which seem beneficial and worth looking into in the Renaissance art period. It quite literally feels like every page in a book on Renaissance art is a pearl waiting to be discovered. In every gesture, position, symbol of these paintings there is a meaning; a secret language runs through them. Although partially lost forever, it can mostly still be re-ropened, studied and understood. (And no, I have not read DaVinci code, nor do I intend to)
I am now really interested of the idea of grotesque art. This comes from the italian word grotto (a cave), grottesco. If we consider this word alone, it can offer queues: a cave is something which is dark, a place outside the normal, where hidden things are. And indeed, that is the way it was first discovered: old paintings that were discovered in old Roman basements. Grotesque art was first referring to these things, with mythical beasts or things that were in the process of metamorphosis. For example, gargoyles are an example of a grotesque. Renaissance art had many examples of an intrigue towards that which is unknown, bizarre or strange -so very much having to do with the same kind of questions that we work with. Grotesque art can refer to something which at the same time makes one feel both disgust and empathy. As an example, DaVinci studied grotesque faces. As a kind of a sitenote, of DaVinci it has to be mentioned that he found being around people quite intolerable, and did at times withdraw away from everyone and stopped painting. Yet it is clear when looking at his drawings in particular, that he was full of the purest possible form of love. Each line of his drawings is filled with it. Hieronymous Bosch, also in some ways a grotesque painter (but of course to most people, to feel empathy for the devils in hell requires more skill than to feel empathetic towards a human being, so this is a little bit subjective view of grotesque)
Later on, the style and use of grotesque adapted. A more contemporary example of a thing like this might be the movie Elephant Man or Freaks.
It's this marriage of repulsion and empathy which intrigues me, and I find it to be quite satanic; and I see this also relating to the ideas of Christ, who would bless and pity those whom others shunned.