Philosophy & Painting

Sustained perceptual engagement and process-driven painting / drawing resonates with Lacan’s notion of "the Real" as that which resists symbolization.

By confronting the limits of representation through intensive, direct experience with form and material, perceptual artists enact a philosophical pursuit of the Real, with the practice of making art turning into a kind of visual encounter with what remains unspeakable / irreducible in experience.

There’s some kind of potential for this practice as a disruptive force within ideological structures, at least on an individual level.

Flattened Space & Real Space

In the history of painting, the invention of the vanishing point has been celebrated as a moment of realism, depth, and mastering the illusion of space. However, medieval artists like Lorenzetti and Giotto constructed images where space behaves according to rules of hierarchical scale, symbolic placement, and narrative clarity. This creates an incredibly powerful expression of the picture plane and immediate architectural engagement. (Singular vanishing points work from one perspective; multiple dynamic vanishing points engage the viewer as they move through and around space).

Max Seckel

 

Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1290 - 1348), Giotto (1267 - 1337)

 

Sarah Mceneaney

The Figure is a Body

Gyotaku is a Japanese method of printing fish dating to the mid 1800s, originally developed for fishermen to record the size and quality of their catches, but it has evolved into its own art form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyotaku

 

Leslie Charleville uses gyotaku to honor and memorialize animals’ lives, and she has pioneered the use of this technique on the Louisiana Alligator.

 

Toni R Toivonen buries animal corpses on brass boards and the process of decomposition chemically alters the metal panels.

 

Metal Patinas by Dissimilar Metal Design

 

Laguna Gloria Moody Pavillion by Trahan Architects & Dissimilar Metal Design

The Figure

“The human figure, whether standing erect or bent, is composed of a few big, simple masses that in outline are not unlike the astragal, ogee, and apophyge mouldings used in architecture. Looking at the back of the figure, there is the concave sweep of the mass from head to neck, then an outward sweep to the shoulders, a double curve from rib cage to pelvis, ending abruptly where the thigh begins, a slight undulation half way down to the knee, a flattened surface where it enters the back of the knee, another outward sweep over the calf and down to the heel; the whole, a series of undulating, varied forms. And the front of the figure curves in and out in much the same manner, a series of concave and convex curves, and planes.”

The Complete Bridgeman

 

THE SCALE OF THE HAND

John Singer Sargent

 

ORNAMENT: JEWELRY

 

SCALE OF HAND: HARDWARE

Marion Cage

 

SCALE OF HAND: BRICK —> SCALE OF COMMUNITY: BUILDING

Eliado Dieste

Constructing Landscapes

LANDSCAPES & ARCHITECTURE: EUGENE VIOLLET-LE-DUC

“Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was a French architect and author who restored many prominent medieval landmarks in France [including] Notre-Dame Cathedral... His later writings on the relationship between form and function in architecture had a notable influence on a new generation of architects, including Antoni Gaudí, Victor Horta, and Louis Sullivan. ”

Wikipedia

“Viollet-le-Duc’s geological work follows closely from his work as medieval archeologist and architect. Having spent his life studying the play of structural forces that operate in buildings, whether medieval or modern ... he passed to the contemplation of the same primary laws and forces working in nature on the grandest scale.

For eight years between 1868 and 1876, he used his summer vacation to study and measure Mont Blanc, the greatest of European mountains. His first aim was the preparation of a complete and systematic map of the region under survey – a goal he achieved spectacularly with the production of a huge and stunning chromolithographic plan ‘view’ of the massif ‘as if it had been photographed from an altitude of 10,000 meters’. Thanks to a graphical method using subtly graduated light and shade, he could produce a vivid representation of the configuration of the slopes, with its hollows and recesses, and the sharp and abrupt contour of the mountain peaks.”

Atlas of Places

 
 

CONSTRUCTING THE UNCANNY: MARY SHELLEY

The Mer de Glace on the north side of Mont Blanc, explored by John Tyndall and Thomas Archer Hirst and guide in July 1857. Here in Mary Shelley's novel, Victor Frankenstein has an unwelcome meeting with his creature. Created 1896.

“Immense glaciers approached the road; I heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dôme overlooked the valley.

A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and recognised, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the lighthearted gaiety of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.”

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

 

FORCES, DIAGRAMS, AND FORMS

“Drawing and painting were fundamental to Hadid’s practice. Influenced by Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko, she used calligraphic drawings as the main method for visualising her architectural ideas. For Hadid, painting was a design tool, and abstraction an investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationship to the world we live in. These works on paper and canvas unravel an architecture that Hadid was determined to realise in built structures, and is seen in the characteristic lightness and weightlessness of her buildings. Conceived as Hadid’s manifesto of a utopian world, the show revealed her all-encompassing visions of arranging space and interpreting realities.

Many of Hadid’s paintings pre-empt the potential of digital and virtual reality. Technology and innovation has always been central to the work of Zaha Hadid Architects. As Patrik Schumacher, Director, Zaha Hadid Architects said: “It was Zaha Hadid who went first and furthest in exploring this way of innovating in architecture – without, as well as with, the support of advanced software.””

Serpentine Galleries

Light, Perception, Points, Pixels

Abelardo Morell (Havana, Cuba. 1948) is known for his camera obscura photography.

The images below are from his series “Pictures on the Ground,” after Monet, Van Gogh, and Constable.

https://www.abelardomorell.net/

Below are a series of works from Morell’s references (Constable, Monet, and Van Gogh). Also included are works from Camille Pissarro, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Georges Seurat, who fill in part of the continuum from landscape painting through impressionism and into post-impressionism (specifically pointillism).

Points of Interest:
- Landscape (representing images of the landscape, projecting onto the landscape)
- Perception
- Representation
- Tone vs. Shade (Constable & Corot’s use of shade, the impressionist transition to hue)
- Points, Pixels, and Planes
- Additive vs. Subtractive Color

 

John Constable (1776 - 1837)

 

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796 - 1875)

 

Camille Pissarro (1830 - 1903)

 

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

 

Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

 

Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891)