Some thoughts on freedom 
L'altro giorno, navigando on the web, I came across the blog of a English artist, Artal
Aristides, the high hand. It belongs, I believe, to the current name without going through the North European and American culture, especially in recent years and that incorporates the classic design
and the ancient technique of painting
good. In the face of short and vanguard of the Trans, of the poor and conceptual art, abstract and formless, far from the spotlight of the art criticism that it creates its own myths of contemporary (see the various Cattelan, Paladino, Pistoletto ... just to say a few names at random);
bottom and without much help from the mainstream culture, many artists as Aristides, take back the brush and face reality without distorting the
"personal interpretations" that avant-garde of a century and a half we have become accustomed.
E 'perhaps one of the so-called "
traditionalisms " for many of this early twenty-first century: I said that is a movement without a name, but in reality someone has called "Read
painting" or even "anachronism" with the usual bizarre desire to
appioppare some 'ism to any new thing to appear in art, he could probably identify the origins and characteristics in even fairly scientific manner, but without star to dig there too, I can safely say that tratta di una pittura che riprende le tecniche dal XVII al XIX secolo e le applica a soggetti anche moderni. Si avvale moltissimo non solo della copia dal vero ma anche della fotografia, ed è abbastanza impregnata di nostalgia per un'antica e perduta età dell'oro...
Un nome di un certo livello è il crepuscolare
Odd Nerdrum ; in qualche misura (più legato però al Novecento) anche
Lucian Freud . Forse i primordi si possono trovare già nel primo
Balthus ...
Vabbè.
Per quel che mi riguarda, ammiro tantissimo questa "corrente": se non altro per il suo tentativo di
svincolarsi dall'ideologia del modernismo e del progresso, dal
increasingly from
always the last to say something from
increasingly abstruse. And the technique, of course, as well as the concept - not wrong in my opinion - the return from a
past that is still alive, without idolizing the contemporary. After all did so too the Romans or the artists of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and was common practice to relate to classical, studying, copying, taking, citing.
At the same time, however, are not convinced to the end, because I'm an icon painter, and then chosen as the period in comparison to rebuild this does not tell me that much. Then I had to make my own because if a model classic, I would go see a classical Greek and Roman art, as always has done in the history of art (though this can also be discussed). But it is particularly
concept of reality of those who paint so it does not fully satisfy me, if I copy this and what is in front of me, I propose an image "retinal" I do a little 'a photograph, playing - as Caravaggio for example - on the effects of light and shadow on the verosomiglianza
painted on. This can verosomiglianza then goes to attend the event represented, to the person or landscape portraits light, atmosferma can move to some other emotion or feeling; or, as the pictorial means put in place, can also lead to a reflection of intellect, perhaps a reflection of high philosophical or theological concepts. But it is a bit 'as the staging of a theatrical act
: it is a fiction
offering a range of external elements in order to communicate meaning. That meaning - which may have different levels of reading available to everyone depending on the degree of cultural development - but remains something of an intellectual, a thought also released the image of wanting to start. In the case of religious art
[1]
this thought is a thought edifying, that may lead - as I said - dalla "semplice" devozione e dalla pietà cristiana alle alte vette della speculazione teologica. Nel caso invece di un'arte cosiddetta
profana , dall'illustrazione di una scena, alla riflessione filosofica sulla realtà esteriore o interiore, oppure sul sogno, sulla fantasia, ecc... Ma ecco che l'immagine a quel punto non è che un
optional , incompleto e imperfetto dinnanzi a ciò che l'uomo occidentale riesce a fare meglio:
speculare ...
Con questo non intendo affermare che l'arte naturalistica - e dunque la pittura colta - sia deprecabile: corrisponde molto bene alla mente razionale occidentale, e le appartiene
in toto . Se l'arte contemporanea è "cerebrale", in the sense that it is straps and straparlare, painting (or art) caught is "speculative" in that it reflects and sobering.
Now, I said that the icon shows the reality in its totality
physical and spiritual: it is the art transfigured by Christ, through his death and resurrection that restores the original creation. This, much better than me, says the
kontakion the Triumph of Orthodoxy:
"The Word of the Father became indescribable indescribable, incarnated in you, Mother of God; And having restored the image mired in its ancient dignity, he has united to the divine beauty. " [...] [2]
Dall'indegnità del peccato alla dignità della nuova creazione; dal solamente umano all'
unione con la Bellezza divina, che è Cristo incarnato! Se questo è il motivo per cui l'icona è l'
unica arte sacra - cioè l'unica arte che tramite il suo linguaggio simbolico (
syn ballein - mettere insieme) riunisce la realtà materiale a quella spirituale in virtù del "restauro" dell'intera creazione attuato grazie alla risurrezione di Cristo, nuovo Adamo - credo che il linguaggio dell'icona possa anche essere arte... "profana" (che a questo punto diventa un termine contradditorio). Dunque, l'iconografo che intraprenda anche la strada dell'artista "Mundane" - so to speak - as a Christian believer and may exercise the same
symbolic language of the icon, if it remains the assumption that the purpose of art is to show the reality
(which is, as we have seen, that physical and spiritual).
How then can translate this thinking into practice
not know yet exactly is the theme of my thinking for a long, but I never had the courage to face "iconography" a theme ... mundane. But I am convinced that it is feasible
; in the Middle Ages was basically this: there are codes in which iconographic forms are depicted in historical events, scenes of life daily life (such as images of lectures), even contemporary personalities of civil life (just today I was reading an illuminated manuscript in which it is represented Benedict Antelami, sculptor and architect active in Parma and Emilia). Even the mythological fables of Homer iconographic characters have ... here, it seems strange, but it is interesting to note that even a pagan story, told by Christians, assume - though probably in an unconscious way - the forms of faith that all things
filters.
it is only today that you want to do at all costs the faith a private matter, separating it from the context of everyday life ...
The Iliad, by the code "Venetus A" c. 1v, X century, Venice, Biblioteca Marciana. [1]
not call it sacred art, because only the icon is truly sacred art, being, as opposed to the naturalistic ontological art able to show the totality of physical reality and the spiritual and then to show the reality of Christ and the holy people.
[2] L. Uspensky, The Theology of the Icon. History and Iconography, 1995, p. 101
The day I finished high chalk and the back of a new board and between Friday and today I started to put his hand to design : I want to make my most faithfully as possible (at least with regard to the figures of Jesus and two disciples) in the first of the three scenes of the Gospel painted on a wall of the church of the Annunciation of the Monastery of Gracanica in Kosovo . 
Two summers ago I joined the church, how exciting! I still remember that trip when I went to Kosovo as one of the most beautiful of my life, and individuai the scene to which I am referring, above, on a dark wall: already at that time sapevo che l'avrei dipinta prima o poi... avrò modo di spiegare meglio il perché più avanti, a icona finita... 
Più che fare calchi da fotografie, quando posso, io preferisco disegnare : è ancora una copia, certo, ma anche un ottimo esercizio, per comprendere i volumi delle parti anatomiche sotto le vesti e per capire le linee armoniche che sottostanno all'immagine. 
Poi, quando è il momento, ripasso a china tracciando anche le linee minori, facendo mani, piedi e volti. 
