Romanian masterpieces at the Grimberg Gallery

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Adam Baltatu, aesthetic philosophy, aesthetics, art history, art in Romania, Arthur Danto, Aurel Tar, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, contemporary painting, Doru Moscu, Grimberg Auction House, Grimberg Gallery, Ioan Stoenescu, Ion Dimitriu Barlad, Iosif Iser, Mihai Zgondoiu, modern sculpture, Pablo Picasso, postromanticism, Romanian art, Romanian masterpieces at the Grimberg Gallery, Romanian painting, Romanian sculpture, Romanticism and Postromanticism

 

Mihai Zgondoiu – Artist’s Golden Hand Triptic

Romanian masterpices at the Grimberg Gallery: Balancing originality and autonomy with tradition and patronage in contemporary artistic styles

By Claudia Moscovici, art critic, founder of the postromantic art movement, and author of Romanticism and Postromanticism (2007)

Since the modern era the notion of “artistic style” has become synonymous with “originality”. Originality represents a step beyond individuality. It traces each artist’s unique fingerprint, setting his art apart from the works of other artists. This understanding of “style”, however, is relatively new in the history of art. Before the nineteenth-century, originality and individuality were not the most highly prized qualities of art. As for autonomy, or regarding art as separate from social functions, this notion didn’t even exist before the modern period.

During the Renaissance, the artist emerged as an individual assumed to have a unique talent that was in some way useful to those in power. Artists helped elevate the status of the Church or the State through their masterpieces. They were also considered useful to society in general, by providing works of rare and incredible beauty that the educated public could enjoy. Despite, in fact, being “original”, Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo perceived their paintings and sculptures as a means of elevating and preserving the social order of their times not only as a mark of their individual genius. No doubt, both Leonardo and Michelangelo could afford to select among patrons and to aggravate those they did serve by postponing deadlines to perfect their masterpieces. In this way, they created the blueprint of the temperamental and independent “artistic” personality that would emerge more fully with Romanticism. Despite the increased prestige of masterful artists, however, Renaissance art contributed to the glory of the patrons and the community (or the nation) it was created for. In other words, art’s undeniable beauty was inseparable from its social usefulness.

As artists’ prestige increased during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so did their relative power and independence from patrons. Romanticism marked this transformation by explicitly declaring the artist to be a creative genius and by regarding individuality and originality as the supreme qualities of true art. Yet for most Romantic poets, writers and artists, as for the Renaissance masters, art was still bound to its social function. The artist or writer imagined by poets like Wordsworth, Lamartine and Hugo spread to the public, through his unique aesthetic sensibility, imagination, discernment and talent, not only aesthetic pleasure but also a heightened and more empathetic moral and political consciousness.

While earlier forms of Romanticism couple social utility and beauty, late Romantic and Modern art and literature would come to disassociate them. As early as the 1830’s, the autonomy of art from society was proclaimed by Théophile Gautier’s phrase, “art for art’s sake” (l’art pour l’art) and by his criticism of the notion that art had to be in any way useful to society.

postmodern philosopher, Arthur Danto

Postmodern art resurrects the notions of art’s utility and individuality, but usually only to critique them. Gautier’s well-known polemic in his 1834 preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin—“the most useful place of a house is the latrine”—seems to have turned into a twisted prophecy almost a hundred years later, when Marcel Duchamp, under the pseudonym R. Mutt, exhibited a urinal as an objet d’art at the 1917 Independents’ Exhibition in New York City. With this partly joking provocation, art took a seemingly irreversible conceptual turn. As the philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto convincingly demonstrates, what constitutes art can no longer be discerned visually.

Ion Dimitriu Barlad – Enescu

Contemporary Romanian art, however, seems to distinguish itself through a partial return to the worthwhile aesthetic values of the past. And it’s about time. The Grimberg Gallery features some of the best contemporary Romanian artists, each of whom has a unique style; each of whom pays homage to the artistic past rather than only turning away from it. To offer only a few examples, among many talented artists: Ioan Dimitriu Barlad’s masterful sculpture is perhaps the most explicit homage. His bust of the composer George Enescu (1881-1955) captures the musician in a realistic style and paradigmatic pose: a particularly expressive moment of sensibility and contemplation.

Ioan Stoenescu – Icoana cu medalioane

Ioan Stoenescu’s Christian icon, “Icoana cu medalioane”, evokes the now lost art form of medieval “illuminations”: smaller oval portraits of revered saints surrounding the central depiction of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, painted with great delicacy and skill. A gilded foil illuminates the composition from within, giving it an otherworldly aura.

 

Adam Baltatu – Nuduri in peisaj

The painter Adam Baltatu reawakens our interest in figurative art, which is, indeed, after decades dominated by abstraction and conceptual art, becoming popular once again. His “Nuduri in peisaj” (“Nudes on landscape”) shows the beauty of the countryside enhanced by the beauty of feminine forms. The artist conveys the two women with a sense of harmony, balance and muted colors reminiscent of post-Impressionism, particularly of the paintings of Gauguin and Cézanne.

Iosif Iser- Odalisca

Iosif Iser’s “Odalisca” (“Odalisque”) also evokes post-Impressionism in style, although the odalisque was a favorite theme of Neo-classical and Romantic painters (particularly Ingres and Delacroix). Iser’s odalisque holds a relaxed, modern pose, displaying her half-veiled body in an almost defiant manner reminiscent of Manet’s Olympia.

Doru Moscu – Alfred’s dream

Doru Moscu’s “Alfred’s dream”, painted with broad brushstrokes of blues, grays, browns and greens, is more Expressionist in style. In this painting color assumes extreme importance, suggesting a somber mood, as furtive and enigmatic as the shadowy man on the right side of the canvas.

Mihai Zgondoiu -Artist`s Golden Hand Triptic

 

Surrealism has experienced a contemporary rebirth as well, as we can see in Mihai Zgondoiu’s “Artist’s Golden Hand Triptic”. In this monochromatic composition the artist’s hand, in a golden cast, stands out in poses suggestive of classical sculptures yet truncated, headless, and fragmentary: like the pieces of a disjointed dream that assume great symbolic significance.

Aurel Tar – Lectura

Aurel Tar’s “Lectura” carries the legacy of Impressionism forward, into the relatively new field of digital art. A painting reminiscent in theme and style of the works of Morisot and Cassatt–a mother reading to her tired, sleepy daughter as they wait together at the train station—has a (paradoxically) new feel through its explicitly retro look (the newspaper print-like pointillism of digital art).

Why is it is it so important for contemporary artists to reinvent, in their unique and original styles, some of the greatest traditions in art history? I think, first of all, because no art exists in a cultural vacuum. Complete individuality is an illusion. Originality, when pushed to an extreme, risks degenerating into mere shock value. Just as contemporary artists can’t reject the influence of the artistic movements that came before them, they shouldn’t underestimate the importance of their patrons: the critics, the viewers, the buyers and the lovers of art.

Picasso and Gilot

For, to conclude my introduction with a citation by Picasso—arguably the most subversive and original modern artist—even subversion cannot exist without tradition, nor can originality exist in the absence of sound aesthetic standards:

“Today we are in the unfortunate position of having no order or canon whereby all artistic production is submitted to rules. They—the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians—did. Their canon was inescapable because beauty, so-called, was, by definition, contained in those rules. But as soon as art had lost all link with tradition, and the kind of liberation that came in with Impressionism permitted every painter to do what he wanted to do, painting was finished. When they decided it was the painter’s sensations and emotions that mattered, and every man could recreate painting as he understood it from any basis whatever, then there was no more painting; there were only individuals. Sculpture died the same death. … Painters no longer live within a tradition and so each one of us must recreate an entire language from A to Z. No criterion can be applied to him a priori, since we don’t believe in rigid standards any longer. In a certain sense, it’s a liberation but at the same time it’s an enormous limitation, because when the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains by way of liberty he loses in the way of order, and when you’re no longer able to attach yourself to an order, basically that’s very bad.” (My life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot, 21)

Returning to some shared artistic criteria and reclaiming art’s role in society doesn’t mean reverting to the rigid criteria of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, which can be respected but not revived. It means revitalizing the importance of art today. As we’ve seen in my brief perusal of Romanian contemporary art featured by the Grimberg Gallery, individuality of style can coexist with respect for past artistic traditions and artistic freedom is entirely compatible with an appreciation of art’s patrons: us, the viewing public.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

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Daniel Gerhartz: The Beauty of Representational Art

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a defense of representational art, aesthetic philosophy, Alphonse Mucha, art blog, art criticism, art history, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, contemporary painting, currents in art, Daniel Gerhartz, Daniel Gerhartz art, Daniel Gerhartz paintings, Daniel Gerhartz: The Beauty of Representational Art, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, history of art, Ilya Repin, Isaac Levitan, John Singer Sargent, modern art, Nicolai Fechin, painting, postromantic art, postromanticism, postromanticism Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com, Realism, Romantic art, Romantic painting, Romanticism, Romanticism and Postromanticism, the art of Daniel Gerhartz, the importance of representational art, the Romantic movement, verisimilitude in art, women in art

by Daniel Gerhartz

Daniel Gerhartz: The Beauty of Representational Art

by Claudia Moscovici, author of “Romanticism and Postromanticism” (2007) and co-founder of the postromantic art movement 

The American painter Daniel Gerhartz is a contemporary master of representational art. Drawn to painting since adolescence, he studied at the prestigious American Academy of Art in Chicago. Gerhartz states that he learned a lot about painting techniques by studying the works of John Singer Sargent, Alphonse Mucha, Nicolai Fechin and Joaquin Sorolla. Gerhartz also goes on to say on his website, http://danielgerhartz.com, that he is particularly inspired by modern Russian art of Nicolai Fechin, Isaac Levitan and Ilya Repin because “their paintings are completely loose yet deliberate and faithful, not at all flashy.”

by Daniel Gerhartz

Although Gerhartz paints a variety of subjects, most of his works focus on the female figure, in diverse settings, ranging from the realistic and contemporary to idyllic pastoral and romantic. Going far beyond realistic representation or the celebration of feminine beauty, his paintings evoke emotion and represent important aspects of the human condition (such as love, loss, nostalgia, and mourning).

by Daniel Gerhartz

Although often inspired by contemporary life, Daniel Gerhartz’s art clearly continues, for our times, the legacy of the Romantic and Symbolist movements, in two main ways: 1) a technique that emphasizes verisimilitude as well as, quite often, 2) the depiction of idealized figures and settings. In what follows, I’d like to explore why this continuation of the Romantic and Realist traditions are important currents in ART TODAY. They not only add diversity to the wide range of artistic movements we can enjoy, but also preserve valuable artistic techniques that  shouldn’t be dispensed with. 

by Daniel Gerhartz

The aesthetic revolution that occurred during the twentieth-century is unprecedented in the history of Western art. Even the invention of one-point perspective and the soft shading that gives the illusion of depth (chiaroscuro) during the Renaissance didn’t change aesthetic standards as radically as the creation of non-representational, or what has also been called “conceptual” art. Since Marcel Duchamp we have come to believe that a latrine, if placed in a museum, is a work of art. Since Andy Warhol we have come to accept that brillo boxes and other ordinary household objects, if placed in a museum, are objets d’art. And since Jackson Pollock and the New York School of abstract expressionism we have come to realize that what may appear to be randomly spilled paint, globs and other kinds of smudges are not only artistic, but also considered by many to be the deepest expressions of human talent, thought and feeling.

Once art took a conceptual turn, it also became philosophical. As Arthur Danto argues in representational art what constituted “art” was more or less obvious. The only question that was always difficult to determine was: is it good art? By way of contrast, Danto explains, conceptual art compels viewers to think about the very nature of art. The postmodern answer to this question is not only philosophical–namely, that art is a concept because it cannot be identified visually, just by looking at it–but also sociological. Art is, as Danto himself declares, whatever the viewing public and especially the community that has the power to consecrate it–by exhibiting it in galleries and museums, buying it, writing books about it, critiquing and reviewing it, etc– says it is.

A priori, art can be anything. A brillo box, a toilet seat. But it isn’t everything for the simple reason that not everything is consecrated as art. What may seem, by older standards, to be art—such as contemporary Impressionist-style paintings–may not be considered art (but only cheap imitation) by the public or critics, while, conversely, what doesn’t seem to be art—a brillo box—can be perceived as the highest manifestation of artistic genius.

As noted, what makes twentieth- and twenty-first century art conceptual is the fact that what makes it be “art” can no longer be seen with the eye. We can’t see the aesthetic difference between the brillo boxes we discard and Warhol’s brillo boxes. Yet one is called trash and the other pop art. Clearly, it’s not the physical qualities of the object, but rather the assumptions of a community that determine what is (good) art. I cannot dispute this argument—made in different ways by Pierre Bourdieu and Arthur Danto–because, given everything I observe is being called art, I see it as the most compelling explanation of the term “art” as it’s being used today. Having conceded the artistic nature and value of nonrepresentational art, however, postromantic aesthetics argues that just because nonrepresentational art is valued doesn’t mean that contemporary representational art should be dismissed.

To explain the conceptual revolution that occurred in art at the end of the nineteenth-century and the beginning of the twentieth century, some art historians claim that photography eliminated the need for representational art, or the kind of art that tries to imitate “nature” by depicting faithfully what the eye can see. We can add in parentheses, as E. H. Gombrich observes in The Story of Art, that the notion of the representation of what the eye can see has changed throughout the history of art. Needless to say, it too is shaped by social assumptions. Nonetheless, the difference between a kind of art that aims at faithful visual imitation of the three-dimensional qualities of physical objects and one that doesn’t remains relatively easy to discern.

For instance, even without reading the descriptive title of the painting, it’s clear to tell by just looking at Renoir’s Girl Bathing (1892) that it features a nude girl bathing. Without its explanatory (or deceptive) title, however, it would be impossible to know what Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 1 (1911) is supposed to represent The last thing that might occur to those who look at it–if it were not for the title–is that it shows a nude.

The invention of photography had a lot to do with the move away from visual representation. To say that photography eliminated the need for representational art, however, is an overstatement. Undoubtedly, the invention of the camera encouraged artists to experiment with other means of representation in the same way that the invention of machines displaced hand-made crafts. The camera probably did for painting what the industrial revolution did for artisanship. But that doesn’t mean that artisanship–or hand-made beautiful objects–are no longer valuable. For what the human imagination, sensibility, eye and hand can create will always be somewhat different from what can be made with the aid of machines. The texture, sense of color and vision that are captured by painters are not identical to those that photography can produce, even though photography can bring us closer to visual reality and even though photography can be artistic.

Verisimilitude, or the true-to-life physical representation of objects, already existed in classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman art, all of which rendered the beauty, movement and sinuosity of the human body especially palpable in their breath-taking sculptures. In classical Greek and Hellenistic art in particular, the human body conveyed (what was perceived as) the essence of beauty: the glorification of divine powers and aesthetic ideals were embodied in the human form. While Greek paintings and especially sculptures showed knowledge of human anatomy, movement and foreshortening, it’s Renaissance artists who discovered the two other key components of verisimilitude in painting: one point-perspective and shading, which give the illusion of three-dimensionality to two-dimensional painted forms. Gombrich and other art historians credit the architect Filipo Brunelleschi with the invention of one-point perspective as it was enthusiastically adopted by Italian Renaissance painters. Perspective entailed the application of geometrical principles to convey in painting the relative size of objects in terms of their distance from one another and from the viewer. (The Story of Art, 228-9).

The most famous Renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci, added another dimension to making the objects represented in art seem almost real. His most famous painting Mona Lisa is said to deceive the viewers into believing that the woman’s eyes move, returning and even following their gaze with her eyes. Likewise, many have speculated about the meaning of Mona Lisa’s ambiguous smile, whose lips have a mobility that renders her at once impenetrable and expressive. Leonardo was able to achieve these complex visual and psychological effects through the technique called sfumato, or the smoky blurring the contours of the object depicted—especially the corners of Mona Lisa’s eyes and mouth—to leave their outline and expression more open to interpretation.

The study and representation of human anatomy and of nature, foreshortening, capturing human movement and expression, one-point perspective and the creation of soft shadows which give the illusion of three-dimensionality to painted forms — all these techniques which took centuries to develop–have the magical effect of making objects represented by art come to life before our eyes. This kind of naturalistic art is not necessarily “realistic” in the sense of capturing human life as it actually is. For instance, some of the paintings of the surrealists were realistic in their anatomically accurate and three-dimensional representation of the human body, but fantastic in their rendition of reality.

Romanticism and Postromanticism by Claudia Moscovici

In its preference for visual resemblance (as opposed to realism or plausibility), my own art and aesthetics movement, POSTROMANTICISM,  which I co-founded with the sculptor Leonardo Pereznieto in 2002, argues that the artistic techniques that give a sense of three-dimensionality and life-like quality to art are difficult skills that require both patience and technical talent and that are worth preserving and appreciating in art today. There’s no reason to discard the masterful qualities that made art artistic for five hundred years. Nor do such techniques have only a purely historical value. In an artistic world that prides itself upon pluralism, openness and variety, artists who desire to continue the legacy of realistic representation should be able to coexist with those that have rejected it.

by Daniel Gerhartz

The postromantic movement–and representational art in general, of which the work of Daniel Gerhartz is a prime example–represents not a rival, but an alternative to modern and postmodern conceptual art. For in a world of such diverse tastes and sensibilities, there’s certainly room for both.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

http://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Postromanticism-Claudia-Moscovici/dp/0739116754

An Archaeology of Contemporary Life: The Art of Gianluca Capozzi

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An Archaeology of Contemporary Life: The Art of Gianluca Capozzi, art blog, art criticism, art reviews, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, contemporary painting, fine art, Gianluca Capozzi, hyper-realism, Italian art, painting, pop art, postmodern art, postromanticism.com, Surrealism

Born in Avellino, Italy, educated at the prestigious Academy of Fine Art in Florence, the contemporary artist Gianluca Capozzi shows an amazing versatility. Her paintings range from hyper-realism to a kind of minimalist Surrealism to Pop art. Gianluca Capozzi’s artwork offers an archaeology of contemporary life.

If anyone were to discover her works decades or even centuries later, they’d see our societies as they are: fragments of our every day lives, be it enjoying a day at the beach or walking on crowded city streets, on the way to work. But for the modern viewer, her artwork holds unexpected visual surprises that give us–quite literally–a fresh perspective on our daily activities: such as images that are off-center, where the focal point is the people dispersing into the city streets from an empty center or a young woman standing in the foreground with a fire blazing right behind her.

One of my favorites, called Pinup, featured below, captures perfectly the nearly inseparable fetishism–a longstanding cliché of the media machine–between women’s sexual allure and cars.

On the other hand, the painting entitled Office, below, is demurely realist and traditional. In a manner reminiscent of Degas’ voyeuristic framing, the viewer is invited to peek inside our mundane reality of “just another day at the office” as if we were mere external observers to our own everyday lives. This painting effectively defamiliarizes the familiar through its perspective rather than its style.

Finally, the painting entitled Sunday Afternoon, featured below, superposes a black and white image of a man working on his car with whimsical, colorful streaks of color. Both the car and the man have a retro look about them, but the splashes of color framed in white render them very fresh, ornamental and modern.

Gianluca Capozzi has the talent to render the familiar unfamiliar for the viewers of today while also making it more memorable for the viewers of tomorrow. You can see more of Gianluca Capozzi’s contemporary and versatile art on her blogspot, at the link below:

http://www.capozzigianluca.blogspot.com

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

The Captivating Art of Ernesto Camacho

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art criticism, art history, Auguste Renoir, city scenes, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary painting, Diego Rivera, Edward Hopper, Ernesto Camacho, Impressionism, painting, postromanticism.com, The Captivating Art of Ernesto Camacho, urban art

The art of Ernesto Camacho captivates. It catches your eyes, from afar, in its catchy urban themes—dramatic yet also familiar—in its jazzy feel (if images could be translated into music, his art would be jazz) and in its contrasts of colors that remain somehow harmonious, not jarring:  easy on the eyes. Just take a look for yourself at his website, http://artistsites.org/ernestocamacho/. This is definitely representational art of regular people in Impressionist settings, but definitely not painted in an Impressionist style.

Recall how vividly Renoir loved to depict Parisian scenes of young people dancing, going to cafés, in the park or on the beach. Most of the Salon rules went literally out the window as Impressionism celebrated average, middleclass life, outdoors, in the city, where most people went to have fun. That’s what Ernesto does in his paintings: he captures young people enjoying life, be it at a bar, like in the flirtatious “Two of a Kind,” at the ballet, like in “Odette My Love,” or waiting for the subway, like in the mesmerizing “Christie’s World,” featured above.

There’s a touch of Edward Hopper in these dramatic city scenes, but no alienation, just energy and even optimism found in every day life. The young lady in “Christie’s World” speaks volumes with her luminosity and intelligent glance, casting light upon the entire scene, including the two men sitting on the bench on either side of her: one absorbed in a newspaper, the other fading out.  Ernesto Camacho depicts with talent and flair our world: contemporary, edgy, urban and narrative, since each picture, like each life, tells an eloquent story.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com