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December 13, 2005
Tradition?
I visited the Gemäldegalerie Berlin twice last week. Somehow I have never been there before within the almost 10 years I have been living in Berlin.
Maybe my growing up in a catholic environment in Bavaria made me avoid any kind of religious art. But not this time: I went the distance, entered these halls filled with medieval and renaissance paintings and fully immersed myself in the collective christian nightmare of fear, brutality, superstition, confusion and longing for salvation.
I was struck by the awkward transformation of biblical sceneries into the local context of the painters. One could easily tell by the faces and fashion styles of Jesus, Mary and the other characters where those paintings originated from. Whether they wanted it or not: depicting the heavenly community the painters also portrayed the societies they were living in.
This made me think about originality again: Those artists treated the same topics with the same characters, using the same medium in a similar style and sometimes even similar compositions for decades if not centuries. Still, every single painting looks unique, reveals its own visual inventions, tells a different story and has its own meaning. Maybe these subtleties can only be perceived because of the similarities. Being used to the idea of constant progress which incessantly forces one to come up with something radically new and unseen I was wondering what media art and design would look like if they would not have to fulfill the need for the sensation of the new.
Posted by Ralph Ammer at December 13, 2005 12:59 PM
Comments
good question. but, weren't the ones that stood out of the abundance of painters always the ones that stood out. and media art is so much more closely related to technology (and not neccessary it's own techniques) as such than naturalistic painting.
it's a funny thought, but maybe today's shooter games and imaging technologies are closest to the notion of most deliberately reproducting god's creation?
Posted by: sascha at December 16, 2005 01:07 AM
I would like to question the value of "standing out". It seems to me that "giants" usually stand on the shoulders of many talented people, not the other way around.
I see a shared aspect of media art and naturalistic paintings in the rational idea to trascend the world by understanding its "rules". But I actually wanted to point out nowaday's emphasis on the single author and her originality and her need to be significantly distinct from anybody else which seems to be a big difference compared to medieval times.
Posted by: Ralph Ammer at December 16, 2005 12:56 PM