The Golden Prairie
In order to explain "The Golden Prairie" I have to go back few years and talk about the series "DaVinci and The New Man", started in 2008. I also have to touch upon the subject matters of social paradigm, identity and landscape representation.
The "DaVinci series started in 2008. It' has to do with Western culture's obsession with physical and mental perfection. I was doing some copies of Leonardo DaVinci’s anatomical studies while reading Jurgen Habermas’ “The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity”. The idea of instrumental reason lying at the base of Western technological advances, social relations and alienation echoes on the ideological program of Marxist-Leninist revolutions and the place it bestows on science and technology over the creation of a new emancipated world and the liberation of man from nature and the environment. While searching for freedom, Western modernity has paradoxically degenerated into a system of fear and terror, alienating and oppressing the individual. Instrumental reason and revolution, having as a point of departure the liberation of man, has ended up oppressing him even more.
The Golden Prairie represents the opposite of the ideas conveyed by the Da Vinci series. In the Golden Prairie, man still lives in the state of nature, linked to it and as one with it.
The issue of identity* arises as a personal dilemma for the artist, who, being born in Western society tries to find a place in it, but knowing that it doesn't have one looks at the Other of Western culture for a place to belong. The landscape of the Golden Prairie and its subjects become the symbols of home and belonging to which the artist strives for.
The duality that is Us and the Other determines the structure of the painting. Therefore the emphatic separation of foreground and background, together with the two symmetrical portraits and the use of genre landscape and portrait painting in the same picture plane.
While doing some research I discovered that the Constitution of the US bears the influence of the Iroqui Law of Peace constitution. There comes the idea for the sequel to The Golden Prairie, The Great Law of Peace. I also discovered that the US has, in the past, printed currency bearing faces and symbols of the Native American. I found fit to make the portraits of Seating Bull and Geronimo in the form of golden coins since the idea of money is tied to the idea of social paradigm sketched in the DaVinci portrait series. Money is the American version of paradigmatic perfection. Thus a bridge between the concerns of the DaVinci series and the concerns of the Golden Prairie was established.
* In his essay "Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and Flow in Contemporary Art and Culture", Nikos Papastergiadis says that "the concept of hybridity was used to redefine the presence of diasporic or indigineous artists. They were no longer defines in terms of an exotic alternative or as a belated supplement whose incorporation could serve to both expand or reaffirm the parameters of mainstream. The story of indigenous survival and migrant diasporas has become a crucial perspective in the critique of globalization and the re-writing of the history of modernism. The concept of hybridity was also understood as offering a critical perspective on the cultural practices or symbolic meanings that were generated by artists. Hybridity serves as a counterpoint to the idealist categories that confined creativity to either closed forms of tradition or universal forms of abstraction. Unlike essentialist theories that claim that cultural identity is rooted in a particular landscape and locked into atavistic values, the concept of hybridity was used to shift attention towards the acknowledgement of the process of mixture and the effects of mobility on contemporary culture" (Papastergiadis 4).
Work Cited:
Papastergiadis, Nikos. "Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and Flow in Contemporary Art and Culture". Theory, Culture and Society, 2005.(SAGE, London, Touthand Oaks and New Delhi).
The "DaVinci series started in 2008. It' has to do with Western culture's obsession with physical and mental perfection. I was doing some copies of Leonardo DaVinci’s anatomical studies while reading Jurgen Habermas’ “The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity”. The idea of instrumental reason lying at the base of Western technological advances, social relations and alienation echoes on the ideological program of Marxist-Leninist revolutions and the place it bestows on science and technology over the creation of a new emancipated world and the liberation of man from nature and the environment. While searching for freedom, Western modernity has paradoxically degenerated into a system of fear and terror, alienating and oppressing the individual. Instrumental reason and revolution, having as a point of departure the liberation of man, has ended up oppressing him even more.
The Golden Prairie represents the opposite of the ideas conveyed by the Da Vinci series. In the Golden Prairie, man still lives in the state of nature, linked to it and as one with it.
The issue of identity* arises as a personal dilemma for the artist, who, being born in Western society tries to find a place in it, but knowing that it doesn't have one looks at the Other of Western culture for a place to belong. The landscape of the Golden Prairie and its subjects become the symbols of home and belonging to which the artist strives for.
The duality that is Us and the Other determines the structure of the painting. Therefore the emphatic separation of foreground and background, together with the two symmetrical portraits and the use of genre landscape and portrait painting in the same picture plane.
While doing some research I discovered that the Constitution of the US bears the influence of the Iroqui Law of Peace constitution. There comes the idea for the sequel to The Golden Prairie, The Great Law of Peace. I also discovered that the US has, in the past, printed currency bearing faces and symbols of the Native American. I found fit to make the portraits of Seating Bull and Geronimo in the form of golden coins since the idea of money is tied to the idea of social paradigm sketched in the DaVinci portrait series. Money is the American version of paradigmatic perfection. Thus a bridge between the concerns of the DaVinci series and the concerns of the Golden Prairie was established.
* In his essay "Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and Flow in Contemporary Art and Culture", Nikos Papastergiadis says that "the concept of hybridity was used to redefine the presence of diasporic or indigineous artists. They were no longer defines in terms of an exotic alternative or as a belated supplement whose incorporation could serve to both expand or reaffirm the parameters of mainstream. The story of indigenous survival and migrant diasporas has become a crucial perspective in the critique of globalization and the re-writing of the history of modernism. The concept of hybridity was also understood as offering a critical perspective on the cultural practices or symbolic meanings that were generated by artists. Hybridity serves as a counterpoint to the idealist categories that confined creativity to either closed forms of tradition or universal forms of abstraction. Unlike essentialist theories that claim that cultural identity is rooted in a particular landscape and locked into atavistic values, the concept of hybridity was used to shift attention towards the acknowledgement of the process of mixture and the effects of mobility on contemporary culture" (Papastergiadis 4).
Work Cited:
Papastergiadis, Nikos. "Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and Flow in Contemporary Art and Culture". Theory, Culture and Society, 2005.(SAGE, London, Touthand Oaks and New Delhi).
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| The Golden Prairie. Acrylic on canvas. 72 x 92 inches (private collection.) |
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| Che DaVinci. Acrylic on canvas. 30 x 48 inches (private collection.) |
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| J.F.K. DaVinci. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. |
posted by Renelio @ 1/08/2014 04:51:00 PM
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