As I’ve written before, Time at the deepest level is a whole different world from clock and calendar time; Standard Art History is like calendar time. At the deepest levels of time the past can come alive in the present and the past may offer a glimpse into the future. By the same token what appears empty can actually be very full. If I keep thinking like this I may have to quit painting and become a Physicist! No I’ll just be a Painter. But Sometimes something develops in my work, that chimes with a discovery from the forefront of modern physics. That’s it, Maybe I can teach physicists to draw and move paint around, which may lead them to new discoveries. Sign me up. I love it!
In the past week I’ve seen some things that were VERY interesting to my eye, so let me take you on an Art/space/time tour of them. Lets start with this one
This is by Mark Rothko. He started out as a figurative painter and at some point he started letting the paint itself lead him, which of course led to abstraction. By the way I have a quarrel with that term. I think everything they call abstract looks like or evokes SOMETHING. This painting for me evokes a seascape. Finally there are a few things that look Un-Rothko like. Do you know why? It’s not a Rothko! It is by the great English Painter, William Turner from the late 18th and early 19th Century. It IS in fact a seascape The past offering some of the future to us within deep time. Forget the calendar stuff. And this also happens outside the Art realm. So lets go to another example of past sending messages to the present.
I came across this one. At very first glance it looked very contemporary, even somewhat “abstract”, given the way the forms are stacked upon each other. Nope. It dates from 1740. It is FALLEN ANGELS by Italian sculptor Agostino Fasolato . So it seems like Modern didn’t start in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as calendar based Art History tells us. Now lets move on to what I think is an absolute show stopper
This is so striking. A tinted glass window. I don’t know who created it or when it was created. The a-symmetrical composition might lead you to think it was made recently. However, I’ve seen very old pieces which also employ such a-symmetry. Hmm. So where does that leave us with our dating? A very striking feature is the face that appears near the top of the piece. I have no idea how that was done. Well, I’m never going to date this, and neither will you. Why? because this is not a tinted glass window. This is a photograph of a dragon fly’s wing. Now it becomes exponentially more fascinating. So who or what designed and executed it? It was fully designed in what some call The Active Vacuum, The Medium, The Aether, unseen as observable tangible form, until enough energy is loaded into it. A kind of blueprint or design until the building is built. So when was this Design created? and by which Artist?…I’ll leave you with that question to ponder.
This has been fun as always.
P.S. From The forefront of physics'-Time is energy. I almost forgot that key idea!
Ricky
t
Have you ever seen a painted portrait of a computer?? You will see it in my next post
I’m looking f