Felix de Azua analyzes the still lifes Luis Meléndez (1715-1780) in A defiant look .
Melendez's self-portrait in the Louvre. Here the young artist of 30 years (dating from 1746), a handsome young olive, dressed elegantly contained, olive satin jacket, frilly-white waterfall in the shirt, blue silk ribbon and bow collecting Monet. However, what impresses is the insolence of the gaze.
The first mystery is the nature of death itself, these compositions with cheeses, fruits, breads or rabbits. What led to Velazquez Zurbarán, Sanchez Cotan, to give such importance to an issue of poor quality? These still lifes have no connection with the flamingos, which is displayed in abundance, wealth, luxury living and furor of a hugely powerful provinces during the six hundred. The humility of English still life has more poetry than science, and yet the mystery is compelling. Heidegger wanted to imbue meaning poor Van Gogh boots, two broken pieces of leather that embodied the lifetime of work and pain of their own, as if the painting of everyday objects could read our fate. But the English still life is the opposite. There is pathos here, or symbols, and transcendence, even (though his defense Bryson) a form of material life. I think this genre is more mysterious than has been the almost extinct art.
No one that actually looks like twins these pristine objects, supernatural light, visible to an extent that not a mechanical eye can reach. It would be a visible reality in the eyes of angelic or demonic, but not humans. This "reality" is as unreal as that of Mondrian. In either still lifes immediately Melendez notes that are the result of an obsession. They are painted to match the eye from a incredible distance as if the painter had put his nose between grapes and cheese. Apparently, Melendez composing his still lifes, but painted one by one the objects and was adding and arranging on the canvas as it advanced (Hirschaner & Metzger). Melendez is located a few centimeters of a pumpkin under intense light we do not know how to install. After scrutinizing as a myopic, paints even the slightest wrinkle of the epithelium. Then do the same with a bread crust clay. And so on to accommodate the end, a blanket of support. With the addition of the size, of course, is not natural.
managed to alienate all guards, because they never received prestigious orders that his talent deserved and others more mediocre painters managed with ease. They have lost the few major works that gave King Charles during a brief stay in Naples (1748-1752), but it never came to know the real favor. So he was condemned to painting still lifes, genre considered the most low-class by the artistic hierarchy, but sold well.
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