TECHNIQUE vrs EXPRESION: ever lasting challange of balancing them. (an art article BUT trust me, it will open your mind in tango as well ) I am very fond of the impressionist’s culture, and though I enjoy greatly of their paintings, what I most learn from them is the order in which technique and expression can hugely change outcome of an art form. You see, the most famous impressionists, who were also the precursors of such movement, were talented artists that had great knowledge of what at the time was called “technique”. They had the skills: they managed rules of proportion, measurement, composition, angles, lines, and the control over the complicated materials with which they worked with (pigments, oils, varnishes, etc.) how to use lights and shadows etc. Yet with all this classical knowledge they refused to keep giving privilege to technique over expression. First of all they lived in a time where artist no longer wanted to tell someone else’s story. They wanted to paint whatever they considered beauty, even if that meant glorifying making immortal in their art work a peasant woman, or an ordinary low class reunion. Yet great classic painters were also sublime: they were so brilliant that they dominated the technique to such a degree that they transcended the theme they were ordered to represent. Their spirit was so passionate, and their minds so quick, that it could not be restricted by rules. They ended up making their own rules and being the precursors of a trend in art. But not everybody has the same skills or temperament, and becaue of this they need different means to express what is within. But the true impressionists carry much of the Tango essence: improvisation. They were fully aware of the need to have certain level of technique, but their main aim was to absorb the “feeling” of the moment. Capturing the colors affected but the light was their concern, and that was a hard enough job by its self. Monet is the grates of these species of painters: he captured the scenes by thoroughly working outdoors to study the change of the ambiance as the sun raised and descended. His goal was to capture that sensation of dusk and dawn. And he sure did it! That is why when looking at one of his art works you can FEEL that precise IMPRESION. But the followers of this movement started copying them without any knowledge, any background, of technique. Cezanne came to put this problem to an end: in his strong and temperamental character, he denounced that the impressionist were discrediting the usefulness of composition. Though he began as an impressionist and had the same urges as they had, he insisted in balance, in a combination that would not totally discard rules but put them in the right order. If you ask me, I don’t care much for his work, cause I sense his rough character in it…he was an obsessive and stubborn man, and a quiet a bit unpleasant to be around. But I can imagine that this was the only way he knew to respond towards a tendency of many “wanna bes” in art world that were distorting the essence. Of course the great names like Monet, Renior, Pizzarro did not have these kind of problem: they had technique, and could bend it to their own desire without deforming it. CONCLUSION: don’t discard technique, but remember it is just a mean to HOLD and CARRY the colors of your expression.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:41:28 +0000
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