While away this winter my mind wandered and stumbled and came upon a few things.
While not immediately photography related, I find the process of musing over these topics informs and directs how I approach the craft.
~ Culture Defined
The first is a renewed appreciation for how received culture impacts my view of, well, just about everything.
Culture is delivered/given to us. We consume it. We participate in it - for or against. It's something I seldom think about but (all too often passively) agree/disagree bound by limits set by culture itself.
Which led me to a question: Can I think beyond those boundaries? What would it mean if I did? How would I see the world differently? How would I behave in the future?
Fortunately there are plenty of hints and ideas.
In Europe Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall explored how the control of a small class of people defines culture for the rest of us. In the US there are Howard Zinn, David Graeber, and Noam Chomsky who looked at the imposition of culture through politics and money. In literature we have the example of Cervantes in the early 1600's and his hero, Don Quixote. More recently we have Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom looked at culture from various perspectives.
What I do, what we all do, in photography and art is caught up in culture as we experience it. How we see. How we react. How we do. All of it.
- The Renaissance
European art experienced a "rebirth" starting in the late 1300's. I wondered, a "rebirth"? What was the first "birth?"
Our trip to Napoli and Rome helped me see.
Renaissance paintings commonly show we humans as we are. Architectural features correctly rendered. Compositions and subject are proportionally correct. This was obviously different than the iconography of the Eastern Roman Empire what were simplistic with subjects and elements disproportionately distributed.
What came before?
In Napoli we visited a museum that holds many wonderful fresco that were taken out of Pompeii. One room is filled with what I found to be incredible examples of correct human shapes, an correct architectural proportion and perspective. All pre-dated the Renaissance by 1500 years. It was instantly clear to me that Roman artists knew quite well what they were doing. This had to be a bit of the first "birth."
Similarly, with sculpture I've marveled at the incredible beauty of Bernini's figures, Michelangelo's sculptural stout firmness and power, and Canova's exquisite line and execution. For me many of their works have the power to emotionally move me.
It turns out so can classic Greek and Roman sculpture. The Capitoline Museum and the Villa Doria-Pamphilj in Rome house early works that I've found to be absolutely exquisite. The Greeks and Romans led the way and I finally understand what is meant by "Renaissance."
An incredible world of art existed many centuries prior.
This made me wonder if everything had been forgotten and needed to be re-discovered? Or if everything remained in the continuum of art but had to be left out due to the demands of those who employed artists?
- Caravaggio
One artist is credited with the introduction of "chiaroscuro" lighting.
It's the kind of light that, if we are speaking in photographic "Zone System" terms, moves skin tones from Zone 6 up to Zone 7 or even 8 and takes the shadows and moves them from Zone 4 down to Zone 2 or 1.
At the Doria-Pamphilj we saw several of Caravaggio's early paintings. They are quite "classic" with open shadow details and muted highlights. They could've been executed by any of the early Renaissance masters as they fit the general style of the time. The arc of his work spans from early flat, calm paintings to later contrasty drama. His later works are what we tend to know him by, and I was quite surprised to see examples of his earliest paintings.
However... his lighting (as important as it is, what with the immediate impact it had on European painters during Caravaggio's lifetime) is most definitely _not_ the thing I find the most interesting about Caravaggio's work.
When we were in Napoli we visited a chapel in the Pio Monte della Misericordia where a Caravaggio hangs over the altar. It's titled "The Seven Works of Mercy."
At first I wasn't sure what to make of it since it failed to conform to expectations I had about, what?, I don't know, just about everything. The lighting was harsh and slashing, which I expected from Caravaggio.
There was something else going on in there. After a minute or two a 5watt bulb turned on in my mind. I had to stand and look and experience and appreciate what he'd done. He'd broken one of the prime "rules" of painting. *snap* As if it were a little twig to be played with and disfigured.
All the important action was pushed to the edges of the frame. The center, ah, yes, the center contained shockingly nothing of interest, and in that light it could be seen as nothing more than a black space, dead center, a black nothingness.
Could it be that Caravaggio's greatest contribution to art was his sense of composition?
Oh my. There could be freedom in this. Maybe. Yes. Likely so.
Things are shifting.
