David: a journey through Arts
This painting is a journey through centuries of Arts.
It starts from Michelangelo´s times in Renaissance, when Painting and Sculpture were the only recognized Arts (together with Architecture), and the level of perfection was at the most, due to the fact that art pieces were mainly produced for the Church first and for noble families later, who paid for them. Artists had to strive for perfection. Centuries later, we still admire and talk about their works. In my painting I represent Michelangelo´s most famous sculpture, David (early year 1500) and a paintbrush as symbols of the 2 main visual Arts.
The 19th Century then produced a revolutionary invention, Photography, which made artists ask themselves what their new role was, and opened a path to start reproducing not only reality but expression of creativity as well. Then came the 20th Century, with computers that gave another direction to expression, nowadays as digital art. On the upper part of the canvas is a camera lens and a sequence of 0 and 1´s in bits whose bytes reproduce the letters ARS, Arts in latin.
In my work I symbolise Contemporary Art as a continuous, hard to capture, stream of Art movements, in which we Artists are urged to find new means of expression, constantly competing with one another to attract the Art scene. But how can we survive in this system? If a work is not strong enough and does not leave a sign, it is destined to crumble to the feet of the Masters´ heritage and will not survive the memory of time. Just the same way that the 0/1 bits crumble from the top of my canvas onto the paintbrush that remains.
Where will our Art be in 500 years´ time? We cannot tell what the taste of public and Art market will be in the future. However, if we look back onto 500 years old David, we see that the subject had already been used by several artists, such as Donatello and Verrocchio. Back then marble was the most common material used by sculptors and the block of marble used for David had already been abandoned by two other artists due to mediocre quality. Therefore it was not the originality of the subject nor the innovation in medias used that made the sculpture memorable. In retrospective, it is the excellency of the execution that audience and critics still admire in Michelangelo's masterpiece five centuries later.
Make your Art survive time. Strive for excellency!
It starts from Michelangelo´s times in Renaissance, when Painting and Sculpture were the only recognized Arts (together with Architecture), and the level of perfection was at the most, due to the fact that art pieces were mainly produced for the Church first and for noble families later, who paid for them. Artists had to strive for perfection. Centuries later, we still admire and talk about their works. In my painting I represent Michelangelo´s most famous sculpture, David (early year 1500) and a paintbrush as symbols of the 2 main visual Arts.
The 19th Century then produced a revolutionary invention, Photography, which made artists ask themselves what their new role was, and opened a path to start reproducing not only reality but expression of creativity as well. Then came the 20th Century, with computers that gave another direction to expression, nowadays as digital art. On the upper part of the canvas is a camera lens and a sequence of 0 and 1´s in bits whose bytes reproduce the letters ARS, Arts in latin.
In my work I symbolise Contemporary Art as a continuous, hard to capture, stream of Art movements, in which we Artists are urged to find new means of expression, constantly competing with one another to attract the Art scene. But how can we survive in this system? If a work is not strong enough and does not leave a sign, it is destined to crumble to the feet of the Masters´ heritage and will not survive the memory of time. Just the same way that the 0/1 bits crumble from the top of my canvas onto the paintbrush that remains.
Where will our Art be in 500 years´ time? We cannot tell what the taste of public and Art market will be in the future. However, if we look back onto 500 years old David, we see that the subject had already been used by several artists, such as Donatello and Verrocchio. Back then marble was the most common material used by sculptors and the block of marble used for David had already been abandoned by two other artists due to mediocre quality. Therefore it was not the originality of the subject nor the innovation in medias used that made the sculpture memorable. In retrospective, it is the excellency of the execution that audience and critics still admire in Michelangelo's masterpiece five centuries later.
Make your Art survive time. Strive for excellency!
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