Ralph Hackeland, Narcissus, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.
"[...] Here the boy, exhausted by the exertions of the hunt and the heat, came to lie down, attracted by the beauty of the place and the spring, but, as he tries to quench his thirst, another thirst arises: enraptured in posing to drink from the image he sees reflected, he falls in love with a chimera: body believes what only is shadow. Astonished he stares at himself and without being able to tear his eyes away he remains petrified like a statue carved in Paro marble."
With supreme wisdom, Ovid (c. 43 B.C.-17 A.D.), a Roman poet among the leading exponents of Latin literature, mentioned above in his celebrated Metamorphoses, an epic-mythological poem aimed at transmitting to posterity numerous mythological stories and tales from Greek and Roman classicism, narrates the "love" encounter of Narcissus. In fact, from 413 to 467 verses of the play, the 16-year-old young man, used to proudly rejecting every single suitor, falls hopelessly in love with a handsome boy who, in an "emulative" manner, passionately reciprocated his gaze. Unfortunately, Narcissus soon realized that he had felt attraction to his own image reflected in a puddle, met for the first time and lost forever, as: it is impossible, although many would like to, to multiply our person, in order to find the sweet half. Precisely because of this drama, which ends with a shattered Narcissus, aimed at allowing himself to die of pain, the reflection of the human body on liquid surfaces begins to insinuate itself frequently in art-historical subjects, re-presenting, in various versions, this heartbreaking tale of missed love. In order to render the popularity of Narcissus in the history of art, it might suffice to make references to one of the greatest masterpieces of the figurative arts, created by the tormented Caravaggio, whose "sickness of living" was probably due to his own temperament, rather than to narcissistically derived motives. The work in question is the Narcissus, an oil on canvas made by the Milanese painter between 1597 and 1599, housed in the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Rome, in which the juxtaposition between the image of the young man enraptured by his own beauty and the nefarious events shortly afterwards, due precisely to this too much self-love, is made concrete on an unconscious level. In fact, the Italian master chooses to depict the moment when the young man, dressed in seventeenth-century clothing, discovers his reflected image within a shadowy place, in which his posture and expression give away all his desire to project himself toward the image reflected in the water. This figurative narrative, except for what concerns the young man's clothing, faithfully echoes Ovid's account, which Caravaggio had occasion to consult, probably referring to Renaissance vulgarizations. The Italian artist's naturalistic approach, revealed in particular by the effigy's spontaneous and natural posture as well as his absorbed expression, departs drastically from earlier interpretations, such as that of the fresco in the House of Mark and Lucretius Frontone (1st century AD. ) at Pompeii or the point of view handed down by the illuminated codices, turning out to be more "akin" to the artistic investigation of Benvenuto Cellini, Dirck van Baburen, and Francesco Curradi, to the point of forcefully detaching itself from the more modern, caricatured, Victorian, and innovative points of view of Honoré Daumier, John William Waterhouse, and Salvator Dali. Concluding the Narcissus parenthesis, it is good to highlight how, in addition to this ancient and cult subject, in which the art-refraction duo was realized, reflecting expanses of water were also the object of interest in the landscape genre, especially, the Impressionist genre, known for its attention directed toward the optical effects of light, which radiating on various naturalistic supports, was able to give voice to the fleetingness, as well as the uniqueness, of the present moment.
Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1597-1599.Oil on canvas, 112 x 92 cm. Roma: Galleria Nazionale d'arte Antica - Palazzo Barberini
Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869. Oil on canvas, 74 x 99,7 cm. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Example of these intentions is offered to us by the artistic investigation of the most famous Impressionist master, Claude Monet, a painter extremely fascinated by the play of light created by water, so much so that this element, omnipresent in his painting, becomes, on some occasions, such as those of the twenty canvases on water lilies, the real protagonist of the work. After all, as he himself had occasion to reveal, "the basic element is the mirror of water, whose appearance changes every moment by the way the shreds of sky are reflected in it, giving it life and movement. To capture the fleeting moment, or at least the feeling it leaves behind, is difficult enough when the play of light and color is concentrated on a fixed point, but water, being such a mobile and ever-changing subject, is a real problem...a man can devote his whole life to such a work." In order to provide more concrete food for thought, it is possible to refer to La Grenouillère, an oil on canvas by Monet dated 1869, aimed at depicting, at its "center," a small island with a tree and some bathers, a vision that gives us a satisfactory idea of how Parisians of the time spent their warm Sunday afternoons swimming or staying on the riverbank. In reality, however, the focal point of the work lies entirely in the more dynamic Seine, a river intended to surround the bathing establishment, making it attractive through the interaction of its water surface with the sun's rays, the reflections of the surrounding reality, and the floating leaves. While such a mode of depicting refraction was highly successful within Impressionism, Post-Impressionism "exasperated" this tendency, giving rise to powerful, exaggerated and extremely unreal reflections, aimed at turning into "fluorescent" beams of light, which concur with the sun, moon and stars in illuminating the landscape, just as Van Gogh's masterpiece dated 1888 and titled Starry Night Over the Rhône demonstrates. Finally, pursuing the intent to "amaze," that is, to provide an even more original image of the aforementioned phenomenon, I appeal to the eccentric genius of Dali and, in particular, to the 1937 masterpiece, Swans Reflecting Elephants, a work in which reflections become an opportunity to generate additional forms of life to those of commonly perceived reality, just as if Narcissus came to be able to kiss his own reflected image with all that ardor, which he was tragically denied. Speaking of contemporary art, on the other hand, some of the most current and innovative views on water reflection are provided to us by the artistic investigation of the artists of Artmajeur, among whom, the interpretations of: Alexandra Djokic, Eva Volf and Dmitry Oleyn.
Alina Sunny, Water mirror, 2021. Oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm.
Dita Lūse, Off-season, 2022. Oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm.
Alexandra Djokic, Water reflection no.2, 2022. Acrylic on paper, 100 x 70 cm.
Alexandra Djokic: Water reflection No. 2
I thought of having the viewer approach Djokic's acrylics painting, imagining that I was accompanying him or her inside the artist's studio, keeping him or her in the dark about the title and the subject it depicted. In a second moment, I asked my "social experimenter," whom I imagine to be of average academic training, what he recognized in that colorful composition. To that question, he, somewhat hesitantly at first, simply described to me what he saw: a harmonious and sinuous "interlocking" of meandering lines, whose hues vary from dark blue to the lightest celestial, delving, at times, into yellow, green and brown. After this purely formal description, my "assistant" took courage, revealing, with extreme conviction, that such stylistic features could only represent, albeit in a "synthetic," and highly personal manner, the reflections of the sun, etc., captured on an indefinite water surface. All this reasoning leads to a master of art history, whose artistic investigation is aimed at showing how, as early as the time of Romanticism, realism was surpassed in terms of an immediate understanding of reality, as his unequivocal work even represents the earliest form of "abstractionism." The painter to whom I refer is William Turner, whose narrative synthesis, recorded by works such as Storm at Sea (1831-32) and Cliff from the Sea (1825), demonstrated how the idea of the sea can be traced to even a few effective and strategic brushstrokes. Midway between the "Post-Impressionism" of Artmajeur's artist and Turner's pseudo-Abstractionism, on the other hand, is the more realistic vision of Väinö Hämäläinen, a well-known Finnish painter, who immortalized the same subject in 1911, demonstrating a more "realist" approach with a clear Impressionist derivation.
Eva Volf, Sun catcher, 2022. Oil on canvas, 91,4 x 91,4 cm.
Eva Volf: Sun catcher
Volf's oil painting moves away from the most personal interpretations of reality, staying true, through a purely realist depiction, to the pictorial rendering of the play of light that the surface of the water hosts, whenever the sun, like a vain Narcissus, is reflected in the sea. This last good-natured star, which, unlike the character just mentioned, proves to be very helpful to others, kisses, with its generous rays, the entire surface of the earth, becoming the unfailing component of the luminous Macchiaioli seascapes. At this point a question arises: were the reflections of the sea, or the swaying foam, also enhanced by less luminous paintings? The answer, surely affirmative, is offered to us by Caspar David Friedrich's masterpiece, Munich by the Sea (1808-10), a painting in which, within a dark, deserted beach, there is only the figure of a monk, placed in front of the vastness of the sea barely illuminated by some saving glow, which comes from a stingy sky thick with dark clouds. If this vision was suggested to the artist from a purely romantic perspective, aimed at placing the protagonist, in all his littleness, before the majesty of nature, there is also a second, far less "philosophical" interpretation of this well-known landscape with figure. In fact, referring to a purely scientific point of view, the bright reflections of the sea, despite the dark sky, could be justified by the "fluorescent" presence of placton, animal and plant microorganisms, which, especially at night, emit light when stimulated by boats or other animals. Consequently, we could wish Friedrich's monk a rich catch!
Dmitry Oleyn, Rainbow sea, 2022. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm.
Dmitry Oleyn: Rainbow sea
Oleyn's impressionist painting is influenced by the viewpoint of two iconic masters of art history, such as Maximilien Luce and Claude Monet, in terms of subject, style, and treatment of light sources. Nonetheless, before coming to reveal how the latter two provided insights for the artist of Artmajeur, it is good to make known the peculiarities of Rainbow sea, whose very title anticipates to the viewer the presence of a rainbow, whose reduced and delicate colored lights are revealed within a wide seascape view, in which a single, tiny boat floats in the distance. Leaving aside this last small white detail, it is the left side of the oil that imposes itself as the center of interest of the figurative narrative, as, illuminated as if by an intense flash, it glows in the sky and the sea, to interrupt its glow behind the majesty of a heavy and sturdy rock. This vision, almost animated by celestial life forms, culminates in the upper part of the painting, where the miracle of the aforementioned rainbow "sketch" materializes. Returning now to the two masters mentioned above, the perspective layout of Maximilien Luce's Sea coast in the Normandy (1893) is designed, in a manner similar to that of the artist from Artmajeur, in order to maximize the spread of sunlight over the expanse of sky and water. Speaking of Monet, on the other hand, Oleyn inherits from the French master the slightly "textural" brushstroke and the taste for capturing the rocks overlooking the sea, as evidenced by numerous masterpieces by the best-known Impressionist, such as, for example, Agitated Sea at Etretat (1883) and Cliffs at Belle-Île (1886).
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli
