The Art Historian
It is with fire that blacksmiths iron subdue
Unto fair form, the image of their thought:
Nor without fire hath any artist wrought
Gold to its utmost purity of hue.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (translated by John A. Symonds)
Can we still be awed?
Can modern art – or any kind of art – give us the feeling the gothic cathedrals offered our ancestors centuries ago? And if not, what does that say about the human civilization and each and one of us?
This is an essential matter to be addressed since a vast amount of our sensory input is visual and because of this our eyes have played a fundamental role in the shaping of our species. Sight’s sisters join this symphony and call us towards the Empyrean - music touches our soul through untold quivers, our remembrances are deeply entwined with long lost fragrances, our (aesthetic) taste is the labyrinthine portal to renewing our bodies and minds, while our fingers and skin play a fundamental role in our capacity to love and to hold. There can be no wonder Jan Brueghel the Elder’s and Rubens’s depiction of the senses echoes our desires and guides us towards blissful enchantment.
What about history? Is it simply what came before us or also what will come after? Starry, starry nights show us that the more things stay the same, the more they change and that is why believing that our destiny is ‘written’ in the stars gives us focus and purpose. However this kind of writing is not sequential, as it can take many shapes and its continuously evolving surfaces and depths reflect the struggles of many eons and civilizations, such an enterprise resembling the forging Michelangelo is telling us about. Given this complexity, our capacity to communicate through various means needs to be historical since in order to master any kind of alphabet you have to know a code and a code needs to be taught and learned. That is what makes it possible for these lines to reach out to the reader and this is how art and history both chiseled and enriched Piero della Francesca’s vision so that he could turn a Roman triumph into a portrait of perennial Virtues. Our unwavering yearn to ascend and not be forgotten finds embodiment in all cultures, the want to make the invisible visible always urging us to bring the horizon line ever closer. The materiality of the ethereal calls to us from its blue-and-white plane of existence through Whistler’s longings, Bosch’s Ascent of the Blessed, the David Vases or the evanescent purity of the Polar realms as we strive to comprehend how simplicity is the most daedal form of splendor.
The entwining of what we are able to see now and the desire to find out who we have always been gave birth to a bewitching tapestry of meaning and form spanning from prehistory to virtual realities, from the Egyptian pyramids to the One World Tower, from the Easter Island to the Borobudur Temple. There are many codes and many knots, natural and man-made, each one with its own voice. It takes truthfulness, passion and commitment to learn their tongues, take their photographs, preserve and restore their message. If one is to become Ulysses and not Narcissus one must pick up the tools that will anneal their spirit and illuminate their way towards the knowledge that will make it possible for them and for their students to unplug their ears even while the Sirens are singing. This is no small task since it requires not only understanding, but also courage, thus begetting the necessary balance between light and darkness, between using the mirror to get Amaterasu to come out of the shadows’ cave and wield it to focus her rays so that everyone can enjoy her blessing. As Akbar’s Rāmāyana endeavor shows us, churning the Ocean of Milk the right way requires foresight, immense patience and skill, as well as choosing worthy companions. Finding the right shade, coloring towards the right path, envisioning what one could see beyond the eerie, yet cherished frame once the lights go out, they are all intimations of a future that is ours to write. The Dan masks that were supposed to be worn in order to allow communication between the living and their ancestors gave birth to Picasso’s unmasking of the apparently splintered nature of time and space, which has consequently allowed for our reconceptualization of past, presentness and the future of perception. An Olmec Colossal Head is just as expressive today as it was almost three thousand years ago, which is a living testament not only to our anthropomorphization yearning, but also to what a living testament is. And indeed, beyond wondrously illustrating the Hand’s enduring strength and the intricacies of Kantian aesthetics, George Washington Lambert’s meticulously sculpted poem reveals that Pan can never actually die.
As the boundaries between artwork and spectator dissolve, the loving gaze of the Glykofilousa and the perennial enigma of Mlle Pogany allow us to become aware of how our spirit is taking shape before us, shedding light on the Venus of Brassempouy having been there all along. Whether we are sculpting the philosopher’s marble to reach the hidden truth or we are trying to figure out what the Ship of Theseus is turning into in the (post-)Matrix era, our sense of Self needs the cultural, social and ethical compass of our artistic and social heritage if it is to auspiciously sail through the unyielding continuum of the ‘tomorrow came today’ era. The astonishing technologies emerging before our eyes opened undreamt of possibilities in X-Ray, UV or IR research, as well as in pigment analysis, numerous methodologies pertaining to physical-chemical investigations allowing us to see beyond the surface and reconstruct the artist’s thought process. Whether they bring unseen drawings, writings or hidden layers of color to the surface, allow AI programs to sift through world-wide databases in search of patterns leading to the authentication or attribution of artworks or even make it possible for such advanced software to win visual competitions open to human and non-human alike, these monumental changes have forever changed our understanding of our minds, bodies and their interaction with the world. As VR, AR or other kinds of immersive realities and installations revolutionize not only museums, but also private and public spaces, we find ourselves building a new society as our virtual Selves play games within digitized monuments, explore historical or imaginary cities, or travel to galaxies far, far away. Our task is to learn from them, put forward our own contributions, and make sure that the knowledge we gain from studying the roots of modern art is used to transform each and every person into a beautiful, truth-seeking and joy-filled human being.
If we are going to do that, awe will have already found us.
And we are.
Vasile-Ovidiu Prejmerean
Crux
Vasile-Ovidiu Prejmerean
I.
Awareness is
An afterlife pulsar colliding into knowledge
Ill-worn by rueful dearths below,
Encore forswearing silent fate
To listless wailing woe.
Awareness is
A twilight-hieing highway
Indelibly to scar time’s maven
As dinning sunsets keep hurting the horizon,
Through unmade likeness long guised
To be forgiven.
Awareness is
A riddle of belated thought
Whose finis bides glee’s echo not,
Grazing datum against hope,
Crystal white of all yearns
Lost.
Awareness is
An ashen acumen’s remembrance
Of fay-filled Grails to Ids begetting
Caverned cravings to be wedded,
Kindling wombs since Us awaiting
Awakening.
II.
Awakening becomes
A restless fount of char-cringed hearts
Wrought from the old swooned gashes’ grasp,
Through enticed gauzes to be cast
In forlorn glints to dew Days Passed.
Awakening becomes
A windswept arrayed coven
Of leery, unkept thoughts
Stirred by the vigil’s guileless hope
To wade through solace’s yield lost.
Awakening becomes
A soothful urn in sea betrothed
To wonders’ whirls of kites’ squalls lighted
By wring-spawned raves of unmet gauntlets,
Through blazes’ foam to rise undaunted.
Awakening becomes
A twilit orb bewitched inside the eons’ aerie
By comely sylphs of trilling gemstones’ bearing,
In groves of ken wreathing the challenge
Of peerless limns ordained to keep on
Daring.
III.
Daring begets
An earth-bound glimpsed atonement
Of callous flames which guilt laves sourly,
Who blindly tempt Self’s truthfulness go awry
In molten lives long sworn to heinous
Dowries.
Daring begets
A dreaded glow of archetypes espied
By umbrae’s biers worded aside,
Dolor’s cruxes gainsaying their right
Through wanton gasps to comb demise.
Daring begets
A smouldering hearth subdued by baleful omens,
Forthwith in wraiths of weeping to be woven
By whirling die of waning torments
Whose conjured hearses squint at the Moirai’s
Longings.
Daring begets
A burnished gist of tinted lavish youth
Chasing omens light afoot
Scudding dreams long lost afar
Cast from birth to eye
The stars.
IV.
The stars unveil
A prying tryst under a woad-hued cairn’s foot,
Forever to bequeath a thirsty wooer’s ardour
Whose seared veils pith Other’s rhymeless lutes,
Incessantly to rive mask’s gaze asunder.
The stars unveil
A lore of lacy intimations
Unseen by all-descrying writs of gold,
Enticing fore the icy Mirror’s valiant souls
Inside the obsequies’ stoned trove.
The stars unveil
A fiend’s ire honed by the wretched sallow pippin,
Stillborn of the tremulous shame’s weeping,
Undone by voiceless qualms of pagan diptychs,
Bereft of Freyr’s suasive sibling.
The stars unveil
A blaze-adorned abode
With only nowhere gates to try
Whose oriels nurse turpitude’s waned ghosts,
Flinching luminaries for all straits
Crossed.
V.
Crossed perspectives
Can but try
Marbled thoughts to flay alive,
Forcing unwept frights outside
To forever wounds entwine.
Crossed remembrances
Tear flint’s night
Luring tombstones into stride,
Vainly folding pearls of wiles,
Endless throes for flesh’s eye.
Crossed avowals
Might allay
Scatheful gazes wronged far astray,
Voicing unquailed chains half-way,
To bleed echoes long betrayed.
Crossed scimitars
Of flashing steel-forged will
Who meres of wretchedness through ruthless pyres heal,
Unearth grains strewn by the Scythe’s faithless,
Unsparingly to thrall dawn’s musing feel
Into Awareness.