“Juan’s Rose” 10” x 8” mixed media/panel, www.johnwiercioch.com
We’re so flooded with digital imagery, and overwhelmed by printed graphics in our urban environs, it’s hard to conceive of times when there were other ways of seeing life. In our western industrialized culture artists were paying keen attention to how technology was changing how they saw the world for hundreds of years. As technology and industrialization ramped up in the 1840’s it became difficult for anyone to keep up with all the influences. Photography caught and froze never before seen things, as well as presenting random compositions. Cultures cross-pollinated more quickly and broadly. Fields of psychology, astronomy and microbiology were blossoming and affecting perspectives. Even pragmatically, painting outdoors was vastly easier once paint was in a tube. New colors added more vibrant chromatic possibilities with less effort. News and information were shared faster than ever. Rigid expectations on what and how things might be expressed steadily eased.
My roots are in painting from life. But that has evolved based upon how I see life. IE: The Impressionists weren’t simply quaint landscape painters, they were responding to the opportunities modern life afforded them and integrated this into their craft. Painting on site pressed Monet and others to come to grips with the transient nature of the world and their hands and brushstrokes raced to keep pace with the moving earth and sun. Degas challenged what beauty could be and where it could be found. Manet loved the excitement of the new glass and steel urban world, and incorporated the flattening effect of mass printed advertising into his bridging of suggested spatial depth with undeniable surface marks. I appreciate them all.
Hundreds of others were pulling each other in new directions. By the turn of the 20th century the illusionistic “realist” story-telling approach that had been the mainstay of popular painting had been blown wide open. A few dozen of these artistic experimenters got recognized by Western popular culture, including Picasso. In his voracious assimilation of the previous generation, Picasso launched into new realms with incredible speed. By 1908 he and his trusted companion Braque had stumbled upon a unique approach to representing forms that came to be called Cubism. There are many speculations on what prompted their journey, and what they were chasing — mostly they didn’t talk to others or write about what they were doing, they simply painted their way forward. “We were like two mountain climbers roped together” is among the handful of quotes Picasso offered in retrospect.
Maybe their efforts in this realm were incorporating the evermore fragmented world they lived in, full of reflections, new-tangled speeding autos, electric street cars, and lighting; or maybe it was an expanded understanding of seeing, building on what Cezanne was hunting for in his sensitive and meticulous paintings; or perhaps they were led by other cultural ways to present form (like the arts of African cultures they saw); or it was an intuited manifestation of the new scientific ideas of the age that revised the nature of reality and time as constructs. In the end, I still like to look at the mute paintings, and many of them captivate me.
At times it seems many artists who paint images today (“realist” or “abstract” ones) have never studied, explored, and/or somehow seem to have “tuned out” Cubism altogether. It’s like the insights of Giotto and the relinquishing of church sanctions hundreds of years ago didn’t instill a curiosity and desire about non-religious subjects. Or pretending photography hasn’t affected how we see, frame, share, or replicate the world. The doors which Cubism opened for me are not about a “style” rather they offer implications about reality and freedom to explore. Some see in it only “fragmentation” but I see in it the falsehood of separation and the unity of all. To me this makes cubist works impossible to ignore. They remain rich and inspiring. I especially appreciate how these now over 100 year old paintings encourage me to see our world with fresh eyes.
Juan Gris was from Madrid and a friend of Picasso, as well as the artists Matisse, Metzinger, Modigliani and several other avante-garde thinkers, like the poets Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, and Max Jacob, and the art dealer Kahnweiler. He quickly absorbed the possibilities within the new way of seeing, understanding, and depicting the world that Cubism offered, and then expanded on it in his own colorful ways. Like Gris, I’ve always had a bit of a classicist in me, a desire to find order within chaos. I’ve also always been attracted to the particularly rich timbre of some of his color harmonies.
I rarely have a subject (or image) in mind when working on a painting, and prefer to title them after they feel resolved. There are elements in my approach to painting that relate to the open-ended responsiveness inherent cubist works. In the end, this little painting hinted at a rose, and the tones, the dynamism held in check by a formal order, and overall feel, to me recalls some of Gris works. I was also exploring texture, and the relationship between it and the illusion of depth — something Cubism often did as well.
How we see the world reveals and defines our relationships with life. I’ve always felt one could make vital paintings that feel monumental yet readily fit in one’s hand. A flower is a galaxy of wonder.
For all these reasons it seemed fitting to give the not too-well-known, yet wonderful painter, Juan Gris, a nod in this title.
We’re so flooded with digital imagery, and overwhelmed by printed graphics in our urban environs, it’s hard to conceive of times when there were other ways of seeing life. In our western industrialized culture artists were paying keen attention to how technology was changing how they saw the world for hundreds of years. As technology and industrialization ramped up in the 1840’s it became difficult for anyone to keep up with all the influences. Photography caught and froze never before seen things, as well as presenting random compositions. Cultures cross-pollinated more quickly and broadly. Fields of psychology, astronomy and microbiology were blossoming and affecting perspectives. Even pragmatically, painting outdoors was vastly easier once paint was in a tube. New colors added more vibrant chromatic possibilities with less effort. News and information were shared faster than ever. Rigid expectations on what and how things might be expressed steadily eased.
My roots are in painting from life. But that has evolved based upon how I see life. IE: The Impressionists weren’t simply quaint landscape painters, they were responding to the opportunities modern life afforded them and integrated this into their craft. Painting on site pressed Monet and others to come to grips with the transient nature of the world and their hands and brushstrokes raced to keep pace with the moving earth and sun. Degas challenged what beauty could be and where it could be found. Manet loved the excitement of the new glass and steel urban world, and incorporated the flattening effect of mass printed advertising into his bridging of suggested spatial depth with undeniable surface marks. I appreciate them all.
Hundreds of others were pulling each other in new directions. By the turn of the 20th century the illusionistic “realist” story-telling approach that had been the mainstay of popular painting had been blown wide open. A few dozen of these artistic experimenters got recognized by Western popular culture, including Picasso. In his voracious assimilation of the previous generation, Picasso launched into new realms with incredible speed. By 1908 he and his trusted companion Braque had stumbled upon a unique approach to representing forms that came to be called Cubism. There are many speculations on what prompted their journey, and what they were chasing — mostly they didn’t talk to others or write about what they were doing, they simply painted their way forward. “We were like two mountain climbers roped together” is among the handful of quotes Picasso offered in retrospect.
Maybe their efforts in this realm were incorporating the evermore fragmented world they lived in, full of reflections, new-tangled speeding autos, electric street cars, and lighting; or maybe it was an expanded understanding of seeing, building on what Cezanne was hunting for in his sensitive and meticulous paintings; or perhaps they were led by other cultural ways to present form (like the arts of African cultures they saw); or it was an intuited manifestation of the new scientific ideas of the age that revised the nature of reality and time as constructs. In the end, I still like to look at the mute paintings, and many of them captivate me.
At times it seems many artists who paint images today (“realist” or “abstract” ones) have never studied, explored, and/or somehow seem to have “tuned out” Cubism altogether. It’s like the insights of Giotto and the relinquishing of church sanctions hundreds of years ago didn’t instill a curiosity and desire about non-religious subjects. Or pretending photography hasn’t affected how we see, frame, share, or replicate the world. The doors which Cubism opened for me are not about a “style” rather they offer implications about reality and freedom to explore. Some see in it only “fragmentation” but I see in it the falsehood of separation and the unity of all. To me this makes cubist works impossible to ignore. They remain rich and inspiring. I especially appreciate how these now over 100 year old paintings encourage me to see our world with fresh eyes.
Juan Gris was from Madrid and a friend of Picasso, as well as the artists Matisse, Metzinger, Modigliani and several other avante-garde thinkers, like the poets Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, and Max Jacob, and the art dealer Kahnweiler. He quickly absorbed the possibilities within the new way of seeing, understanding, and depicting the world that Cubism offered, and then expanded on it in his own colorful ways. Like Gris, I’ve always had a bit of a classicist in me, a desire to find order within chaos. I’ve also always been attracted to the particularly rich timbre of some of his color harmonies.
I rarely have a subject (or image) in mind when working on a painting, and prefer to title them after they feel resolved. There are elements in my approach to painting that relate to the open-ended responsiveness inherent cubist works. In the end, this little painting hinted at a rose, and the tones, the dynamism held in check by a formal order, and overall feel, to me recalls some of Gris works. I was also exploring texture, and the relationship between it and the illusion of depth — something Cubism often did as well.
How we see the world reveals and defines our relationships with life. I’ve always felt one could make vital paintings that feel monumental yet readily fit in one’s hand. A flower is a galaxy of wonder.
For all these reasons it seemed fitting to give the not too-well-known, yet wonderful painter, Juan Gris, a nod in this title.
RSS Feed