Don't go over my head with this one

Can't belive I forgot to write something about this - Metaphysical painting As liberally poached in the middle of the night from the dark forest itself. And can also be found here.

Actually I should have read this much earlier and then Chirico's paintings would have made much more sense to me.

"Metaphysical Painting sprang from the urge to explore the imagined inner life of familiar objects when represented out of their explanatory contexts..."

I think I was on the right track with my last entry when I tried to explain where my picture was headed. It wouldn't really matter what I said since it was a reality constructed from my own mind or from some other reality.

"...represented a visionary world which engaged most immediately with the unconscious mind..."

According to everyone's favourite internet monkey,Metaphysics deals with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world. And asks such questions as:
* What is the meaning of life?
* What is the nature of reality?
* What is mankind's place in the universe?
* Are colors objective or subjective?
* Does the world exist outside the mind?
* What is the nature of objects, events, places?

And blah blah dealing with subjects that beyond the physical world. And now a lot of words from Promethea by Alan Moore and J.H Williams. It has a fair amount of metaphysical theorizing,which is why it is appearing here. This tidbit is from a section that looks at man's journey through history and life. This particular section refers to The Tower tarot card.

Like,Babel,meant to heaven reach,
all towers men build a lesson teach.
Lightning,descending from the sky,
reminds man there's but one most high.

Painting Assignment - Development 2

More of how the painting came to be. This is a progression shot of the picture during my first lesson. I was aiming to get simular colours to the original painting here. As it turned out I had to make the background more interesting later on. I admit it looks pretty flat at this stage.


Adding in the towers,it really annoyed me that I didn't have very good brush control here,but I don't think I've gotten much better since then. I was aiming for some kind of lonely and mysterious place that was errected as something impressive or as a monument to someone. Incidently,the tower ended up looking like a lighthouse. So the picture looks more like a abanndoned sea that dried up eons ago. I did ditch the little shadows that were going to look like gateways. In my original sketch,it was a mysterious set of pillars and towers that had shadowy gates that lead to who knows where. I might do a version of that idea during the holiday.

Now for something vaguely different. I present a tower of another sort. You could go and make your own conclusions here but really I just saw it and said "It's tower-esqe in composition" and took a picture of it. I think the most disturbing thing is,it looks more forlorn than my painting.




This is more or less the final product,I am going to take a better picture of it by the end of the week. But now the tower has a lot better shadows and looks like it's expecting a light from above or falling stars. Go figure. I did learn a lot from painting this,but it seems I forgot most of it when I started my next one. I really don't know where this all ended up,I think I was heading towards a tower in an endless void and it turned into something else. Surprisingly it is somewhat impressionistic which I like.

Towers

A few things about towers since the subject of the paintings are tower(s).
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower
Towers are tall man-made buildings, always (and usually much) taller than they are wide. Towers are generally built to take advantage of their height, and can stand alone or as part of a larger structure. Examples of the various uses of towers include:

* To save ground-level space: skyscrapers, cooling tower, chimney
* To enhance views: tourist towers, air-traffic Control tower, railroad yard tower, harbor control tower, filming tower
* To increase strategic advantage: prison watch tower, defensive walls, siege tower, fire lookout tower, camera tower
* To increase potential energy: storage silo, water tower, drilling tower, ski-jump ramp
* To enhance communications: radio mast, lighthouse, light tower, minaret, bell tower, clock tower, weather beacon
* As support: suspension bridge, cable-stayed bridge, pylon, aerial tramway support pillar
* To access tall or high objects: launch tower, service tower, supply tower, scaffold, tower wagon
* To access atmospheric conditions aloft: wind turbine, meteorological measurement tower, tower telescope, solar power station
* To protect from exposure: BREN Tower
* For industrial production: shot tower
* To drop objects: drop tower, bomb tower, diving platform
* To test height-intensive applications: elevator test tower
* To improve structural integrity: thyristor tower
* To mimic towers or provide height for training purposes: fire tower, parachute tower
* As art: Eiffel Tower, Shukhov Tower, Space Needle
* For recreation: rock climbing tower
* As a symbol: Tower of Babel, The Tower (Tarot card), church tower

Skyscrapers are often not classified as towers, although most have the same design and structure of towers. In the United Kingdom, tall domestic buildings are referred to as tower blocks. In the United States, the now-destroyed World Trade Center had the nickname the Twin Towers, a name shared with the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

Inccidently "The Tower" is a poem by William Butler Yeats which is a passionate indictment of a man wrestling with age. It can be read here.

Towers also relate to The Tower card.

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This post is part of an art assignment to research a painting,document this research and produce an interpretation of said painting.

Painting Assignment - Development

A look into my visual diary.
A look at some of my planning,looks like. After I did the copy(picture coming!) I took on the suggestion of my class mates,to make the tower twist. A friend says it looks like the tower melted.

So I moved on and tried a free-form kind of approach. I had a better picture in my mind so of course,it never came out. I tried to make a tower that had a lot of empty space but it also went up. I don't know if that makes sense. But I think the tower is supposed to be a memory of infinity or is a representation of infinite space. I will write more later.

13th May- According to my teacher,I can have my own opinions as part of my research for this assignment. Looking even harder at the picture and trying to figure out just what it is all about. I might be on the right track with it,maybe the title is somewhat misleading. It might relate to the Tower of Babylon,which was supposably a tower that went on for ever. So the 'tower series' by de Chirico may be a continuation of this - a tower is really a big,long building constructed to go as high as mechanically possible.

Another way of looking at this picture/series is as a continuing theme of searching for a retreat. Everyone likes to have their own private space. It could also be a look into a strange fantasy world. Though I kind of like that idea,lonely towers that go upwards to some dizzy height in a empty world that is barely inhabited. It's very open to interpretation,so what I write here could be right.



Incidently if you look at the next progression of idea development,it looks very simular to another of the Tower Series known as the Great Tower. Perhaps the other ones are all aspiring to become like this monument. I don't know where I was heading,I think I was trying to create this space that was a construction that was open or lead up to somewhere. It's annoying when I can see it in my head by not have it translate to paper!


Something of a final development stage - it of course changed while I was painting it. I think I was going for a long and thin tower with archways that went somewhere or perhaps didn't make sense. I think I'll always be in some fantasical landscape.

Some article on de Chirico - I haven't read it since it might upload spyware on my computer. You have been warned!!
Some notes or a report someone did on de Chirico
A poem based on the Nostalgia of the Infinite
Exposure to the ideas of modern mathematics has led artists to attempt to depict graphically the haunting qualities of the infinite. - An article on modern mathematics

"magic unreality and poetic sensibility of metaphysical images" - de Chirico's work as described by here


Guess who?
He studied art in Athens before moving to Paris where he created such unusual works as "Toys of a Prince", "Sweet Afternoon", and "Nostalgia of the Infinite". Influenced by the writings of Apollinaire and Nietzsche, he founded the movement called "pittura metafisica". For 10 points, name this Italian artist known for long shadows and exaggerated perspectives such as those in "Mystery and Melancholy of a Street."
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This post is part of an art assignment to research a painting,document this research and produce an interpretation of said painting. Such is the power of the internet and the immediate quality of blogging.