ED MIRZA

WESTERN PAINTING

These discoveries concerning western painting may be divided into the following
categories:

1. On the Meaning of Paintings

2. On the Technique of Painting

3. Art Historical Discourse

4. Centres of Gravity and arts development

5. A list of certain artists relating to this discourse

With notes throughout

6. Time lines

7. Cosmogonies (diagrammatical) to which the time-lines, and ‘centres of gravity’

CHAPTER 1: ON THE MEANING OF PAINTINGS

As has been the outlook from the beginning, all is meaning, including technique and all these
studies are just divisions of the first study, the study of painting as meaning - pure meaning.

December 10, 2007

The Meaning of Paintings

When the term meaning is discussed it indicates symbolic forces inherent in art objects (the
term ‘object’ may be taken here to include performances and other installation based art from
our ‘animistic’ point of view - however, this discussion has been limited to paintings - as this
query requires) - this may happen on either a conscious or an unconscious level.

The discussion of the meaning of paintings is therefore the discussion of the symbolism of
paintings.

The definition of symbolism has been supplied previously, but may be summed up here as a
living force inherent in any action or any object which represents something else.

When it is suggested that paintings may be symbolic either consciously or unconsciously, it

Hence it has been ascertained that the study of the meaning of paintings is the study of the
symbolism of paintings on the small scale and the large.

So, the study of this symbolism may be, it would seem, divided into a number of categories -
all of them broadly to be understood as either civilising or enculturing in their totality.

Since this discussion of painting has been limited to a European context this study shall
thence be entitled: Painting as Part of Western Civilisation and it’s Cultures.

Painting as Part of Western Civilisation and it’s Cultures

The study of this symbolism, may, as has been observed above, divided into a number of
broad categories; these categories are:

Literary; and,

Folklore.

There are no hard and fast boundaries between each, but where symbolism is not written it is
here taken as ‘Folklore’.

Within the literary the following categories may be observed:

The Classical - those tales surviving from Greek antiquity, and from other later ‘Classical’
poets and scholars, such as Ovid, and Catullus;

The Christian - symbolism resulting from the cult of Christianity and it’s resulting
institutions - all of which may be said to be more or less literary.

As has been observed before a struggle continues between the civilisation’s pagan roots and
it’s thorough immersion in Christianity - in which the two powerful civilising and culturing
forces were never reconciled.

Science itself is a balance between Classical and Christian outlooks which chose to discount
animism (as far as possible).

All uses of symbolism in painting may be said to be divisible within these two units.

The romantics, for example chose to evoke animistic scenes with landscape, but some showed
strong Christian sympathies.

The use of symbolism may also be described as psychological depth (in that the numinous
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Ed Mirza Western Painting, December 10, 2007
may be caught). The use of an empty chair; or pictures removed from the wall; windows;
trains; musical references; symbols of communication; animals; plants; books; certain books;
the use of shadows to add a further dimension of relevance to the associated object; shadows
themselves; gardens; food; bare breasts; one breast showing; body language (which may be
seen to link to the archetypes) attitudes of confidence; coyness; secretiveness, eroticism;
symbols of decadence; plenty; or of poverty; of order, or of chaos; of straightforwardness; of
anger; of infidelity; of ignorance; impiousness; impressionableness; frivolousness; of youth; of
age; of prophesy; of death; of birth; of resurrection; parts of the body and their significance;
of pain; of impropriety; of anarchy; significance of composition; and much else as well as
this.

Problems of mixture of cultures - painting is no-longer predominantly white.

But these cultures have had little in terms of secular art have they not - perhaps China and
Japan come the closest - but their ‘civilising’ and ‘cultural’ concepts, possibly have
psychological and symbolic nuances of their own - one thing is for sure - the western natural
space is not part of their culture.

People of the same language paint the same pictures.

In themselves techniques and methods themselves may be taken as symbolic - i.e. that of the
Impressionists as scientific, disinterested; that of the Realists, again scientific; that of the
Romantics, [non] rational; that of the Abstract Expressionists, non-rational?, heroic; that of
the Orphists metaphysical, pagan; that of Bad Painting, nihilism, the death of history: in this
sense there is little distinction between symbol and technique; but the basis of technique may
be taken as what follows:

The Technique of Painting

There seem to be three indivisible parts of painting, each of which are related to one another,
and which also may be seen to be wholly reconcilable and rationalisable in terms of many
cosmological frameworks, as well as scientific maxims: these are: line, tone, and colour; then
texture weight and dimension; then price, symbolism, and spirit.

PART 3: ART HISTORICAL DISCOURSE

The given interpretation of paintings as pure meaning, that is given above, still withholds, and
the mentioned symbols (symbols as meaning throughout) may be seen to relate to particular
‘centres of gravity’ in ideas, all of which relate in one way or another relate to the given
philosophical, metaphysical, and theological frameworks that have been mentioned above; and
these paintings may be placed within these ideas and notions, and as such are grouped
according to period, genre and style according to these fluctuating ideas:

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Ed Mirza Western Painting, December 10, 2007
Analysing paintings

In order to ascertain the significance of paintings, some knowledge of historical and aesthetic
ideas is necessary, one peculiar to each ‘movement’ as it were, i.e. Existentialism,
psychoanalysis, and the way in which the overall ideologies impinge on the process of
painting - there will be, aside from the three principles of of line, tone, and colours, various
ideological and spiritual significances in the way in which each of these is used. (This
particular analysis of painting may also be called iconography.)

[List movements and contributing ideological texts and the way in which this is manifested in
the paintings]

though little meaning may be ascribed to the below headings at this instant, each “movement”
shall be given and significant texts particular to each shall be supplied.

Pre-Raphaelites
Use of pigment as flat, Christian Ideology - Moral, Didactic? -

Bad Painting
Neo-Romanticism - Expressionism?

Impressionism
Science - Photography

Icons (Byzantine)

Expressionism
Worringer - Kandinsky

Abstract Painting
Kandisnky - [maybe not Greenberg]

Symbolism

Surrealism

Romanticism
The Poets, Rousseau

Renaissance
Christian Ideology - Classicism

Baroque

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Ed Mirza Western Painting, December 10, 2007
Rococco

Post Modern

Primitivism

Art Brut (Outsider Art)

Iconography of Colour [to look]11

PART 5: LIST OF ARTISTS WITH RELEVANCE TO THIS DISCOURSE

Well, then, first it is meet to observe that a central tenet, or ‘common denominator’
may be seen to be present in this practise called ‘painting’, and that all of the
‘symbols’ given above are all bandywaggoned within it.

(further notes are given in accompanying documents)

The study of painting would appear to follow a trajectory from the religious to the secular,
but throughout the point of focus would appear to be the changing perception of the self that
is peculiar to the human - in this sense an unbroken lineage withholds then as these attitudes
change, in the development of the depiction of the human figure, and his whereabouts,
experience and perception in a pictorial language, technically, as well as ideologically, the focal
point of art, for humans, appears to have been, the human being itself - hence its most central
locus of change and development appears to be the domain called ‘figurative art’ - this
relatively final section shall trace the changes and developments that took place on the
canvases of particular (or those of some passing, or possible relevance), and often
recognisable consequential artists in this medium.

[see also Ed Mirza - Artist Database, november 2, 2007]

Figurative based artists, and artists of similar relevance (in alphabetical order)

(this subsists in another document)

Notes:

Development of the Figurative Line

The linear tradition happened during the renaissance, and was a result of scientific
developments - however roman murals show some of this skill and it may also emanate from
calligraphy, as it did in China and the far east.
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Ed Mirza Western Painting, December 10, 2007

Pictorial imagery has been used to express various beliefs, and various philosophical systems
- but there has remained an unbroken thread of its adherence to the figurative line.

For example psychoanalytic ideas and symbolisms, the ‘sublime’, or ‘realism’, but even ‘bad
painting’ (an art movement) has remained a discourse abut the figurative line - surrealism
[proper] remains a symbolic art, an art of iconography.

There have remained three subject matters: minerals, plants, animals and humans, all of them
continue with relevance to the ‘figurative’ line - this may be because the human is perceived
of as the end of a ‘food chain’ as the ‘yard stick’ of these other qualities, have discourses in
which they themselves are top of the food chain - angels themselves are not subject to
figurative lines, let alone Gods.

Origins of the figurative line

[(Note): people got really good at drawing in roman times] that is to say they
developed the standards now regarded as hallmarks of quality.]

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