A Call To Remember

"Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free"

Awake My Soul

Mumford & Sons

G.K. Chesterton said, " All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.” The Renaissance was a time of remembering forgotten things. This week's Thursday Lecture focused on Jan van Eyck, painter extraordinaire of the Northern Renaissance. The northern painters' passion for detail, as seen in the examples below, is exemplified in the work of van Eyck.

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

Angels, Upper Left Panel with Detail

Jan and his brother Hubert's crowning achievement is the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, also known as The Ghent Altarpiece; a monumental painting on twelve Oak panels, measuring more than 11' x 15' and weighing nearly two tons. 

Note to students- I incorrectly told you that van Eyck worked on this panel two years. It was closer to six! (A classic example of what happens when you give a discourse without notes). My apologies. 

The attention to detail in the altarpiece is staggering. One fifteenth century writer said that van Eyck's landscapes seemed to stretch "for fifty miles." For van Eyck, no part of a composition was insignificant. Notice the hi-lighted square in the lower central panel below. 

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

Hubert & Jan van Eyck

Completed 1432

Here is the same area, cropped.

Detail

And here, cropped further (magnify by clicking on pictures).

Greater Detail

The paintings of Jan van Eyck remind us that there is more to our world than meets the eye. Robert Hughes said, "By such means of vision and symbolism, Jan van Eyck temporarily did away with the division between secular and religious works of art. All nature is sacramentalized by the sheer intensity of his gaze."

Jan van Eyck's 'call to remember' is still heard by painters today. One such painter visited the Art Room this week, Mr. Greg Card. Mr. Card has been featured in numerous national publications, including ARTnews and ARTFORUM, and has exhibited from New York to California. He is currently exploring a series on recycled materials, Viz. cardboard.

Greg Card demonstrating Interference colors

Greg Card works with a special type of paint called Interference Colors, manufactured by Golden Artist Colors. Here is a description from Golden-

The GOLDEN Iridescent and Interference Colors achieve their reflective properties by synthetically reproducing several natural phenomena-the nacreous, or pearlescent, qualities found in fish scales or the dust of a butterfly's wing, and the shiny and reflective qualities found in certain metals and minerals.

I wonder what Jan van Eyck could have done with Interference paint?

Greg Card reminded my students that there is wonder to be found in a drop of paint, if we will but look. Thank you, Greg.

Student Work from this week:


Pinhole Photography