Stylism Manifesto




A new idea about painterly Art. (invented May 28th, 2000)

Over the past several hundred years the art of painting has changed dramatically.

The Renaissance Masters used perspective that gave the illusion of looking through a window to the real world. They also used a technique called chiaroscuro, which is the effect of light modeling in painting, where three-dimensional volume is suggested by highlights and shadow

The cubists reacted to that notion and said that the painting itself is a 2D object and should not be confused with the real thing that is being "copied", and that they had no intention of using linear perspective to achieve their goals. Picasso said "I paint what I think, not what I see".

So now we have two basic schools of thought. One, that a painted image should have perspective and 3D shadow effects akin to photographs. The other, looks to the internal landscape of feelings and pure color sensations.

Where Renoir might say his painting is of a woman, the cubists said that they can only represent what the woman means to them, and make a picture of how the subject seemed to them via their interpretation of form and color.

The Renaissance thinks in terms of Metaphor: This IS this

Abstract Art thinks in terms of Simile: This IS LIKE this

All this thought and work divided Art into two basic camps. Between them they pretty much cover anything you can do with paint on a canvas.

From extreme realism to abstract surrealism, as in a single tiny spot of color on an otherwise blank canvas.

There is no place left to go except to take every individual style that has come before and use them all on the Palette of Stylism.

My idea is to USE AND COMBINE some or all of the previous styles onto the same canvas. Different aspects of the image use different techniques.

Various images within a composition can be singled out and painted in different styles, from Egyptian to Greek through Byzantine and Romanesque, Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionism, cubism and Abstract Expressionism or Color Field, for example.

A collage of styles.

It is as if all of the advances realized over the centuries can all be fused together for greatest effect using a juxtaposition of styles as well as color.

I am working on a Style-Wheel that will show the visual and conceptual concepts and contrasts of this new theory.

So much has already been done in painterly art (as listed above), that there has been an evolution of sorts, born out of circumstance, that has left us with a vast array of images, ideas, and paradigm shifts.

A vast landscape of visual history.

Most (if not all of these various styles), have had a direct relationship with the real world of the everyday life (flowers, portraits, tables, etc.).

Piet Mondrian is a good example of someone who used cityscapes to compose his basic abstract patterns.

Picasso, Braque, Gris and Cézanne all transformed the everyday items around them to illustrate their personal visions and theories.

So, to me, each of these styles and theories are filled with their own intrinsic history and meaning.

I want to use those various meanings as my "Visual Grammar".

Each style is now, in a way, it's own color, so to speak. Think of a color as a word, and combinations of colors (or words), make up a sentence or a painting. Each color has it's own meaning, and various combinations make up the grammar of the medium.  Their meaning is much like that of an archetype.

Theories of art have been proven with images alone.

If you see a chubby nude, surrounded by flying cherubs, you know where you are and what to think about. The same goes for an out of focus landscape that copies the reflected colors of objects as seen by a near sighted artist without glasses.

People can appretiate the juxtaposition of a Monet on one wall and a Da Vinci on another.

Mix and match. A cubist still life on a table in front of a window that shows a natural landscape, or paintings within paintings, as if one is looking at the wall of a museum.

There is an encyclopedia’s worth of artistic styles available to us, each with its own built in meanings, that act like sentences, sometimes paragraphs, in themselves.

Another analogy might be music, where colors equal notes, and styles of painting compare with musical phrases or melodies.

My Landscape is not the Landscape of the Everyday, My Landscape is the Entire Visual History of Human Creativity.

Rather than look to the real world for inspiration, I look to the actual styles and examples of art history as if they were the only landscape available to me.

Pablo Vitruvian - Chicago, May 2000