Emulation Study: Illuminations I

MEDIEVAL RE-VISIONS

Agent of Change - The Noble Knight

The human condition of culture is pervasive through art, and demonstrates itself through a play between old and new expressions, in all forms of art and in all regards, through the very act of imitation.

Feudal institutions, like Monasteries, preserved cultures and technologies alike during the Medieval era of the European Middle Ages. From early blacksmithing knowledge, to bread and wine-making, and arguably most importantly, Literacy...and with that illustrations.

With the need for Bibles replicated, monks would dedicate their time to scribing the latin texts of the Holy Books, copying them word by word. Fortunately for us, they often took it upon themselves to append the texts with [mostly] Church-sanctioned imagery in the form of small gold-gilded paintings among the pages. Medieval traditions castrated many of the skills and techniques of the great Classical era of ancient Greece and Rome, not yet revived until the Renaissance in the late 1400's.

Illumination: Unarmed Knight, 2025. Gouache and Gold-leaf, 11"x 14".

When we look back, the illustrations found in Illuminated Manuscripts, called Illuminations, take on a story-book, child-like appearance. With caricature-like depictions of soldiers, royals, faith leaders, angels, apostles and the like... and accompanied by ornation of floral patterns, animal figures, and medieval backgrounds, these painting carry on a sense of humor through the centuries that many find captivating.

CULTURAL CONTEXT

When we create emulations, studies and copies of past works, artist are attempting to channel the feel, the styles and the techniques of those past works. It is an act of homage, or paying respects to the legacy that these works contain. It is an embodiment of the past while in the present along with it's contemporary and current events. Copying a work can be livened to a dialogue with the original--- a pass of old technique, style and subject matter, to the here and now in our "modern" or "contemporary" time. It can carry all the weight of that culture.

These could be seen as a commentary on the state of society; it's structures, it's reverence or preference for one over another, it's desire to show wealth through things like gold-gilding in an age of poverty. A feudal world seems easier to relate to seen through the eyes of an artist... visualizing the living people of the past as not too different from the our lives that we experience in the present. The human condition is pervasive through art, and expresses itself through a play between old and new expressions, in all forms of art in all regards, through the very act of imitation.