Giovanni Bellini
Christ
Crowned with Thorns
oil on wood
103 x 64 cm
Nationalmuseum Stockholm
Giovanni
Bellini's meaning to me grows in such a slow and imperceptible way that I am
surprised at every (re)encounter with his work.
Being
teacher, sponsor and probably the most influential interface of Venetian
painting, John Ruskin and later Theodor Hetzer consider him the most important
Italian painter, and "freezing by enthusiasm" always applies to me
too.
Since
I like to believe my own eyes, I would not have needed art historical safeguarding.
I
love the "Venetians" and Pietro
Longhi, as well as Morandi and Howard Hodgkin for their faith that you can
transmit concrete contents with color.
To
my knowledge Giovanni Bellini was the first to communicate this idea also as a
teacher.
I
don't really read his "Dead Christ" in its extremely reduced palette
as a depiction. His understanding of the subject leads to an "experience
area". A sheer presence of the dead being. Formally he is closer to Robert
Ryman than to his contemporaries. He abandons the idea of representative
painting in favour of painting the presence of a sensual experience area. The
old Titian formally follows this idea with his own unique temperament, and this
is just as evident in the late Morandi. I encountered the Stockholm picture for
the first time only recently. How intensively this encounter pursued me, I really
felt when this experience without cause wanted to be shaped in the painting
process.
Matthias Kanter, 2016
Matthias Kanter (DE)
Christo
Motto zu G. Bellini
2013
acrylic on canvas
100 x 80 cm
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