(…)
When I teach the frescotechnique I always keep a lecture first to the students. This lecture is about the history of the frescotechnique. It’s about how it was used -in symbiosis with the building. It means: building, plaster and painting (fresco) lift the entire combination into something `more (see sistine chapel which is originally no more then a cube, a military building). If we are talking about fresco’s, we are not talking about just a painting, it’s not just decoration either.
The lecture is also about the mentality people had in frescotimes, and within which the fresoctechnique could florish. If people ask me why it is that the frescotechnique has become a rarity these days, I answer them it is not because of lack of buildings, it has something to do with modern mentality/modern thinking about it.
Let me explain what I mean.
Fresco comes from a time in which there was no separation in skills/crafts and art. In a certain sense the frescotechnique has been the father of the notion of the `individual artist’. How did that go?
All started with the invention of the stained glass window and of oil paint. Both had a richer, more shiny and warm look then the dull, cold look of fresco’s. Frescomakers had to find out how to compete with glasswindowmakers and oilpainters. The idea was to refine the frescowork, what was painted had to be extremely refined, faces and perspective should look as real as possible, and all was enriched with gold, silver, precious stones etc. (see pic 380)
To have paintings refined like that, frescomakers had to make a plan in advance -they wanted it to be precise and they didn’t want to mess around with expensive materials. This plan is called: the carton.
Carton’s were made in a small size first (before the renaissance no cartons or refined plans were made) and enlarged to use it on the real wall. (see pic 375).
Because cartons were small of size, they were made at the frescomakers place (at home). Because they were made at home, the maker developed his own style (nobody to compare with while making the design and the carton).
Because the makers got an own style, they got their own names connected to it too. Because they got names, they could be remembered, and this is the start of `the artist’ as we know it today. In these days frescomakers nevetheless still made public pictures, only having their own `handwriting’ shown. It’s much later that painters made pictures that sprang from their own inner world.
About the 1780′s people invented -perhaps in response to the phenomenon of `the artist’ – individuality. People got their own taste.
The feature of fresco is exactly that it is in symbiosis with the building, it has never been different, from the first fresco’s about 6000 years ago onward untill about 1780. So, `own taste’ is contrary to this public feature that is typical for fresco’s. You know it is public, that is why you want the frescotechnique in a public place like a church, and the church calls for the frescotechnique, even more so if it’s an old church.
`Own taste’ is a typical feature for artists. It’s a romantic idea of what `art’ (which again, is a notion from áfter the frescotechnique) is: connected to a person instead of to a building.
`Art and artist’/ our modern look on anything that looks like a painting has therefore been the source of the extinction of the frescotechnique. `Art and artist’ also is only about the paint-part of the frescotechnique, the plasterpart is not involved. In my view our modern look on the frescotechnique reduces it to `just another paintingtechnique’, no wonder why it is almost gone.
I tell you this, because (..) I care about the technique, I care about all aspects of it, the way of thinking too. I wished to tell you about this `frescothinking’, that it really existed and still exists in some persons.
The question is what you want, do you want to have `art’ based on a modern look in the building, (…) or would you rather honour it, the frescotechnique and it’s context, (..)do you want to be it’s context? (…) and develop together with the frescomaker what the building wants in symbiosis with the frescotechnique, which is going to be part of it.
(..) it is important to me that you know about the history of the technique and perhaps you decide to adapt to it.
