ARTC 2010 Section 3 Intro to Digital Arts

Above are the paintings that Guiseppe Archimboldo is best known for. His creative style uses the lighting that was familiar to renaissance paintings, while his creativity is unleashed by creating portrait faces out of foods, plants and in some cases animals or inanimate objects. These types of collages are entirely unique to him, and highlight his expertise, as well as creativity.

The earthly feel to his paintings convey nature, and mankind as a part of nature in a beautiful way. Instead of man conquering nature or taming it Guiseppe shows a harmony that mankind has with nature. Even though mankind may be top of the food chain hist paintings illustrate man as made up of many other parts. Vegetables and fruits as well as animals add to the point that man has a distinct symbiotic relationship with these items. Archimboldo embodies his portrait studies literately, as what they eat or things that sustain them. Taking the physical features of an item and translating them into similar parts of the human body clearly juxtaposes both parties that are being combined. Similar physical characteristics lead the mind to wander about asking, “What other characteristics do the two separate things share with one another?” In other words Humans and Vegetables combined into one work makes me wonder what do humans and vegetables have in common now that I see them as one being.

Guiseppe’s work intrigues my mind mainly because at first glance I thought he was a modern artist who worked with computer imaging or something relatively similar to it. Upon further inspection of his bio and his paintings I found out that he is quite old. Born in 1527, Guiseppe was a renaissance artist working in the old fashioned oils. Oil paint when used as masterfully as Guiseppe uses it translates worlds of “WOW!” to me. While most all his other contemporaries were working on simple portraits of people he was working away with creative juices that none had tapped before him. Archimboldo is probably one of the first artists to be defined by his creativity rather than his shear skill, as well as being one of the first misunderstood artists. The portraits that he painted speak loads more about himself than the people who are in the paintings, and that intrigues me to endless wonders about how his mind worked. I relate to him because of his style that breaks conventionality with grace, ingenuity, and creativity.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Artists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.