The Joy of Painting

/, Gallery, Blesok no. 53/The Joy of Painting

The Joy of Painting

* * *

#7 Among the Expressionist movements that are geographically defined, such as Nordic, Slavic or German Expressionism, the Macedonian Expressionism of Sergej Andreevski belongs in the wider inclusion of Slavic spirit in a Mediterranean context.
The Mediterranean region is a place of beginnings. From the Danube to the Aegean Sea and from Asia Minor to the Apennines civilizations and Barbarians clashed, developed and merged, ultimately giving rise to the European civilization. This symbiosis is almost unprecedented in world history.
#8 In a global context, the opposite of Mediterranean art, especially Macedonian fine art, is Northern art. Wilhelm Worringer attempted to make the psychological distinctions between Classical and Oriental art with Northern art. He maintained that Northern art does not need the terrible pathos related to the revival of the non-organic. In Northern art everything becomes threatening, fantastic and grotesque.
Is the Mediterranean with its culture and art, including Macedonian art opposite to the “transcendentalism of the Gothic world of expression” of Northern art?
#9 Probably yes is the answer. Kenneth Clark says that man is the subject of Mediterranean art. Theodor Lips considers Classical art and Mediterranean art as objectified self-enjoyment. Mallsworth continues by referring to the art of the Mediterranean region as art where the individual is an essential attribute, in contrast to Northern art where one can only look for movements and styles.
Mediterranean art had and still has a quality of its own that expresses the transparency of the region, cultural exchanges whether violent or peaceful, giving and receiving, and the continuity of open awareness toward the new. Embracing the new and preserving the traditional seem to be a basic foundation of the civilization of this region.
#10 Macedonian Expressionism beginning with the fresco “Pieta” (12th century) in St. Pantheleimon through the Macedonian icons, to Martinoski, Mazev and Cemerski… to Sergej Andreevski has a definite Mediterranean character. It is the art of the individual, “objectified self-enjoyment”, the art of man. It celebrates, as Jack Barnheim says, the “humanism” we so stubbornly stick to.
The Expressionism of Sergej Andreevski is Expressionism as the nature of art. It is not related to the development of Expressionism as an artistic style in the beginning of the 20th century.
While Macedonian Expressionsim is unique, one can see the closeness of Mazev to German Expressionism, the influences of Macedonian Medieval painting on Cemerski, and with Urdin influence of the fauvists. Sergej Andreevski has digested the influences of many historical and contemporary expressionist variations, namely the New Figuration and action painting.

AuthorZlatko Teodosievski
2018-08-21T17:23:10+00:00 April 14th, 2007|Categories: Reviews, Gallery, Blesok no. 53|0 Comments