<<

Košir presents the museum visitor with a digital camera as an indispensable expedient that, with its reproduction aptitude, promises the utopian surpassing of the uniqueness of the event and materializes restoring of the memory; and is at the same time the essential mediator between the viewer and the observed artistic object. Many times the perception of the image, when confronting the original, is demonstrated through digital screen that transforms the invisible conventions and codes of the authentic media expressions and represents it in its uncovered visibility; but there is a lack of other sensory stimuli that arise from haptic painting memorandum. Believing in the art is retreating to believing in the idea of art. With the transcription of the image in the screen as in the place of its demonstration, the direct experience is forged and the meaning is transformed since, according to Baudrillard, the reality and the image in its true meaning are disappearing.
By presenting typical amateur shots of Mona Lisa, Košir points out the importance of spectators’ aptitude of iconic image as information about presence in front of it and also the painting itself, protected behind glass, turns into periodic and spacious palimpsest that unites the original structure with the reflections of gallery space and iconolaters; he exposes the changeable reception of the image and its functions in different social contexts. In the photos of Mona Lisa, the “interventions” of other medium that remodels the original painting are registered in the form of visible pixels at feeble resolution and the effects of flashlight. The author is interested in exposing the mechanism of viewing, to see how I see, but more from the sociological view construct than from the phenomenological viewpoint. The irruption of digital camera in Vermeer’s Allegory of Painting is interpreting technological substitute, where the screen through which we see what is being created on the canvas is symbolically taking over the function of the painter’s eye and contact. The matter of the painting within the painting and its illusory character is multiplied from the painted model on the easel and digital screen where the analogical relation between the painting and photography is restored at the level of the appearance of the image. Vermeer’s painting made by means of the precursor of the camera, the camera obscura, enables almost photographic shooting of atmospheric illuminations and shaded areas; and is an ideal selection for a dialog with photography image since it illustrates parallelism, as well as the distinctions between the media. The uncovered curtain of the Allegory of Painting is alluding to the stage scenery, to the staging of the image for our observation and to the illusion as a perception snare that assures the believing in the image and simultaneously uncovers it. The painter was aware of that and Košir is actualizing it at the present exhibition with photography, which is in the process of formation and is, according to Bazin, the model and its reproduction at the same time.
The understanding of Košir’s relation to the function of the image and his artistic affinity is revealed through the selection of his work limited to the eras that have manufactured the illusive model of forming, structured around the perspective as a potential mean of perceiving of the world the most. The common attribute to all the illusive formulations is a reflection of optical situation that suits simultaneous perception of the complete situation and is also shown in the structure of photography where it is preserving the perspective code. Košir uses the analogy of the art models differently on photographs of Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi, The Marriage at Cana and David’s The Consecration of Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame (Paris, 2nd December 1804) in the context of museum space. On the photography the perfect coexistence between the painting and the museum visitors occurs: the fictitious space of the painting is penetrating into the actual gallery space that is transforming into some kind of tableau vivant where the multitude of viewers is turning into and is understood as a part of spectacular scene. The discussion of two spectators in front of Veronese’s painting convincible comprehends into the happening on the painting; someone else is present at the coronation of Napoleon and despite anachronistic expedient and outfit functions as an undisturbed participant of the solemnity. It is interesting that the pedestal on which the Feast in the House of Levi is placed and the frames of The Consecration of Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame (Paris, 2nd December 1804) and The Marriage at Cana are complementing the illusive view as the signs of realistic space and are emphasizing the profound motivation and at the same time transfers it into the consciousness. The seeming erasure of the passage between the fictive and realistic is duplicating the illusionism of image as well as the photography representation.