7 - MAY - 2003

    Oil painting has a series of characteristics which are intrinsic to the materials themselves, this seems obvious and is also true of other techniques but in this case it becomes more important because the durability of the results will depend on a series of differences in procedure. We have already said that oil painting allows many procedures but there is a series of errors which must not be made because they compromise the appearance of the work over time since we must take into account more sophisticated physical and chemical principles than with other techniques. These technical bases may seem an obstacle and a hindrance to creative spontaneity but really the opposite is true since the better we know the technical procedure and take the paints as a material to the limits of their potential, the more our creative horizon broadens as the number of possible combinations multiplies and the easier it is to make our own combination; in this way new knowledge can spring from tradition and we take steps forward but this isn’t possible without going into the secrets of our craft, just like a magician cannot find a new spell without first experimenting and studying all the substances within reach and the spells of great magicians. This study may be out of favour today in some sectors which for convenience have turned against what they consider an unoriginal and boring task: in one way they are right: it is not at all original to study what others have studied or done yet without going through this phase it is clear that the result will be poor since it was made without tools and the saying will be more true that "all that is not tradition is plagiarism". But….What is tradition?

    "Tradition" in Europe always had a dynamic concept in its meaning. The knowledge of each generation, in each branch of art (architecture, painting, music, literature etc.) is learnt and understood. From this point, new steps are taken as ideas, techniques, concepts etc, broaden. For many centuries this tradition led Europe to perfect and improve continually in all the arts. This tradition enabled Europe to bequeath to the world a spiritual universe of incomparable beauty: we can enjoy authors from Shakespeare to Hesse, music from the extraordinarily beautiful Mediaeval songs to Horner and Williams and so on systematically in all branches, in architecture from Brunelleschi to Gaudí, in painting from the walls of Pompeii to Pérez Vigo. Abandoning this concept has certainly often led to regressions or irretrievable losses in artistic procedure. Today this ignorance is supported by the "theory of genius" which many "historians" like and use.

    Yes ladies and gentlemen! Rubens copied and made new versions of Titian himself and this was quite typical among the great masters. Shakespeare, whose morality some say was ‘doubtful’, gave his own form to tales that he picked up anywhere. And? It doesn’t matter, because when we use the terms "copies" and "versions" history and its interpreters consider this a work of tradition and progress in which we should try to find, at least, a desire to improve in some aspect or simply to vary the image or idea contained in the model in a tasteful way.

    When we look at a copy, we can give opinions and debate at length whether the work is better than the model or gives it some new expressive virtue, elegant new touches etc.. What we should always avoid is criticizing destructively just because the work is a copy or includes ideas and procedures already found elsewhere. It would be absurd to judge each artist on his or her early work and then dismiss his or her art as self plagiarism.

    Tradition is not a mummified entity that goes on repeating itself as if it were a mould; it is a vehicle, a source of energy which, once assumed, lets artists reveal what they have inside. Tradition or classicism is not ‘past’: we should always see them as generative material, as the trigger of creative potential. An author called Ramón Gaya stated that <<breaking with tradition has only generated a dustbin of novelties, producing ‘events’ not art and making the creative process frivolous>>.

    Tradition should be considered as a source which we must go to and drink from to be artists in our own opinion and not just to look like artists.