15 - AUGUST - 2003

What led you to study Turner?

    At the beginning because when I first examined his work I realized that by understanding it I would build a bridge between the most classic tradition and the most interesting aspects of the start or origin of modernity, I use the term modernity chronologically not etymologically (which would designate a certain style). In my artistic judgement there is an approach which links me deeply to my time, to the society round me and in short to circumstances, but always challenging tradition (not passive but life-generating), this challenge goes through Turner, I will explain why.

   In him we see an element which is very important in modernity, conceptually speaking, and this is the introduction in his visual language of everything connected to elements which are apparently only present in the 20th century, for example roughness, texturizations having intrinsic value, certain degrees of horror which correspond to states of the soul, the aesthetic importance of unfinished elements ,of pain, a certain sense of the terrible which surrounds the work. His philosophy should be connected with the studied done in his age on the sublime contrasted dialectically with the beautiful. This is not new, we could go back to A.R. Mengs and from my point of view his reflections on the difference between beauty and grace make an important opening since we could say that even Picasso in his disdain for beauty attempts to make an aesthetic arrangement of the elements which form his work to look for the concept of grace.

   In Turner’s artistic development he seeks to amaze the spectator without losing the subject itself and without empty extravagance but in a safer, deeper way formed of visual and intellectual elements. This intellectual character is nothing more than an aesthetic approach which starts from poetry especially in its function as a vehicle of the imagination and its element which exalts human sentiments. Visually, the vehicle is travel as a source of knowledge and experience which will lead to self-awareness and a voluntary distancing from that which is near and familiar to let oneself be ‘amazed’ or ‘impressed’ by new, unknown elements (the relationship with Impressionism is obvious).

   At the same time we see in Turner a progressive interest in the dynamic of colour which leads him to include in his chromatic vision Goethe’s studies on colour, put into practice with nuances and improvements derived from the practice of something which was originally only theoretical. So I would say that he adds to the above Rembrandt’s concept of chiaroscuro and reaches the conclusion that colour is articulated with the use of light and shade respecting the universal colour spectrum. This is what allows Turner to develop the true sense of colour that he was looking for: colour that is composed in such a way that it UNITES and at the same time REVEALS and SHOWS but also lets him imply hidden elements and leaves the spectators to finish off the work in their mind.

   Turner’s colour originates in the classics as well as Goethe, as is seen in his exhaustive knowledge of the Venitian School. Personally I think that the vital importance Turner gives to Red and Yellow comes from this and creates visual journeys dominated by these colours This is traditional in his exhaustive studies of documentation on boats, fish, etc. and also in an attitude which he never gave up, which is that most of his creative work was developed in his studio. whether the primary or creative stimulus of the work was a journey, a fire, a landscape, etc..

   His palette was actually very simple but he was able to use it with the maximum variety, another similarity to the Classics; he started with no more than 7 or 8 colours but reached an infinite goal. The greatness of Turner lies in the way he opened a new road without breaking with the old way; he didn’t need to say that his predecessors were worse (which they weren’t), his artistic humility led him to say that if Girtin hadn’t died young he wouldn’t have become famous. His works have the greatness of the apparently easy and the charm of his free spirit which allowed him to master all materials , he is not subject to absurd classifications as oil painter, watercolour artist engraver, drawer; rather, he used what he needed for what he was working on at the time and if he needed to leave orthodoxy he would do so and he would make it work because in Art you have to be an angel to do some devilry and Turner did devilishly angelic things.

   Approaching his work through copies has shown me some very interesting technical procedures both in the order of the phases of execution of the work and in the chromatic harmonies which he used. These harmonies are not subject to the arbitrariness of taste or the caprices of a particular way of feeling but to the rules that Turner made himself and which he came at through his study of the artists who interested him and his own artistic judgement.

Those close to me are surprised that this type of study is useful when creating my own work in harmony with the current historical and social context, it is difficult for them to see how this partial knowledge of painters of the past can fit with more contemporary stylistic elements; they are wrong; as we get more professional baggage, the creative field which opens up to us is infinite. The more tools we have, the more difficult it is to pigeonhole us in a given style because each work we do will be impregnated with the madness of the moment and this madness, our madnesses, will have more space to develop in.