… but these are not tigers!
“This is not a woman, this is a painting!” This was the sharp answer given by Georges Braque to a woman who made him notice that the female figure he had drawn had an arm shorter than the other.
From a theoretical point of view, one of the most important achievements of the 20th century is the fact that the artistic research became autonomous, not subjected to the pressures of naturalistic rules. This change affected all disciplines, all genres, from abstract to figurative arts. In order to approach Maurizio Boscheri’s works we have to bear in mind this new concept of figuration, which is more intended to give a different meaning to this stylistic choice than to merely represent real data/world.
The main aim of his research as a painter is not the simple perception of sight, given that tigers, exotic birds, tropical insects in flourishing environments are to be considered as transfigurations, as projections of the thought.
To observe these works is like looking through a multicoloured kaleidoscope of flora and fauna. While apparently describing reality, Boscheri seems to mean more than what is accessible to the eye. He uses a sort of hyperrealism that reminds us to the idea of the Baroque “wonderful”, meant to amaze in order to teach.
The intellectual effort clearly shown by these paintings is to describe the scene at its climax, at that very unique moment to which Goethe said “Stop, you are beautiful”
To go any further would mean to invert the ascendant parabola, that would suddenly take to this abyss. The title of the exhibition itself, “Arcadia”, suggests an almost mythical approach to his works.
Boscheri’s work include a number of emotions and technical expedients purposely taken to excess. On the one hand suspense and amazement, on the other exaltation of the colours, flou effects and decorativism.
However, this is the only possible way nature can be seen nowadays. Any scientific documentary about animals seems to carry the omen of a threat. We assist as an impotent audience to the acts of exotic species, aware that we are witnessing what concerns the very last 30- 40 ….on earth. It is not of much comfort the fact that some unknown species can still be discovered these days, as happened for the Elephant Shrewmouse, recently discovered by the staff of the Natural Science Museum in Trento.
This is the reason why beyond the brightness of flowers and the variety of animal species Boscheri paints, we can perceive some sort of melancholy (like in Arcadia, the border line, 2008, or like in Relax, 2007) and it feels like the famous drypoint “Melancholy 1” by Albrecht Durer is a recurring theme.
Boscheri usually prefers static compositions, often tigers lying on trunks (another reminiscence to the angelic figure by Durer who, absent-minded, has its elbow on the knee) or frogs looking at the viewer.
The same is for those scenes where one would expect some actions, such as a fight between wild beasts (Mato Grosso, 2002), courtship rituals (Paradiseae raggiana, 2007) or birds flying (Ghiandaie azzurre, 2002). Not interested in any dynamism, Boscheri organises his paintings by accurately placing each element so that it can be observed by the viewer, who can appreciate the many fine details. The very look of the animals towards the viewer, which is often found in the series of felines or of red-eyed frogs (Frogs with pink hibiscus, 2008), contributes to the feeling of suspended time and space.
It would be well worth viewing the works with the painter himself, who knows several animals species and their different varieties as well as an expert would. In addition to the main characters of the scene, Boscheri’s compositions include detailed mental representations of micro-environments. However, flowers, herbs and insects are consistent with their real habitat. Images are assembled like in a collage, which is partly made by using pictures fragments but also highly inspired by the various journeys the artist has taken in different wildlife reserves of the planet.
Boscheri’s general style and the special attention he pays to the natural world probably come from his personal life experience. He is self-taught and approaches painting after years of managerial experience in multinational companies. As many other contemporary artists coming from other walks of life (such as Maurizio Cattelan or Karsten Hoeller), he realises that the best way for him to contribute something to the world is art.
His attraction to exotic places and the consequent meditation on nature are expressed in Boscher’s paintings through a stratification of techniques.
A first background layer is made with the airbrush which confers a fluorescent aura with “flash” effects. In the second phase, the most demanding one, the artist builds the main framework of the painting by accurately defining the figures with acrylic or, more recently, with oil, as this allows him to use a wider range of nuances.
The last stage consists of painting the circular decorative elements using the point of a brush, in the same way as the Aboriginal Australian rock-painting. These signs remind of the Aboriginal alphabet, however they are used like decorative arabesques. The artist has recently added some spangles, to match with the colourful natural images that complete the bright atmosphere of the paintings.
The result is a series of work meant not merely to illustrate, but to rather warn. It is some sort of “memento mori” to remind the viewer of the dramatic extinction risk many of the painted animals are exposed to.
Orietta Berlanda
Beyond Natural Appearances
It is always interesting to stand before young poetics for how far it can seem from one’s own specific area of study or research. Continually re-treading the familiar path of one’s own personal knowledge is a serious form of unknowing shortsightedness on the part of the observer, listener and reader.
The contemporary aims to break down barriers of both form and content. The contraposition between iconism and aniconism, intended as an ideological borderland, may now be considered an archaic topic of discussion. It is sufficient to have visited one of the last editions of the Biennale di Venezia to realize this, where the multitude of languages seems to follow the same progression as the web, just as when we enter a word chosen at random into a search engine. Unfortunately, as in the web, there are more pitfalls than pleasant surprises. The contemporary, due to a sterility of ideas, is now perhaps learning that it is not enough to be free to do, more or less, whatever one wants. Creating a work of art today (maybe more than at any other time) is an extremely serious undertaking. It is about producing thought, that thought which is subject to the concept of culture, which in its turn produces models of behaviour, necessary for the development of human society. I believe that every artist and every writer or poet or musician, when deciding to “create” should face this direction or risk remaining silent for a long period. When my dear friend Mario Mutinelli asked me to write a brief presentation of the works of Maurizio Boscheri he knew I would not have refused. When Maurizio Boscheri, an intelligent artist, showed me his most recent works, he knew I would have said exactly what I thought, as there are few things worse than lying in front of a work of art. What is there of interest in Boscheri’s animals?
“These animals are so perfect, they could be photographs”, is an easy trap to fall into when one is still a little inexpert. If the reason behind his paintings was just faithful representation, Boscheri would have sent his curriculum to the National Geographic instead of bringing these paintings to me. Looking with careful attention at a number of paintings the eye manages to free itself slowly but surely from the animals in the foreground which even tend to become irritating in their banal, infantile affability. Often, around the close up images, something happens; something that has nothing to do with an animal documentary. Luminous halos appear like lamps seen through mist on the airbrushed backgrounds, almost as if the image was nothing more than an artificially lit stage set. It is an exterior that looms and transforms the apparent and appeasing initial perception into uneasiness. Paintings such as the Selva Negra or The Red Eyes Company exude the kind of disturbing aseptic sensation of a laboratory. The whole scene is meticulously detailed as though according to a marketing strategy directive. In line with that strategy, as an introduction to a catalogue of the images, one might read a comment of this kind: “… the animals rest on light surfaces, hinted at as intertwined branches, adorned with fantastically shaped leaves and bejeweled with pearl like berries, dew drops and a crystal breeze, almost as though covered by a regal cloak. Agile and graceful cats, multicoloured birds, small frogs and primordial insects move with cautious unselfconsciousness in dimensions almost completely without traditional reference to perspective, where every element of the real world is transformed to another place. The green leafy boughs, which envelop the multicoloured plumage of the parrots, become embroidered feathers of rare animals; the straw and flowers, where butterflies alight, like shooting stars in trails of golden ribbons. Even the darkest nights reveal silver cobweb threads, stretched to their limit, and small garlands of flowers set like pearls in rays of light set the darkness on fire … ” - an exercise in style for a promotional campaign. It is the cold but astute eye that can capture nature in pose, for other aims and ends. It seems to me that through the contrast of the backgrounds, Boscheri wants to unveil and unmask the artificiality of that which creates distance from nature rather than drawing nearer.
Another unmistakable characteristic is the use of curious biomorphic arrangements of dots, mostly circular or serpentine, spreading out in many branches and waves. There is an affinity between these shapes and some primary cellular structures; however, Boscheri restores them to a visible primordial language, as seen in the caves of the Aboriginal Australians, made up of similar multicoloured groups of dots. Their metaphorical interpretation may be varied and contradictory, ranging from the persistence of the vital energy of nature to the origins of human language, destined to change the perception and the structure of these pieces of artificial nature. With regards to such alternatives, I prefer the second, which describes the artistic progression of Boscheri’s poetics. I have found confirmation of this interpretation in some modified elements of the paintings such as the branch in the aforementioned The Red Eyes Company or the body of the Iguana, which seem destined to lose themselves in the rise and fall of the coloured dots. Could it be, however, a human language, both modern and ancient, retaking possession of images, from which nature can leave and reenter in a different and pictoral ecosystem? It seems to me that this is the most interesting direction that Boscheri’s research takes, aimed at trying to find a way of returning to nature. The simultaneous presence of this language and these images of animals hopes for a new fusion between mankind and nature, in which nature, finally, can free itself from the confines of exploitation, from where we have banished it. With this fusion the artist may be able to offer us a new concept of ecological existence, in which man is not only man, immersed in a concrete habitat far from everything else but able to become, through understanding, man-fox, man-frog, man-tiger, man-dog, because he has made himself dog, finally, made himself tiger, made himself frog, made himself fox to shatter the shrine and extinguish the light of whichever artificial day.
Leonardo Conti
