Discovering the “Hidden Spaces” of José Manuel Ballester in the spaces of the Greats: Diego Velazquez, Johannes Vermeyer, Hieronymus Bosch, Sandro Botticelli, Franco Angelo, Rafael Santi, Leonardo da Vinci…
My first impulse was to share all the photos at once – full-length photographs of Jose Manuel’s works and reproductions of the originals to share the stunning effect. The effect of moving beyond the work of Man as a species, image, object and opening of the canvas. And yet let it happen for everyone in their own way. I chose the details. Let them be like a puzzle for some, wondering what picture they are from.
What’s stunning?
It’s not so much the Space that is stunning. What is stunning is the opening state, the plans and details that have come to the fore, and how easily they take attention to themselves and the coming ideas and meanings or meaninglessness, or the state before the idea, before the thought, the purity of being… before… what is happening, with some kind of work and what happens after, a vision of the world before Man or after Man… before the event and after… a pre-event… and the impossibility / or possibility / of it happening. It seems like you know what “the artist wanted to say,” or rather, you think that you know, or you know what others have learned and shared with you, or you know what the work gave birth to in you, what subject it was written on, something about symbolism, about era… The statement of the Artist – the Master has already happened… for centuries it has been accomplished for contemplators…
And suddenly… there is no familiar, important, one or those who showed the plot and meaning… But something remained, something was revealed behind Them, behind the “gone”, taken away from the canvas by Jose Manuel…
And here in Bosch, paradise before Adam and Eve and objects before and after Man, with marks of the catastrophe that happened… here they were, creating their own objects, household items, here is a helmet, here is a knife… a pen… and as if , swept away… the fires are still burning and a new light… is expected, is it expected? And, if to the beginning of the triptych, then here it is, a new cycle… the Garden of Eden… and again… the eye can walk in circles… as if into Eternity, as if into Eternity.. and into Life…
Velazquez… and he is not on the canvas… and we are in the sanctuary of the Master, before the master, maybe before the workshop became a workshop… what was there… the opening took over the whole view… in opening and into the light.. there is no menina, no approach of the Infanta and Special…
And, if you really added a mirror to the canvas… then anyone looking could take the place of the Kings… even the appearance of Diego in front of the canvas…
Although, even without a mirror, Las Meninas without Meninas is the most popular work for selfies or photographing… the entrance to the frame, the opening of the picture asks to be let in…
Vermeyer… there is light… a polyphony of gray, graying, but shining Light… I couldn’t resist showing the work without the artist and the model… just giving the model a frame… to see what Jose Manuel saw and conveyed to us. In the original painting, on the canvas, we see only a pale blue flower on the girl’s head, which the artist transfers onto the canvas… but how she is captured is not visible to us… hidden by the artist’s hand and body. Jose Manuel, having taken them away from the picture, left the appearance of its features on the canvas… airy… the work looks better, moving meters away, then there is even more light in it…
The Birth of Venus Boticeli, without Venus… “Place of Birth” calling… such a force of aggravated emptiness without Beauty. Waiting, the islands and the sea that are around and the shores are deserted with emptiness… so clearly that you don’t even know whether the expanse will remain a desert or whether someone will be born here… The greatness of Waiting… and the happiness that we know that behind him will be born Beauty…
In his Spring, how the forest blossomed, and the mountains appeared behind the trees, and the heavenly clouds floated… everything that the gaze had previously only briefly glanced at… flowers and foxes, maybe too much, received a little more than from the Divine Virgins. ..
In Leonardo, where the Madonna is in the rocks, I so want to return her Divine, because the Light is so lacking without her, and the arms hugging with Love…
And on the Annunciation, then a book with an almost falling page that invisibly supports, does not allow, it to fall… is the wind really reading with prayer? We know the Divine Hand… but now it has been taken away… and the sails, and ships, and rocks have opened behind… That’s why he left the ships? And if they had not existed—the creations of human hands—would the foundation of the world have been revealed to us before the News?
The second shock – the Temple of Raphael is empty without the Betrothed… although the mountains and the doorway of Heaven are exposed…
And Fra Anglico… leaving the apples in the garden, without those who knew the fruit… and the column of perspectives… but without the “Perspective” of Christmas… only a temple…imitating, as if, the Temple of the New Jerusalem is imprinted in the window frames… with people and without people…
And the beauty of nature returns everything to normal… and Life, and the sighs, the impressions of those who came…
This happened to me. I hope that for those who care about making their first impression, I stopped reading from the place of impressions)
I don’t sign photos of the details of the paintings, let there be a surprise and a quest. And, of course, the quality cannot be compared when you get closer, if you look, even though it’s canvas, print, not oil)
And the exhibition is a delight!
Thanks to everyone involved who brought it! I look forward to talking when Jose Manuel is able to come to Moscow.
Vera Lysenko