Simple and Friendly Paintings

A Glance at Farshid Shiva’s Works in Asar Gallery

Since at least the Renaissance, the outlook on the world has been represented by sketching and painting. During this time, architecture, sculpture, and literature have been vying with these two branches of art, and especially in the second half of the twentieth century, photography, the movies, television, video, and even philosophy rose to emulate with them. Nevertheless, it can be declared and proved that sketching and painting are still considered the commonest and the most helpful way for the world to be perceived, reflected and seasoned with a pinch of excitement and enthusiasm. It’s also worth-mentioning that painting has always been entangled with various ideological and political influences as well as some other discords, which rose to a climax in the mid-1960’s. Consequently, painting faced a contradictory concept, which, in effect, turned out to be disastrous. For some time afterwards, the dignity of painting was diminished. Lynched, metamorphosed, and humiliated, were painting and sketching exiled. Even Douglas Crimp tolled its death bell everywhere along with other cultural deaths such as :The Death of Tragedy (.susan sontauge ),The Death of History ( alexadre....cougois.& francis fokoyama. ) The Death of the Author (roland bart ), The Death of the Theory (hans belting), The Death of the Subject (Michael fuko..),etc. In fact, painting was replaced with some apparently intellectual fusses and the so-called conceptualizing and philosophizing of art. Yet, none of these evidently neo-creativities lasted long, and painting reappeared on stage in the mid- 1980’s. Just the same, it seemed that this short period of exile had caused its rebirth, changing its look, identity, meaning and purpose. Clearly, a great part of these changes was due to the change in man’s perception, i.e the way he saw the reality.

Realism has always been a vague concept. Never can it be called an accepted artistic label. However, this does not imply that it should not be applied or referred to. In other words, realism might have a more accurate meaning in the available literature on philosophy for two reason: First, from a historical point of view, it is in opposition to superficiality and second, certain scientific theories have been categorized under this heading. Generally speaking, one can say realism and representational art have been the most wide-ranging, complex and mutable concepts in art and culture. In fact, realism has such a wide scope that it covers not only the works of .Gustave courbet.& Barbizon painters and some of the mid-19th century painters, but also those of the painters of the second half of the 20th century and a huge number of the artists of the early 21st century. In fact, the scope is so wide that it can be viewed as having lost its specific meaning, especially in depicting interior environments. For a long time, painting was solely considered to be those of the interior environments and landscapes or was dominated by the intentional intricacies in Braque works or those of the painters following Picasso’s style, or was simply overshadowed by the toughness of Cezanne‘s devout and glorious mannerism. The world of art, entangled in modern uproars, paid no attention to works of Edward Vuillard and Pierre bonnard and simplicity and cordiality were the elements doomed to be forgotten. In addition, confirming the fact that there’s not a single trace of the simple and friendly paintings like Vuillard ‘s and Bonnard ‘s is reaching epidemic proportions today. Even if there is something left, it is limited to tiny bits of life with vague memories flying overhead, which willy-nilly takes on a nostalgic color in a few cases.

One common accessible meaning for realism is that the painter reflects objects, sceneries, people and in general, different aspects of life the way s/he really sees them. But what is ignored here is the selection process. Just like other branches of art, painting is accompanied with selection, which should be considered along with perception. In fact, two noticeable elements in Farshid Shiva’s works are the selection of content and the simple reflection of the reality. Shiva tries to hide the boring monotonies in beauty, which turns into a kind of motivation to enter a wider realm: The aesthetics of everyday objects. He sometimes goes so far in the labyrinth of this process that finds himself in an apparently known but in fact mysterious and occasionally satiric environment. For instance, the place where an armchair or a simple sofa is located, is laden with potential ambiguities, equivocalness, and recountings seeming not to have had the chance to be interpreted. The sofa Shiva paints could be an imaginary picture of what Froyd’s mental patients would lie on to be psychoanalyzed, and on which parts of our everyday life is spread now. It is surrounded by a light which appears to have passed a mental filter before entering the painting, and which both transforms and reveals the objects. This makes his painting take on a hypnotizing trait. He depicts the physical details, but not so much as to be trapped in pure, super or hyper-realism. Moreover, he keeps away from the imagination we see in neo-expressionism as much as possible. He sums up the features inherited from the greatest painters, yet avoids the sentimentality of some of them, not sacrificing the identity of painting for a detailed description of objects. Although each and every one of the elements in his works hold a symbolic, conceptual and to be more precise, biographical meaning, his paintings bring to mind an unusual exploitation of ordinary objects, showing that there is no need to make fusses to graft painting onto conceptual arts.

The truth is that nowadays visual art no longer revolves round different schools, movements, -isms or historical classifications. Using definite –isms to refer to a painting or labeling it as following specific schools is simply out-dated. What is of importance is being innovative in the custom of painting. The painter is no longer viewed as an advertiser, a bawler or the so-called intellectual. Also, the expectations of the cultural role of painting have changed. It is under these circumstances that a young person like Shiva paints ordinary objects patiently and with a simple attitude toward them. In other words, he interprets and paraphrases them in a visual language. He is well aware that young people today should either spend their time sketching and painting or choose another name for what they really do and that they can no longer have double policies toward painting. Pure love for painting now differs from pornography or drawing crooked lines and figures. Shiva is brave enough to avoid flying high or dealing with concepts that fail to be internalized through a visual language. He believes himself to be committed to a sort of pictorial modesty. Neither does he want the paintings to be looked at as metaphysical works, nor does he intend to give them a surrealistic enamel. That explains why his works are modern and up-to-date. There is no need to draw crooked modernistic patterns or meaningless sketches to be modern. The painter today looks for and sees not only the detachment from reality but also its distortion. Though young, Shiva knows well what he, as a painter, calls the real world is by no means the same as what the man in the street sees. Of course, this should not tempt one into thinking that real objects do not exist, or that they have a double identity. Rather it implies that the intrinsic meaning of objects is not limited to what humans refer to. The painter replaces the familiar codes with those of his own, creating a substitute world to influence the real one, and to lead to a new reality.

Another point which is worth-mentioning is that some of Shiva’s paintings remind one of a stage on which the actors and the actresses have not yet appeared, a place where all the main objects turn into secondary ones. As a rule, if in a painting, there are even hundreds of objects and only one human figure, the objects are all overshadowed by that figure. For instance, in Vermeer ‘s works, the presence of a woman among tens of other objects from tables, chairs and tablecloths to curtains, natural sceneries , etc turns the painting into a figurative work. Having been aware of this fact, Shiva depicts the scene before man’s arrival, inspiring the viewer with a feeling of attachment to the coziness of the home.

Another obvious feature in Shiva’s works is that there are at least one definite horizontal and one imaginary vertical line in most of them, which meet each other like two axes of a diagram. Although they might be hidden behind some of the objects or elements in the painting, their presence is always tangible. Using these axes, Shiva spreads his painting from the center to the sides as well as controlling it. The axes, in fact, function as frames on which the body of the painting is based. Besides, they determine its structural criteria. Meanwhile, it can be easily understood when these formal qualities stop functioning, and are replaced with form and color, communicating the painter’s intuitions. In some cases, what lies round this main axis changes into fluid. The colors look like lively elements, with their vibration making the viewers’ eyes wander all over the painting and not letting them focus on one spot.

Clearly, Shiva has his own models, which he has painted by looking at real objects. But the outcome is similar to recalling one’s memories, the same as the ones Giorgio Morandlived with looking for the time passed. There is only one difference. The way Shiva paints resembles some sort of analysis of a complicated process: “Memorizing and Recalling”. Such an idea could just be generated by the viewer’s mind. In other words, Shiva might have painted whatever lied in front of him, without knowing the first thing about this notion. However, it cannot be denied that such interpretations, although vague, could be logical and acceptable in visual arts. In fact, ambiguity is a sign of an undeniable fact: The flow of the viewer’s experiences and their consequent change while facing an art work. Some Japanese aesthetics analysts suggest the word “wabbi” for a special quality in these works. The concept is untranslatable and has no equivalence in Persian, but refers to perceiving and understanding the real quality of the real objects and simply put, distilling pure sensitivity in which a careful look, silence and inner motivation are intermingled.; something more like what Kafka says: “ Importance must lie in your look, not in what you look at.”

Two other differentiating features in Shiva’s paintings are his technical skill and the respect he has for his visual expressive tools. Art and its different kinds will anyhow exist, which is why they change.Adami once said:” Practical techniques and skills have no role in a painting’s being modern.” But I personally believe that this seemingly petty issue is , in fact, one of the most important ones in today’s art. A mess or scatter is technically or practically as bad as being old-fashioned, something which should not be ignored or underestimated.

And as one last word, if not taken as a piece of advice, Shiva paints what he sees in his surroundings and is in connection with his personal life. This is not bad. Before that,
Giorgio morandi did the same thing , carving his name on history for eternity. Even if the painter tries to create a personal painting, the language he uses is so public and may sometimes take a rhetoric form. Nevertheless, he should not forget that these concepts and closed environments are of a limited scope, as a result of which he might be trapped in an environment solely created for him. Clearly, under such circumstances painting cannot be looked on thoroughly. It will also be much of a burden to focus on the rumination bases, the only solution to which is to transform an ordinary object into a beauty in his inner personality, and to entangle himself in recalling the memories concealed in delicate forms. Unlike what Nietzsche assumes, beauty should not necessarily be joyful. It can appear as a consoling element for the loss of the excitement and enthusiasm, making the painter take the risk of returning to the past, and most dangerous of all, forget that outside his painting workshop, there are alleys and streets outside his painting workshop with people only a few steps away, each of whom may hold an attractive content for painting in them.