Stylistically originating in Abstract Expressionism and deeply inspired by Buddhist philosophy, Alexander Markovich’s art is authentic and personally identifiable. He explored many different types of mark making, freely mixing figurative and abstract forms, but the final result is always rich in emotive content. The visual dynamics of his art encompass polar opposites: frantic complexity and austere simplicity, energetic explosions of paint and shapes frozen in an inherent immobility, an active chaos of expressive accents and the meditative tranquility of single, simple statements. He worked in a number of different techniques, including oil, acrylic, charcoal, pastel, ink, pencil, varnish, collage, and lithography; and his works display various forms of abstraction, in some cases dense and gestural, in others pared-down and simplified. Some works include anthropomorphic allusions, while others are non-referential and purely gestural. However, his works all contain a specific articulation of deepened subjectivity: an articulation in which the abstract and the representational mode are fluidly interchangeable. Intense and immediate, Markovich’s art conveys two essentially different and yet related sensations: at one extreme a dark threat of eroding loneliness and endless suffering that may extinguish the soul, at the other a longing to experience the eternal beauty and tranquillity of a supreme spirit that will lift the soul to a magic realm of light. These two themes are in fact almost inseparable in Markovich’s works and run as a constant current through all of Markovich’s art, whether Christian and Buddhist inspired in its imagery, whether romantic dreamscape or anguished recording of internal conflict.
In his art Markovich openly faced a harrowing clash in his mind between his darkest feelings of fear and distress and his yearning for eternal calm and brightness that appeared to him as a “spirit in his dreams” (poem X). Most of his works include dramatic contrasts of pure black and white. His paintings, prints, and drawings move and touch us because they originate in experiences which all humans share, namely fear and hope. In equally familiar but more symbolic terms, this could be understood as the fundamental contrast between heaven and earth, between a world of infinite light and hope for salvation and the nether world of death and eternal suffering. Variations of blue and earth tones dominate Markovich’s palette, together with the non-color of complete darkness and the absorption of all light rays (black) and that total brightness in which all light rays participate (white). By insisting on principles of spontaneity, Markovich sought a fuller encounter with his own existential concerns. Rapid handling of the brush secured the directness of his images. His subject matter incorporated disorder and uncontrolled energy, which at times was combined or completely replaced with a precarious tranquility expressed through loosely constructed geometric forms. And yet all of Markovich’s works are linked by his preference for mystery and vagueness and by his elevation of intuition and subjectivity over intellect. Existing outside of reason, these floating visions communicate the sensations and strivings of the artist’s most intimate inner world. Buddhist philosophy remained an important source of inspiration for Markovich throughout his life, especially Buddhist teaching on the dreamlike quality of life and reality—which is movingly conveyed in Markovich’s surrealistic and translucent images. In particular, based on the evidence of his paintings, he must have been well-versed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Buddhist inspired contemplation of the transience of human life, the constant presence of impermanence and death, and the vicious cycle of human frustration and suffering, provided the bases for Markovich’s visions of his own journey through life. Because life as a whole is nothing but a perpetual repetition of birth and death, the transition between the two—the so-called bardo experiences, or experiences of transitional realities—encompass us all the times. It is especially in moments of strong change and transition, the teachings tell us, that the nature of our mind will manifest itself. Specific moments (bardos! ) in our life-and-death journey are much more powerful and charged with potential than others. The greatest and most charged of these, the moment of death, when unconditioned truth reveals itself (luminous bardo of dharmata), attracted Markovich greatly, as may be seen in his art. By dissolving his image-signs, and by continuously melting, merging and twisting the colors, lines, and shapes used to reflect the ultimate truth of life and death, Markovich wears away and dissolves the intellectual veils that obscure the truth of his own soul. Although it remains distinctive, Markovich’s art connects with some of the major trends of the Post-Modern eighties which have been labeled as Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Abstraction, and New Imagist Painting. American artists of the eighties, Markovich’s contemporaries, embraced similar forms of expression and sentiment to create an art that was both emotionally and physically charged. In the eighties a number of young artists—such as Susan Rothenberg, Elizabeth Murray, Jonathan Borofsky, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and others—explored abstract gesture and mark-making with an allusive figurative content as did Markovich. Thus, Markovich’s oeuvre could invite comparison with Rothenberg’s flat, silhouetted figuration; Murray’s interaction of figurative subject matter and abstract construction of forms; Borofsky’s associative structures and faceless human figures; or the sense of pervasive ambivalence toward absence and presence expressed in Basquiat’s paintings, as well as “the eternal silence of infinite spaces” that is said to characterize his work. In the work of all these artists subject matter became more directly personal; all of them suggest a unique immediacy and only hint at a bodily presence. They were all creating images either as symbolic self-portraits or as surrogates for human feeling. Many American painters of the eighties and early nineties shared the attitude that abstraction may in fact be the most expressive of all available aesthetic languages in an age abstracted by its own technology—moving from reality towards “simulated” reality.
Read more about this product...
|
|
|
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book
Dot Dot Dash: Designer Toys, Action Figures And Character Art
Crumble, Crackle, Burn: 60 Stunning Textures for Design and Illustration