02 permanent exhibition The night

Why this picture ?

 

I have make this composite to pay homage to this painter whom I love very much and whose inspiration is quite unique. His art is rather close to some science-fiction themes but with a very personal vision and very far from the clichés of the genre. One has called him a visionary. A series of prints of his paintings have been published in a monograph in 1985. They show landscapes of a planet Earth from where the Man seems departed. At least as a species if not up to the last one, for one can meet here all the same a vagabond walking in the depths of a forest, his bundle on ones back (Le bagage), and a women swimming in the company of the dolphins (La chemise de nuit). Dolphins, whales, sharks and others sea animals have moreover invest what was in the past the human territory, today buried under the waters, without any doubt after what one guess a world cataclysm. The whole planet has been given back to the animals, which move about in landscapes where here and there emerge the pathetic remnants of the human civilisation : empty houses, planes, trains, cars, given up everywhere, in deserted countries or in devastated towns became landscapes of sea bed or erecting towards the sky some buildings sinister like the charred trunks of a burned down forest.

 

On all these after-man landscapes reign the pale light which falls of the overcast and heavy skies. If one see sometimes an area with blue sky, never a sunray comes to light up these lands where yet the life seems go on without any problem, as if Man was already forgotten. Everywhere, the technological and architectural remnants of a fallen civilisation are scattered on a nature which reassert itself, invading the more improbable places.

 

One has compared Roland Cat to the nineteenth century masters of American landscape, Bierstadt, Church, Cole. That is right in the sense that Cat is a landscape and nature lover like were the latter. But if they painted grandiose landscapes and still free from the Man, Cats landscapes are rid of this one. The paintings of the Hudson River School founders and successors often showed glorified and embellished landscapes (even accurate to the model) : glowing red sunsets were not rare in it, just as warm and saturated colours. Cats nature is more dull. It does not irradiate. It is often sad, and even sometimes worrying and harrowing. It is no less beautiful if one can bear the feeling of solitude and melancholy it inspire. I would thus rather compare him to the early nineteenth German painter Caspar David Friedrich, about whom one have said that he felt « admirably well the landscapes tragedy », and in whom one find the same melancholy, the same feeling of solitude, the same fascination for ruins, the preference for half-lights and overcast skies, and often the absence of Man in his landscapes.

 

This leads me to ask a question : the feeling of sadness that give off the Roland Cats landscapes is so pregnant that I wonder by what exactly it is produced. Cats painting is of an almost photographic accuracy and this leads to compare its canvas with photographs. Now, I have seen thousands of photos, and if the feeling of beauty in them is often obvious, I dont think have never felt a so strong emotion of sadness than in the canvases of this painter. Moreover, it seems to me that it is not peculiar to this one : very often, in view of paintings I feel keener emotions than in view of photographs. So, this is my question : Is photography powerless to suggest true emotions, and if painting can do this, by what means can it succeed to ? In the past, the pictorialists thought that photography, to transmit emotions, had to imitate painting. By different process, they strived to erase, to lessen the too sharp and too accurate appearance of the photography. Later, others have assert on the contrary that photography had to accept its own nature and have claim the best sharpness, the best accuracy to reality. But faced with the almost photographic appearance of Cats paintings, in which view one feel emotions that photography seldom succeed to transmit, one is forced to wonder why photography is unable to do the same. What is there more in the Roland Cats painting which seems lacking in photography ? One could think that it is the addition of these famous signs of a departed humanity which produce this feeling, but it is not that, for the same sadness seize us in view of some of his canvases which shows landscapes lacking in theses science-fiction elements. Even the painting « La Terre », which unique element of strangeness is the nebulae in the sky, produces this feeling of sadness and of solitude which a similar photomontage remains powerless to give rise to.

 

This picture is a composite with a photo and a print of a painting.

The photo was taken by myself in the country near my parents house :

it is a stream flowing in the fields and bordered with some trees.

The cosmic sky, with these nebulae which are normally invisible from

our earth with the naked eye, is borrowed from a painting titled La

Terre (The Earth), by a French contemporary painter named Roland

Cat. My photomontage is inspired by the painting which shows as well

a stream in the fields with some trees on the edge. It is a end of

day view with a pale light. The late hour, the cold colours, the

landscape a bit sad, the starry sky which nebulae refer to the

distant space, all in this painting express the solitude. However, it

is not question of mans solitude, but of the Earths solitude, the

only life-planet of all the universe. For see the painting and know

more about Roland Cat, read the comments below.

I feel awe and insignificance, knowing that we are so microscopic in terms of rthe big picture of the vastness that lies out there. There is hopefulness in this image. It truly makes us wonder about the vastness of the skies. We often focus on the macro aspect of our lives... looking closely at an insect or a flower to see it in all of its details. Here we see that there is so much more to explore. So much more to learn. It is a beautiful rendition that you have created. What exactly makes you sad seeing this? Please explain.

Do we talk of the same picture ? I say that I feel sadness on the Roland Cat's painting you can see in clicking on the link "la Terre", not on my bad picture above, which is just a pretext to introduce this painter to the photo.net members. If you talk of the same picture, so I can just say that everybody feels a work of art from its own personnality, its own history, its own brain.

Beautiful!! I wish wasn't so grainy though, because i'd love this as large poster. Great job!

Is intelligent life. The numbers demand it.

I love this shot ..wow...you are really talented!

A very guessed right combination of images, with a result expectacular. Good work

Great Idea, composition and WORK !

I liked the idea very much, but the noise in the sky bothers me. IMHO, if the noise is cleaned, it could be a real winner.

Thank you Mehmet. The noise is the canvas texture of the painting reproduction I used for made the manipulation as I explain it above.

Regards, Henri