Histoire de l'oeil

The portrait is one of the subjects that fascinate me in painting and I think it is also one of the most difficult to do. History of Painting offers sublime examples of Painters who have ventured into this before and after the Nineteenth Century invention of photography that marks a watershed in the role of document "objective" painting for posterity. In particular I studied Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Courbet, Gericault, Thomas Eakins and, in the Twentieth Century, Casorati, Jean Rustin, Otto Dix, Soutine,Francis Bacon, Walter Sickert, Antonio Lopez-Garcia, Lucian Freud, Varlin, Chuck Close, Gerhard Richter,August Sander and Diane Arbus. I like to paint old men and women because, quoting an analyst and psychologist Jungian James Hillman, they have the "force of character" modeling to their face and I work on a stop frame of video (when possible) by manipulating the color mismatches and as a form of "expanded reality." The series entitled "Histoire de l'oeil" is dedicated to Georges Bataille and my love for cinema.
This year, with the portraits of the philosopher Arthur C. Danto I began a series of paintings of important and living figures of contemporary culture (Philosophy,Science, Sociology, Art History, ect.)with whom I'm in touch to decide on the image to paint. The title is: ATLAS:Pictorial Iconography of Contemporary Thought". My selection is very subjective and it reflects my interests and my passions, but also a reflection on these years, and a radiograph of their(our) mind and soul.