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Artist: Clay Bodvin ( New Zealand ) -
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Main Category: Mixed Media
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Biography: WHY THE STILL LIFE AS THE STARTING POINT
(the rise and fall and rise of a genre)
In the early 1600s religion began to lose some of its control over the minds of the people as a threat arose to its position of importance in their perceptions and their lives. This threat took the form of changing manufacturing methods which produced a burgeoning array of new consumables. In response to this new and lavish abundance unparalleled desires for these luxury goods stirred in the privileged, contemporary viewer.
An amazing range of new subject matter reflected the increasing compulsion to enhance and document one’s personal, sensual pleasure. Paintings quickly became status items in that they displayed the patron's tastes and desires while also providing a public record of their ability to acquire and consume.
Across Europe this hunger was evidenced, in particular, by an upsurge in the popularity of still life painting as well as by the changing look, feel and content of portraiture and other narrative work.
Further declining religious influence in the middle 1800s again coincided with more improvements in production capabilities, triggering another wave of spectacular commodity consumption. This time, the converging events resulted in an extraordinary, populist rebirth of painting which lasted through to the early/middle 1900s.
It was exemplified by the way Matisse painted the luxurious nature of everyday things without being definitive in their representation. Interestingly, while Matisse’s world of sumptuous materialism was in contrast to Picasso’s more detached and clinical interpretation, together they defined the tastes and styles of the first half of the 20th Century.
Art historically still life painting has offered new and challenging points of view - like materialism illuminating modernism, á la Matisse and Picasso. But now, however, it appears the genre has simply been relegated to art’s margins. Regaining its relevance (its power to inform and make comment) is long overdue.
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Collections: Gallery Comment:
The still life is alive and well. Bodvin's ornately "decorated" rooms have something precious and inviting about them. A positivism and appreciation of objects, not as much for what they are, but as what they can represent in their painterly narrative context. Rich, dense and deeply saturated primary colors often placed next to their complementaries serve a precise function; to model and exalt the objects presented, to justify them, while somehow avoiding the garish. Bodvin uses a collage approach of sometimes repeating motifs, at times of different scale, that is very effective in achieving "environment"; not of a specific space, but a sense of place that is almost tangible. His master is obviously Matisse and he learned his lessons well; the ornamental rythmical lines of contrasting tints are a direct homage to the Fauvist painter. Bodvin's force is composition, and chooses the organizational harmony of the objects and the sensations they evoke, above perspective.
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Bibliography: Clay Bodvin is a Member of ARTROM Gallery GUILD
Visit his on-line portfolio at:
www.artromgallery.com/guild_directory/g_clay_bodvin.htm
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