Natural human attitude

Ubaldo Bartolini's unique landscapes at Istituto Italiano di Cultura

Why the persistence of the landscape? For those who pursue painting them, it seems written in the blood. And yet, like the figure, it remains a centuries-old subject, an almost divine rite of passage for any schooled artist.
This month at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Ubaldo Bartolini, Italy's most famed traditional nature-view painter draws inspiration from Canadian poet Margaret Avison to create his new landscape series - The Optic Eye. But Bartolini's works, despite their tired subject matter, could only have been made in the 21st century.
On first inspection, the title of this exhibition implies a kind of redundancy - optic meaning 'of' or 'related to' the eye itself. But on a second glance, one sees that Ubaldo is highlighting in particular the artificial dimension to seeing. The eye, as instrument lodged in the body, has no judgment-free input of information. Bartolini's paintings of nature, while they reflect a masterful touch in high realism, speak less to the empirical presence of trees and fields and more to our human and religious attitudes about nature.
Like Margaret Avison, Bartolini taps into the specific moment with nature in a highly focused way. His paintings, like her poetry, make real not what exactly nature is - but how we might feel in a moment of being emotionally moved by it. She writes: "The body of this earth/has water under it and/over, from/ where the long winds sough tirelessly over water, or shriek around/ curved distances of ice." In making the banality of water a miraculous occurrence, she reminds us of the importance of perception. Once our mind has dulled from seeing water so many times, we can never again perceive it for the first time - unless that is, through a poem.
Bartolini's landscapes work on the viewer in a similar way. Romantic escapes show billowing clouds pulsating with hints of fluorescent. The figures meander insignificant beneath the grandiosity of the scene. Like Avison's poems, his paintings remind us that we are mortal and alive and only really in possession of this present moment, and so we should not take for granted this simple trickle of water or this fluorescent sunset.
Born in Montappone, Italy in 1944, Bartolini initially belonged to the Conceptual Art Movement of the 1970s, but gradually shifted towards the "visionary" genre, which as his website describes "was characterized by unreal enigmatic and disquieting view and landscapes". By 1982, he had joined the original group of Italo Mussa's "Pittura Colta" and later the "anacronismo" movement, in which he revitalized a passion for the Old Masters' landscape paintings. In an atheistic age, Bartolini and Avison convince those who experience their art that our interaction with nature is in fact a spiritual experience.
As one critic of his work explained it: "Bartolini is perpetuating the romantic idealization of nature through art as a genuine spiritual affirmation and as the consummate creative expression of the human imagination". His continued success - in the most important international galleries from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris to the Venice Biennale, the Quadriennale d'Arte in Rome to the Edward Totah Gallery in London; from the Seubu Museum of Tokyo to the Del Re Gallery of New York - prove that so long as we have eyes to see, we will always want a new interpretation of our surroundings.
Perhaps, in this day and age, when global struggles and environmental disasters threaten the simplest natural occurrence, Bartolini expresses a plea for beauty - a reminder of how much we stand to lose, if we do not stop even momentarily to look twice.
Ubaldo Bartolini's The Optic Eye shows at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 496 Huron Street, until October 13. For more information call 416.921.3802.

Publication Date: 2004-09-12
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