Windows, moments

When we observe a painting of a landscape we are opening a mental window to a Nature that the painter has managed to capture in his work. Nature is free, independent of the human being, but in a painting it is Nature recreated, conceived, digested by the human mind. This wonder amplifies the concept of landscape; a blue sea will become a frenetic or calm story of color and textures, in a still and eternal moment of how the painter lived that emotion that Nature integrated into him. And he leaves it there, on a limited and enclosed surface, a piece of the soul frozen in time forever.  

Landscape or film

A landscape can be a more or less real and naturalistic, more or less impressionistic or fauve copy of Nature where everything is in its place respecting light and natural perspective, but it can also be a reinvention or recreation of it. In Chagall, lovers, a blue horse and a red Eiffel Tower fly weightlessly over bent houses in distorted perspective. In Miró the stars become symbols and graphics that do not cross an unfathomable firmament but rather descend to the ground and are placed in front of a bird, with their sparkles like calligraphic signatures, or on blue suns bordered by red, yellow and black. De Chirico's landscapes vibrate under a permanent impossible sunset...

The landscape genre long ago stopped being a mere evocation to also be an invention, an arrangement of elements that with their own laws and rules complete a free story on the picture plane. And that's when the landscape becomes an outdoor movie. What is important and necessary is that it be a landscape, a succession of natural elements, houses, trees, fields, rivers and seas, suns and clouds, so that we can continue calling them landscapes. Otherwise we will be facing a fantasy story, we will also be in a movie, yes, but not about Nature.

The same applies to an interior or a still life, but it is in the landscape where it is best manifested, perhaps because of that illusion of open countryside where the history of things takes place.

© José Manuel Merello