Picturality

I’m not even sure this word, picturality, exists in English… But if it doesn’t no matter…it sounds good. For me, picturality (in French, “picturalité”) is that quality of a painting which makes it a painting, a good painting. It’s neither a simple nor an easy to explain quality… To cite again the French, it has a “je ne sais quoi”, something inefable, something which cannot be explain with words…

It is the manner the artist mixes his/her colors, the brush strokes, the spontaneity, the masterful use of composition and melodic repetitions (again the French have a better name for it, they call it: “rappels”), the way he/she selects the subject, the mistery and the hasard of it… the unicity and originality of a painting. That “je ne sais quoi” quality which makes a nude, a still life, a portrait or a landscape to be irrepetable, impossible to reproduce other than with very perfectionate mechanical means and even then… The thing which makes an original and original, the multitude of layers, each with its own hasards and necessities put together by a certain artist at a certain time in a certain place… The thing which makes a Van Gogh a Van Gogh, a Cézanne a Cézanne, a Picasso a Picasso…

I do not pretend I am one of them. I am Ion Vincent Danu, just another artist. I’m sure, although, that I am Danu and nobody can do the things I do. Mediocre or great paintings, I don’t know… But mine, no doubt. And with some picturality about them… Like this very simple one (and exercise in simplicity, in fact) I’ve just finished these days…