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| PAUL BRESS |
Today ‘posterised’ art
images and prints come two a penny – albeit costing lot more on poster sites selling
them. Indeed anyone can now ‘posterise’ or ‘oil paint’ an image with a single
click using the ‘image editing’ and ‘special
effects’ software built into their digital cameras, smart phones, tablet apps or
computer ‘paint’ programmes.
Though the results are often
very surprising, pleasing and even dramatic, what characterises this instant
‘techno-art’ of posteri(s/z)ation and
other special effects such as ‘oil painting’ is precisely they requires no art and even no artist at all
to create. For unless the images which
are posterised are based on authentic art photography, the sole ‘artist’ is just a piece of in-built
digital software.
All the more surprising then, to come across an artist called Paul Bress
who - without use or even knowledge of instant digital posterisation and other technical
tricks - came to spontaneously create acrylic art portraiture sharing the
same basic character of technical ‘posterisation art’– the use of unmerged
colour zones - albeit with one big difference. For the result is actually a work of art in the traditional sense – created
through the genuine and impressive painterly skills of a real live artist and
not just by an automated and instantaneous technical process.
Paul Bress describes his
particular art style as ‘zonism’, contrasting its use of unmerged and
ungradated colour zones with other forms
of post-impressionist art - but without any reference to the automated digital
transformation of images into unmerged colour zones through ‘posterisation’ and
other image-editing effects such as ‘oil painting’ likenesses. Some might therefore consider his view of ‘zonism’
as a wholly original art style as therefore wholly naive.
If so, then through this
apparent naiveté, Paul Bress has actually ventured something much more
historically significant that he even he himself thinks - namely to buck the
trend that has led to the
ever-increasing digitalisation and technologisation of art and painting. Indeed
he has unknowingly but effectively reversed this trend - returning us from one-click
techno-art to authentic artistic and painterly ‘craft’ – craft, craftsmanship
and art being in fact, the original meaning of the Greek word techne.
Paul describes his own
journey as an artist as follows:
“I started painting with acrylics (first in black and white, and then in
colour). Once I had a canvas in front of
me I found myself painting in a very singular style. Instead of starting in one place (say, the
corner of the left eye) and continuing adding to what I’d done, I started
painting in zones. What does this mean? I looked at my muse and thought “What do I
see first?” Let’s say I saw a sunlit square centimetre of nose. I painted that in, then looked for other
parts of the muse that looked the same colour/tone – and I painted them in
too. The result was that I had a canvas
with splodges of sunlight spread, unconnected, all over its surface. Next, I said to myself: “What’s the next
thing I notice?” And I did the same with
that. And then the same again. And the same again. Until my picture was completed. Because I
paint ‘zones’ I’ve called what I do ‘zonism’.”
To the art critic or connoisseur this sparse account, with its lacking
reference to art history, and to all the countless varieties of post-impressionist
and expressionist painting in particular, Bress’s belief that ‘zonism’ is a
wholly original painting style and technique might seems simplistic or naiive.
But it is it? One might think of Warhol for example – but his work is certainly
‘simplistic’ by comparison.
Compare for example, Paul Bress’s Monroe with that of Warhol and the
difference is clear – as it is with all Bress’s paintings in comparison with
the images to be found by simply Googling
‘posterised’ or ‘posterized’ art.
Indeed Warhol’s Marilyn Dyptich - voted in the Guardian (2004) as the third most influential work of modern
art - is almost an exact anticipation of
a digital image editing screen set to ‘posterise’ a photograph and can be seen
as pre-digital inception of today’s wholly
automated, commercialized and mass produced ‘zonist’ imagery. In this sense it constitutes the very opposite of what Paul Bress seeks to
achieve through the non-technological ‘craft’ or techne of his ‘zonist’ facial portraiture.
Peter Wilberg 2012
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| Paul Bress |
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