By Gloria Serrano Martin
“This book is nothing more than a modest attempt to collect a few visual relationships to propose a multi-voice conversation between works, motifs, periods and artists. I only hope that whoever has come this far has been able to hear within its pages the echo of a melody whose score is painted through words and metaphors and written with brushstrokes and colors” (Oscar Martinez)
Qualification: The painted echo. Pictures within pictures, mirrors and reflections in art.
Author: Oscar Martínez.
284 pages
Editorial: Plum tree.
Posted on April 26, 2023
Oscar Martínez has a Doctor in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic of Valencia and a degree in Art History. He abandoned his time as a painter, draftsman and engraver to dedicate himself to teaching and currently works as a professor of art history, architecture, photography and design. From his first book, “Thresholds”“, I already did the review on this blog and I can assure you that it was worth reading his second work.
This time Oscar Martínez immerses us in the world of meta painting, a new look at special paintings that include other images at the limits of their frames and that raise questions beyond the reality they represent.
With works of Gauguin, Picasso, Sofonisba Anguisola, Van Eyck, El Greco, Van Gogh, Vermeer, Velázquez and other contemporary but no less interesting authors, the author offers us a different approach, fusing artistic themes with other current ones to show us how images from other centuries or decades connect with contemporary thought and pose very current and still unresolved dilemmas. Symbolism that works of art conceal when we study them carefully.
Explained this way, it would seem that it is a very theoretical approach. This is not the case because he does not only talk about what he has researched, but rather starts from his personal experience, from the impression that paintings like The Arnolfini marriage of Jan Van Eyck either The key to the fields of Magritte. Or the discovery on his many trips of paintings that have shocked him like A bar at the Folies Bérgere of manetdiscovered almost by chance in a small gallery in London. Using very simple and didactic language, he makes us part of his experiences. This is how he defines the motivation that led him to write his work: “To the “To dedicate this text to meta-painting, my intention has been to achieve a double enjoyment: by including paintings that in turn had others inside, I have intended to serve a visual banquet in which a lover of images could be satiated.”
An essay so that all of us who love art can be satisfied with this visual feast because its proximity makes us discover new nuances in the face of already known works and reveals mysteries that we could not have imagined, especially in contemporary works. His personal stamp makes this book different and exceptional.
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