Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (44.2011)

this radical change. Colour came to be understood
as a coloured material, as a material of sensation
and of dream.
How did Turner integrate the new scientihc
knowledge with a traditional iconography using
Goethe's ideas of colour? How did Turner create
his cosmos in his painting? In Turner's TyyA
(TAwr y — TA
— AT?y<?y IIWTyg Ať Boo/è o/ Gť/7ťyh, we do not hâve
dehned space any more. We are thrown into a
light with no beginning and no end. In this Turner
echoes Tiepolo, who was one of the hrst artists
to create an infinité space. Argan explains how
Tiepolo, impressed by the new scientihc théories,
developed a wider space going beyond the doctrines
of perspective. Isaac Newton, with his lecture on
OpAry in 1704, was able to underpin the scientihc
perception of colour ^ yoA7 roAfťt?/(Aory,
AyA fčWTvň? ^A'A rť^ť^/ťd Ať
AA?7čWť7M" based on a systém of absolute physics.
With Newton the scientihc révolution touched its
highest point. In his PA/oyopA^ť %A//fàA'y
^^Ať^^/A^ of 1687, he was able to describe nature
in a geometrie synthesisT'
Tiepolo pushed perspective to its limit, making it
spring forward with the help of luminous chromatic
relations: the resuit is the intertwining of the inhnity
of space with the inhnity of light. So the dome in
which heaven was always a dehned concrète space
now became inhnite light A It is interestmg to note
that Tiepolo arrived there starting from perspective
and not from empirical sensations. The same is true
with movement. His religious or mythological hgures
are full of movement, but it is with colours that he
gives a sense of drama to his scenes. He shook the
colours until they broke down into so many lower
planes, coming in contact with each other, with a
tight game of strikes, shakes, and rehexes. With its
constant accélération, the movement of colours gives
a general effect of an absolute and radiating light,
like the multi-coloured dises of the spectrum, which
appear white while turning.
The same is true for his thèmes and subjects:
Tiepolo created a theatre but not of gestures or ac-
tions, but rather a theatre of colours. He strove to

' I. NEWTON's CpTzkf in 1704 and ywAýA
1687.


7 7. Ry%.' dAťčw tA (THv (TAT, 74(4 — 7(<$P.
Ať A A A,

make "painting", as a musician strives to make music.
He did not want mimesis, copying or imitation of
nature. So he did not show people, but painted im-
ages, painted with helds of transparent stains, on a
surface, creating images, and leaving the brushstrokes
visible. But the secret of his art lay in making the
movement of the hgures corne to a standstill with
the set of the chromatic accords reaching the füllest
light and the limit of space.
He painted hgures like ephemeral images, des-
tined to vanish immediately, but instead thanks to
the very splendour of the colours, they could hold
the stare of the observer. A perception which by
lasting repeated its stimulus and grew in intensity:
in a calculated effect, predisposed by the artist. The
more the intensity of the stimulus of light grew, the
more the interest of the represented object van-
^ PLAZAOLA, J.: PPsVcAz TT Ar/zAť. Madrid 1999, p.
323.

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