Stefan Arteni

Traditioning: the Game of Painting

an autobiographical visual essay

IV

Stefan Arteni, Selfportrait

SOLINVICTUS PRESS 2010

Piero Marussig

Piero Marussig
Francesco Trombadori

Giorgio Morandi
Alberto Salietti

Mario Mafai
Felice Casorati
Stefan Arteni
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Greece, 18th century
Jacopo Tintoretto, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Jacopo Tintoretto
Stefan Arteni
Stefan Arteni

Stefan Arteni
Icon, Crete, 17th century
Icons, 1776, Stavropoleos Museum, Bucharest
Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi
Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi
Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi
Stefan Arteni
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Stefan Arteni
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Roman mosaic
Stefan Arteni, Pentaptych and details
“…form as possibility of choice, form that is an attempt to locate points of fulcrum…in
the chaos around us…” (Danilo Kiš)
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein argues that there is a striking parallel between Byzantine
and Japanese aesthetics. The mute-optical element has priority. Acts of formalization
create a reality of their own, a reality that is strictly a formal one, a style mediated
only through style, a reality which presents nothing but itself - style as a virtual world,
or, paradoxically, as virtual irreality.
One compelling indication of the need for syntax [or morphosyntax, that is rules
governing construction, that could be used for recursive compositional constructs]
were the patterned scratchings or incisions [grammata] that forked both into art and
writing - that is a combinatorial (syntactic) structure determined by the medium
constraints and by the force of convention.

One should recall the Old European Script investigated first by Marija Gimbutas. To
use the words of Andrei Vartic, homo geometricus had used graphic patterns which
worked as a sacred palaeoinformatics. The Indian Siddham script as well as the
Chinese graphic system and in particular its most ancient characters, were
considered as a system for the representation of reality, as non-created entities
constituted by expressive forms.
I have studied with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese teachers, and I am now
pursuing calligraphy with Professor Yusho Tanaka (Setsuzan), Director of the
Department of Calligraphy, Faculty of Literature, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo, one
of Japan's foremost Living Masters and president of the Nihon Shodo Geijutsu
Kyokai (The Japan Calligraphy Art Association) founded by Professor Kamijo
Shinzan, a pupil of Miyajima Eishi and one of Japan's top calligraphers. In
competitions organized by the Japan Calligraphic Art Academy in Tokyo and the
Japan Calligraphy Center in Los Angeles, I was awarded the Japan Foreign
Affairs Minister's Grand Prize for Calligraphy in 1996 and in 2005. I have been
awarded in 2005 the highest rank, SHIHAN (Master Teacher), by The Japan
Calligraphy Art Association. It is tradition that on such an occasion the teacher gives
the student an art name which points to the student's nature. In 2005, I received the
special art name GEIZAN [meaning Art Mountain] from Yusho (Setsuzan) Tanaka
Sensei. This art name contains a part of the Teacher's art name, ZAN [meaning
Mountain,] as a symbol of spiritual succession.
Felice Carena

Felice Carena
Felice Carena
Zao Wou Ki

Zao Wou Ki
Julius Bissier

Julius Bissier
Mark Tobey

Mark Tobey
Serge Poliakoff, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Pierre Soulages, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Kamijo Shinzan
Tanaka Setsuzan
Stefan Arteni
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I use recurring series as points of departure for variations in color
and form. Series proceed not consecutively, but concurrently,
and are interrelated. One must give an account of the way in
which the flow of the series is actualized as the
asemantic limit of the gesture, as an assemblage of multiple,
fragmentary, even conflicting modes of representation, like a
process of distribution and not like an unicentered process.
Collages serve first in the form of preparatory studies. They
provide an avenue to simplify the painterly language. By using
both cut and torn pieces, the key element being color, I
establish a dialogue with visual experience and distill its essence.
I views collages as modelli. The series each develop a particular
assemblage of forms and obey a logic of multiplicities in which the
same images may occur, but always in different relations such
that their nature in turn is transformed.
Jacob Jordaens, Real Academia de Bellas Artes
de San Fernando, Madrid
Nicolas Poussin, Louvre Museum, Paris
Willem van Mieris, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede
Nicolas Poussin, Prado Museum, Madrid
Andre Derain
Stefan Arteni

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Manner of Domenico Ghirlandaio, National Gallery, London
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown

Master Baldraccani ? Asmolean Museum, Oxford

Lorenzo di Credi, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Domenico Tintoretto, Hermitage, St Petersburg
Stefan Arteni
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Stefan Arteni
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Evaristo Baschenis

Evaristo Baschenis
Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico
Gino Severini, Museum Boijmans, Rotterdam

Gino Severini, Musée National d'Art moderne –

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Gino Severini

Gino Severini
Stefan Arteni

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Anonymous Florentine master
Stefan Arteni

Stefan Arteni
Sandro Botticelli, National Gallery, Washington

Sandro Botticelli, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Stefan Arteni

Stefan Arteni
Artemisia Gentileschi

Primo Conti
Stefan Arteni
Filippino Lippi, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Stefan Arteni

Stefan Arteni
Lorenzo Monaco, Staatliches Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg
Stefan Arteni

Stefan Arteni