Boleslaw Lutoslawski

 Inspirations from painters

Our faces change so often that it is difficult to describe them in one word: they are beautiful, holy, charming, threatening, serious, sad, cheerful, comical, tired, amused, tragic, thoughtful, soulful, attentive. The face is the most mobile part of our body, reacting not only to internal experiences and thoughts, but also to environmental conditions such as light, wind, meetings with other people... The comfort of a chair, the movement of a walk, reaching out for your hand, standing on tiptoe, jumping up for a joke... all this is reflected on the face.

Hours of conversation would not reveal as much as observations of people performing everyday, ordinary tasks. The way someone pours tea, helps you with DIY at home, turns around when we call him or her... all this is the source of our cognition. The entanglement of personality in the everyday social life means that each of us is transformed according to the changes in conditions and relationships. The speed of these changes depends on the alternation of the tasks that we are involved in.

That is why portraits were painted since ancient times, in Ajanta rock-cut caves in India, to portraits of King Amenhotep I and his mother Ahmose-Nefertari of New Kingdom (Egypt), 19th Dynasty, c. 1300 B.C. in the Tomb of Neferhotep, Thebes

Since I started to take photographs I understood that paintings do not offer me a lesson how to compose, because painted portraits are created over a long period of time, and sometimes during different sessions in different environments. Photographer must compose within a very brief session, often in a split second.

From a photographer’s point of view painting offer those seven eye-opening inspirations:

·      Attention to the mood of a model

·      Ability to notice small but critical to overall visual story elements, maybe narrative part of clothing, specific gesture

·      Background in relation to the face and light governing the space

·      Interaction with other people (if included in a scene)

·      Role of a view outside

·      Feling for ambient spiritual atmosphere

·      Preserving intensity of gaze

 Here is my list of painterly inspirations:

Jan van Eyck (c. 1390 –1441) a Flemish painter Portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife

Rogier van der Weyden (1400 –1464) a Flemish painter  Portrait of Francesco d'Este

 Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430 –1516) a Venetian painter Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan

Hieronymus Bosch (1450 –1516) a Netherlandish painter Christ mocked

 Leonardo da Vinci (1452 –1519)  an Italian painter The Lady with an Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani)

 Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483 –1520) an Italian painter  Portrait of Pope Julius II

Titian  (1488/1490 – 1576 ) a Venetian painter  Portrait of Charles V 1548

Parmigianino (1503 –1540) an Italian painter The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

Peter Brueghel the Elder  (1520 – 1569)  a Dutch painter  The Adoration of the Magi

El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos)  (1541-1614) a Greek painter Saint John the Evangelist 1590-1600

Michelangelo Caravaggio (1571? –1610)  an Italian painter  The Supper at Emmaus

Peter Paul Rubens (1577 –1640) a Flemish painter  Portrait of Prince Władysław Vasa

Frans Hals (1582/3 - 1666)   a Dutch Painter  The Laughing Cavalier

Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) a Spanish painter Pope Innocent X 1650

Rembrandt (1606 –1669) a Dutch painter  Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels 1654-6

Johannes Vermeer (1632 –1675) a Dutch painter  Woman with a Pearl Necklace 1662/64

 Rosalba Carriera (1673 – 1757) an Italian painter Portrait of Antoine Watteau

Antoine Watteau (1684 –1721) a French painter and draughtsman  The Love Song

Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828)  a Spanish painter  Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel

Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun  (1755 – 1842) a French painter Self-portrait in a Straw Hat

Édouard Manet (1832 – 1883)  a French painter Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets 1872

Edgar Degas  (1834-1917) a French painter At the Café 1875/77

Claude Monet (1840 –1926) a French painter Camille Monet on her deathbed 1879

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) a Dutch painter Wheatfield with Crows 1890

Georges Seurat (1859 –1891) a French painter The Circus, 1891

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 –1901) a French painter Au Moulin Rouge 1885

Olga Boznańska (1865 –1940) a Polish painter Self Portrait 1906

Amedeo Modigliani (1884 –1920) an Italian painter  Seated Nude (1916)

Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (1908 - 2001) a Polish-French painter Katia Lisant

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) an American painter Oeuvres

Andy Warhol  (1928 –1987) an American artist Self-portrait 1986

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