The Internet has speeded up everything in our lives nowadays. If you look back only 20 years ago and compare to now, you will see how much everything has progressed rapidly. The Internet has facilitated access and share of knowledge which impacted pretty much anything we know as it is today. Throughout school, we learnt about the wars and sacrifice in the history of humanity, and we remember every year how privileged we are now for not having to be another war body. The Internet has given us the luxury of getting to know the history and create our own wars, instead of living the war. Our childish innocence maintains intact in that sense in comparison to our grand-grandparents and grandparents that had lost their innocent imagination early on, as the world did not allow them to live childishly until they desired. The Internet has made us the most privileged generation in history, and yet, we complain about so much.
“The Great Battle (After Canaletto)” by James Johnson-Perkins may illustrate these ideas perfectly, but mainly how our fascination for the war is continuous. No matter how much we know about its reality, we will always wonder the lives we did not live and the stories we could have lived. We rely on the heroic figures to give us hope for the future and remembrance for the past. This digital collage is giving the viewer an insight into what a contemporary war looks like through the lens of pop-culture.
This enormous panoramic collage is part of a project named “Gigatage”: a robotic machine named “Gigapan” that allows the artist to attach his camera and take thousands of super high-quality photos that can then be stitched together to create immersive panoramas. This technology permits Johnson-Perkins to create a super digital collages where the artist imagines different “stories” for each environment. The artist has been engaged with this particular technology for the past 10 years, but he says ‘these works could go on forever.’
“The Great Battle (After Canaletto)” is 7 meters long and its tiny details engage with the viewer like no other work from this project. In this high-definition collage, the Venice Canal is the stage for this dramatic image, and the title gives us a direct reference to Canaletto’s paintings. Taking “The Bucintoro” (1745-1750) as an example, we may see the resemblance: the colours are pretty much in the same tone. Like a sunset painting, it creates a sense of calm, as whatever is going on at that precise moment is not relevant, like a baby’s pastel bedroom to avoid distress; And the diagonal line formed where the water meets the buildings are a lot alike too, making the viewer focus on the horizon, a line guiding us, a distraction from the centre. Making the viewer feel hopeful. Hopeful because there’s more than the chaos.
At first sight, this digital collage could be confused with a painting because it has that pompous and harmonious feeling from the old master’s paintings. “The Great Battle (After Canaletto)” masters its composition, something about it that pulls us in, especially towards the right side. The buildings seem brighter, and the elements appear to be more cheerful, which compliments the horizon line sense of hope. The chaotic scenario does not intimidate the viewer. Instead, it pulls them closer to it. Art and war (as art and aesthetics) have been tied together for centuries. Something about the chaos and terror that attracts our attention, entertains us. From far away, we may not denote the narrative going on in the messy scenario, but once we take a closer look at the details of this collage, we realise there is a story behind. A story that sparks a sense of nostalgia within us. When immersed in the detailed mess, we notice the chaos of curated characters and iconic elements taken from comics, movies, etc. A battle of the heroic and scary figures from our childhood. From Snow White to Hitler, from Spiderman to the Joker, this collage is mastering a sense of nostalgia that crossed dozens of generations. These iconic characters belong to our pop-culture. A culture that recreates themselves through imaginary wars in the inexistence of a real war. Or you may also say, a culture that is trying to escape the real wars through fictional narratives. Both points of view are very valid, and both represent our contemporaneity.
Our contemporaneity is made of these quirky things that our grand-grandparents would find disgraceful probably. We are so privileged in relation to them, but we still struggle with almost the same issues. Time goes on, but humanity hasn't changed much in the sense that we all love great stories. More than a fascination towards war, humans are drawn to narratives, and that is why we love looking back at the past. And that's what makes this collage so immersive: although the chaos may take hours to understand, we are not putting it aside because stories do not bore us. We are storytellers, and our contemporaneity has been embracing this idea so much that now we have thousands of heroic characters and evil figures. If you ask someone “who’s the bad guy from your childhood”, I am pretty sure that doubtfully we will hear the same answer twice. We live through these nostalgic narratives; we make them our own as a reflection of ourselves.
“The Great Battle (After Canaletto)” will still be a relevant work in 20 years because it can be a forever non-finished work. A masterpiece that reflects around 5 generations. A striking image that is referencing the past while creating a visual novel to the future. This will not be the last war artwork, but it definitely unifies the past and the present gracefully.
Footnotes
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. 2020.The Bucintoro. [online] Available at: <https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/canaletto/bucintoro>.
The Artist
James Johnson-Perkins is a British artist who currently lives and works in the UK and China. His art practice draws from themes such as memory, nostalgia and play. In his work, he uses childhood materials, nostalgic objects, new media, drawing and performance to camera.
James Johnson-Perkins has exhibited in China, USA, Canada, Russia, Japan, Nepal, Oman, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, Macedonia and the UK. Including The Chinese European Arts Centre (CEAC), National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Moscow, Russia, Toyota Museum of Modern Art, Japan, Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Glasgow and The Royal College of Art (RCA), London.
E-mail: james_johnson_perkins@hotmail.com
Blogspot: http://jamesjohnsonperkins.blogspot.com
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user350102
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jjpartist
