Danielle
Thompson "Panorama" at 101 Collins Street. Melbourne March 9 - 31, 1999
Kant, Kierkegaard,
Schoppenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Wittgenstein and most of the recent
writers who comment on aesthetics agree on at least one point: aesthetics
and ideology are intertwined. "Aesthetics
is borne as a discourse of the body. In its original formulation by
the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten the term refers not in the
first place to art, but as the Greek aisthesis would suggest, to the
whole region of human perception and sensation, in contrast to the more
rarefied domain of conceptual thought"(1). That memorable
image, a painting by Caspar David Friederich entitled Der Wanderer ueber
dem Nebelmeer (1818) depicts a solitary male, poised on the a rocky
outcrop, high above a sea of fog and looking onto the distant ranges.
He is calmly contemplating the landscape, his back turned to the viewer.
Friederich makes us aware with this painting that the contemplation
of landscape is a silent and intensely personal journey. Many, if
not all of us, have had such an experience. It makes us better individuals
for that moment. We feel the homogeneity between ourselves and nature.
It is like a spell and we have to awaken again to continue our journey
. Soon the magic fades away. Danielle
Thompson's images in this exhibition are intensely aesthetic. They do
not lend themselves well to an equivalence in language. They are pure
states in themselves. Derived from the landscape, but undeniably not
an equivalence to the landscape from which they were derived. What we
are seeing in these photographs here is a fusion between the landscape
and the strongly personal, even intimate revelations of the artists
mind. In the
present climate of art and art critique these photographs might seem
somewhat romantic and un-theoretical. Perhaps this is their most striking
quality. To me they are like a good book in that they open the door
to a private union with another's mind for an enjoyable period of time
where the rest of reality just fades away. Many individuals
are becoming increasingly nervous about where our communities driven
by rationalism and technology are heading. The firmament of facts under
which we individually shelter is not always providing the security and
direction we seek. What a relief then, to encounter some pictures which
are not attempts at factuality or, for that matter, imitation. Like
a hummed tune, these images remind us of something familiar. What that
is, depends on where we've been. Danielle
Thomson's pictures prove that art can still be magic. Enjoy! ©Werner
Hammerstingl, Melbourne, 1999
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