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Modern mithology
Ivan Paulić
18/06/2021
“MASTER OF MYTHOLOGY”
„O beata solitudo, o tu
sola beatitudo“
I remember the
inscription discovered on a small Venetian island of Torcello, speaking about
the blessing or blessings of solitude. As I can ever more often hear questions
about the sense of the so called easel painting, I find the answer in the
blessing of solitude, which is synonymous for the encounter with one’s self. It
means that there are as many answers as there are artists and even more; one of
the most plausible answers can be found in the New Mythology, by the young
painter Ivan Paulić, who, in his encounter with himself, opposes the
meaninglessness, the matrix without an aura. If we define the space of Paulić’s
painting (as we originally perceive it) as a sphere, one level away from infinity,
there, halfway to infinity, there are the same, yet different characters
determined by old iconography, with new attributes of “ectasy”, from beauty to
power and misery, painted in the ”old way”. The artist has experienced the
theme, motive and the way of painting.
It means that Paulić
opposes the matrix without an aura, for, what is the „Bildung ohne Bilder“,
archaeology without photography, myth without an aura. What has remained “the
day after”, after the post-modernism (to artists in general and those
interested in and wishing to speak about art)? What has remained but floating
in the area of possibilities, where halfway through it we bump into or find
more or less re-modeled myths transformed into archetype. Postmodernism is also
called the cemetery of possibilities, the cemetery of “the optimal projections
of avant-garde” (Aleksandar Flaker). Throughout the 20th century these gave
rise to the versions of style, as well as “isms”, new methods and technologies
determined the inflation, the range of impossibilities… All of this until the
moment when Paulić went behind the easel, elaborating his idea for a new or for
his first painting. This is, in fact, a metaphor aiming to point out the
experience of the myth in painting, from Caravaggio to Balthus. In the time of
“the blessing of solitude”, he opposes the iconographic piles, the amassed
images on the repositories of the postmodernism, which sealed the door of
cognition on the pretext of mass creativity. Paulić, on the other hand, opens
the door. He uses images from the postmodernist repository and all his
characters and situations (Mars, Aphrodite, Bacchus, Christ, toilet seat
(cro.-shell), 21st century ball-point pen). Either considering them as a whole
or analyzing them in detail, they are always double characters, with elevated
heads, open mouths, with the attributes of passion, the attributes of the
activity they perform, of what determines them in their everyday life,
faithfully determined, as in myths themselves. Paulić’s anachronistic creation expresses
both an image and cognition. The inscription on the gable cannot become a
slogan: „O beata solitudo, o tu sola beatitudo“.
Paulić defined his path
of a “cosmic walker” by extending his studio to the street, to the architecture
of daily life. Paulić’s paintings are characterized by matrix and aura themes
with a wide range of meanings, expressed through comments ranging from
contemporary myths to multiculturality and back to the interpretation of
mythology as cultural heritage. In a recognizable sequence named Modern
Mythology, turning a retrospective glance towards the silence of cognition,
Paulić enters the history of contemporary art as an artist enchanted by
classical myths, which he elaborates within the framework of real life
experience. He enters the holdings of the Imaginary museum (Malraux) with
paintings that summarize an archetype, ancient myths with all their
re-interpretations, the myth about painting. This myth exists and is contained
in a perpetual looking back for aura.
Lilijana Domić
Ivan Paulić
September, 2nd, 1989. , Rijeka, Croatia
Atelier: Galerija/Atelje “Paulić” Primorje BB, 51222 Bakar, Croatia
2008. Finished School of applied arts Rijeka, Croatia, Industrial Designs
2014. Magister of applied arts, on Academy of applied arts in Rijeka, Croatia
Class: Painting, Mentor: Damir Stojnić
Member of (Artist Community Rijeka)HDLU Rijeka, Croatia