Cross and Plane to Space - Myriam Thyes

The title refers to Kandinsky’s book “Point and Line to Plane” – here to the historic antipodes illusionism and constructivist art. In this video, the illusionistic ceiling fresco ‚Triumph of St. Ignatius of Loyola’ (1685) by Andrea Pozzo meets compositions with (broken) crosses (1932) by Sophie Taeuber-Arp. While the hierarchic, centralist painting in the Jesuit church Sant’Ignazio glorifies the holy lord, Taeuber-Arp created multifocal, plane compositions of non-figurative shapes. The only thing the baroque and the modern artworks have in common, is the sign of the cross*. In the animation, the oppositional artistic concepts start a competitive dialog, they influence and penetrate each other. Given the current victory of virtual worlds, this animation reflects the history of illusionism and its assumed overcoming in modernity.

* Taeuber-Arp didn‘t call her works „compositions with (broken) crosses“ – these titles were created after her death. It is not known, whether Taeuber-Arp meant the Christian cross and/or commented on the Nazi swastika. But the modern artists were of course aware of the ideological meanings of the sign of the cross – especially those artists who intended to overcome symbolic meanings of symbols and signs and were looking for the pure shape.