Bada Durer

Zhu Da (1626-1705), known as Bada Shanren, "the man of the eight big mountains", lived in the 17th century. His paintings present firm, determined strokes; few but inspired ink lines which create atmosphere and suggest situations akin to the Taoist painting canons. Zhu Da loved nature and preferred to paint birds, fishes, flowers, landscapes. According to legend someone gave him some silk to paint on: Bada Shanren sketched the character "KOU" (mouth), a rectangular shape, which he filled in with ink on his fingers. The visitor was disgusted with it...so Zhu Da added some touches with a brush, only to realise that from a distance the form seemed to represent a living bird. Technically the main feature of his painting is simplicity. His landscapes are similar in essence to the minimalism of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is considered to be the greatest representative of German Renaissance painitng. He was influenced by Flemish and Italian art. Through the Humanism Movement he found his true path and began to paint in a realist way, leaving behind gothic painting. He became less concerned with religious themes and creating symbolism in his work. Although Dürer painted numerous portaits, he never lost his ability to reproduce nature with amazing precision. In one of his works, he represents, in the right eye of a hare, a reflection of the room which it is in. The acute precision of his extraordinary ability is present also in his landscapes where every detail is restored in minute detail. The two artists have nothing in common which is what attracted us to this challenge in the first place. We wanted to surprise and to enchant the onlooker making two opposites meet. Our work is a multimedia approach to their art forms; a purely aesthetic attempt to integrate two different expressive approaches. The works, of the two painters, attract, seek, probe and compensate each other in an attempt to visually charm, from which the public cannot retract itself. Through motion, music and technological effects we have created harmony, balance and union where once only inconsistency and contrast seemed possible.