The analysis of formal compositional characteristics of orientalist paintings by Paja Jovanovic

Abstract

Paja Jovanovic's painting developed all its important characteristics in the late seventies and early eighties of the 19th century, during the time span in the history of European art which is considered to be a constitutional period for the development of poetics in painting such as impressionism, en plein air painting, pointillism and symbolism, which in the terms of composition, colouration and the use of light transformed profoundly the mimetic patterns and traditional techniques of atelier approach to the model and took painting from its self-imposed isolation into a pulsating reality of unbridled elements and human passion, already determined not only by centuries-old subject matters crystallised in 'eternal' conflicts of duty and honour, love and self-sacrifice, individual parvenuism and altruistic devotion, but more often by the directing of the autonomous and technicised reason, which started in the late 18th century its victorious pace to mastering and utilisation of its available sources hidden in once sacralised nature, guided by Bacon's formula 'Knowledge is power.' Numerous journeys in oriental regions of the Balkan Peninsula, and research travels in the Caucasus Mountains and Egypt, provided Paja Jovanovic with a direct insight into inexhaustible abundance of iconographic details and motifs which were to be introduced later into his orientalist works.