Essay on Alessandro Bavari

Over the past few years, I have become increasingly drawn to art work which is developed using digital technology. I tend to have either my digital SLR or video cameras with me wherever I go. Likewise, I enjoy experimenting with different digital effects – recently even pinhole technology. During the summer, I was fortunate enough to visit an exhibition of Andy Warhol’s films including – Screen Tests, The Kiss and Blow Job. I found these films fascinating, especially the use of static camera angles whereby the action moved into and out of shot. These two aspects inspired me to investigate contemporary use of the moving image.

Whilst researching for Digital Artists, I came across an innovative artist called Alessandro Bavari who uses techniques similar to my own practise in the field of digital arts. He is a thirty-seven year old Italian artist who works with Photography, Painting and video. He is now a world renowned digital artist who uses digital media to manipulate images. His surrealist images are a contemporary twist on the work of artists such as Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali. His work features digital photomontages which combine animate and inanimate objects, such as people, trees and buildings. The photographs mostly consist of vast landscapes, which include many different layers and textures.

In an article for Zoom magazine in 2003, Gigliola Foschi said “he prefers the hints originating in dreams and the unconscious rather than the real world-visionary representations rather than the illusion of the truth. He does not photograph reality, he brings to life a new reality”1. This is where his surrealist style comes from in terms of his ideas. He waits for dreams to happen and his unconscious mind to display them. His dreams are like his reality and he creates a world of his own through these images.

During my research for this assignment, I got in touch with Bavari and I was encouraged to find that his work process is very similar to my own. “I have the habit of taking photographs of everything wherever I go: human and animal matters, objects and architecture, pictures and landscapes, fossils and materials, which join my mental museum, also strongly influenced by indo-european cultural myths and allegories as well as 14th and 15th century artists”2. Bavari. Sodom and Gomorrah is Bavari’s latest and probably the most controversial work yet. Sodom and Gomorrah are two biblical towns that were said to have been destroyed by God because of the wickedness of the people. Over the centuries, Sodom and Gomorrah have been used as metaphors for sinfulness and sexual deviation. Even though the story features in the book of Genesis, the historical existence of Sodom and Gomorrah has widely discussed and is still in dispute by archaeologists. Bavari tried to visualise the two cities through portrait, environments and objects in the same way that Italo Calvino did thirty years ago in The Invisible Cities (1972, Einaudi).

Bavari has modernised and digitized this ancient story; creating photomontages, which are quite dark; frequently working in black and white. He creates incredibly deep and atmospheric images an amazing amount of detail. I am fascinated by the modern interpretation to this biblical tale and how he has made the narrative his own story by using clever manipulation techniques.

Other photographic works include a piece called “Cure of Enchantment on Minor Key” which is a triptych that includes a figure playing the guitar with a vast background landscape behind it, consisting of people, trees and buildings. Referring to this piece, Bavari stated “So, this is music as a universal value, whose instrument, in this case the guitar, becomes an extension of the mind and body: its virtue, translated in vibrations and tunes, can elicit emotion and lead to indulgence”3. I can empathise with this; when I start to play my guitar I become isolated from the world and it’s as if my soul merges with the guitar. Likewise, I find that my art is inspired by music and my music is motivated by my creative urge.

When I first came across the image, it looked like a photograph from a conflict which had been airbrushed and manipulated in some way. The man playing guitar is the main subject but it has replicas behind him and his guitar strings are only attached by the body of the guitar, and they merge into the landscape to make cables similar to those found on telephone masts. This work has subdued colour but not enough to make it obvious, and he is still working with textures and layers.

Headcleaner is his first short film and is probably his most daring and disturbing work yet. The imagery has many resonances to the work of Salvador Dali. It starts with a brain and ribs that cage around it. It displays some very strange after effects which is intriguing because it looks like he has used the aged film effect on movie. Then transitions into a really epic wide shot of these creatures with knives as arms. The most disturbing part of it is the end, where a man is sitting down with a hole in his head and figure standing over him stirring his brain with really hideous stirring sounds to go with it.

In my email to Bavari, I asked how he creates these photographs; he sent me something that he said in an interview for the UK magazine Advanced Photoshop:“What is your preferred digital application method if you have one? When I start with a new artwork, first I make a sketch to understand the global masses of the composition, deciding how to work on the different elements. Next I make the shooting of the photographies, working these in Photoshop. Where is impossible to find objects to be photographed, I create it on 3D software. After the rendering, I go to integrating it with the photographic elements in Photoshop, taking care to the lights, perspective, materials and shadows. The softwares that I use primarily are Photoshop, Softimage XSI, Zbrush, Vue x-Stream, some fractals 3D softwares. Working on video I use also After Effect, Media 100, etc”4.

By keeping all the different layers as separate “layers” in Photoshop he can edit them individually, which is how he can get different brightness and contrast. This is very useful in making a landscape photograph; by fading out the background and giving the foreground more contrast it increases the depth and sense of perspective in the image.

In a lot of his images he uses what appear to be scratch marks but these were made using a digital pen to draw on the lines using the “dodge” tool. These imperfections are very reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s films which had scratches and marks that are so common in 16mm films of the time. I also think Barvari’s work is evocative of the work of Joel Peter Witkin who has a very similar photographic style to Bavari. They both work in dark, atmospheric and sometimes disturbing imagery. The images look very similar in style and in content, both working with the human form and very painterly backgrounds. I find it fascinating to compare Bavari with these two artists because Witkin and Warhol created images using analogue technology with real objects and real backdrops. Conversely, Bavari uses digital technology and manipulation software to insert backgrounds and content but the resulting images still have the painterly feeling of analogue processes.

Bavari’s work is very dependant on digital manipulation and even more dependant on his skills to manipulate an image using digital software. There is a lot of cut and pasting and cropping involved in his work. I can imagine his images would look very different if he were to create the same images using props and backdrops. Without digital manipulation software I don’t think he would be able to work with scale so broadly because of Photoshop’s ability to skew the size of anything. An alternative would be to paint them on or cut them out of small images.

Salvador Dali’s surreal influences definitely show through Bavari’s work, especially his video Headcleaners. It is like watching an animated version of Dali with a variety of disturbing imagery which would be more likely to feature in anyone’s worst nightmares rather than the real world. The themes are bloody and gruesome starting with a brain on a spinal cord and ending with the blood curdling sound of brains being stirred inside someone's skull.Bavari’s work is considered to be heavily influenced by a surrealism artist such as Hieronymus Bosch who was a 14th century visionary artist and precursor of modern surrealism. One of his earlier photographs; 'Ascesa Verso il Nuovo Medioevo' (Ascent to the new Middle-Age) is most apparent of this influence, although Bavari’s work still remains very de-saturated in colour unlike the works of Bosch which are vibrant. This work featured in a calendar for Adobe in 2000.

His other inspirations come from experimentation and just from going outside and finding things. “I find masses of motives on the sea shores, especially after a storm. The ocean casts up many exciting things which can become fantastic motives"5. This relates to my processes as an artist. Where I have been experimenting with pinhole photography and going out and just taking photographs of what I like.

Although never having seen his work in person I have a lot of respect for the thought, creativity and time that he puts into each one. In an interview for Photomagazine, webzine in 1997 he said "It usually takes between 3-10 days per picture. But more time goes into finding motives and photographing them. Normally my pictures take form themselves. I improvise and begin with a simple idea, like a thin piece of matter which slowly grows more powerful as I nourish it with more material. Experimenting with the computer is, of course, extremely time consuming"6.

I think this demonstrates the importance of Bavari’s work in the modern age, using the technology to it greatest potential. By making incredibly inventive images that most people wouldn’t even think possible with Digital Manipulation. I consider that he takes digital manipulation to its ultimate, cutting edge conclusion. Through creating digital photographs that look as if they came from film or paintings, Bavari makes a direct link between his own work and that of Witkin and even Bosch. I think this allows the viewer to appreciate the technical skill of the artist. The image isn’t just a manipulated image but it is an image that has been created by an artist demonstrating imagination and creativity.



Magazine1 Foschi, G. (2003) Alessandro Bavari. Zoom Magazine. 184World Wide Web page2 Bavari, A. (2000) Sodom and Gomorrah. [Online],Available: http://www.alessandrobavari.com/english/sodom_gomorrah/gallery_sodom_gomorrah.htm World Wide Web page3 Bavari, A. (2006) Cure of enchantment on minor key [Online]Available: http://www.alessandrobavari.com/english/cure_enchantment/gallery_cure_enchantment.htmElectronic Mail (E-mail)4 Bavari, A. (2008) e-mail to A. Williams (anthonywilliams1987@msn.com), [15 November 2008].World Wide Web page5 Bavari, A. (1997) Interview for Photomagazine, Webzine [Online],Available: http://uii2.com/entry/Alessandro-Bavari [1997]World Wide Web page6 Bavari, A. (1997) Interview for Photomagazine, Webzine [Online],Available: http://uii2.com/entry/Alessandro-Bavari [1997]