UNDERSTANDING PAINTing MEDIA

I have chosen the above tondo pieces from different artists across the centuries. However, before I examine some of these pieces, I want to think about this circular support. 

I read about the tondo Reading Rounding up the Story of Tondo in Art

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What do we know about tondos?

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•  Initially found in Ancient Greek times.

• Were gifts to pregnant women in the form of decorated trays.

• Renaissance humanists likened the circle shape to God himself, and from the 16th century, circles formed the ground plans for Churches. (I have seen many, especially in South America.)

• Tondos were religious images with less importance placed on the background.

In his art journal, William Zimmer writes with regard the tondo,

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The tondo is the most harmonious, most self-contained of shapes, but it is also the most radically demanding. The shape comes first, and content submits to it, or else baulks in opposition. “The window on the world”, the traditional trope for rectangular paintings, does not apply. In rectangular paintings, the window is supposed to disappear in favour of what we see through it. In a tondo, shape imprints itself, commanding all (Zimmer, 1991).

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The circle or round is symbolic in different cultures:-

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• The ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

• A mandala is a symbol of the universe for many Buddhists and Hindus. Most mandalas have colourful, detailed geometric patterns or designs. Mandalas are a religious and spiritual art with a deep significance for many people.

• The wheel is a symbol of motion and continuity.

• The principle of Yin and Yang is that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites, for example, female-male, dark-light and old-young.

• The spiral is found in all cultures and represents the cycle of life; birth, growth, death, and reincarnation. Spiritually the spiral represents connectivity with the divine, spiralling from the outer ego (the outside world) into the inner soul (cosmic awareness and enlightenment).

• A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. The Labyrinth represents a journey to our own centre and back again out into the world.

• The Flower of Life is one of the basic sacred geometry shapes. The Flower of Life symbolizes creation and reminds us of the unity of everything: we are all built from the same blueprint.

• Enso is a sacred symbol in Zen Buddhism, meaning a circle, or sometimes, a circle of togetherness. It symbolizes strength, elegance, and one-mindedness.

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What do I think about the tondo?

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I think of the tondo not just as the apparent circle of life, eternal, infinite or whole, but also as looking through, say down a telescope, porthole or through a keyhole perhaps. I also imagine planets, stars and the world, and they fit with a circular spherical format also time and clock faces. Objects enclosed within a circle are restricted, as with road signage, or could the ring be a shell to protect the things? Or a view of looking into or out of something, am I concealed behind the circular hole? Figure 4, Anna Lena by Mark Fairnington this eye is looking at you, but the person is covered/concealed.

Whilst I read The Poetics of Space, my imagination is set free, and I can see spaces differently, which is interesting. Writing down my initial thoughts now leads to concepts for paintings, which sparks my imagination in my painting practice. Is this how it works, then; it’s just like experimenting in my sketchbook but with the written word. Developing my resource base whilst researching artists is not only expanding my toolkit but feeding my imagination.

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Looking more deeply at the tondos chosen above, it seems that finding a focal point is difficult in the tondo composition, and I see a triangle within the placement of the three portraits (heads) in Figure 2 Doni Tondo by Michelangelo.

Geometrics are also present in Figure 7 Relational Painting Tondo number 35 by Fritz Glarner and Figure 9 Blue Tondo by Ilya Bolotowsky, but they are apparent and compliment the shape. Picasso and Braque also used this complement in a type of frame for their cubist works.

Figure 6 Byzantine Head The Brunette by Alphonse Mucha stands out as a unique piece for me. I instantly recognised the Art Nouveau style of this artist, reminding me of being in Paris or Prague. However, Mucha resented being labelled as Art Nouveau because that was too contemporary, and he preferred a timeless ‘le style, Mucha’. He uses a limited palette, depicting the feminine form surrounded by florals, the works mostly created for advertising and his designs copied on tins, posters and decorative product packaging. I can see many circles in his pieces; the arched top used on his long tall poster designs, but where has the influence come from for these circles?

The answer is Moravian folk arts, Baroque and Byzantine architecture (domes and arches) from his Slavic roots and heritage.

Moravian craftwork was used as inspiration for this particular painting. We see the woman wearing exotic and magical hair ornaments and a complex circular intricate pattern in the background. Looking at Moravian traditional art, I can see from the patterns and the floral 2D shapes how a beginning has formed and been developed. It also has similarities to the mandala.

I enjoy the painting for its original style and the fact that the circle has been broken by the hair falling over the bottom of the frame.

Some of the artists chose a fish eye approach to surround their work, some a flat black background to focus the eye on the subject, perhaps? Some chose flat geometrics, and some bring the spherical shape within the tondo to life with depth in their composition. Whichever approach is used, I like the shape of the unusual canvas for my work.

I remember seeing a painting in Lisbon by Frank Stella (below). It's not a tondo, but the round edges and unusual canvas shapes made an impression on me. Why is most canvas rectangular or square? Maybe I will change my mind when I attempt my own tondos.

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