Louis's Art Critiques

03. Coastline: Metamorphosis & Rebirth Author: Louis Rice In this edition, we will briefly critique the painter's breakout masterpiece: Coastline. As an important messenger leading the painter into the public eye, the brushstroke techniques in this painting are more mature, and the painter's unique dreamy style has basically taken shape. Numerous interpretations of this piece have been offered up by art critics and academics. Those famed works are familiar to all, so I won't repeat them here. Rather, this author shall continue on the same train of thought as before: An analysis of the artist starting with the work. I trust that old friends already familiar with me also understand my methods of analysis, but due to the artist's popularity, these essays have recently attracted some attention and following. Because of this, I will share with new readers an outline of my line of thinking at the start of each chapter. There is a general consensus in academic circles that artworks cannot be equated with their creators. This is a concept verified by countless cultures over the centuries and seems to be an immutable truth. But this author believes that so-called works are ultimately no more than the product of splicing fragments from the creator's subconscious mind — just like dreams and hallucinations which often reflect in detail the deepest desires of the heart, which even the creator remains unaware. And the more you understand the creator themselves — the environment in which they grew up and their life experiences — the more accurate this process of inference will be. Therefore, on this basis, we will briefly review the topic of the first two notes: In Night of the Majestic Cosmos, we can clearly see the artist's love for art and beauty, the strong desire for freedom, and their reflection and love for humanity. And in the second painting, the Death of Robin, the artist instead portrays a severely formulaic and solemn yet disheveled funeral to express their weariness and displeasure at the tediousness of boring reality. Bearing this premise in mind, we may then turn our focus to this famous Coastline. The background of the entire painting is composed of a triad of beach, ocean, and sky. Their borders echo each other diagonally across the canvas between top-left and bottom-right in the shape of the golden ratio. At the same time, from the beach in the bottom-left to the sky in the top-right, spans an arc comprising four clear themes strung together: A molted black snake skin, a white soaring bird, a golden cloud, and a crimson sun. Based on this author's interpretation, the beach, ocean, and sky respectively represent the material world, the mental world, and aesthetics itself. While the molted snake skin, the soaring bird, cloud, and sun represent the inner ideals of the artist. Burdens of life lie abandoned like a molted old snake skin, while the artist reborn is like a bird freed from the shackles of earth, rushing toward those brilliant clouds symbolizing freedom and spirituality. And the sun, high in its zenith, is the manifestation and embodiment of truth, goodness, and beauty — the goal and desire which the artist eternally longs for. The artist also makes creative use of color and line. The brushwork for the beach in the painting is solemn and forlorn, while the undulating ocean uses thick and heavy brushes, and the sky uses graceful and light lines. The colors of the four themes are black, white, yellow, and red which correspond to the nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo processes in alchemy. Thus, three dimensions are used to symbolize the metamorphosis and rebirth of the artist. Everyone knows that Coastline was a huge turning point in the artist's life. This thick and heavy work could perhaps be understood as the painter putting everything on the line in coming to Penacony, or it could be understood as the painter being a precocious dark horse that rose up through a single masterpiece. However, in this author's estimation, this point had already been revealed in the artist's work itself — even before this painting was made.