Escape from Criticism

Today I will tell you the story of the work "Escape from Criticism" by Spanish painter Pere Borrell del Caso, painted in 1874.

Although its name is 'escape from criticism', the painting targets the lynching culture of the 19th century painting world.
Are you open to criticism? Imagine a crowd that is against your ideas and has declared itself an authority. They say they criticize you when you go against the rules of this crowd that wants to impose their ideas on you. But wouldn't that be judging?
This was exactly the problem of Spanish painter Pere Borrell del Caso. Romanticism, the popular art concept of the period, took over all art schools. The 18th century was a period in Europe that expressed concepts such as excitement, enthusiasm and freedom.

Romance; It was said about works that were 'novel-like', that is, works that were hard to believe and had a supernatural feeling. Especially history, ruins and legends were passionately transferred to the canvas. This understanding of art, which was considered metaphysical, of course did not fit into the understanding of 'art' of many painters. One of them was Pere Borrell del Caso. He wanted to get rid of the Romanticism movement, which was accepted and became the authority of the period.

He wanted the pictures to be real. He wanted the facts to be told, he wanted the figures in the painting to be us, to look like us, and for us to actually see ourselves when we see them.
He said that the way to teach people art should be reality, not Romanticism. The figures inside the canvases should not be inaccessible figures like in Caspar David Friedrich's 'Wanderer on a Cloud of Mist'.


These figures had to be close enough to touch us in every sense. That's why he designed this magnificent scene called 'Escape from Criticism' in 1874.


Thanks to the optical illusion used in this oil painting on canvas work, it becomes very difficult to believe that the work is two-dimensional. Responding to the metaphysical approach of romanticism with a slap-like reality, the artist manages to remove the figure in the painting in a metaphysical way, avoiding all criticism and leaving the so-called authoritarian critics of the period helpless...

Only in this creative way could one escape from the art schools and critics of the period, who did not want paintings to be made outside their own rules, and the bigoted approach to art of the period... Thank you for reading. Stay with art and love... 🖤