Lode Coen
• A New Digital Renaissance • by Dottore Salvatore Russo
The Renaissance was an artistic period between 1400 and 1500, characterized by the renewal of artistic language, which concerned architecture, sculpture and painting. The first to speak of "Renaissance" was Giorgio Vasari, who can be considered as the first art historian. The artists of the first Renaissance period were: the architect Brunelleschi, the sculptor Donatello and the painter Masaccio.
The artists of the Renaissance considered themselves the heirs of the great classical civilization and considered the previous artists (medieval) insignificant artists of a dark and barbaric period. They therefore looked not at Gothic but even at Greek and Roman works. The artists of the Renaissance considered it an obligation to go to Rome at least once.
They measured the buildings and drew the sculptures they saw, returned to Florence they showed them to those who could not go to Rome so that they could study them. Renaissance man places himself at the center of the world, in harmonious relationship with the surrounding reality, which he can understand and dominate with the right use of reason, scientific knowledge and the wisdom of tradition and the ancients.
Scientific progress also leads to the discovery and exploration of new geographical areas starting with the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The medieval idea of a cosmos ordered by divine will with the Earth at its center, as depicted in the Ptolemaic system, is thus overturned: man thus becomes a part of the universe, which acts and influences nature, but is also conditioned by it. It is the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) who first formulates the heliocentric theory, which will inspire Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).
In the art of Lode Coen we witness a return of the Renaissance, but this time in the "garment" of computer graphics, or a Digital Renaissance. During this “New Renaissance” by Coen, the human eye learned to know human and cosmic spaces and their laws by rediscovering their perspective structure.
Renaissance culture introduced into the figurative arts the increasingly accurate study of both human anatomy and man’s interiority, through the investigation of facial expressions and gestures; it is precisely from here that Lode Coen starts to create his works of art. In works such as “Adam & Eve” the artist takes us back to a hypothetical new “earthly Eden” where Adam is no longer represented by the classic “statuesque man” of Greece during the first Olympics, but is replaced with a modern “migrant” who, after having made a journey similar to that of Ulysses, lands, not on Ithaca, but on our land and finds his Penelope.
Even more evident is the key role that the concept of Human Anatomy occupies in Coen's works in the work "The Artist & his Model" where a painter is in front of his model and after having portrayed her he gives her a last look to try to bring the girl's soul into his drawing.
150 years after the birth of Surrealism, a work dedicated to this theme could not be missing; so Lode Coen decides to create a work that takes us to the rooftops of Paris to observe the flight of a woman who stretches her arms to the sky.
In his "New Renaissance" Coen gives a lot of space to themes typical of great French authors such as Moliere or Baudelaire.
In my opinion, Coen's work that tells us about an old man, now dying, destroyed by alcohol, alone and with a figure of a young she-devil in the background, could easily be compared to one of Baudelaire's most significant texts: "The Flowers of Evil".
This is one of the works that best expresses the complexity and depth of the human soul, addressing themes such as sin, death, decadence and the search for beauty. Baudelaire tries to extract beauty even from the darkest and most cursed experiences, giving life to a work that reflects the torment and rebellion of the author against the morality and social conventions of his time.
Lode Coen does not lack references to great French painters such as Delacroix. In his works "Liberté" and "Fraternitè" Coen takes us to the same scenario as the work "Liberty Leading the People" but changes the characters.
Next to "Liberty" he once again inserts a male figure, a young black man, holding a rainbow flag. The Belgian artist through these works shows us how computer graphics is making giant steps, but at the same time, without the genius and the human mind, nothing interesting could be created.
To the palette of colors, the canvas, and the brush, used in the Renaissance, Coen replaces computers, mice, and graphics processing programs.
In a contemporary world that has seen man arrive on the moon, and in a few years go to Mars, artistic evolution must go hand in hand, for this reason I find Lode Coen's research very interesting and certainly capable of conquering any observer.
Article written by Dottore Salvatore Russo (curator / art critic / art historian) for the catalogue/book for the solo exhibition in Paris 17-21 December
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