To find sacred aspects within Western art, we turn to Kurt Wenner, a self-taught artist who learned classical drawing directly from the Renaissance masters by studying and drawing Greek and Roman sculptures in the Vatican Museums. Kurt then honed his skills through Italy’s long tradition of pavement artists, finding ‘canvas’ and his audience in the streets, creating large classical compositions in pastel. Decoding the secrets of perspective, he is celebrated worldwide for his innovative 3D illusions. He has worked with the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian, Disney Studios, Warner Brother Studios, and holds a Kennedy Center Medallion for his outstanding work in arts education. He has revived the skill sets and inside secrets of not only the Renaissance masters, but the Greeks. His classically inspired figures and architecture also carry deeper meaning: “Classical tradition is not a style, so much as a Language of Form based on a profound knowledge and appreciation of our physical universe,” he says, outlining the creative principles within geometric design as unity, duality, polarity, equilibrium, and proportion. Kurt shares his journey and philosophy in his book “Asphalt Renaissance” and holds the Kennedy Center Medallion for his outstanding work in arts education.
Says Host Laura Lee: We’ve been celebrating the revival of lost “languages” and bodies of knowledge, to gain a peripheral but appreciative sense of the various ways of navigating our world, developed over the long arc of our human journey: the tradition of star navigation across the Pacific, watching the waves, bird, and constellations. Decoding the petroglyphs and ‘sun daggers’ of the ancient Skywatchers who left solar calendars across the American Southwest. What expert trackers read in the subtlest clues left by an animal’s passage. I add Kurt Wenner’s work to this list, in his revival of a lost ‘language of form’ shared by the artists of old so we may better understand how they did what they did. I also appreciate its evolution as Kurt take those skills and deep understanding into our modern vernacular to create art that bridges then and now.”
Hosted by Laura Lee and Paul Robear. Conversation4Exploration, Conversation 4 Exploration, Conversation for Exploration, Cuyamungue: Felicitas D. Goodman Institute, The Laura Lee Show