Guity Novin - Transpressionism

Transpressionism

Guity Novin founded Transpressionism in 1994 in opposition to High modernism, aiming to interpret humanism and acroamatics values with aesthetic notions of beauty, harmony and transcendence. It counters what is perceived as the deathtrap of the artificiality of postmodernism by seeing art as a birth, where the viewer must be involved in the creation of the sublime. The artist's role is as a conduit for the observer’s imagination, where "Love" is the fundamental principle giving coherence to an otherwise random physical and psychic universe. To achieve this, Transpressionism makes use of legends and myths such as Clytie, a maiden who loves the Sun-god Apollo and is transformed into a sunflower.

Novin explained her motives for introducing Transpressionism:

“

I did my undergraduate studies during the late 60s, where a definite penchant for modern and postmodern art predominated in the art academia. ... There thrived a culture that scorned figurative painting and representational art. What mattered in art was an appearance that could provoke a shock reaction from the observer. Beauty and the judgement of delight in beauty were considered tolerable concerns; but the judgement about the generality of delight in the object was dismissed on the ground that it would lead to vulgarness. The critics questioned the validity of painting as an artwork and used a plethora of pejorative adjectives such as archaic, stale, or sterile to describe any kind of beautiful painting…. In my Transpressionism works the main emphasis is on the composition, and the harmony of curved spaces which in their dynamics introduce a unifying possibility... Like Kant, I strongly feel that the beautiful is what pleases because it can also please others, and therefore taste occurs only in society, and that in every case of beauty particularly in painting the object must please in itself through conceptual reflection, and not through impression. So I think the preamble to Transpressionism manifesto should include the following:

'In painting, sculpture, indeed in all formative arts...in so far as they are beautiful arts, the composition is what is imperative. It is not delight of sensation which establishes the foundation of any characteristic of taste, but entirely what entices through its form.'

”

Artists identifying with Transpressionism include Fer Veriga (Brazil), Irina Kupyrova (Ukraine), Diana Zwibach (Yugoslavia), Terri Baugh-Norman (USA), Lorena Kloosterboer (Netherlands), Ellen Marlen Hamre (Norway), and Shano (USA).