Similarities between Kenyan and famous Italian art styles

Longinos Nagila had an exceptional exhibition of his ‘Technicians of the Sacred’ a few months back at The Art Space.

It was an inspirational show not just because he was working with a difficult technique, mixing a photo-transfer approach to his image-making with a consistent use of bright gold acrylic paint shaped as a ‘holy’ halo.

Longinos’ show was also special because he’d clearly given his subject matter a lot of thought before producing a body of work that reflected his feeling that the secular realm of high fashion (or haute couture) has taken on a characteristic that was practically profane.

For the global elite, haute couture is now treated almost like a religion, even as mainstream media seems to treat big name designers such as Gucci, Versace and Dior as if they were Saints.

His exhibition had a special appeal to the energetic new Director of the Italian Institute of Culture, Francesca Chiesa who has curated a new exhibition entitled ‘Technicians of the Sacred Revised’.

In this show, she draws on her extensive knowledge of art history to place almost a dozen of Longinos paintings within a broader context of global culture and the history of Western visual art.

Historical framework

Explaining the idea behind her curatorial concept, Francesca says she sees Longinos’ art as part of a long line of works by painters who preceded him by centuries.

She adds that she can’t really understand Kenyan art outside of a historical framework and she’s found that this young Kenyan artist fits most effectively into that historical context.

Her affinity for Longinos’ paintings may have something to do with his own affinity for Italian art, having spent time in Italy, and many days visiting its myriad museums, galleries, churches and cathedrals.

In the process, he’s been inspired by countless Italian painters, architects and sculptors, most of whom had been commissioned by the Catholic Church.

What makes her curatorial work so fascinating is the depth of research that she’s put into creatively correlating Longinos’ paintings with artworks of his predecessors. Most of the correlations are thematic but also visual. And nearly all of them are scripturally-based.

Inspiration

For instance, she found a seventh century mosaic [in an Italian cathedral in Ravenna] of the ‘Three Wise Men wearing Parthian Clothes’ that she felt correlated with Longinos’ own semi-abstract version of the ‘Three Wise Men’ which looked like multi-coloured mannequins. Then she found an antithetical correlation of this threesome in a different sort of trio in the oil painting by Caravaggia entitled ‘The ‘Cheaters.’

To his symbolic painting of a man he calls ‘The Exodus’, Francesca partnered Rembrandt’s powerful 1659 painting of ‘Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law.’ And to his painting of two men in ‘Before the Lost Supper’, she aligns another iconic mosaic found in the cathedral (now a mosque) in Hagia-Sofia in Istanbul entitled ‘Jesus Christ and St. John’.

But it would seem Francesca was especially inspired by Longinos’ ‘Enroute to Damascus’ since she found no less than three very different paintings to complement that work.

There were two men walking in Longinos’ painting just as there were two flying angels painted by Giotto in 1320 entitled ‘Stefanechi Polyptych’ that Francesca had found. Then she chose Beato Angelico’s ‘Annunciation’ painted in 1438 as it was shaped something like the Kenyans’ two walking men; and her final choice was a dramatic portrait of the moment St Paul was blinded by Christ on the road to Damascus painted by an unknown artist.

Video

And just for fun, Francesca paired Longinos’ painting called ‘Contemplation’ with a black and white portrait of the Reggae king Bob Marley.

Planting a Kenyan artist in the pantheon of great painters like Giotto, Rembrandt and Caravaggio is unprecedented, at least in Nairobi, and I appreciate the Italian director’s initiative.

But she didn’t stop with the hanging of renaissance replicas. She also created a video of many more historical images of art that featured ‘Halos’, given that in every one of Longinos’ works, his subjects are aglow with circular halos

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