Likewise, Rejlander’s photograph, composed of over thirty different images combined into one complete arrangement, has many similar references. High-relief sculptures of the god Apollo and goddess Athena buttress the themes of renaissance thinking such as music, wisdom, and rebirth of the culture of classical antiquity. Framing the painting are allusions to Greek mythology.
The setting in which the painting takes place is a basilica-shaped church, the Greek cross layout symbolizing the intersection of pagan philosophy and Christian theology, two major ideologies flourishing at the time. In it are portraits of the great thinkers Aristotle, Plato, and a self-portrait of Raphael himself. Raphael’s most notable masterpiece, “The School of Athens” is a large fresco painted on the interior of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Similar in composition and subject matter, these two works are unmistakably linked. Because of this, many early photographers sought to make their prints resemble fine paintings.Ī prime example of this technique is Oscar Rejlander’s photograph “The Two Ways of Life” as compared to the famous artist Raphael’s “The School of Athens”. Those opposed to photography as a fine art believed that it was a machine that captured the image, not the artist himself. Although members of the Avant-garde movement sought to break away from the strict rules of the Salons, a body of wealthy patrons who took it upon themselves to define what qualified as “art”, and singlehandedly destroyed the integrity of any work that strayed from their ideals, artists remained wary of this budding medium which was unlike any method ever used before. At the forefront of this crusade was a new mechanism of art that had not yet been explored prior to the 19 th century: photography.
Two ways of life free#
On the brink of Modernity, artists all over the globe buzzed with anticipation of a new, avant-garde art movement that allowed painters, sculptors, and architects alike to break free from traditional means of artistic patronage and dive head-first into a movement that inspired change, growth, and, for the first time, an uninhibited freedom to create.