Under the Star of Odysseus: Mannerist Wanderings on the Eve of Contemporary Art Strategies

In the article, I will attempt to discuss how the theme of wandering in the Mannerist era changed from a plot to a method of exploring the formal and semantic foundations of creativity. It is very important to ask why this mannerist way is interesting and in demand today. It focuses on the interplay between 16th century aesthetic ideas and the latest trends in global artistic production. The split, destroyed world of the former Renaissance harmony is commonly referred to by the term ‘mannerism’. From the second third of the 16st century, for the first time, man felt his loneliness, God-forsakenness in a collapsing naive model of the earthly Eden he had invented. He took up a passionate search for metaphysical ideas that give life value content. This quest is like the Odyssey of the restless, who have lost their exclusive position as a master in the hierarchy of the cosmic order of the ancient titans. Not virtuous heroes, but the crippled giant Polyphemus from Homer’s Odyssey, the giants from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, punished for their pride, became the heroes of the frescoes. The dislocations, the fractures, the writhing of the athletic figures proved to be the leitmotifs of the 16th century Mannerist paintings. This article clearly traces this process. At the same time, the search for the very manner of high art, the quintessence of virtuoso style as such by the artists of the generation of Giulio Romano, Pellegrino Tibaldi, Giorgio Vasari is justified. The wanderings in search of this style are conceived as a new Odyssey to the essence of the truth of the image. Today, this Mannerist odyssey is interestingly projected onto contemporary art. A catastrophic worldview makes one part with the cynicism and skepticism of postmodernism, to break through to the lost value-based, eidetic basis of creativity. The very technique of the newest formwork evokes the Mannerists’ odyssey towards the perfectionism of a universal style based on a complex interpretation of the ‘manner’ of the old masters. In the article, these processes are considered both on the example of contemporary art coryphaeus Bill Viola and on the example of contemporary Russian artists.