The cinematic imagination, then and now

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Ian Jones finds old masters and contemporary paintings with cinematic elements at London’s Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery

The area of central London framed by Euston Road, Oxford Street, Portland Place and Tottenham Court Road, known as Fitzrovia, is home to around 26 independent art galleries.  The writers Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, the poet Arthur Rimbaud and the painters John Constable and James Abbott McNeill Whistler were all residents in this historically bohemian area. 

The Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery occupies a prime location in the heart of Fitzrovia.  Opened in 2011 by Ian Rosenfeld and Dario Porcini, the gallery has 3,000 square feet of exhibition space spread over two floors and has entrances from Rathbone Street and Newman Street. 

The current exhibition, ‘The Birth of Cinema …and Beyond’, at the Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery presents a series of Old Master paintings juxtaposed with contemporary works.  The intention behind displaying traditional paintings next to modern works is to show how we continue to read and remember works of art as a theatrical or cinematic narrative.  The viewer can read a painting as a personal sequence of events, suggesting a story or tale frozen in time and presented as a scene.  Just as a film creates an objective narrative or memory of the storyline, the spectator can create a subjective idea of what is occurring before, during and after the scene of the painting. 

Il Vicentino by Andrea Michieli (1542–1618) depicts the shocking moment when Goliath’s head is cut off after being slain by David. Blood pours from the headless torso leaving us to imagine the fight that happened before this scene.  Less graphic, but equally effective in evoking memories of a landscape, is the contrast between the contemporary work Florence (2013) by Aida Rubio Gonzalez and The Rest After the Hunt by Johann Heinrich Schonfelf (1609–82).  Although separated by more than 300 years, both present an image full of activity, like a movie that has been paused.  The combination of Old Master and contemporary work shows that although these works differ in style, the idea of a narrative in the mind of the viewer has been similarly used by both artists.

The Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery has organized a series of special events to coincide with this exhibition, including curator gallery talks and late-night opening.  The popular Fitzrovia Lates occur on the last Thursday of every month and involves over 20 of the galleries in the area opening until 9p.m.