When we think of the Renaissance, what comes to mind? Large buildings, Roman and Greek antiquity everywhere. Columns, Versace patterns. Sandals, airy clothes. Blue sky and wonderful weather. Masses of parties and battles.
But where does this image come from? From paintings. We are not really thinking about the Renaissance itself, but about the paintings that were made at that time (or about that time). We think it looked like this. But this reality is only offered to us. Simulacrum. This is a copy of reality, as it could be then. These copies form our perceptions of supposed reality. But we do not know whether the things depicted in the paintings really happened in this way - reality becomes hyperreal.
There is also a paradox of the sensory organs of perception. Everything that we perceive, we perceive with our senses, and we can’t in any way check whether this is actually so, because again, we check it with our senses. A vicious circle. Therefore, we look at the pictures and think that it should have looked like this before. But the only way to test this is with our senses.
Maybe people wore perfectly composted Nikes or were bald. We do not know this. But we can assume, based on the science, paintings, photographs of the past, that this was not so. We create our own idea of the past and let it become reality.
And to show that due to the given media, we perceive reality differently than it is likely, we animated and slightly exaggerated the scene from the Renaissance.
In the animation, you can see how the artist “documents” the battle. However, an apricot flies into his head and he loses his glasses. The result is a work of art that does not reflect the battle. However, the artist claims that the battle was such. Because he saw her like that. He creates a new reality that becomes reality for us.
And Renaissance artists also create a reality that we have to follow because it reflects our reality. But this reality is only a copy of reality, and we have to live with what the artists interpret in events and how they represent them.
In addition, of course, every one of us probably perceives and interprets the paintings differently when we look at them. So each of us has a slightly different idea of reality.

CREDITS
Idea: Yuliya Hofer
Animation: Yuliya Hofer & Anna Eber
Copywriting: Paul Petritsch
Paintings: "The Intervention of the Sabine Women" by Jacques-Louis David, "The Art of Painting" by Johannes Vermeer, "A Market Stall with a Young Woman Giving a Basket of Grapes to an Older Woman" by Louise Moillon, "Self Portrait" by Raffaelo Sanzio, "Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity" by Salvador Dalí, "The Three Philosophers" by Giorgione

2020