Talk:Alla prima

Cleanup
Tending towards a pretentious mess eg The Italian term was introduced in the 16th century in contrast with ‘disegno alla prima’, which literally means primary or initial design, and which unfortunately has not penetrated the English language - in what way is it 'unfortunate' ? Sf5xeplus (talk) 16:24, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

removal
This : 'Painting alla prima' is an awkward translation of ‘pittura alla prima’ in Italian, which literally means primary or initial painting. The Italian term was introduced in the 16th century in contrast with ‘disegno alla prima’, which literally means primary or initial design, and which unfortunately has not penetrated the English language.

From a narrow methodical angle, ‘disegno alla prima’ refers to a preliminary drawing used as the basis of painting. Such preliminary drawings have apparently been used already in ancient times. They have often been executed in charcoal, pencil or pen and sometimes copied from paper to a vase, wood panel, canvas, or wall on which paint was then applied. On the other hand, ‘pittura alla prima’ refers to direct painting that is not based upon such preliminary drawing. According to Vasari, the originator of this Renaissance innovation was the painter Giorgione.

However, ‘disegno’ refers not only to drawing but also to designing, design, plan, blueprint, composition, order, conception or idea. It was a central term in Renaissance discourse which highlighted ‘arti di designo’ - the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture - as well as ‘disegno poetico’, ‘disegno musicale’, or even ‘disegno divino’ which would sometime correlate with ‘disegno artistico’. Hence the issues involved with the innovation of ‘pittura alla prima’ far exceed the limited technical sphere.

The emergence of ‘pittura alla prima’ in the history of art was gradual and diversified. It appeared in pre-modern painting in many partial and often covert ways. Peter Paul Rubens, for instance, restricted it to a kind of middle phase between the final ‘finish’ and the preliminary faint ‘disegno’ which he did not give up after all. Rubens’ alla prima – beautifully observed in some of his unfinished works – is marked by bold spontaneous brush strokes, as if he somehow managed to paint while still organically ‘designing’, which seem exceptionally ‘modern’.

The full potentialities of the freedom and expressiveness of alla prima painting gradually appeared in the Modern era, as revealed by some outstanding examples of impressionism, expressionism, fauvism, and both lyrical and expressionist abstraction, which suggests a number of interesting issues regarding Modernism.

Some methodical sources traditionally discuss the subject within the exclusive context of oil painting, though other mediums are clearly relevant, i. e. acrylic or gouache. Moreover, at times some narrow connotations are suggested, like "painting at one stance", "painting wet on wet", or "painting without cover up layers", which, of course, stress the "direct" sense but deviate from both the original sense of the term and various de facto implications.

The text appears professional, but is not written in an encyclopedic style - this suggests that it may have been copied (ie plagiarised) from elsewhere.

Whether my suspicions are right or not the text would require some rewriting to remove the opinion parts, additional the parts about ''disegno ... '' are not fully relavent to the article.83.100.141.24 (talk) 16:49, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge with Wet-on-wet
This article should definitely be merged with Wet-on-wet which is about exactly the same subject. I don't know exactly how to do this, and move the content of this talk page to the talk page of Wet-on-wet, but I hope somebody who knows how to do it does it.Roger491127 (talk) 03:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. Johnbod (talk) 03:57, 10 January 2012 (UTC)