A Study of Mordor and Coruscant as Paradigms of Neo-Baroque Digital Landscapes

the contemporary proliferation of fantasy and action releases containing high technology usage has led to an explosion in the number of fantasy worlds to which viewers can be transported. These are environments digitally constructed employing matte painting, a technique of audiovisual creation that has typically received the least research attention from studies specific to animation and more general analyses of filmmaking. Despite this, the technique constitutes a highly sophisticated conceptual phenomenon, capable of offering a rich tapestry of images derived from its unique position halfway between film and pictorial. The few studies that have shone a light on this practice, such as those of Mark Cotta Vaz and Craig Barron or David Mattingly, have done so from the point of view of the instrumental production of the effect; consequently, there has been little to no analysis from an aesthetic perspective of these particular trompe l'oeils, historically hand-painted but today digitally designed, with their increasingly prominent role in constructing our contemporary sensual and excessive visual culture.The reason for this lack of analytical interest appears to be related to the lesser consideration—culturally speaking—traditionally given to the arts of illusion and simulation, which in turn is motivated by the demonstrably erroneous belief that these arts make a less meaningful contribution than other artistic expressions. This brings to mind the words of Andrew Darley in his highlighting of the ornamental and sensual forms of the new digital aesthetic: “Yet might we not also concede that what may also be occurring here are certain kinds of preoccupation with skill (in the production of various visual effects) that are not particularly well understood, precisely because they have always been viewed as both immediately transparent and inferior” (7).Matte painting, as with other manifestations of the new digital visual culture mentioned by Darley, belongs to this aesthetic tradition, undervalued as a cultural expression, that prioritizes external and formal dimensions over semantic and reflexive ones and whose expressive richness unfolds in sensual material shots. As with other illusion and simulation arts, typically considered to be merely decorative, matte painting contributes considerably to what is admired by the observer as part of the viewing experience. As a form of expression, it warrants greater understanding of its aesthetic nature and consideration in line with the quality of its contribution. Like Darley's work, this article aspires to “cast the same critical light of past approaches on the latest developments” (7) and to acknowledge the complexity and validity of practices such as this one, advocating for the consideration of digital matte painting as an artistic and narrative creation in its own right.This article aims to address the dearth of analytical studies on the subject by looking at and analyzing two digital neo-baroque matte paintings, chosen for their ability to be representative of the diverse range existing today, and by highlighting the extent to which they can be read as pictorial texts. The selected landscapes are the view of the Barad-dûr tower and Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003), created by Dylan Cole, and the vista of the governmental district of Coruscant in Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005), produced by digital matte painter Yusei Uesugi. These two examples display extraordinary technical and artistic quality, and by exploring these works this article aims to demonstrate the remarkable analytical richness of this practice.To begin to characterize neo-baroque aesthetics, it is pertinent to recall the study by Omar Calabrese in which he observed that people are currently immersed in a cultural regime characterized by accumulation and excess, both in form and in content; by the quantitative and qualitative abundance of technical skills; and by the incentive to destabilize and transgress traditional archetypes and break through all limitations. In its trend of excess, a characteristic of the neo-baroque age is its taste for the enigmatic and mysterious, the complex, the inextricable, and the labyrinthine. It tends toward vagueness and lack of definition, toward murkiness and darkness, shapelessness, and distortion. Perhaps the most emblematic example of this is the confusion of identity and the ambiguity of what is true and what is fiction found in The Matrix (Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, 1999). In this same vein, Calabrese observes that contemporary culture displays a marked interest in asymmetry, irregularity, fragmentation, instability, and unpredictability, an aesthetic that takes pleasure in eccentricity and strangeness and that is attracted to the grotesque, deformed, or metamorphic. Viewers are witnessing a resurgence of the monstrous figure, as evidenced by the success of films centered on monsters and beasts, such as King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005), Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), or the many installments of sagas such as The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Transformers.Far from delighting in harmony and balance, the current world prefers to enjoy instability and dynamism, monumentalism, and gigantism. Avatar is an eloquent example of this aesthetic of excess. Pandora, the planet on which the action is set, is portrayed as an immense, massive world in which each vista stretches further than the eye can see. Its landscapes and jungles, designed down to the minutest detail, are grandiose and exuberantly excessive, and the wild animals that populate them are depicted as colossal and mighty. Another feature of this modern neo-baroque aesthetic is that it leans toward disorder, chaos, destruction, and devastation. Calabrese goes so far as to refer to chaos as art (141). One needs only to remember the space devoted to lengthy sequences of destruction in the film franchises mentioned previously—The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, Transformers, and Avatar—to see the extent to which this is true.Traditional cinematographic discourse has given precedence to plot and character over the visual enjoyment of the images viewed and the pleasure derived from scopic vertigo, but this is a cinema that redefines the role of the spectacular sensory experience of viewing its images and one in which an important technical skill is on display. This type of cinema, in which the signifier acquires as much of a central role as the meaning, concedes greater relevance to special effects. However, this article cannot agree with Darley's opinion that “in this important strand of New Hollywood, traditional narrative containment of spectacle has crumbled in a manner that is quite unprecedented” (106). In such films as The Matrix, Avatar, and The Lord of the Rings, one can see the importance they afford their narrative component, in addition to the relevance of their staging's formal attributes and their great visual intensity. These films used the flexibility of new technologies and the malleability of digital images when creating impossible realities to astound the viewers in their contemplation of that which is implausible and fanciful in nature. In the same way in which modernity pursued a return to the cinema of the Lumière operators, back to the world with its natural light, paradoxically this new spectacular cinematography, technically in opposition to the postulates of modernity, is also a kind of back-to-basics for cinema and a return to fairground spectacles, a discourse in the wonder and surprise of primitive film.Given the lack of analytical interest this neo-baroque cinema is receiving, in particular its digital environments, developing a mere instrumental description of the techniques these films is and technique also be all the in modern digital digital painting, and the of and been by digital matte painting to these sophisticated fantasy However, this article from other studies in that it not only to the techniques with which but also to their aesthetic and role in the of as well as to their as pictorial As be this study is also unique in its to from the study of traditional arts to these particular of 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constructing the a that for an that the eye toward the of the as well as attention on more in the which may be more it for these to be it also specific to the digital related to and certain limitations. The of this to the also the of the which that it not be in a the to the from the to the and each the a The a and from a certain point of the the technique as which in for This the by a to the a the to the on each in which each its and to this particular This for the creation of the to and and has been in this in which is the in a spectacular and from the merely one can to on the of the as in this it is that there is no or at but an to the of the that form it on this not been merely but The of the that has is depicted here in its most and over the planet is The is merely a to be and no is of its natural The planet has been to the way of and to an as an viewing this spectacular this as the only and the with its and all of or a its in the position of of a planet that they have to their This is the of a that with its and are portrayed through a perspective than an one, and in to the and over a to but of its a neo-baroque that artistic and as a pictorial in its own right.This has to the digital not merely as an with the of and other special but in of its as a unique of contemporary with specific analytical to its position between and this, two chosen because they the two by digital creation in of to an analysis as pictorial This analysis with the formal and an of the particular techniques in their on to the in the of these these with this analytical has to that with a range of from the of and digital painting to the creation of constitutes much more than a to be of in formal this one can that the digital as a highly sophisticated to be considered in the of The analysis of digital landscapes in contemporary visual culture for digital neo-baroque landscapes the of pictorial texts

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Baroque · Visual arts · 3D Surveying and Cultural Heritage · Architecture and Art History Studies

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