To pursue the impossible and the unknown and seek for the unique is one the most distinctive characteristics of our human nature. Exploring limitations and possibilities in resolving problems has driven societies to evolve and realize the secrets of our incredibly intricate world as well as understanding our own nature and producing philosophical notions which developed our culture. This characteristic has also been part of architecture, translated in radical designs capturing the imagination of
Perhaps the Japonisme phenomenon can be acknowledged as another instance of the artistic “appropriation and reuse of the pre-existing” that David Shields defines in “I Can’t Stop Thinking Through What Other People are Thinking”. In Shields’ eyes, art is “edited, quoted and quoted again and recontextualised, replaced, collaged, stitched together anew” (744). Shields believes that appropriation should not be vilified because art is dependent on the diffusion of ideas between artists and this diffusion
In the essay “Naturalism and the Venetian ‘Poesia’: Grafting, Metaphor, and Embodiment in Giorgione, Titian, and the Campagnolas,” Campbell explains the role of poetic painting, poesia, in Venetian artwork during the 1500s. Titian personally used the term poesia when he “[referred] to paintings he was making for [King Philip II] with subject matter derived from the ancient poets.” Poesia now refers to a type of sixteenth century Venetian painting, which Giorgione and Titian initiated and used