The Optimist by Baptiste Ibar (2001)
I am looking at a painting across the room, above the fireplace, “the Optimist” it is called. It is a large painting, showing just a few elements, a black dead tree with branches, a red ladder that folds up in the air in a bizarre way, leaves that fly like butterflies and seem to pass by, disappearing towards the horizon, and a little man suspended from a rope, posing his feet at the intersection of the ladder and the tree. The whole scene is overlaid on top of a background color divide between just two colors, gold and burgundy. The flying leaves are all colored in aqua green.
It is breathtaking, mysterious, deep but simple, naïve but profound, it brings me peace and a sense of existing, as if time was passing in front of me, like fishes in an aquarium...
There are several basic concepts I relate to in this painting. The structure of the painting is this basic split between two colors, although note that these two colors are not complementary. What makes it work, it seems, is the presence of the aqua green stains which spread on boths sides, ignoring the divide, giving the appearance that the two colors are much more compatible than they actually are. The aqua green color turns out to be beautifully contrasted with each background color, gold and burgundy, giving that appearance. This may be a basic principle: get a compatibilizer, a diffuser, it will blur a divide. A divide is a split, like a discrete quantum event, either 0 or 1, not a smooth variation between 0 and 1. The leaves are also a set of discrete objects, yet their presence, as a transversal spread, smoothes out the discontinuity, renders the divide more continuous.
Perhaps this illusion also comes from the fact that the leaves are independent objects, present in the picture but without belonging, since they seem to ignore the main story of the painting, the little man, the rope, the tree and the ladder, they are parallel to the event, yet they play an essential role in the overall aspect of the painting. The size of the butterfly leaves decreases when they approach the horizon divide line, which gives them the apparence of being in motion across the scenery towards infinity. This adds to the picture a dynamic dimension, introduces time as a reference, making the event of the suspended man a space event, at instant t. Perhaps the little man on his tree is watching the passing of the butterflies and, during his time of observation, his position in space is stable.
This is the other concept that I see coming out of this painting. Consider the chances for this exceptional event consisting of this moment of coincidence where the branch of the tree, the ladder step and the feet of the little man suspended from his rope exactly meet. This event is like an interaction in space and time. The painting is a snapshot of this coincidence. The tree has many branches, filling space, increasing the chances that events of this sort will occur. Branching permits to duplicate the possibilities, expanding the area for the reaches with little expansion demands from the tree itself, a very efficient way to increase the chances to reach out (create interactions), but the search is done randomly, at irregular intervals, it symbolizes unpredictability. The ladder is like a one dimension space filling, it explores space by changing direction, the whole ladder is redirected in the new direction, this is a different approach than branching. The presence of rungs, transversal to the main direction, provides a second degree of space filling, it symbolizes regularity, periodicity, the order dimension. And our little man is there, in equilibrium between the tree, the last bar of the ladder and he holds himself from the rope above him. What a coincidence! None of the other tree branches could do that, none of the other ladder configurations, no other rungs could do that, no other position of the little man on the rope would work. The occurrence of the event has to be very sparse, almost unique. How long will it last?
This occurrence reminds me of the way nature works, it tries and tries, fails a million times, continues to try until a coincidence occurs, a node, an interaction, and the important question is its stability, the durability of the interaction. Matter emerges from that mechanism, which I call chrono-condensation. Structuring can occur at different scales, depending on the stability of past solutions, increasing the inertia to create new coupled interactions. The ladder of solutions interlocks like a chinese lantern,from small to large, from 1 small to 1 large, yet still through the same mechanism, repeated over and over again. We are part of those interlocked cycles, we are part of why it stands. We are hanging to our rope, just for the time to let the butterfly leaves pass by.
All of these ideas emerge from this beautiful painting. I assure you, I see all these things: physics is everywhere!
This is what the artist said about his painting:
“I decided to call it "The optimist" after thinking about our talk and how all of the elements and events meet up at a certain point in space/time.... the optimist believes in these events happening perfectly in the present moment. Therefore feeling fearless of the future and free from the past.”
Here is a portrait of the artist in his studio in Brooklyn, NY
