2 ECCV-16 submission ID 24 

paradigm or formula. Salvatore Settis describes it as: “the oxymoronic word, in that it merges in the same term the movement of pathos and the rigidity of the formula-schema” [13, p. 167]. Freedberg [14] notes the intuitive nature of the Pathosformel - asking “How does a picture or sculpture engage the body, and what are the emotional responses that may ensue?... Not only do the gestures ring humanly true, but one also knows immediately how often one has seen them in art”. 

We understand these Pathosformeln specifically as body poses, neglecting other portrayals of emotion (such as accessory items, facial expression, and hand gestures) - as the human pose is both a formally quantifiable aspect of a work of art and a primary expression of emotion (as further described in Section 2.2).

David Freedberg, an art historian and current director of the Warburg Institute, makes three specific claims that are relevant to our analysis [14]: 

ways that it can readily be taken as representative of the range of attitudes towards and uses of memory in the culture as a whole. My claim is that such an exploration will contribute to a far more general understanding of both contemporary art and contemporary memory.

A change in attitude towards memory and its importance began to take hold in the seventeenth century, when, for instance, British Empiricist philosophers laid stress not so much on memory as a vehicle of knowledge but as a type or form of knowledge rooted in experience.

The artist has produced work inspired by Cranach the older, Bosch, Michelangelo... all in all more than 70 paintings inspired him. Trained in oil painting but also in the use of Chinese ink, Miao painted for ten years before turning to photography as an autodidact. He then moved over to the new media and created a single visual language integrating informatics and photography. He will say, “Bacon had only his brushes while we have the computers”. His numerical approach of the classics of painting allows him to renew their perception: hundred years after cubism, he wishes to prolong this reflection work on the multiplication of points of view, by inventing a new grammar, capable of expressing our new relationship to the world. He combines his formal research with a ceaseless interrogation about the future of man, whom he often represents as close to the animal or to the machine.

His parallel quest for identity took the form of an alter ego which the artist created very early: as he was a student in Germany, he invented another “I”, whom he represented in his series Visitor of the past (1999-2004) under the shape of a scholar- visitor from the Song dynasty. He would carry with him all the time this very light sculpture in polyester. Later, he brought it back to China and staged it there as a symbol of the existing gap between him and his contemporaries: in his own country he felt a stranger. According to him, photography is more powerful than painting, it speaks more quickly to people because it looks real. People can identify with the character and understand how he felt while in Germany, and, beyond, understand the gap that he is pointing to between the past and the present. Because, finally, when he continued this series in China, in color and as from 2002, he realized that the gap between the China of yesterday and China today is wider than between East and West. 

Observing the great figures of the history of art, Miao noticed that they finally only portray a single human figure, which they afterwards reproduce with some changes: a man pictured by Bacon looks like another man pictured by Bacon and the same goes for Van Gogh or Michelangelo, the latter making also women look like men. 

He therefore chose a face for himself, a computerized face, replacing all others in his digital reinterpretation of the classics of Renaissance painting. In this new world, peopled with clones, there is no original any more: is this a complete assimilation of the “other” and exasperation of the individual or a universal utopia? We may see in this the dissolving of the subject, a very Buddhist prospect: the multiplication of faces finally reveals a universal, single, face and the complete disappearance of the subjective.

Photography implies a single point of view. With the computer software, however, Miao, is in a position to choose all the points of view, and to move around the object. He enjoys another relationship with reality since the issue is now to build everything, to start from scratch. In his 3D version of the Last Judgement inspired by the work of Michelangelo in the Sixtine chapel in Rome, one can walk in the sky and look at the characters from all angles. If he stuck to the black and white, it is by reference to Michelangelo’s sculpture: the Italian artist defined himself as a sculptor and not as a painter, and this is a way to pay homage to him. 

When he is at work, Miao feels he is in a virtual reality. His studio is like a laboratory where he can experiment and express whatever he wishes to. It is his own ivory tower, which he sees as a utopia. His grand series on the Last Judgement takes place entirely in heaven and he explains that it represents his window of liberty. 

The impact of the computer on painting may or may not be following a similar pattern, but it is useful to bear some of these parallels in mind. An art form need not disappear because a new technology comes along and takes over its functions. It can be reinvented to accommodate the technology, and it can find new functions. The roots of painting, like the roots of dance, music, theatre, and literature, go back a long way. The digital technology that can now simulate paint is awesome, but the problem or opportunity of absorbing that impact may itself be an old and familiar problem.