RETURN TO ORDER 2020

(left image) LUMINOUS BLOOMING collage & acrylic on canvas. 36" X 36" X 1 1/2" (91.44 X 91.44 X 3.8 cm)--- (right image) THE SEA collage & acrylic on canvas, 36" X 36" X 1 1/2" (91.44 X 91.44 X 3.8 cm)

Happy New Years 2020 with health, wealth and much great art in your life.
Around 100 years ago in art, was the  Return to Order movement and here in the first hours of 2020, our last two paintings of the  finals days in 2019 could be considered clear descendants of this distant art past. 
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 The Luminous Blooming, ( top left) a dreamy meditation in color featuring red roses in a pot, either floating or seated in front of a sea of eyes backdrop. Cozy and tight at the same time, the floating eyes reflect back at the viewer looking at the painterly roses.
The rose is considered a symbol of balance. It expresses promise, new beginnings, hope and is considered the highest vibrational flower on the planet. 
 Eyes are probably the most important symbolic sensory organ. They can represent clairvoyance, omniscience, and/or a gateway into the soul. Other qualities that eyes are commonly associated with are: intelligence, light, vigilance, moral conscience, and truth.  
The Sea, ( top right) a collage portrait, also contains eyes and a floating rose along with some Tibetan style clouds.

Luminous Blooming and  The Sea,  both by Los Angeles based painter James Sasso,,contain the use of his fluid drawing style and canvas collage, with certain characteristics of Surrealism, Though wholly original, modern, they both could hold a certain feel of nostalgia for the Return to Order art of the early decades of the 1900's.
 The return to order (French: Retour à l'ordre) was a European art movement that followed the First World War, rejecting the extreme avant-garde art of the years up to 1918 and taking its inspiration from traditional art instead. The movement was a reaction to the war. The return to order was associated with a revival of classicism and realistic painting, among other styles.

Two artists who helped to define some revolutionary developments in the visual arts in the opening decades of the 1900's were Henri Matisse (born 31 December 1869 – died 3 November 1954) and Pablo Picasso  (born 25 October 1881 – died 8 April 1973), arguably produced some of their finest artworks during this era and after.  

Both artists living in France, Matisse was known for his use of color (Colorism & Fauvism) and his original fluid drawing style, while Picasso in the 1910's and early 1920's made artworks described as a NeoClassical style, along with hints of Surrealism but also new off shoot methods in the genre of Cubism, referred to as both Synthetic Cubism and Crystal Cubism. 

Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century and the Synthetic variant of Picasso, noted for the first use of collage in oil paintings. To collage means to "to glue" or "to stick together", a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts but also in music. Picasso glued bits of fabric, paper and newspaper unto the canvas surface in his cubist paintings.