Lynda Benglis – American Artist

Lynda Benglis at Le Consortium

Today’s post concludes a sequence of three consecutive posts dedicated to female American artists (poets are artists).

Lynda Benglis: Roberta (1974)

Sculpture, enamel, sculpmetal and tinsel on aluminium screeing and foil
Primary Insc: not signed, not dated.
79.1 h x 89.1 w x 41.3 d cm

Lynda Benglis is an American artist, mainly sculptor with Greek blood. Her father’s family was Greek in origin and she still has family on the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo.

She was born in Louisiana in 1941 and after graduating from college moved to New York in 1964.

Christopher Knight writes in Los Angeles Times:

“When she arrived in New York shortly after, in the mid-1960s, art’s purity police were out in full force, busily patrolling what artists shouldn’t do when making paintings and mustn’t do when making sculptures.

If you sense a collision coming, take a bow. Benglis, after surveying Manhattan’s art landscape, did the only reasonable thing. In the face of its ponderous penitential virtue, she brought Mardi Gras to Soho.

The fiesta was undertaken neither lightly nor at random. Ambitious, she looked hard at the local art that had come before, from the 1940s to the early 1960s. Much of it was great; still, it’s always helpful to know how we get to where we are.

She looked at Jackson Pollock’s skeins of dripped paint and at Helen Frankenthaler’s big puddles of stained color. Barnett Newman’s zip-lines — those ambiguous vertical bars of color dividing fields of painted light and darkness — came under scrutiny. So did more recent work: Carl Andre’s checkerboards of metal plates that turned the floor into an artistic pedestal for people, Donald Judd’s orderly sculptural subdivisions of space and Richard Serra’s molten lead splashed into studio corners — all of them sculptures directly challenging the postwar primacy of painting. “

Lynda Benglis: Smile (1974) cast bronze

Benglis has a powerful sense of humour, which she manifested gloriously in her 1974 advert in Artforum magazine.

Hilarie Sheets comments in her New York Times article:

“She (Benglis) lampooned both the machismo of the art world and the way artists were expected to promote themselves in a market-driven system by exposing herself, with a dildo between her legs, in a 1974 Artforum advertisement that she paid for, earning her as many fans as detractors.”

Lynda Benglis: Phantom

Arttatler offer the followng insight into Benglis’ work:

“Benglis’s best-known works question the rigors of Modernism and Minimalism by merging material, form, and content; bringing color back into sculpture; and taking painting off the wall. These works include her richly layered wax paintings and poured latex and polyurethane foam sculptures of the late 1960s and early ’70s; innovative videos, installations, and “knots” from the 1970s; metalized, pleated wall pieces of the 1980s and 1990s; and pieces in a variety of other mediums, such as glass, ceramics, photography, or cast polyurethane, as in the case of the monumental The Graces (2003-05)”

Lynda Benglis: The Graces

In her 2010 interview to the “frieze”, Benglis talked to Marina Cashdan about her art and work in a comprehensive way. I copy here one of the questions and the answer:

“MC: Is Robert Pincus-Witten’s term for your work, ‘the frozen gesture’, a misnomer, because your work feels more like it’s living, an act as opposed to a confined object?
Lynda Benglis: Well ‘the frozen gesture’ was something that I think both Yves Klein and Franz Kline had done. Symbolically, Klein jumped out the window: he was involved with gesture, process (his ‘women brushes’ painting with their bodies) and the symbolic (sponges soaked with his paint on monochromatic blue canvases). Kline took the gesture and made it iconographic. Frank Stella said that Kline was one of his favourite artists, so I think Stella himself took the canvas, the stretcher bars, and turned them on their side to make them painted objects, as did other artists who were using materials and geometry. They were presenting something that was, in a way, rebellious and sometimes simplistic, and it was called Minimalism. I saw that and understood it in the context of where art could go, but for me it was a statement that seemed very rococo. It was way out on a limb. I felt that art had to have more content, a multiplicity of meaning and associations. And even many of those so-called Minimal artists broke out of their own self-created mould! ”

Lynda Benglis at Le Consortium

On the occasion of her first major retrospective in the UK, Benglis talked to “The Guardian’s” Laura Barnett, and concluded as follows:

“You can say, ‘Is there the influence of Greece?’ or ‘Do these works look like the sea?’ Those things are all there, but there are many other associations. I think all good art is really abstract. That’s how it transcends cultural differences. That’s how it speaks to us.”

Lynda Benglis: Untitled

Donatello’s “The Penitent Mary Magdalene”

Following the trail I started with Titian’s “Pieta”, today I go a few years back to meet another Genius and Master, Donatello.

Donatello's statue outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

As I read in PBS’s web site:

“Donatello was not a popular person, but in his sculptures he managed to capture life itself. Every look and gesture was rich in humanity and personality. He was known to mutter “speak, damn you, speak!” at his figures as he worked.

In 1434, following his triumph over the enemies of the Medici, Cosimo requested a special commission from his friend. A statue of an Old Testament hero, symbolizing triumph against the odds. Donatello’s bronze “David” broke all the rules.

Donatello: Davis, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Firenze

A playful, sensuous, and androgynous hero, “David” was the first life-size nude to be cast in bronze since Classical times.

In the 1450s Donatello began work on a terrifying statue, the most vivid of his career. The “Penitent Mary Magdalen”, carved for the baptistry of Florence, is an eloquent vision of fear and decay, perhaps brought on by the realization of Donatello’s own mortality.”

( The material of the previous paragraphs comes from the web site of USA’s Public Broadcasting Service, PBS.)

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalene, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Firenze

From David to Mary Magdalen. It is a path of life.

Mary Magdalene has been the subject of many paintings and sculptures.

Titian: The Repentant Mary Magdalen

Titian has painted a portrait of Mary, which is in the Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, a few hundred meters away from Donatello’s sculpture, which is in the Duomo Museum of Florence.

What a contrast between Titian and Donatello’s interpretation! Is it only Titian portraying Mary as a young woman, repentant or not?

El Greco: Mary Magdalene in penitence

Not really. Look at El Greco’s interpretation. Mary is young, very young, beautiful, with long hair that envelopes her body.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

The hair is the only common element between Titian’s and El Greco’s paintings and Donatello’s sculpture.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

Donatello wanted Mary to be an old woman. A woman approaching the end of her life.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

A woman whose face is pierced by the bones, whose eyes inhabit open dark holes, whose mouth is almost toothless.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

Her hands are almost forming a prayer pair, but not so.  It is as if she was going to pray but she changed her mind as the hands were coming together, but not touching yet.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

The aging woman is standing firmly on her feet. As disconcerting her hace and overall condition may be, she is standing with confidence and without any weakness. She is almost “relaxed” when it comes to her feet.

This in my view is the key to “reading” the work. Reading the body.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

As the eye travels from the face to the torso, the hands and then to the feet, the ambivalence of the artist manifests itself in a comprehensive way.

This ambivalence is the distinctive feature of the work, a feature that differentiates Donatello’s interpretation from Titian’s and El Greco’s.

In both paintings, Mary is a person wiht a clear attitude and stance in life. Repentant in Titian’s painting, full of devotion in El Greco’s.

But in Donatello’s sculpture, Mary may be skinny and appearing in a state of departure from the worldly affairs, but at the same time she is not fully wholy absorbed by her devotion or repentance. Her body language expresses ambivalence and the coexistence of the worldly stuff with the heavenly. This is what I find amazing in this work. Donatello either consciously or subconsciously is a Modern Master in this work, as he depicts Mary in the state of inner conflict, in the state of Being and Being Not.

What Donatello may have started as a work that would portray his fear of Death, his anguish of getting old, was transformed in the creative process to a work that is full of Life, as Life is ambivalence and contradiction and conflict.

Bacchus Sculptures – Three examples of Greek Art

Great Art is a mix of two basic components. The first is the accumulation of the past. The second is the break away from the past. In an earlier post, I presented Michelangelo’s Bacchus in Florence’s Bargello. Today I would like to view some earlier sculptures depicting Dionysus or Bacchus, the God of Wine. This will serve to highlight the first component of Great Art, the tradition that Michelangelo inherited, and will make it easier to appreciate his creation.

Dionysus, Bronze, Greece 460 BC. Musee du Louvre, Paris

I start with a Greek statuette of Dionysus as a young man, of the 5th century BC. I quote from the Louvre site:

“Created c.460 BCE, this statuette bears witness to the aesthetic innovations introduced by the generation of sculptors who worked in the Severe style, after the Archaic period and before the Classical period. The contours are more flowing and the distribution of weight is new. The tilted pelvis and the accompanying movement of the muscles add life to the figure, although the line of the shoulders remains horizontal: the contrapposto arrangement of the figure developed by Polyclitus of Argos toward the mid-fifth century BCE had not yet been adopted at this point. The youth is captured in a walking position, with his weight on his left leg and the right leg bent, the heel of the right foot probably raised from the ground in the manner of works by Polyclitus of a few years later. The weight of the body is thus shifted on to one leg alone. The treatment of the skillfully proportioned musculature also anticipates the athletic figures of Polyclitus. The hair, caught up in a short style, reflects the style common at the time. The grave facial expression, finally, contrasts with the open smiles of the Archaic kouroi.”

Praxiteles: Hermes and the infant Dionysus, 4th century BC

I continue with Praxiteles’ infant Dionysus held by Hermes, one of the most beautiful sculptures of Ancient Greece, now in the Archaelogical Museum of Olympia in Greece. I quote from the Museum of Art and Archaeology of the University of Missouri:

“When Zeus, king of the gods, revealed himself to his mortal lover Semele, she was at once incinerated by his divine radiance. Zeus, however, was able to rescue their unborn child by sewing him within his own thigh. Following the birth of the child, Zeus ordered Hermes, his messenger, to hide the newborn from his jealous wife Hera, who sought to destroy any remnants of the affair, including the newborn. Hermes swiftly took the baby to remote mountains for hiding, where nymphs raised the child. Under their care, the infant Dionysos grew to maturity and became the god of wine, revelry, and theater. Hermes and the Infant Dionysos depicts the messenger before he delivered the infant to the mountain nymphs.

German excavators discovered the statue in 1877 in the Temple of Hera at Olympia. Pausanias, a second century A.D. historian, describes his tour of this temple in which he saw such a statue said to be by Praxiteles.

Praxiteles achieved a naturalism and intimacy not seen before in sculpture. His style moved away from the hard, scientific vision of the earlier Classical Period. Unbalanced poses, sensuous forms, playful subjects, and use of emotion contrast with the previous period’s idealized and stoic works. The innovations evident in Hermes and the Infant Dionysos define the Late Classical Period and signify changes fully realized in the Hellenistic Period.”

Borghese Vase, detail, Musee du Louvre, Paris

To conclude this short detour, I would like to view the Borghese Vase, now in the Louvre. The Vase was made in Athens in the 1st century BC, of Pentelikon marble. Quoting from the Louvre site: “These large vases, much appreciated by the Romans as decoration for their gardens, were mass-produced in workshops in Athens and then exported to Italy in large quantities. Athenian marble workers specialized in making these pieces. The rapid Hellenisation of the Roman ruling class that resulted from the conquests stimulated the development of backward-looking styles. Since pillaging by Roman generals was not sufficient to meet the growing demand for Greek works, artists drew on the repertoires of ealier periods of Greek art. The relief decoration represents a Bacchic procession. Satyrs and maenads dance to music, accompanying Dionysus and Ariadne, who preside over the revels. The models for the decoration are drawn from Hellenistic art of the mid-second century BC.”

Michelangelo’s Bacchus (1497) in the Bargello Museum, Florence, Italy

I recently visited again the Bargello Museum in Florence, and was mesmerized by the Michelangelo sculptures on display.

I therefore decided to write one post for each, in the chronological order they were created. The first one is Bacchus as it was finished in 1497. Bacchus and St Peter’s Pieta are the only sculptures that can be attributed with certainty to Michelangelo’s Roman period.

Michelangelo: Bacchus, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

Bacchus is depicted with rolling eyes, his staggering body almost teetering off the rocky outcrop on which he stands. Sitting behind him is a faun, who eats the bunch of grapes slipping out of Bacchus’s left hand. With its swollen breast and abdomen, the Bacchus figure suggested to Giorgio Vasari ”both the slenderness of a young man and the fleshiness and roundness of a woman”, and its androgynous quality has often been noted (although the testicles are swollen as well). The inspiration for the work appears to be the description in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History of a lost bronze sculpture by Praxiteles, depicting “Bacchus, Drunkenness and a satyr” (Source 1: Wikipedia)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

Bacchus is more imaginative, experimental and inventive than either the Pieta or David, the two great sculptures with
which Michelangelo followed it. While the level of the carving and the resolution of compositional problems
in the Pieta is extraordinary by any criterion, the arrangement and attitude of the figures were not new; examples of the Virgin holding her dead son in her lap were known in Florentine painting at least a decade before Michelangelo began work on the group, and his apprenticeship as a painter in Ghirlandaio’s shop in the late 1480s would have made him
fully aware of them. David is astounding for his size, and for the skill with which Michelangelo overcame the difficulties of scale and of a shallow block, but the figure type is well known, and can be traced back through Donatello and Nicola Pisano to antique art. (Source 2: Ralph Lieberman, Regarding Michelagelo’s Bacchus)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

In Michelangelo’s treatment, on the other hand, we understand from the figure’s reeling pose that he is experiencing the effects of his wine, and the stunning conjunction of character and behavior weds form to content at a level unknown in earlier Renaissance sculpture. Michelangelo’s profound exploration of the nature and personality of his subject led
him to create a figure difficult to accept by someone anticipating a more traditional representation, and Cardinal Riario was not prepared for a Bacchus who behaves in a drunken, indecorous way and who, “in brief…, is not the image of a god.” (Source 2)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

The group is prophetic in that in Bacchus, and even more in the satyr who attends him, are to be discerned the origins of the figura serpentinata, to become familiar two generations later, but here the poses Michelangelo gave his figures do not make them exercises in elegant artifice; Bacchus himself is in some ways an example of almost brutal realism. (Source 2)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

We see the young Michelangelo having fun, portraying the God of Wine in a drunken state. The God is tipsy turvy, but why not?

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

But Dionysus is not the only one having fun. The young Satyr glued to him is devouring a bunch of grapes, his facial expression being the one of utter pleasure.

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

In addition to the depiction of fun, we have a very sensual depiction of the human body.

Dionysus is depicted as a sensual, hedonistic creature, seeking pleasure in more than one ways.

Michelangelo has taken the Greek Classical style’s line perfection, added the expressibility and character of the Hellenistic period, and crowner everything with his own passion for life, founded on the belief that life is beautiful. After all, this is the work of a 21 year old genius.

Real Greece – Part IV: Aegean Sculpture – A Church in the village of Marpissa, Paros, Greece

I was for a few days on the island of Paros, Greece, where one night I saw under the weak lunar light the Aegean Sculpture I present today. The white church looked like something much more than a religious building, and I pronounced it “a sculpture”. Next morning I went to the village in order to photograph the “sculpture”. It was there, bathed in the morning sunlight, in the middle of the small community that was still resting. This emotional experience led me to present the church as sculpture and sculpture as a working work of art, in the sense originally discussed by Martin Heidegger.

I find particularly interesting the notion of a “working” work of art, in the sense that it is a work that participates and in a way effects and reflects real life. I will therefore quote extensively from Heidegger’s work but also from scholars who have tried to interpret Heidegger after his “turn” to aesthetics and art.

I will conclude with some thoughts on the significance of the Aegean Sculpture in the context of the ever developing Greek drama, a combination of financial and cultural bankruptcy.

{In his article, “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger explains the essence of art in terms of the concepts of being and truth. He argues that art is not only a way of expressing the element of truth in a culture, but the means of creating it and providing a springboard from which “that which is” can be revealed. Works of art are not merely representations of the way things are, but actually produce a community’s shared understanding. Each time a new artwork is added to any culture, the meaning of what it is to exist is inherently changed.}

(Source: Wikipedia)

{Heidegger’s basic insight is that the work of art not only manifests the style of the culture; it articulates it. For everyday practices to give us a shared world, and so give meaning to our lives, they must be focused and held up to the practitioners. Works of art, when performing this function, are not merely representations of a pre-existing state of affairs, but actually produce a shared understanding.}

(Source: Hubert L. Dreyfus, Heidegger on Art)

Heidegger articulates his thoughts by discussing an ancient Greek Temple:

{It is the temple work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being….(The temple thus) gave things their look and men their outlook on themselves.}

(Source: Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art)

{Heidegger is considering art in terms of its cultural founding significance, and cultural founding art work acts as a paradigm for the event of truth’s happening. The happening of truth is described as the projection of truth, and all art is defined by Heidegger as Dichtung, or poetry.  However, this does not restrict the definition of Dichtung to include only the linguistic expression of “poetry.” Rather, he envisages Dichtung as referencing all creative, projective  events of truth’s happening. Therefore, Dichtung occurs in many forms of art: painting, sculpture,  architecture, music, and poetry. Due to art’s unique nature, it opens the space of disclosure in  such a way that it “breaks open an open place, in whose openness everything is other than  usual.”34 Heidegger stresses the potential of great art to ecstatically displace Dasein from the
realm of its everyday, ordinary ways of existing by transforming “anew” its accustomed ties to the world and Earth.}

(Source: James Magrini,

The Work of Art and Truth of Being as “Historical”:

Reading Being and Time, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and the “Turn” (Kehre) in Heidegger’s Philosophy of the 1930s)

The work of art is not something that works out its truth merely by laying it bare and plain for all to see. On the contrary, great works of  art outshine others in their unfathomableness, (i.e. their depth). That is, anything which lends itself to conveniently summed up—described and explained away—is not thus preserved in its being let ‘stand-initself’, but rather leveled off and disabled in its capacity for bringing about wonder and estrangement; it is dragged down in connoisseurship to the realm of commonality (i.e. the unextraordinary) and commodity (i.e. the ‘art business’). It is masticated so as to be served up as fodder for idle talk.

(Source: Shawn Moi, Perplexity and Passion in Heidegger)

In the Heideggerian framework of viewing Art, the Ancient Greek Temple is “non-working Art”, in the sense that the work of art no longer has and maintains a dynamic interplay with the surrounding community. the reasonable question that emerges having seen the Aegean sculpture, is:

Is the Aegean sculpture working art, in the sense that it performs the three essential functions? (see Dreyfus):

• Manifesting a World
• Articulating a culture’s understanding of Being
• Reconfiguring a culture’s understanding of Being

I believe it is, and as long as it remains, I also believe that there is hope in the contemporary drama of Greece.

The hope is that Greeks will eventually accept to be themselves (ourselves) and stop trying to become a pathetic immitation of others. There is no survival without identity, and the Aegean Sculpture is part of the Greek’s multifaceted  identity. The acceptance of identity will also start the process of maintaining it and embellishing it, and this is where the Aegean Sculpture also comes in, with its stunning simplicity and harmony of being an integral part of the space around it.

The white structure engages the blue sky and the sea of the Aegean in an eternal embrace.

Its whiteness pays tribute to the famous marble of Paros, but beats it at the same time, as its humble and simple material reminds us that we can do wonderful things, and thus be wonderful ourselves with very “cheap” materials. The Aegean Sculpture could never be made of gold, or covered with precious stones. It would not be itself.

1001 Ways to Die – (7) Cy Twombly, American, Painter and Sculptor

Cy Twombly, one of my favourite modern artists, has died on Tuesday, 5th July 2011 in Rome, Italy, losing a long battle to cancer.

His work “The Rose” was the object of a previous article. In another article on this blog I presented his sculpture “Thermopylae” in relation to C. Cavafy’s poem. Today I want to travel with Twombly in the Sea.

I have somehow visualized Death, more precisely the departure from this life, to embarking, to getting on a boat and sailing in the sea. This is no crossing of Acheron, the river of Hades. This is becoming one with the Sea, taking his boat out to the sea, and then sinking with it.

In order to do this, I will use his “Poems to the Sea”, a series of 24 works done in 1959, a photograph of the Sea that the artist took, and his monumental work “Lepanto”.

Twombly in 1958, the year after he moved to Italy from the US. Photograph: David Lees/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Poems to the Sea

‘As Twombly told the critic David Sylvester, “the Mediterranean is always just white, white, white”: in the 24 drawings called Poems to the Sea the colour blue barely appears, and yet the cursory lines and spots create a sea of the mind’s eye – hours of contemplation transformed into a few cryptic marks. With their textured, creamy backgrounds, the paintings inspired by Procida are also extremely evocative: parched cliff-tops in the Bay of Naples; crumbling plaster; the heat – it’s all there if you look for it, though without that act of the imagination the charm quickly fades.’ (source: Christopher Masters, the Guardian).

Poems to the Sea, 1959, Collection Dia Art foundation, New York

‘What order of poems, punctuated with numerals and question marks, are these? The sea is reduced to horizon line and word, scribblings and veils of paint against the stark white of paper. A persistent compulsion is invoked in the viewer, the desire to read what is there, but not fully manifest in the artist’s scrawled script. Two words in these drawings emerge into legibility, “time”and “Sappho”, as if washed up on the beach alongside sudden, subtle gem-flashes of colour – blue, orange-yellow, pink – gleaming all the more because of their discretion. In these pages, meaning is endlessly frustrated and pursued. It settles only in the distance, figured perhaps by the horizon lines that move across the top of each of the drawings – in fact, simply grey or blue lines made with a straight edge, but suggesting seascapes at the vanishing point. The flat planes of sea and page have been collapsed. Writing comes in waves, rolling funnels of cursive script, crossed out, erased, enfoamed in satiny greyish-white paint. The signs are given as nascent forms, as gestural indications of “the hand’s becoming”, as Roland Barthes so aptly phrased it.’ (source: Claire Daigle on Cy Twombly, Tate Gallery, London).

Cy Twombly: Miramare 2005

Miramare

‘Cy Twombly photographs the subjects that he encounters in his studio in Gaeta, in Bassano, Rome or in Lexington, on the beach at Miramare or in botanical gardens, using an instant camera. By means of a special pigmenting process that involves dryprint, these one-offs are enlarged and printed in limited editions. Not only the special saturation of color, but also the fact that the shots are strikingly out of focus account for their unmistakable nature and extraordinary appeal. The consistent lack of focus is reminiscent of the photographs of the late 19th-century Pictorialists. Hubertus Von Amelunxen, however, discerns photo-historical references to the early days of photography, namely to early calotypes, first paper photographs permeated in “light and emulsion”. Indeed, with their aesthetic effect, Twombly’s photographic images exhibit a sense of both astonishment and entrancement with the (new) technology. The unusual and the new is of a quite singular beauty.

Using his particular technique, Cy Twombly manages to concentrate on the textures of surfaces which, removed from the flow of time, generate visual orders of an over-arching world of perception. Hubertus Von Amelunxen calls them “musical, rhythmical positions in an ineffable syntax” – as the focus is not on representation but on the unmistakable nature of things or the clarity of motifs. Finding the invisible in the visible, retaining the purportedly excluded in the image and at the same time sensing the intangible dimensions of time and space, that is what constitutes the great appeal of Twombly’s photographs. The eye is always very close to things, the direct view suggests an almost intimate proximity – of tender tulip blooms, of everyday objects such as glasses and bottles, of the artist’s slippers, his brushes and painting utensils, and not least his paintings themselves.’

(Source: La Lettre de la Photographie)

Cy Twombly: Lepanto

Lepanto

The work consists of 12 large canvases that looks back to one of the most important naval battles of early modern history. Lepanto was shown in September 2008 in the Museo del Prado prior to its permanent installation in the Brandhorst Museum in Munich in October of the same year. I saw the work in Brandhorst in 2010 and was deeply moved by it.

‘When Cy Twombly was offered a gallery dedicated to his work at the 2001 Venice Biennale, he chose to create a new work especially for the space, a work that he describes as one painting in twelve parts. For his concept of the project, Twombly turned to the genre of history painting. Before the advent of Modernism in the late 19th century, history painting, which encompassed images from mythology, the bible, and the lives of the saints, as well as scenes from ancient to contemporary history, was considered the highest achievement of the painter´s art. Responding to the exhibition´s locale adjoining the Arsenale shipyard, Twombly chose of his subject the famous 1571 naval battle of Lepanto.

Cy Twombly in front one of the "Lepanto" panels in the Venice Biennale of 2001

Venice, then an immensely powerful city-state, instigated the formation of an alliance against the Ottoman Empire, which had been attacking its colonies in the eastern Mediterranean and defiling their churches. Brokered by Pope Pius V, the western European alliance consisted of Venice, the Papal States, and Spain, three major Catholic powers of the post-Reformation period. The battle of Lepanto has always been viewed as a turning point in the history of Europe. The Ottoman Empire had heretofore seemed invincible and its fleet was far larger than the alliance´s armada. With more manageable Venetian-designed ships and superior deployment of artillery, the alliance vanquished and burned the Ottoman fleet. Lepanto was the last major sea battle that involved ramming and hand-to-hand fighting on deck. It was the first triumph of Christian Europe over the seemingly all-powerful Islamic Ottoman Empire. It also marked the end of the Mediterranean as the locus of shipping and trade; henceforth, the Atlantic routes to the riches of the American colonies dominated naval activity.

Twombly arranged Lepanto in a way that is at once symphonic and cinematic with four images of flames and falling leaves presaging, interrupting, and concluding his highly abstract narrative of the battle. The maritime scenes, with their stick-figure images of fighting galleys, become increasingly dense with the final triad drenched in the colors of his rich, limited palette. The lushness of the reds and yellows counterpoints their depiction of flames and blood.’

(Source: The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA)

As the ship disappears in the horizon, where sky and sea merge, I quote from Roland Barthes (The Wisdom of Art by Roland Barthes 3):

‘If we wished to locate this ethic, we would have to seek very far, outside painting, outside the West, outside history, at the very limit of meaning, and say, with the Tao Te King:

He produces without appropriating anything,
He acts without expecting anything,
His work accomplished, he does not get attached to it,
And since he is not attached to it,
His work will remain.’

Farewell Cy Twombly

 

Intoxicating pleasures, deformities and disproportions: The Female in decorative arts and music

Introduction

“An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.” C.Baudelaire ( I thank “Paintisnotdead” for the quote)

Today I publish more of my favourite depictions of the female in sculptures, paintings and photos, accompanied by a song or an aria. Beaudelaire’s saying epitomizes what is the sense of beauty I am looking for. I am looking for all deformities and disproportions at the same time that I am captivated by the formal elements of beauty.

These are fragments, in the sense that Female Characters and Images and Music, all come together without a coherent Totality. Fragments, moments in times gone, characters in the course of history, real or imaginative.

Fragmenta

1. {Alma Mahler} 

The golden hair of Venus, her eyes contemplating the fate of whoever meets her gaze. She is confident, she is on top of the world, she is unbeatable in the game of Love. Tackling her is suicidal, but this type of death, under her gaze is a sweet death.

Liebst du um Schönheit,

O nicht mich liebe!

Liebe die Sonne,

Sie trägt ein gold’nes Haar!

If you love for beauty,

Oh, do not love me!

Love the sun,

She has golden hair!

(Detail from Botticelli’s “The birth of Venus, Ufizzi in Florence.)

2.(Mimi, La Boheme}

Golden brown hair, contemplation on the mirror, the bluish landscape offering a retreat from the heat of the internal scene. The confidence of Venus is gone. The young woman tries to see into her future. What does the mirror hold for her?

O soave fanciulla, o dolce viso
di mite circonfuso alba lunar,
in te ravviso il sogno
ch’io vorrei sempre sognar!

Oh! sweet little lady! Oh sweetest vision,
with moonlight bathing your pretty face!
The dream that I see in you
is the dream I’ll always dream!

(Young Woman in her Toilet, by Giovanni Bellini (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum)).

Gerhard Richter, Betty 1988

3. Everybody is talking at her, but Betty is looking away.

Everybody’s talking at me.
I don’t hear a word they’re saying,
Only the echoes of my mind.
People stopping staring,
I can’t see their faces,
Only the shadows of their eyes.

I’m going where the sun keeps shining
Thru’ the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes,
Backing off of the North East wind,
Sailing on summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone.

I’m going where the sun keeps shining
Thru’ the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes,
Backing off of the North East wind,
Sailing on summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone

(Almost five centuries later, Gerhard Richter’s daughter, Betty, poses unusually in this 1988 portrait. I have published this portrait for the first time in the blog in my 2010 post honoring women.)

David Schoerner, Martynka

4. Run Away, Turn Away

You leave in the morning
With everything you own
In a little black case
Alone on a platform
The wind and the rain
On a sad and lonely face

Mother will never understand
Why you had to leave
But the answers you seek
Will never be found at home
The love that you need
Will never be found at home

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.

Pushed around and kicked around
Always a lonely boy
You were the one
That they’d talk about around town
As they put you down

And as hard as they would try
They’d hurt to make you cry
But you never cried to them
Just to your soul
No you never cried to them
Just to your soul

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.

Cry , boy, cry…

You leave in the morning
With everything you own
In a little black case
Alone on a platform
The wind and the rain
On a sad and lonely face

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.

(Taking the lead from Richter’s unusual position for a portrait, David Schoerner, an American photographer, took this photo “Martynka (after Gerhard Richter’s Betty)”, honoring the oblique unusual pose of Richter’s Betty. I found this Martynka thanks to “Eloge de l’ Art par Alain Truong“).)

5. {Cio – Cio San (Madama Butterfly)}

Un bel dì, vedremo
levarsi un fil di fumo
sull’estremo confin del mare.
E poi la nave appare.
Poi la nave bianca
entra nel porto,
romba il suo saluto.

One good day, we will see
Arising a strand of smoke
Over the far horizon on the sea
And then the ship appears
And then the ship is white
It enters into the port, it rumbles its salute.

Cio-cio San asks the mirror the eternal question of beauty. This question is at the same time eternal and astonishingly temporal. She wants to know whether she is beautiful now, the very moment she is looking at the mirror. Tomorrow is too far away. “Am  I beautiful now?”

(The Japanese Master Hokusai painted a woman in front of her mirror. I like the somber background and the restrained tone of the colors.)

Alison Brady: Untitled 2006

6. Alice? Who the fuck is Alice

Brown hair covering the face, painted body inviting. Living painting, the canvas is now the human flesh.

Sally called when she got the word,
She said: “I suppose you’ve heard -
About Alice”.
Well I rushed to the window,
And I looked outside,
But I could hardly believe my eyes -
As a big limousine rolled slowly
Into Alice’s drive…

Oh, I don’t know why she’s leaving,
Or where she’s gonna go,
I guess she’s got her reasons,
But I just don’t want to know,
‘Cos for twenty-four years
I’ve been living next door to Alice.
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Twenty-four years just waiting for a chance,
To tell her how I’m feeling, maybe get a second glance,
Now I’ve got to get used to not living next door to Alice…
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Grew up together,
Two kids in the park,
Carved our initials,
Deep in the bark,
Me and Alice.
Now she walks through the door,
With her head held high,
Just for a moment, I caught her eye,
As a big limousine pulled slowly
Out of Alice’s drive.

Oh, I don’t know why she’s leaving,
Or where she’s gonna go,
I guess she’s got her reasons,
But I just don’t want to know,
‘Cos for twenty-four years
I’ve been living next door to Alice.
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Twenty-four years just waiting for a chance,
To tell her how I’m feeling, maybe get a second glance,
Now I gotta get used to not living next door to Alice…
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Sally called back, asked how I felt,
She said: “I know how to help -
Get over Alice”.
She said: “Now Alice is gone,
But I’m still here,
You know I’ve been waiting
For twenty-four years…”
And the big limousine disappeared…

I don’t know why she’s leaving,
Or where she’s gonna go,
I guess she’s got her reasons,
But I just don’t want to know,
‘Cos for twenty-four years
I’ve been living next door to Alice.
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Twenty-four years just waiting for a chance,
To tell her how I feel, and maybe get a second glance,
But I’ll never get used to not living next door to Alice…
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Now I’ll never get used to not living next door to Alice…

(The portrait is now mixed with the nude body. Coming to think of it, the face, the object or subject of the portrait, is always naked. But we do not say “this is a naked face”, because the face – even when made up – is always naked. Therefore we do not say it as it would be a tautology. In the rather elaborate photo taken by Alison Brady, the face is not only naked, but hidden. In Schoerner’s Martynka the face is not shown, but is not hidden. In Brady’s untitled woman the face is hidden on purpose, as if what matters most is the naked breasts that have been elaborately covered by a paint pattern. Therefore we have a juxtraposition not only of the portrait with the naked body, but of the photo with a painting, as the depicted body is painted.)

Roy Lichtenstein: Crying Girl

7. Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda

Cry, cry girl!!!

Piangi, piangi faciulla!

(Roy Lichtenstein’s crying girl brings pop art to the post. The face in this portrait is not naked, as it is dressed by tears.)

RB Kitaj: Sandra Fisher

8.  Love

I wanna be loved by you
just you and nobody else but you
I wanna be loved by you – alone.
Boo boo bee doo

I wanna be kissed by you
just you and nobody alse but you
I wanna be kissed by you – alone.
Boo boo bee doo

I couldn’t aspire
to anything higher
and to feel the desire
to make you my own.
Badum badum bee doodily dum ! Boo !

(No female portrait collection would be complete without RB Kitaj’s portrait of his beloved Sandra Fisher.)

RB Kitaj: Marynka smoking

9. Marynka, aka Lulu

You keep saying you’ve got something for me.
something you call love, but confess.
You’ve been messin’ where you shouldn’t have been a messin’
and now someone else is gettin’ all your best.

These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin’
and you keep losin’ when you oughta not bet.
You keep samin’ when you oughta be changin’.
Now what’s right is right, but you ain’t been right yet.

These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

You keep playin’ where you shouldn’t be playin
and you keep thinkin’ that you´ll never get burnt.
Ha!
I just found me a brand new box of matches yeah
and what he know you ain’t HAD time to learn.

These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

Are you ready boots? Start walkin’!

RB Kitaj: Marynka on her stomach

10. Lay lady lay

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colors you have in your mind
I’ll show them to you and you’ll see them shine

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile
His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean
And you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen

Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he’s standing in front of you

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead

(Kitaj also painted Marynka lying on her stomach.)

Aneta Bartos, untitled

11. Stairway to Heaven

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying the stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.
Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying the stairway to heaven.

There’s a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a tree by the brook, there’s a songbird who sings,
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it makes me wonder.

There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees,
And the voices of those who stand looking.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.

And it’s whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter.

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.
And it makes me wonder.

Your head is humming and it won’t go, in case you don’t know,
The piper’s calling you to join him,
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.

And she’s buying the stairway to heaven.

(Another photo by Bartos)

Gerhard Richter: Ema - Nude on a staircase

12. Ema

And I would do anything for love,
I’d run right into hell and back.
I would do anything for love,
I’ll never lie to you and that’s a fact.

But I’ll never forget the way you feel right now, oh no, no way.
And I would do anything for love,
Oh I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that,
No I won’t do that.

And some days it don’t come easy,
And some days it don’t come hard,
Some days it don’t come at all, and these are the days that never end.

And some nights you’re breathing fire.
And some nights you’re carved in ice.
Some nights you’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before or will again.

And maybe I’m crazy.
Oh it’s crazy and it’s true.
I know you can save me, no one else can save me now but you.

As long as the planets are turning.
As long as the stars are burning.
As long as your dreams are coming true, you’d better believe it!

That I would do anything for love,
And I’ll be there till the final act.
And I would do anything for love,
And I’ll take the vow and seal a pact.

But I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t go all the way, tonight.

And I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that.
No, I won’t do that!

I would do anything for love,
Anything you’ve been dreaming of,
But I just won’t do that.
[x2]

[Solo]
And some days I pray for silence,
And some days I pray for soul,
Some days I just pray to the god of sex and drums and rock ‘n’ roll!

And maybe I’m lonely,
That’s all I’m qualified to be.
There’s just one and only, one and only promise I can keep.

As long as the wheels are turning.
As long as the fires are burning.
As long as your prayers are coming true, you’d better believe it!

That I would do anything for love,
And you know it’s true and that’s a fact.
I would do anything for love,
And there’ll never be no turning back.

But I’ll never do it better than I do it with you, so long, so long.
And I would do anything for love,
Oh, I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that.
No, no, no, I won’t do…..

I would do anything for love.
Anything you’ve been dreaming of.
But I just won’t do that!
[x3]

But I’ll never stop dreaming of you,
Every night of my life.
No way.

And I would do anything for love.
But I won’t do that.
No I won’t do that.

[Girl]
Will you raise me up, will you help me down?
Will you get me right out of this God forsaken town?
Will you make it all a little less cold?

[Boy]
I can do that. Oh I can do that.

[Girl]
Will you cater to every fantasy I’ve got?
Will you hose me down with holy water, if I get too hot? Hot!
Will you take me places I’ve never known?

[Boy]
Now I can do that! Oh oh now, I can do that!

[Girl]
After awhile you’ll forget everything.
It was a brief interlude
And a midsummer night’s fling,
And you’ll see that it’s time to move on.

[Boy]
I won’t do that. I won’t do that.

[Girl}
I know the territory, I've been around,
It'll all turn to dust and will all fall down,
Sooner or later, you'll be screwing around.

[Boy]
I won’t do that. No, I won’t do that.

Anything for love,
Oh, I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that.
No, I won’t do that.

(Gerhard Richter’s painting )

Sarah Lucas: Nuds, 2010

13. Sweet Jane

Standing on the corner,
Suitcase in my hand
Jack is in his corset, and Jane is her vest,
And me I’m in a rock’n'roll band Hah!
Ridin’ in a Stutz Bear Cat, Jim
You know, those were different times!
Oh, all the poets they studied rules of verse
And those ladies, they rolled their eyes

Sweet Jane! Whoa! Sweet Jane, oh-oh-a! Sweet Jane!

I’ll tell you something
Jack, he is a banker
And Jane, she is a clerk
Both of them save their monies, ha
And when, when they come home from work
Oh, Sittin’ down by the fire, oh!
The radio does play
The classical music there, Jim
“The March of the Wooden Soldiers”
All you protest kids
You can hear Jack say, get ready, ah

Sweet Jane! Come on baby! Sweet Jane! Oh-oh-a! Sweet Jane!

Some people, they like to go out dancing
And other peoples, they have to work, Just watch me now!
And there’s even some evil mothers
Well they’re gonna tell you that everything is just dirt
Y’know that, women, never really faint
And that villains always blink their eyes, woo!
And that, y’know, children are the only ones who blush!
And that, life is just to die!
And, everyone who ever had a heart
They wouldn’t turn around and break it
And anyone who ever played a part
Oh wouldn’t turn around and hate it!

Sweet Jane! Whoa-oh-oh! Sweet Jane! Sweet Jane!

Heavenly wine and roses
Seems to whisper to her when he smiles
Heavenly wine and roses
Seems to whisper to her when she smiles
La lala lala la, la lala lala la
Sweet Jane
Sweet Jane
Sweet Jane

(The transfiguration of food objects into body parts was a post that brought Sarah Lucas to my blog. Her NUDS is a series of sculptures that I find intriguing. I quote from the “Auckland’s Art Festival 2011″ relevant web page:)

Sarah Lucas: Nuds, 2010

(Lucas’s new sculptural series, NUDS, consists of nylon tights stuffed with fluff and fashioned into ambiguous biomorphic forms. The coinage NUDS itself implies knots, nodes, or nudes and is evidence of Lucas’s use of puns, slang and language as elements of her sculpture.  The works brim with allusions, inviting different interpretations from the tender to the auto-erotic. Leaning towards primitivism and abstraction, they echo the work of iconic British sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. The sculptural approximation of the female form also links back to the gender-orientated works that defined Lucas’s early practice, in which assemblages of found objects became stand-ins for the female body.)

Heidegger-Weg (Heidegger’s Path) – Part II: The French Connection

It is now more than five months since I have posted the first part of my tribute to Heidegger, following my visit to his hometown and the mountain retreat in the Black Forest. It is time to continue with the second part, which focuses on two French friends who became very important for Heidegger after the Second World War. One is a philosopher, Jean Beufret, and the other is a poet, Rene Char. Until the 1970′s Heidegger had a major impact on French intellectual life and philosophy. His two French friends, in their own way, have played a major role in this.

Thor Seminar, 1968: Heidegger in the middle, Beaufret far right

The Philosopher Jean Beaufret

Jean Beaufret is the French philosopher who played a key role in introducing and developing Heidegger’s ideas in France. Heidegger’s ideas were introduced in France in the 20′s and 30′s, but became highly influencial only after the second world war. Heidegger and Beaufret met in 1946 in Todtnauberg. Beaufret introduced Heidegger to French existentialism, and posed to him some questions with regard to Sartre’s address “Existentialism is a Humanism”, given earlier in the year. Beaufret wrote the questions hastily on a piece of paper in a Paris cafe so as to be delivered by a friend ready to leave for Freiburg. Heidegger in response to these questions wrote the “Letter on Humanism” and dedicated it to Beaufret. It was written at a time of great personal struggle for Heidegger: he had just been indefinitely banned from teaching following the Nazi war-crimes hearings, and he had undergone a kind of emotional breakdown as a result.

Jean Beaufret and Martin Heidegger

Beaufret taught philosophy at the Ecole Nationale Superieure from 1946 to 1962 and was in the core of Parisian intellectual life, being friend with among others Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, and Louis Althusser. In 1955, with Kostas Axelos, a Greek philosopher who was teaching in Paris, Beaufret organized the conference “What is Philosophy?”, in which Heidegger was welcomed by the leading French Philosophers.

Beufret edited and published some of the letters he exchanged with Heidegger in four volumes of “Dialogue with Heidegger”. The first volume is on Greek Philosophy.

The Poet Rene Char

It is not an accident that two of Heidegger’s most celebrated acquaintances are poets: the French Rene Char and the Romanian – German – Jewish Paul Celan.  As Heidegger observes in “Letter on Humanism”:

“Be[-ing], as what has come down <to us> which becomes truth, remains hidden. But the fate of the world is presaged in poetry, without its having as yet emerged as the history of be[-ing].”

In 1955, Jean Beaufret introduced Heidegger to the French poet Rene Char, during one of his to France. Prior to his arrival in France, Heidegger stated that the person he most wanted to meet was Char, whom he regarded as the most important contemporary thinker. They became friends and met many times in Provence, the birthplace of Char.

Rene Char and Martin Heidegger

One of his “surrealist” poem collections, written in the 30′s is “The Hammer without a Master”. Some of its verses, were set to music by Pierre Boulez. Here is one of them.

The furious handicraft

The red caravan on the edge of the nail
And corpse in the basket
And plowhorses in the horseshoe
I dream my head on the point of my knife is Peru

“There are those who leave behind poisons while others leave remedies. Difficult to tell which is which. You have to taste.
The immediate yes or no is healthy in spite of the corrections that will follow.”

[Rene Char: In a crude mountain shelter, translated by Susanne Dubroff]

Char has influenced Heidegger deeply. As Michael Worton comments “…this friendship led Heidegger to write his Gedachtes sequence of poems, which are among his last writings and bear the marks of Char’s poetic practice of thinking-through-language”.

Rene Char

Heidegger was so captivated by the landscape in Thor, the place of residence of Char, that he organized philosophy seminars there in 1966, 1968, and 1969. In the mornings the participants would sit under the trees in front of the house and discuss the topic of the seminar, while in the afternoons they would visit the surroundings. One topic was young Hegel’s words: “A torn stocking is better than a darned one; not so self-consciousness”. Another one discussed Marx’s eleventh Feuerbach thesis: “The philosophers have merely interpreted the world. The issue is to change it.”

 

 

“Arantzan zu?!” (Thou, among the thorns?!) – The Basilica and Sanctuary of Arantzazu in the Basque Country

According to the legend, these were the words of the shepherd Rodrigo de Balanzategui, who discovered the sculpture of the Virgin in a thorn-bush in the Onati county in the South of the Basque Country.

These words named the place Arantzazu, a holy place for the Basques, where they have erected a Sanctuary.

I visited the Sanctuary of Arantzazu more than a month ago, during a day that the skies were grey and the water was falling continuously, all day long.  As we approach the Virgin’s Assumption on the 15th of August, I felt is would be appropriate to share with you some of my pictures from the Basque Madonna.

The whole area of the Sanctuary is developed for people. You can walk, rest, enjoy the natural environment, visit the Church and the other edifices. The Basilica was rebuilt in 1951, when it was decided that no further extension of the old building made sense.

The Church is modern. The imposing belfry tower has a minimal cross on top.

The main entrance of the Church is modern but powerful.

The spikes of the facade are “thorns”.

The four doors of the main entrance were made by Eduardo Chillida. In the page of Onati dedicated to Arantzazu, we read: “The four doors that provide access to the church were designed by Eduardo Chillida and seem to be almost below ground, being set at the bottom of a steep staircase.”

“With their mineral appearance, the doors suggest the entrance to the underground world, an impression which is further reinforced inside the church by the massive high altarpiece, which measures over 600 square metres. The altarpiece was designed by Lucio Muñoz and is carved in wood of many different colors.”

The 14 Apostles guarding the entrance are the work of Jorge Oteiza. The Bilbao Guggenheim organized in 2005 a major retrospective of Oteiza’s work. We read in the Exhibition program: ” In the same year (1950), he began work tentatively on a major commission for the statuary of the basilica at Aránzazu, a huge undertaking finally realized in 1969. Here, religious motifs are depersonalized; figures are emptied, opened to space, and filled with spiritual content.”

The Pieta crowns the 14 Apostles.

The crypt is accessible from the inside of the Basilica. It is utterly modern, and captivating. The Onati site comments: “The crypt, decorated by Nestor Basterretxea, contains 18 murals of exceptional expressive strength, which have a somewhat aggressive use of color.”

The 15th century statute of the Virgin.

May her Mercy envelop and deliver us more true and free to the world.

May her Grace help us to sustain pain and sorrow.

May her Heart keep us warm in the cold and dark terrain of solitude and remembrance.

Exiting the Chillida doors.

Time to go.

Time to get lost in the mountains and the clouds.

Chillida: Gruss an (Hommage à) Heidegger

Δοκεί δε μέτα τι είναι και

χαλεπόν ληφθήναι ο τόπος

“It appears, however, to be something overwhelming and hard to grasp, the topos (that is place, space)”

Aristotle, Physics, Book IV

The Basque Sculptor Eduardo Chillida in the early 1960′s engaged into a dialog with the German Philosopher Martin Heidegger. When the two men met, they discovered that from different angles, they were “working” with Space in the same way.

Chillida has been quoted as saying: “My whole Work is a journey of discovery in Space. Space is the liveliest of all, the one that surrounds us.” He has challenged the Empty and embraced the Horizon. One might say that his mission in life was to give life to Emptiness.

In one of his interviews, Chillida said: “Heidegger wrote a book, The Art and the Space, that discussed my work: the idea of space as a living space that is in relation to man, and the idea that sculpture reveals the exact character of a space. Heidegger asked for my thoughts because he was astonished to find so many relations between his ideas and my ideas, translated into sculpture.”

Heidegger wrote: “We would have to learn to recognize that things themselves are places and do not merely belong to a place,” and that sculpture is thereby “…the embodiment of places.”

Against a traditional view of space as an empty container for discrete bodies, these writings understand the body as already beyond itself in a world of relations and conceive of space as a material medium of relational contact. Sculpture shows us how we belong to the world, a world in the midst of a technological process of uprooting and homelessness. Heidegger suggests how we can still find room to dwell therein.

Hommage à Heidegger.
Holzschnitt.
Van der Koelen 70016. Signiert und nummeriert. Exemplar 98/100. Auf Japanbütten. 13,8 x 17 cm (5,4 x 6,6 in). Papier: 20,8 x 17 cm (8,1 x 6,6 in).
Beilage zur Vorzugsausgabe des Buches “Martin Heidegger/Eduardo Chillida – Die Kunst und der Raum” von Erhard Kästner, St. Gallen 1970. Gedruckt von der Erker-Presse, St. Gallen, erschienen im Erker-Verlag, St. Gallen. [RS].

Chillida was asked and accepted to prepare the illustrations for the book that was first published in 1969. The illustration above comes from the book.

Gruss an Hiedegger, Frankfurt am Main (1994)

In 1994 Chillida completed his sculpture “Hommage to Heidegger”. The sculpture was installed in open air in Frankfurt an Main.