Patron Saint #11: Frida Kahlo: Portraits of La Santa Muerte

Autorretrato con collar de espinas (Self Portrait with Necklace of Thorns) - oil on canvas - 1940, Frida Kahlo
(Apart from this image which is posted at its maximum size, all others on this page
 can be clicked to enlarge.)

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”

- Frida Kahlo; quote found here.

__________________________________________

I've not been a huge fan of most film and television fare in recent years, so I tend to miss a lot of things. And, when Julie Taymor's Frida (2002) appeared on the tube several months ago, I was a liitle hesitant; not convinced that Selma Hayek (or, anyone, for that matter) could pull off the heavy title role. Happily, I was wrong, and, for the most part, I enjoyed the film. And, it renewed my interest in possibly one of the most celebrated, venerated - and, possibly least understood - artists of the past century, Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 - July 13, 1954).

As it was, Frida Kahlo's story came up a few times in the autumn of last year, during research for "Dia(s) de Los Muertos". At first, I thought it was amusing that, while googling "The Day(s) of the Dead," Kahlo's imagery - and photos of Kahlo herself - kept popping up on my computer monitor, but, after exploring some of these links, and doing a little investigation of my own, an intriguing picture began to emerge. Ultimately, Frida Kahlo might not be associated with the Days of the Dead for superficial reasons. As it was, I begin to suspect, in many ways, not only was she aware of La Santa Muerte (or Santisima Muerte) the patron Saint of Death - in spite of the fact that she had not come from, nor lived in the lower class barrios - she, in many ways, identified with her and, possibly, even paid tribute to her, along with the Saint's Mesoamerican forebear, the goddess of death, Mictecacihuatl. Moreover, as documentation of contemporary Santa Muerte worship just happened to originate around the middle of the 20th century - anywhere from the 1940s to the 1960s (Kahlo herself died in 1954) - I suspect that, not only was Frida Kahlo an early contributor (albeit unwittingly) to the religion's more recent form (see here and here), she has become, in a sense, one of the saint's corporeal embodiments...

The Language of the Birds (& the Memory of Sound): Automatism

Wings of Light - oil on canvas - 1984, Roberto Matta

"Fulcanelli's main point, the key to unraveling the larger mystery of alchemy and the cathedrals, lies in an understanding of what he calls the "phonetic law" of the "spoken cabala," or the "Language of the Birds."

"What unsuspected marvels we should find, if we knew how to dissect words, to strip them of their barks and liberate the spirit, the divine light, which is within," Fulcanelli writes. He claims that in our day this is the natural language of the outsiders, the outlaws and heretics at the fringes of society.

It was also the "green language" of the Freemasons ("All the Initiates expressed themselves in cant," Fulcanelli reminds us) who built the art gothique of the cathedrals. Ultimately the "art cot," or the "art of light," is derived from the Language of the Birds, which seems to be a sort of Ur-language taught by both Jesus and the ancients. It is also mentioned in the Sufi text, entitled "The Conference of the Birds," by Attar the Chemist."

- excerpt from Reading the Green Language of Light  by Vincent Bridges

"Whilst some artists emphasised automatism’s role in discovering hidden aspects of the artist’s psyche, others, such as Roberto Matta, valued it as a means for uncovering hidden aspects of objects and for the exploration of what lies beyond the confines of the visible world. Its optical image is just one aspect of the existence of an object. Galaxies, crystals and living matter go through processes of creation, existence and destruction. They exist in time, change with the passage of time and can be observed from multiple perspectives. Conventionally, however, they are only depicted at a fixed point in their history, from a single point in space and, inevitably, with a palette limited to colours which reflect light of a visible wavelength.

To his attempts to use automatism to give form to those things which cannot be seen except as an inner vision, Matta gave the name ‘psychological morphology’, a phrase Colquhoun used to describe her paintings of the 1940s.  For the painters involved in this theorising – primarily Matta, Esteban Frances and Gordon Onslow-Ford – the possibilities were, literally, endless; ‘It is a Hell-Paradise where all is possible’ wrote Onslow-Ford. He continued; ‘The details of the farthest star can be as apparent as those of your hand.  Objects can be extended in time so that the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly can be observed at a glance."

- excerpt from Richard Shillitoe's excellent online article: Occult Surrealist: Ithell Colquhoun and automatism

"We are still living under the rule of logic, that, of course, is what I am driving at. But in our day, logical procedures are only applicable in solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism still in fashion only allows us to consider facts directly related to our own experience. The aims of logic, in contrast, escape us. Pointless to add that our very experience finds itself limited. It paces about in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to free it. It leans, it too, on immediate utility, and is guarded by common sense. Under the flag of civilisation, accompanied by the pretext of progress, we have managed to banish from the spirit everything that might rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, fancy, forbidding any kind of research into the truth which does not conform to accepted practice. It was by pure chance, it seems, that a part of our mental world, and to my mind the most important, with which we pretended to be no longer concerned, was recently brought back to light."

- excerpt from Andre Breton's 1924 Surrealist Manifesto

***

M'onde - oil on canvas - 1989, Roberto Matta

(Continuing where I left off), have you ever come across a particular scene (via a movie or some other form of entertainment)... which goes something like this: a man is walking down a city street shouting oaths to an invisible entity, and the passersby think he's mad... deranged,* but, in reality, the invisible entity actually exists - the man really is communicating with someone or something - and the passersby are merely missing the overall picture (?). If it isn't already, it ought to be the standard metaphor for all creatures "paranormal". Ghosts, aliens, fairies, Yeti, whatever. Some of us see them, some of us don't. The ones who do are immediately labeled delusional... while the ones who don't - for the most part - file their nails and sit complacently on their sofas, in the safety of a bedroom or living room or media room, watching bogus "reality" shows on whatever pixelated screens they possess. But, meanwhile, there's an elephant in that room. Or, maybe a bird. A wild bird which has flown into the room and has begun plummeting against the walls in panic and desperation. And, because no one knows quite what to do - and the program is over anyway - they wander into another room and close the door.

End of metaphor.

Artists, on the other hand, stay in that room... with the elephant... with the bird... with no pixelated screens to distract them. That is, unless they're a certain breed of digital artist, but, at this point, the screen is blank, apart from maybe a shadow of a large ear, or dim trails from a flapping wing, or the bright glints of light on a splintered beak. Images from the unconscious are hard to pin down. They're anomalies in a different language... poetry in unspoken words. You might say, (re: quote above) an unspoken cabala, the true language of the birds... and, invisible birds, at that.

Patron Saint #9: Kay Sage - "I Walk Without Echo"

The Instant - Oil on canvas - Kay Sage, 1949 - Mattatuck Museum, CT

“I can’t tell you what it would mean to most people, but I do know what it means to me. It’s a sort of showing what’s inside - things half mechanical, half alive. The mountain itself can represent almost anything - a human being, life, the world, any fundamental thing.” 

- Kay Sage, Time magazine, March 13, 1950, on her painting "The Instant"

"Consider Kay Sage (1898-1963) the anti-Thomas Kinkade. She was America’s great painter of menace, dread, and the post-apocalyptic future. Her trademark was “the sulphurous light before a thunderstorm,” observed biographer Régine Tessier. Like a thunderstorm, Sage’s art could be depressing and exhilarating. A true contrarian might nominate Sage as the best of all the Western Hemisphere surrealists."

- excerpt from Kay Sage, Painter of an Odd Future - William Poundstone

via an April 30, 2012 Art Info article


"And what's in it for me my pretty young thing?
Why should I whistle, when the caged bird sings?
If you lose a wager with the king of the sea
You'll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me"

- Verse from "Soul Cages" - Sting - 1991

***

The "anti-Thomas Kinkade" is an apt description for Kay Sage, American Surrealist, who found her artistic voice in Paris in the late 1930's, at the age of 44. Counterpoint to Kincaide's illustrations of lush, kitschy cottages in idealized, antiquated country settings, we have Sage's silent and spare views of some timeless, alien stratosphere. Then again, in comparison to the veritable cottage industry (pun intended) generated by Thomas Kincade (January 19, 1958 – April 6, 2012) Sage's subliminal messages on canvas are relatively obscure.

"! Walk Without Echo" was the title of the posthumous exhibit of Sage's collection in Mattatuck Museum, Connecticut, 2007. I'm not sure if this line was taken from one of her poems, a journal entry, or the creation of the curator, but it, too, is an apt description of Sage's work, and, perhaps, an ironic illusion to her legacy as an artist. (Regarding all images which follow - click on for a larger view.)
 

In the Third Sleep - Oil on Canvas - Kay Sage,1944 - The Art Institute of Chicago

Despite having been associated with the coveted circle of artists that surrounded Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism, in the early half of the 20th century, Sage was a peripheral figure, never to know the encouragement and acceptance afforded to male members of that regime. Of course, the Surrealist movement was famous for its inherent misogynistic stance, but Sage was especially unpopular. To begin with, she hailed from the upper-crust  bourgeoisie, and had been married previously to an Italian nobleman. Her presence in Paris was only made possible by an inheritance from her deceased father. As it so happened, she was intensely disliked as a matter of course by the other artists and their wives, especially when she married Yves Tanguy, a Surrealist illuminary. Their alliance apparently enraged Breton to such a degree that his deep friendship with Tanguy eventually evaporated in 1949. All of this, in spite of the fact, that it was, albeit indirectly, through Sage that Breton, and a number of other Surrealists, were able to flee Paris at the beginning of World War II, and relocate to New York. Apparently, even as guests to the Tanguy's eventual home in Woodbury, Connecticut, Kay Sage would not win any lasting friendships within the Surrealist cabal. As late as 1974, and more than a decade after Sage's death, Enrico Donati still found it necessary to remark:

"Tanguy was the painter. I mean, we were the friends of Tanguy because he was the painter, the master. She was his wife, but we went there, to Woodbury, to see Tanguy. She was Mrs. Tanguy so she was there, too, but he was our friend. She was the friend of nobody." * 

The journalists of the day were no better. After a Sage painting  had won 1st prize in the Eastern States Exposition - in which Tanguy had also exhibited -  in Connecticut in 1951, the Hartford Times reported the news under the headline: "Housewife Wins Art Exhibition".

Danger, Construction Ahead- Oil on canvas - Kay Sage, 194o - Yale University Art Gallery

As tragic a figure as Kay Sage was in many respects, I think in the last analysis, her work resonates more with the 21st century zeitgeist than most of her more celebrated peers. And, unlike them - with the exception of Tanguy and Matta - her paintings portray an inner reality witnessed, and masterfully documented, as opposed to a number of Surrealistic creations which were contrived primarily to shock and/or entertain. We may not be able to name the world in which Kay Sage's psyche wandered, but that she wandered there is something we immediately accept. We may not, for that matter, find her observations of this enigmatic world altogether pleasant - few have; often describing her images as dismal and devoid of life - but we never question their validity. My personal interpretation, however, is that "life", or its metaphor, is certainly apparent in her work. It is organic life which is represented by the swathes of wind-blown, or, preternaturally suspended fabric, undulating silently and phantom-like within each of her eerie linear vistas. Presented as a life-form in this way, the fabric takes on an immortal aspect - an almost sentient presence - while, at the same time, transcends the limits imposed by both gender and species. Often, Sage's vistas have the ambience of seascapes receding to a blank, ocean-like horizon. Upon closer inspection, however, the backgrounds are not comprised of water at all, but are of a static substance, engraved with geometric abstractions.  This is especially true in the painting "In the Third Sleep" (second image from the top), a strange image which brings to mind a landing strip on an almost Martian-like planet.**

  As for it, and the image "Danger, Construction Ahead" (directly above), both are examples of paintings that may have spawned half a dozen contemporary Sci-Fi illustrators, despite having been painted in the 1940's.

On the First of March, Crows Begin to Search - Oil on canvas - Kay Sage,1947 - Wellesley College, MA

That being said, most of Sage's contemporaries describe her as being introverted, distant, and somewhat chilly in comparison to Tanguy, the proverbial life of the party. And comparing the work of the two artists, one might find evidence of this. Both artists drew their inspiration from inner  - almost paranormal - dimensions (see this description of Tanguy's work), and both artists, to some degree, were influenced by the early work of de Chirico. But, whereas Tanguy's biomorphic shapes (see "Phantoms" below) are somewhat whimsical, Sage's strange figures generally are not (with the possible exception of the image above). Later in her career, she developed an attraction to a variety of latticework (see detail below), solemn structures, in which her biomorphic fabrics are trapped within... veritable "Soul Cages" looming over a murky, slack water.

(Left) Phantoms - Oil on Canvas - YvesTanguy, 1928
(Center) Photo of Kay Sage with her painting, Suspension Bridge for Swallows, 1957 
(Right) Detail of Tomorrow is Never - Oil on canvas - Kay Sage, 1955 - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

As it stands, had I written this post 20 years ago, Patron Saint # 9 would've probably been Kay Sage's husband, Yves Tanguy - who, incidentally, was both friend and mentor to Matta, Patron Saint #2 - the more celebrated Surrealist. I hadn't even known about Kay Sage 20 years ago. Why is this? Well, for the same reason I hadn't known about Surrealist painter, Leonora Carrington***, the lover of the Surrealist, Max Ernst, 20 years ago... nor, for that matter, Surrealist artist and designer, Dorothea Tanning, Ernst's second wife. Female artists who bonded with male artists in the 20th Century did so at the risk of anonymity, most especially in the Surrealist community, where women may have been idealized as muses and objets d'art in themselves, but thoroughly dismissed as intellectual and creative equals. Another case in point, the Surrealist, Gerrie von Pribosic Gutmann, wife of the photographer and painter, John Gutmann. Ever hear of her? I'm willing to bet you haven't. She has a handful of paintings in cyberspace and no Wiki entry. A number of links to Imogen Cunninghams's photographic portrait of Gerri Gutmann is what you're most likely to find in a search.

Photo of John and Gerri Gutmann found here

Not all Surrealists in the dual role of Surrealist wife/Surrealist artist fell into obscurity, however. Frida Kahlo (deservedly) was to eventually outshine her husband, Diego Rivera, as the world slipped into the 21st century. Then again, if it means anything, both Carrington and Tanning out-lived Max Ernst by decades - Carrington passing away in 2011 at the age of 94, and Tanning, earlier this year at the age of 101 - both artists remaining prolific and relevant till their very last dance. Sage and Gutmann, however, did not fare so well. Eight years after the death of Tanguy in 1955 (due to a cerebral hemorrhage), Kay Sage, despondent, and in ill health, fatally shot herself through the heart, January, 1963. As for Gerrie Gutmann, her suicide is currently no more than a mere caption to one of her husband's photographs online.

And, once again, referring to the "enlightenment" one is likely to find in cyberspace, we only have to look at the roster of artists included in Wiki's definitive collection: WikiPaintings, Visual Art Encyclopedia. Neither Sage, Carrington, Tanning (nor, for that matter, my previous female "Patron Saints":  Alice Pelton, Louise Nevelson, Vali Meyers, and Sakiko Ide) are included. (Note: Thomas Kincaide, on the other hand, is.)

Below is a video featuring a collection of Kay Sage's work. The video, along with a content description and short biography of Sage can be found here.

For those who might be interested, Kay Sage's posthumously published memoirs - "China Eggs" - covering the period from 1910-1935 can be found for sale in limited form on the net. Apparently this is a paperback edition published in 1996. However, I note that a mysterious hardcover edition does exist, supposedly published in 1955. Very curious.

* My major source of reference for this post, and, for which I am grateful, is Judith D. Souther's biography of Sage, A House of Her Own, Kay Sage, Solitary Surrealist.

** (Footnote added 12/10/12) Regarding Sage's "static substance, engraved with geometric abstractions", it occurs to me now that they might also appear as the detritus in the foreground of the first image "The Instant"... in this case, appearing as the dismantled platform. The word which first came to my mind, however, was "deconstructed", which has an interesting definition which may or may not be relative, but, I'll copy it here anyway: "to analyze (a text or a linguistic or conceptual system) by deconstruction, typically in order to expose its hidden internal assumptions and contradictions and subvert its apparent significance or unity."

*** Leonora Carrington - Patron Saint # 8  Note: The post linked to here has been updated with videos for both Carrington and Patron Saint #7, Remedios Varo.

Here are individual links for examples of the following artist's works: Kay Sage, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, and Gerrie Gutmann.

For other listings of Surrealist women, try here, and here.

The Language of Form - Part 2

Fractal, Form and Field - the Inevitable Symmetries

The interesting thing about fractals (example shown above) is that they illustrate more than just pretty patterns. They, too, employ the same language of form we're discussing, as well as mathematical equations and/or sequences. A new science - the Science of Chaos - is gradually emerging. and fractal theories have been absorbed within that paradigm. But don't be deceived. "Chaos" in this sense, is really the intimations of a higher order, specifically the orders of symmetry, and the fractal nature of the physical world at large. Fractals, in other words, bridge the micro to the macro, and do so by the marriage of mathematics to the language of form. Symmetry, on the other hand, has become the catch-word across the board; in all areas of science, as well as art, music, history and societal analysis. Symmetry, in other words, is a very transdimensional term. It describes both the singular entity and the encompassing field. It can take us from a simple geometric figure to a parallel universe. We can follow it from the atomic to the galactic, from the child's "cat's cradle" to the Super-string universe and beyond.

Artists, of course, generally take both the fractals, the strange geometry, and the form language for granted in their work - for them it is an instinct - and this has been the case since pre-history. Whether it was a lattice or spiral drawn on a cave wall or the crystalline structures tiled onto the walls of the great mosques, artists, intuitively, have generally "been there first" on an unconscious level.

For another intimation of the modern "fractal" for instance, we need only look at some of the illustrations of German naturalist, Ernst Haeckel, (1834-1919). Consciously, he was "drawing from life"... but, observing his work (an example is shown above), I can't help but feel that, once again, on a more unconscious and metaphysical level he was trying to intuitively connect the dots, so to speak, to a larger, more profound picture... the organization of the organism, if you will, its inherent symmetry, and its relation to all phenomenal form.

When it comes to attempting to define a form language, however, it is a mistake to take any form too literally and so superficially that one overlooks the primary source - and/or the larger picture. I'm afraid that those in scientific fields and mathematical fields often have a habit of doing just this. For example, take the Sierpinski "gasket" (my version) shown above. It needs no explanation for the mathematician, but for an artist, myself in particular, the complexity in which it's presented and the way in which it's developed and described is rather daunting and off-putting. In actuality, this triangle describes a portion of a very simple grid, the very same grid from which the Platonic solids emerge. This grid, in turn, is created from a very simple field of inter-penetrating circles, the very same field from which my geometrical figures - the "Platonic" cyclohedra - arose and/or emerged (in 1984). (A graphic of these figures is shown below. Sorry, I no longer have my documentation of these figures online, as there was a decided lack of interest previously shown; in the U.S.A., that is. Interestingly, some of my related diagrams were published in China in 2007, with my permission.) 

The Cyclohedra

The point I'm trying to make, using simple geometrical observations, is that the language of form is inherently transdimensional. Both figuratively and demonstratively it is an emergent - and yes, I am referring to the theories of David Bohm - and, as such, describe form as both a singular entity and the component of a field. In other words, there is symmetry, and then again there is field symmetry. There is the stratum of one dimension as the component of higher dimensions, and what we "see" and cannot "see" is relative to our placement in that stratum... a sort of "Flatland" fable.


Fractals, and geometric observations aside, the interesting thing about more transfigurative forms in artwork - Dali and H. R. Giger come to mind - alchemical symbols and drawings, even the illustrative work (like Haeckel's) often have a "dirtiness" about them. This type of "dirtiness", I think, is the type of "dirtiness" Matta refers to when he speaks of "hallucinations" - that is, inspired images which are inseparable from the unconscious repertoire from which they arise. That symbols from unconscious and imaginal origins ultimately obey the same "laws", the same unwritten code that is used to represent the actual, phenomenal world, is our "cause for pause", so to speak. In my opinion, it intimates one way in which we might someday come to understand the Transdimensional quality of the form language, whereby shapes, patterns, fractals, and "diagrams of forces" become the keys to unlock perceptional doors to a more profound concept of space - and its hidden symmetries - that is, as a tissue, a fabric, a synchronistic and living connective.


Credits:


Fractal form: found here.
Mosque photo: found here.
Ernst Haeckel illustration: found here.


Also: another Fractal link.


"Language of Form" post links: Part I, Part 3

Patron Saint #2: Roberto Matta

“We should one day represent what we don’t see.”

Roberto Matta

"Visionary artist Roberto Matta (1911-2002) was arguably one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His high profile association with poet Andre Breton’s group of Surrealists only initiated his own personal evolution and style, which culminated in addressing the realm of the subconscious and the invisible. Thus, Matta is the patron saint of so-called “metaphysical art,” the graphic depiction of energies beyond the physical realities of everyday life.

“Matta – The Eye of a Surrealist” is a brilliant documentary by filmmaker Jane Crawford, which shows the artist exploring and simultaneously explaining the creative process. The film is also a cinematic retrospective of Matta’s life and his work with interview commentaries by art historians, curators and fellow artists.

Trying to explain his own personal creative process, Matta says, “If you start with a white thing [referring to a canvas or piece of paper], you are going to project things you already know. Make it dirty somehow and then you will start using hallucinations.”

These “hallucinations” are simply the power of imagination as when “people see in a cloud an elephant and begin to hallucinate to suggest something [to their mind.]” We make our own realities in other words, says Matta, and art is the expression of bringing the hidden into the visible."

- Uri Dowbenko - excerpt from “Matta – The Eye of a Surrealist: Mapping the Dimensions of Consciousness" - 2005

Chilean artist, Roberto Matta, I think, is often overlooked as a Surrealist, because his work never fit comfortably in that category. You can see in the article above that his work has been sited as "Visionary", "Metaphysical", and Surrealist. Ultimately, for the artist especially, this presents a problem. Even by my own definitions, Matta, like myself, was both a Transfigurist and Transdimensionalist. Ultimately, I think Transfigurism (and you'll note I'm reverting to the more simplified terms) and Transdimensionalism are one and the same; Transdimensionalism being the main category and Transfigurism being a subset in that category.


Matta is certainly one of the "patron saints" of this blog. I consider him one of the first true transdimensionalists. For more views of his amazing work and his hundreds of paintings, visit Tim Rock's amazing Matta gallery found here (this link also appears on the sidebar of this blog).

(Oil paintings by Matta in this post... Upper: Let All Flowers Bloom - 1952; Middle: Untitled -1959; Lower: Dar a la vida una luz - 1970.)