windows through the soul

Paul Klee's work has been said to have created, through its pictographic forms, a mythology outside and beyond any one, or particular culture. His forms are variable, archetypal, and have multiple meanings. The simplicity of Klee's forms allows for a complex ambiguity. Simplifying forms like the human figure or structures into basic signifiers provides freedom and openess. When there is abstraction there is more possibility or potential for viewer participation; because the work isn't based within a context of illusion but representation. Simplified or symbolic forms have traditionally been referred to as "primitive". I was taught in school that Medieval art looked the way it did(flat and disproportionate) because it was made in the "dark ages"; people were uneducated barbarians who weren't sophisticated enough to deal with perspective. This is lazy thinking. The middle ages were a time of "reformation". The church was avidly trying to convert pagan peoples. Force isn't the most effective or Christian way of doing this(although obviously not always the way chosen) so what's left is the appropriation of key events, dates, styles, etc. Most people know that this is why in Catholicism Christmas is around the winter solstice. Light festivals in nature religions during the darkest time of year conveniently fit into the Christian idea of Jesus as the light of the world. Nature religions are just what they sound like, about nature, they are a Cthonian focus on the cycles observed around us and how humans fit into that cycle. Rather than an Appolonian Christian idea that nature is lower than the spirit and inherently inferior because it "dies" and the spirit is "eternal". Simplification of the world around you into symbols provides a language that is easily reproduced, understood, and projected. Doesn't it make more sense that this is where this style of religious iconography may stem from? What we are talking about here are priorities, not knowledge. Folk art is more in line with practicalities and typically seen as a lesser form than that of academic or fine art. Art that I find interesting is idiosyncratic. And if you consider Folk art any art that comes from a non-academic context, then a lot of folk art comes from a very deep, personal, and idiosyncratic place. That, combined with an artists intuitive sense of beauty, is more interesting than a masterwork from the Renaissance that, beautiful and illusory as it may be, seduces us in a way that is still sensual; one's body still gets involved in a very Cthonian way. We want to touch it, gaze at it in admiration and declare how majestic it is.

After reading Shrines, Curiosities, and the Rhetoric of Display by Stephen Bann I was thinking about medieval triptychs and the Renaissance practice of the cabinet of curiosities in relation to a piece I did recently. The paintings I've been doing are very simple. They remind me of Paul Klee. I put a few of them along with Xerox photos I've taken in a wall mounted poster display unit like that you would find at a head shop or department store. What I find similar in medieval triptychs is that the wings are often hinged and double sided; they are meant to be opened and closed like a cabinet. Also, they almost always depict religious scenes from the bible, typically the crucifixion, which suggests the containment of a utopic vision. The poster display unit is interactive. With 15 double sided wings there is a possibility of 30 works on view to be flipped through. The usual use for the unit is to present posters that are for sale. The posters in the wings at department stores represent utopic vision as well. Each wing encapsulates a desire; whether it be the whimsical world of cartoons, a sports star, a psychedelic black-light poster, a musician/band, or a scantily clad female/male. People flip through the case and find what they want; something that is a signifier of themselves. It is a literal construct of the process of looking at art. It is as Bann so elegantly puts it, a "sacred prototype", "an endlessly transformed and transforming agent". There is a metaphysics of presence contained here. The display is a terminal where one passes through their desires. Like a window through which the eye must pass to reach its goal.

Triptych of the Family Moreel 1484 by Hans Memling

Bann sites Norman Bryson's use of this metaphor in his book Word and Image. Bryson describes this situation as resulting in "the supremacy of the discursive over the figural". Bann goes on to say that: "With the irresistable(sic) rise of the theory and practice of perspective from the Renaissance onwards, the Word will become predominant: color and form will be valued not in their own right, but only insofar as they enable and facilitate the telling of a sacred tale." Color and form are their own sacred tale. The question is, what's yours?
Paul Klee's epitaph: "Here lies the painter Paul Klee, somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual, but far from close enough."