Formal Definitions and Myths in my Paintings

Leonardo, Vol. 6, pp. 53- 55. Pergamon Press 1973. Printed in Great Britain FORMAL DEFINITIONS AND MYTHS IN MY PAINTINGS Ethel Schwabacher* 'It is repugnant to me to do as so often is done, namely, to speak inhumanly about a great deed, as though some thousands of years were an immense distance ; I would rather speak humanly about it, as though it had occurred yesterday, letting only the greatness be the distance, which either exalts or condemns.' KI ERKEGAARD [I] In the 'Divine Comedy' [2] Dante described himselfas walking down the dark descent into Purgatory with the great Latin poet, Virgil. Many years ago, when reading Dante, I was entranced by this method ofjuxtaposing the past and the present and felt that such a method could well be applied to painting. In the poem, Dante and Virgil are brought together, to coexistence, without regard to the difference in time and the fact that Virgil had been dead over a thousand years. Was it not 'wild' and 'unreal' to ignore or put aside the usual, stable, logical connections -accepting and even wooing the poetic ones? And yet, as poetry it became real: Dante and Virgil belonged together in the poet's mind as a vision of relationship and perfect unity. And the mind had become its own subject matter. My interest in the lyric/epic approach was further ~timulated some years later by my reading Kierkeguard 's 'Fear and Trembling' [1]. His adaptation of the story of Isaac and Abraham contained a similar awareness of the presentness of the past. The painting resulting from my thoughts on this story is shown in Figure 1. And, indeed, a similar pattern seemed to emerge as I read Sophocles' 'Oedipus' [3]. I felt a clear continuity between Oedipus, the Greek king who lived in 500 B.c., and Freud's reincarnation of him as the Oedipus fantasy in all ofus :he was still the same one who, submerged in his unfortunate fate, killed his father, married his mother, fathered his own brothers and sisters, brought disgrace on his homeland, was exiled to a distant land and there died a glorious death. The painting shown in Figure 2 (cf. color plate) was based on this story. These perceptions led me to create a series of paintings based on Greek myths, 'rehumanized'- *Artist living at 1192 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10028, U.S.A. (Received 20 December 1971.) 53 Fig. 1. 'Of Abraham and Isaac', acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 in, 1969. (Photo : O. E. Nelson, New York.) to return to Kierkegaard's remark. In glvmg thought to the application of the epic mode to painting, I realized, of course, that many painters in the past had attempted this. Giotto, for instance, provided a marvelous example of the bringing together of elements important to poetic thought in such a way that they seemed inevitable, though they were in fact incorrectly juxtaposed from a representational point of view. What delight one felt to find all elements or images 'sink in' to the pool of expression, expanding it, causing it to overflow. As Blake put it, 'Exuberance is beauty. The cistern contains, the fountain overflows' [4]. The ladder structure of Giotto's painting of the "Madonna and Child" in the New York Metropolitan Museum was a way of building successive elements in the order of their poetic importance. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he found a way of giving all elements importance : the Infant and adoring shepherds, the Virgin, the Angels and hill and stars. 54 Ethel Schwabacher I was now committed to lyric/epic painting where the mode of expression was mythic and involved a historical continuity. The central statement was the deed and in my paintings the deed generally involved a separation which took place on the way. Yes, it had to do with 'visions on the way' condensed into visual images: of this one and that one on the way caught up in longing and in the opposite or conflicting emotions of the deed. Caught up, further, in time/space, psychological necessity, decrees of destiny. But there was another element in these myths. The pain of separation from...