VISIONARY REVUE

VISIONARY REVUE

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THE TRANSFIGURATION
OF THE RESURRECTED
1961 - 1982
(Central Panel)
Ernst Fuchs

FALL 2007

I looked at it.
I looked right into it,
and it...
was the surface of my own mind
reflected in front of me.

- TERRENCE McKENNA

PRELUDE

The aim of the alchemical opus is not only to forge the Philosopher's Stone, but to alter the very mind and soul of the alchemist engaged in his experiment. One evening, I stumbled upon the elusive lapis; in the crucible of my soul, I witnessed its golden aureola - without any clear remembrance of how I’d accomplished the mystery. All memory of method and procedure had vanished.
Over the ensuing months - indeed, years - I repeated the experiment with the express intention of recovering some of the elusive steps that had led me to that fortuitious discovery.

VISIONARY REVUE

      I do not deny the role that entheogens played in my experiment - psychotropic plants which have a transformative power as playful and unpredictable as the mercurial stone itself.
      And yet, there was more reality to my perceptions than what, the otherwise uninitiated would call, ‘the drug-induced ravings of a deluded mind’.
      The author of this document is a visionary artist of doubtful renown, living in Paris at the turn of the millenium. My authorship of The Visionary Manifesto and my apprenticeship with Ernst Fuchs have added a touch of notoriety to a name otherwise obscure and unknown.
      And yet, the person penning this recollection has been caught in the crux of his own personality. With each experiment, my relationship to Fuchs and to Visionary Art witnessed an irreversible transformation.
      Fuchs - the man I knew, with his gifts and his faults - was elevated in my perceptions to a colusses of visionary proportions. And the practise of Visionary Art became a compulsion, obsession and all-consuming passion.
      Over the course of these alchemical investigations, the author was increasingly enmired in a myriad of his own psychological complexes - ideation, paranoia, narcisstic ego-projection - all aggravated by mind-expanding substances. Thus, the author himself is not to be trusted.
      This account, I do not deny, mixes truth with fiction. Events have been condensed, scoped and displaced. Convincing details of setting and character have been added, to buttress with realism what would otherwise be a wholly unbelieveable - but true - account of my own willing descent into self-induced madness.
      Why publish an introduction which casts doubt onto the author's credibility? Because, somewhere between the clarity and hallucination, between the deception and illumination, lies the undisguised truth.

L. Caruana
Paris 2007

FALL 2007

PART I

THE HOMECOMING

The drive from Monaco back to Paris lasted a couple of days. We set out at a leisurely pace, following smaller roads as we detoured towards le facteur Cheval's Palais Ideal. The car windows were open, Edith Piaf was playing on the radio, and my hand danced lazily on the breeze. The road was winding through cool forests and rolling fields. After a year of non-stop activity, my wife and I were finally starting to relax. All was peace, calm and perfection.
Various aspects of my life swirled round each other in my memory - Florence, my wife, French; the renovations to my studio in the Bastille, finished; Zen, our black cat, waiting for us in Paris; my year in Monaco working with Ernst Fuchs, now completed; the life of an artist and writer in Paris, beginning anew - and myself, on the road at this moment, being the meeting place and centre of all these things.

THE VISION TREE - PART I

      Paris..! We are finally back in our small studio in the Bastille. As I write, a thunderstorm has passed, leaving a cool breeze behind. Zen is stretched out on the window sill, enjoying the fresh evening air.
      Last night I dreamt of Fuchs. The dream evoked many of the feelings I had while working with him in Monaco.
      Without my noticing it, we were in the Fuchs-Wagner Villa in Vienna (a place where we never worked). And, strangely enough, we were painting an image directly onto the walls of the villa.

VISIONARY REVUE

PARADISO (Detail)
Ernst Fuchs

      We were rendering a Vision Tree. The organic textures on the trunk, the lively twisting and turning of its branches, the rich foliage - all manifest a formidible energy.
      Even within the dream, this Vision Tree evoked ‘the hidden accord’ between heightened perception and psychotropic plants.
      At the centre of the tree’s crown I saw a singular eye, with the hint of a triangle or pyramid around it (evoking the Eye of God motif). At times, the lines around the eye also reminded me of the Egyptian Eye of Horus.
      I had never seen this Vision Tree before, but its lines and volume possessed the same stylistic movement and roundedness so typical of Fuchs’ work. It was similar, in some respects, to the Paradiso painting we worked on in Castel Caramel.
      Fuchs was working on the central portion of the tree, and I was working on one of the branches to its left. (Another branch to the right would eventually be added, but was presently obstructed by some furniture.)

As we worked together, many of the feelings typical of our relationship resurfaced. He was in an energetic and enthusiastic mood, and had entrusted me with some interesting tasks on the left branch. I was contributing to its form and overall rendering.

FALL 2007

I found this ‘shared perception’ in the creative process very inspiring; we were both engaged in ‘seeing’ what we painted - seeing it intensely, in a visionary manner.

* * *

      Since my return to Paris, I've had some interesting discussions with Romuald Leterrier (while reading his book l’Enseignement de l’Ayahuasca). His research into ayahuasca seems to have influenced my dream to a certain degree since he is researching how psychotropic plants communicate with human beings - through the visions they induce.
      Plants, we could say, convert light into visions... They transform the divine light into symbolic visions.
      The Vision Tree in my dream had this capacity - to make us see with the divine eye. During my apprenticeship with Fuchs, I learned to paint in a state of vision that transcends our usual manner of seeing.
      Without a doubt, the motif of ‘master and apprentice’ also occurs in this dream. Fuchs was working on the main stem and I was working on the ‘left branch’. Is my vision ‘branching off’ from his? But why left? Is it 'left' in the sense of heretical? Am I, like Devadatta or Judas, the apprentice who fails to comprehend his master? ...The apprentice who eventually betrays him?
      I have the strange feeling that the dream carried on, but I can't seem to remember the rest...

THE TRANSFIGURATION

      August 6th, 2001 - Feast of the Transfiguration
      Since Florence is away this weekend, I've had a few pleasureable days of solitary revery. Before settling down to work in the studio, I took a long walk through the Jardin des Plantes.
      This park is an ethno-botanist's 'garden of delights'. For centuries, plant-samples from around the globe have been collected here, cultivated and allowed to flourish. If only entheo-botonists could cultivate a similar such garden for sacramental plants...

VISIONARY REVUE

As I meandered through its shrubbed labyrinthe, my dream from a few nights ago played itself over in my memory. Working with Fuchs. Psychotropic plants. The Vision Tree. Is there some connection between these which I haven't quite fathomed? Did something transpire between us, during that year in Monaco, which I haven't yet understood? Will I only understand it now, after my departure?

Without a doubt my relationship with Fuchs, from the very beginning, transpired in dreams and visions as much as in la vie quotidienne (daily life). Before Andrew Gonzalez and Amanda Sage introduced me to Fuchs in Klagenfurt, I'd had a whole series of dreams* leading to our first encounter. Now, after my return to Paris, he is again showing up in my dreams - the Visionary maestro, the Amazonian shaman with flames dancing in his hair.

As I followed the Canal d'Arsenal back to my studio, the graffitti scrawled across a wrought-iron sign seemed to take on a strange significance.
Crossing Rue de Lyon, I glanced at the ornate clock-tower of the Gare de Lyon. Suddenly, in the graffitti and faded signs, I saw it again - strange hieroglyphics, like Hebrew letters spelling out long-lost truths.

Back in the studio, I immediately brought out a wooden chest, purchased during my travels through Egypt. The mother-of-pearl on its lid glowed with strange shapes. Within was a veritable shaman's pharmacopia given to me by a friend: yopo seeds, san pedro cactus, mushrooms. As a bonus, he had added some home-grown weed and a little hashish.

___________________________________________

*See The Dream Journal of L. Caruana in the Features section of LCaruana.com.

FALL 2007

I rolled a joint of the sativa and smoked it. It was, I was happy to discover, very effective - bringing me into visionary states while still allowing me to be functional. With the lights dimmed and music on the headphones, I stood myself before a poster of Fuchs' altarpiece The Transfiguration of the Resurrected.

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE RESURRECTED
Ernst Fuchs

At first, my eyes wandered over the various forms as I became more accustomed to the effects of the THC. Everything became extremely three dimensional and the perspective acquired remarkable depth. Lines echoed with other lines and the colours, noticeably brighter, began vibrating harmoniously.

VISIONARY REVUE

      I refocussed my eyes, moving farther and closer to the image, until I found the correct distance to view it 'perfectly'. At that moment, my perspective shifted entirely, and I entered through the image.
      The effect was incredible. My vision re-focussed, its periphery expanded, and the frame disappeared. My eyes 'filled with sand’ as the colours harmonized and fused. Struck dumb with sacred awe and wonder, I had the undeniable sensation of entering through the image.
      It is so difficult to describe, this state of 'pure vision' because, when I'm in it, I'm entirely in the image. It isn’t an image at all, really. It's a timeless experience of immersion into sacred wonder. I was now ‘seeing’ in the presence of the Sacred. Only when I pulled myself out of it, slightly, did I realize how different 'the vision’ was from the support, the painting.
      At one point, I was looking at the work and seeing the frame, with me on this side, and the presence of the Sacred on the other side. Everything appeared flat, artificial, dim - obviously 'painted'. My critical eye noted all the faults and deficiencies.

Then, the painting transformed. Everything that appeared ‘rendered’ became absolutely real. The paint dissolved, the frame disappeared, and all deficiencies gave way to perfection.
I marvelled at the jewels in the shadow of the wings. These were not 'artfully rendered' to resemble transparent orbs of glass - they became them... deep crystals glowing from within.

FALL 2007

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE RESURRECTED
Ernst Fuchs

And that strange gaze of Christ - cross-eyed - it transformed and became a direct gaze, as if I were looking at myself in a mirror. The image was convex, but extremely accurate and authentic. It possessed 'presence'.
As I stared into the face of Christ, his upheld hands were not simply flat 2D shapes at the outer edges of my sight; they extended themselves outward until just inches away from my temples. They grew proportionally larger, being in the absolute foreground of my 3D vision. But, the moment I re-focussed my eyes to 'normal sight', the vision was lost and they shrunk once more into the flat surface of the painting. It was uncanny.

VISIONARY REVUE

       Then, as I refocussed my eyes, the harmony between the colours altered radically. Those colours, which had appeared separate to my 'everyday sight', suddenly merged and blended to create a brilliance of light almost blinding to the eyes.
      The background with its purple and yellow flames united into one field of vibrating light. Colours beyond worldly description danced in space and swirled through time. They become angels - emissaries of divine consciousness.
      Passages from the scriptures echoed in my mind: "It is not I who liveth, but Christ who liveth in me." Without a doubt, Fuchs had seen and experienced this. "For now, we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face." The painting had become - what Alex Grey called - a sacred mirror.
      Had Fuchs experienced this while painting? Had he seen his own face in Christ’s visage? More than that, had he seen himself, as a man, in Christ, and Christ in God..?
      This painting, I had no doubt, was a sacred mirror in which he was looking at himself while also looking into the face of God. And his altarpiece manifests this higher way of seeing ('face to face').
      But a canvas only becomes a visionary work when one meditates upon it and enters through it. Then, it brings the viewer into the presence of the Sacred.

THE VISION TREE - PART II

FLAMING CHERUB OVER CRYSTAL FLOWERS - 1960
(Bottom details)
Ernst Fuchs

The next day left me restless and agitated. By late afternoon, my state of nervous excitation had come to a peak. Too many thoughts were crowding my brain, as I felt I had made a most fortuitous discovery (on the most propitious of days, the Feast of the Transfiguration). But I couldn't fully articulate it or integrate it into my life.

FALL 2007

      I escaped to the Jardin Luxembourg, where hundreds of Parisians gathered daily to read, discuss or - as was my case - deambulate in solitude. Toward evening, the guardians began blowing their whistles, announcing 'fermiture!' - the garden's gates were closing.
      I crossed rue de Médicis and my eyes fell upon a curious display in the window of a bookshop: a crystalline chalice and a Hebrew scroll, arranged like a mortar and pestle, sitting atop an alchemical treatise.
      Intrigued, I turned the handle to enter - and it promptly came off in my hand.
      The proprieter appeared and gently relieved me of the door-handle saying, ‘Ca signifie l'heure de fermiture.’ He nodded kindly - giving me a rather indecipherable glance - then promptly locked the door...

      That night, the dream of Fuchs recurred. Again, we were painting the Vision Tree in the villa. The same feelings were present: of collaborating, by seeing and painting 'in a visionary manner'.
      Then, the dream progressed. In fact, it digressed, and I found myself looking through some skeches which Fuchs had made during the early 60’s.
      One was a drawing of a kind of amorphous multi-shaped stone. It had smooth surfaces, curving step-like formations, and varying degrees of transparency in its substance.

CELESTIAL CATARACT - 1963
(Turned horizontally)
Ernst Fuchs

All these effects were achieved through the subtlest touches of the pencil on a white background. I marvelled at the drawing for some time - such lightness, grace and ease...
To my great surprise, Fuchs didn’t mind my taking a break from painting just to marvel at this drawing and see it in a visionary way.

VISIONARY REVUE

       I turned to him and said, “This is truly masterful.”
       In his typical, absent-minded and ambiguous way, he nodded and said “Yes...” - agreeing with me, but not really sure of what I meant.
       This digression then returned to the main dream - I was beside him again, painting the Vision Tree. But no matter how hard I try, the dream's continuation eludes me.

* * *

       Zen woke me that morning, scratching at the books beside my bed and purring in my ear.
       At once, I transcribed the dream into my journal. The more I wrote, the more yesterday's odd event kept resurfacing in my memory. Why did the owner of the bookstore prevent me from purchasing the treatise on alchemy?
       In a moment that stilled my beating heart, I became aware of how the drawing in my dream - which I called ‘an amorphous multi-shaped stone’ - was in fact the Philosopher’s Stone.
       Does not the alchemical opus begin with the prima materia, a chaotic mix of earth, water, air and fire? Through successive experiments, these elements are harmoniously fused and united into the lapis philosophorum. That stone is then projected onto other substances, transforming them and ‘perfecting them’.
       Fuchs’ drawing in my dream had this quality. Like the lapis, it had no definite shape. It was constantly ‘shape-shifting’ and even ‘substance-shifting’. At times, it appeared solid (earthen) or transluscent (watery), then transparent (airy) and even ethereal (fiery). It transformed itself continuously, manifesting each of these qualities 'to perfection'.
       And - isn’t that what the master artist does with his art? He takes the light which we normally perceive and, through his masterful rendering, manifests the light’s immersion into matter - its various simulacra or reflections as earth, water, air and fire. In this sense, the artist is like the alchemist, and his opus (the painting) culminates in the Philospher’s Stone.
       I was struck by the fact that I said to Fuchs in the dream “This is truly masterful.” Those were the exact words (and the only words) in the dream. Fuchs is the master artist, capable of rendering light’s manifold reflections. Consider the various ‘textures’ in art, and how they reflect light.
       Shiny metals such as silver and gold focus light into a small, intense reflection. The result is an almost ‘pure' reflection of the divine luminescence which is then distorted into warm golden light or a cold silvery hues.
       Precious stones capture the light. Amethysts, rubies and gems not only produce a gleam on their surface but capture a play of colourful hues in their depths. Water also does this:

FALL 2007

FLAMING CHERUB OVER CRYSTAL FLOWERS - 1960
Ernst Fuchs

it sparkles and glows while revealing the light's transluscent flow. We plunge into the depths of its 'watery light'.
       Skin, when wet, has the same hard gleam as water or metal. But in a dry state, the fleshtones reflect a variety of hues. They become more ‘earthen’, diffusing light and shadow so gently that they blend into one another with magnificent subtlety.
       Continuing in this direction, plants, stones and soil are dull in hue. They absorb the light, diffusing it into subtle colours and fine contrasts. Consider fur, velvet, silk, pearls - so many surfaces and textures that have delighted artists throughout the centuries.
       The master artist finds endless pleasure in rendering this infinite play of light - the divine light's immersion into the elements of the sublunary realm.

VISIONARY REVUE

VISIONARY WAYS OF SEEING

       As an artist, I am still learning from Fuchs. (All of us are - all artists who call themselves Visionaries...). Learning the techniques he practised helps me, to some degree. But it is the ‘art of seeing’ that is the most important.
      His Transfiguration of the Resurrected manifests so many different 'ways of seeing', of 'looking through the image' to the Sacred. To accomplish these effects, he must have constantly been immersed in the Sacred. Because a vast number of effects have been recorded in this painting with amazing precision. And yet, we cannot even begin to see this with our everyday sight.
      This altarpiece brings together the many visionary ways of seeing which he learned over a period of twenty years (1961 - 1982, the length of time he painted and 'experimented' on this piece). The only way he could lay down the white casein or tempera, and then glaze the colours over top, was if he were in that state - a state of seeing where everything harmonizes and unites.

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE RESURRECTED - 1961-82
Ernst Fuchs

      That explains the two-headed eagle behind Christ. This is not simply an emblem of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is an angel seeing God - gazing upon God.
      To be an artist is to have an elevated way of seeing - to see as the angels see.
      Of course, being in such a state constantly, while painting, is no easy task. I’m still asking myself if Fuchs was in such an elevated state the whole time we were painting together...
      In any case, his paintings have shown to me and to others the many different 'ways of seeing’ that become evident through psychotropic plants.

FALL 2007

      This altarpiece brings together - in one opus - the evolution of his higher sight. Meanwhile, a series of lesser works, spread out over twenty years, manifest those styles individually.
      The Gothic style of his paintings from the late fifties is clearly present in this altarpiece - in Christ's face, hair and drapery. But Christ's torso and hands manifest the epic or Babylonian style which emerged in the sixties with his Samson engravings.
      The precious jewels in Christ's crown and the wings of the double-headed eagle reflect the Cherub period of the early sixties. Meanwhile, the way of rendering figures through volume (the giant on the right) or through dashes of colour (the giant on the left) suggest new ways of seeing that came to him.

- ERNST FUCHS -
Gothic style:
THE RESURRECTED CHRIST - 1957 (top left)
Babylonian style:
SAMSON THE JUDGE - 1962 (bottom right)
Cherub style:
CHERUB LIKE A MIDNIGHT AMYTHEST - 1960-69 (top right)
Feuerfuchs style:
VIEW THROUGH THE ROOM - 1978-82 (bottom left)

      Finally, there are the stratified bands of intense colour so typical of the Feuerfuchs period in the late '70s, when he was experimenting with new and intense colour combinations.
      The only way to accomplish so much, with such accuracy and detail, is to play - to delight yourself in a garden of light, mixing shapes and hues to pass the time in the sheer joy of creation.
      As an artist, I'm still in the process of learning how to enter into visionary states while painting - how to see and render that vision...

VISIONARY REVUE

THE INTERIOR OF LE VOLTIGEUR
(With Lunece behind the bar)

THE FIRST EXCHANGE OF GLANCES

       As usual, I crossed the Rue Faubourg St. Antoine to have my morning expresso and cigarette at le Voltigeur. I've always been impressed by this brasserie with its classic 50's decor. The clientele stand behind the long zinc bar which, for all intensive purposes, is our altar. Before the tabernacle stands the owner, Lunece, who is really our sacred priest and servitor. Behind him on shelves of mirror and glass are our modern sacraments.
      First, near the entrance: le tabac with its Lucky Strikes, Gitanes and Gauloises. Then, in a special alcove illuminated by a red neon sign: the shiny-steel expresso machine topped with bowls of sugar. And further down, glittering in green and gold: the many vintage tonics beloved to the French - Pernaud, Pastis, Ricard and Absinthe.*
      "Un double express pour Laurence..!" the owner cried from behind the bar. The sugar, caffein and nicotine (all addictive drugs, all legal...) intensified my revery.

      Returning home along Rue Faubourg St. Antoine, I happened to glance at a derelict, who was blind in one eye. His 'dead eye' produced in me an overwhelming sense of dread...
      The graffiti on the walls, I noticed once more, glowed like Hebrew letters. 'The writing is on the wall' an inner voice told me.
      Back in the studio, I found myself staring at a painting which had great significance for me personally.

LE VOLTIGEUR

Not only was Christ Alchemist my first oil painting, but the key-work that brought me together with Fuchs.

_________________________________________

*AUTHOR'S NOTE: Since the publication of this document, the interior of le Voltigeur has been gutted and renovated beyond all recognition.

FALL 2007

CHRIST ALCHEMIST
L. Caruana

      I had the painting with me when we first met in Klagenfurt, since it was to be exhibited nearby in Payerbach. On the evening of our first encounter, Fuchs asked to see a sample of my work. So, we went up to my room in the Pfarrerhaus of St. Egyd and I showed him this painting.
      Now, more than a year later, I ask myself what he saw in this image. Did he see as deeply into my work as I did, a couple of weeks ago, when gazing and marvelling at his altarpiece? Did he see the hidden signs, which have only become apparent to me in the last year?
      All the signs are there: the sacred mirror, Christ, the alchemical opus, the strange hand gestures, symmetry, centeredness, the visionary colour combinations... Was this the first exchange of glances?
      Standing before my work, Fuchs praised certain qualities and pointed out other weaknesses. But, more importantly, he peered at me over his glasses and gave me a strange gaze which, to this day, I haven't quite fathomed. There was something infinitely mysterious in that gaze - something meaningful but left unspoken.

VISIONARY REVUE

RESOLUTION

       Again, I was awoken by Zen scratching at the books near my bed. As I opened my eyes, I found him rubbing his whiskers over a pile of paperbacks. Lazily, my eyes scanned their titles: Aurelia by Gérard de Nerval, Inferno by August Strindberg, Nadja by André Breton, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, Valis by Philip K. Dick, True Hallucinations by Terrence McKenna...
      There is some strange continuity in all these titles. From absinthe, madness and dreams (de Nerval, Strindberg, Breton) to states of ecstasy and insanity induced by entheogens (Hesse, Dick, McKenna) there is one long, unbroken chain.
      My black cat gazed at me curiously.
      Now, three months after my return from Monaco, the next turning in my life-path has become clear. Reveries, dreams, memories and visions - all have been leading me to this one moment. I stand at the meeting place and centre of every book I've read, of every painting that has seized my gaze.
      I must undertake a series of experiments - alchemical experiments. The object of the opus will be Fuchs' Transfiguration of the Resurrected. The subject of the opus - myself. Through psychotropic plants, I will view this altarpiece time and again.
      Because I am sure that, on the most propitious of days - the Feast of the Transfiguration! - I stumbled upon the elusive lapis. I entered through the image. Yet, I cannot recall the steps leading to my discovery. All memory of method and procedure has vanished.
      Thus, I'm condemned to repeat my experiment, with the express intention of understanding how I entered through Fuchs' altarpiece. I must determine the different 'ways of seeing' that are present, but hidden, in this work.
      I will attempt to record, in detail, such phenomena as the sacred mirror, expanding focus, seeing perfectly and hidden colour harmonies.

EXCERPTS FROM
MY ENTHEOGEN JOURNAL
- FIRST EXPERIMENT -

- July 19, 2001 - It is more than a year since I smoked hashish. I just don’t know anyone in Paris through which I can get hold of the stuff. Then, an artist from Berlin left me a small cube as a present.
I decided that, to keep my experiement within certain measureable parameters, I will employ cannabis (THC, THCV, CBD and CBN) as the sole organic substance in my opus. This psychotrope is ideal for meditation and contemplation on Visionary art. (Meanwhile, through the VISIONARY REVUE, I'll seek out accounts of other artists, and their use of other entheogens...).

FALL 2007

I cut the block of hashish into four parts and made two joints, smoking one in the morning and the other in the early afternoon. I spent an indeterminate amount of time staring at The Transfiguration of the Resurrected.

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE RESURRECTED
Ernst Fuchs

       At first I concentrated on the eyes and tried to bring them together into a single, unbroken gaze. This required refocussing my own eyes repeatedly. Christ’s face became an amazing kind of mirror, reflecting thousands of alternating, flickering faces - like memories superimposing themselves one upon the other. (I became acutely aware of how we project memory onto everything we see...).
      And yet, I couldn’t bring the eyes together into a unified gaze. Nor could I assimilate the parts of Christ's visage into a single whole.
      Even in real life, I remembered, it is almost impossible to look someone directly in the eyes. Instead, we feel their presence... In the future I must feel the presence of the Sacred, concealed 'on the other side' of this altarpiece...

VISIONARY REVUE

       I should mention that I became aware of some steps necessary for ‘entering through the image'.
      Set and setting are crucial. The setting must be free of all distractions, with revelatory music on the headphones (I use Peter Gabriel's Passion soundtrack). I must stand perfectly straight, with my eyes perpendicular to the painting. The painting itself must be well-lit in a dark room.
      In this way I can 'center myself' in the painting, using its symmetry (both vertical and horizontal) while also altering my distance from its surface from time to time. I focus my eyes on one point.
      After a few minutes, my eyes de-focus so that all outlines are slightly hazy and tend to vibrate. This brings about a form of ‘refocussing’ - but in another dimension of seeing. I must look beyond the picture plane, to the image. My concentration is constant, fixed, unbroken.
      I should read up more on ekagrata, the yoga of 'one-pointed' contemplation. Research Tantric contemplation both in the Hindu tradition (concentration on statues or geometric forms, leading to samadhi) and in the Buddhist tradition (meditation on thangkas or mandalas, leading to bodhi). Did other cultures pursue these practises? Byzantine? Ancient Egypt?*

THE SACRED MIRROR

      Paris, July 26, 2001 - It’s the following Friday, and I smoked up again. I did so because I wanted to enter through the image. Last Friday, I had the sensation of coming close but stopping at the threshold. So today, I wanted to try again.
      This afternoon, I experienced many things vis à vis Fuchs’ altarpiece. I doubt I'll be able to recount here everything that I thought and experienced.
      All I can do is offer hints and clues to remind myself how to enter through the image the next time. Because what I experienced today was a re-immersion into the momentary theophany of the Feast of the Transfiguration.
      Remembering the way there is not at all easy. A sense of 'unity' must be taken for granted.
      When staring at the image, it is not an intense concentration, not a stare that is needed, but a relaxation of the eyes and their focus. You must gaze long enough that your vision becomes blurred and the different areas of colour begin to overlap.
      Most important, your eyes ‘fill with sand’. What that means is, a white haze enters your vision. At first, you think it is obscuring your vision. You also think it is because you have held your eyes open for too long, and tears are obscuring your sight. But, in fact, you can now blink repeatedly, and the white haze will remain.
      Through relaxed eyes widely focussed, gazing at a single point, with a white haze present - slowly all the elements of the painting come together. The colours, which may look wrong or too widely dispersed in normal sight, suddenly harmonize and unify. Their brightness is almost blinding. The area of focus expands, so that objects on the periphery of vision are now included in the centre.

__________________________________________

*AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the results of this research, see the concluding passages of Myrette: An Entheogenic Journey.

FALL 2007

      Fixing your gaze onto one point is important. On the face, or the tip of the nose, is one way. Staring into the eyes is another possibility. But it is extremely difficult to bring that gaze together - to harmonize, combine, and unify it. Fuchs has left a strange 'hidden sign' in the painting - those crossed eyes...
      They are, in fact, focussed as if one were staring at one’s self close-up in a mirror - a sacred mirror...
      After staring at the face for some time, I was amazed to see a clearly rendered portrait of Fuchs from the time he was in his twenties until he was in his early forties - a span of some twenty years... The long nose, narrow face and short chin are all there, beneath Christ’s long flowing beard.

LEFT: Fuchs 1954, age twenty-four
CENTRE: Self-portrait (?) in altarpiece - 1961-82
RIGHT: Fuchs 1968, age thirty-eight

What is more, there is also a strange distortion, so that the tip of the nose is stretching outward, while the chin is falling back and away. This is the effect of 'looking at one's self' in a convex mirror (which also appears in Hausner's work.)
Fuchs has painted his eyes as 'crossed' because he is looking at himself in this convex mirror. And the moment you see yourself - in the mirror, and in the image of Christ - then the eyes are no longer crossed. You have entered through the image.

LEFT: Fuchs' self-portrait (?) as Christ - convex mirror
RIGHT: Hausner's self-portrait as Adam - convex mirror

The painting becomes a sacred mirror in which you are looking at 'yourself' ...not yourself as an ego-bound individual with unique traits and faults but, transcending that, your divine Self. You recognize that you too are 'the son of God', and can see God within yourself. For you are a particle of the Divine, and your consciousness stems from its Self-consciousness; your knowing is a momentary reflection of its eternal Self-knowing...

VISIONARY REVUE

       Before falling asleep, I recalled the gaze which I'd seen today in Fuchs' altarpiece and asked myself - where had I seen that gaze before?
      And slowly, with chills rising up my spine, it occured to me. When I first showed Fuchs my work in Klagenfurt, he'd peered over his glasses and given me that look - filled with a strange significance left unspoken.
      And indeed, each time we met up in Monaco, after he'd returned from a couple of weeks in Vienna, he'd shake my hand, peer over his glasses - and give me that look.
      After hours and days, working on both my paintings and his, he seemed to be asking - wordlessly - 'Have your seen it? Have you disciplined yourself, trained your eyes and learned to see beyond the painting's surface? Have you looked through the appearances and seen with the eternal gaze of the artist?’

EXPANDING FOCUS
PROPORTION, DISTORTION

	Aug. 16, 2002 - I spent the morning leafing through monographs. In particular, I've become obsessed by the various kinds of 'gaze' manifest throughout art history. This begins with the 'eyeless gaze' of Greek and Egyptian statuary, then moves on to the 'direct gaze' of Buddhist, Byzantine and Renaissance art (they are all inviting us to gaze into the sacred mirror...). Visionary art gives us some fascinating variations on this theme. Not only does Fuchs use the 'cross-eyed' gaze in several works, but there is also the bizarre 'astigmatic gaze' in his Ezekial engraving (which was inspired by Jean Paul Sartre's roving eyes, after Fuchs had met him in St. Germain des Prés, Paris). Then there is Giger's 'gaze of the dead' in the Li portraits (painted after she'd ended her own life...) Is this the gaze into the realm beyond death?





1. Egyptian 'eyeless gaze' 2. Buddhist 'direct gaze' 3. Titian - Renaissance gaze 4. Fuchs 'cross-eyed' gaze 5. Fuchs - Ezekial's 'astigmatic gaze' 6. Giger - Li's 'gaze into death'

FALL 2007

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE RESURRECTED - 1961-82
Ernst Fuchs

       In the afternoon, I renewed my alchemical experiments before the Transfiguration altarpiece. The subject of 'the gaze' was very much in my thoughts.
      As the hashish took effect, I made a conscious effort to expand the focus of my vision. Even though I was focused on one point in the painting, I gradually brought all the objects on the periphery into the widening circle of my vision.
      I started by focussing on any one point, which then related to the points around it. I continued this process in various parts of the painting, allowing my eyes to slowly rove over the surface. The tip of the nose brought together and harmonized the entire face, then the jewels around it, and even the hands. The same with the navel for the figure as a whole.
      After staring at each of these for an extended period (perhaps five minutes, though time was irrevelent), the painting would cease to be a painting and become an image. I was looking at the image which exists beyond the picture plane.

VISIONARY REVUE

Gradually, I moved further back from the painting, trying to see the totality. With a lot of patience and concentration, I was able to broaden my area of focus to the whole painting, including the frame. Then, the frame disappeared and I felt immersed in the totality. It was an incredible, indescribeable experience, making me question my sanity.
But, I couldn’t maintain this sensation for an extended period of time.

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE RESURRECTED
Detail: The left cherub
Ernst Fuchs

My gaze then fell upon the cherub in profile, just above his right hand. In my entheogenic state, the cherub appeared 'massive', as if I were looking at something huge from close-up. It was as if I were standing too close to the screen in the cinema, so that a distortion in the proportions occured. This cherub's 'massive proportions' were achieved through a subtle widening of its proportions.

FALL 2007

       I felt as if another 'secret' had been revealed to me. In my normal state, this widening appeared simply as a 'distortion'. But in my entheogenic state, I realized (with a dawning sense of epiphany) that these distortions were, in fact, perfections as the angel's profile had assumed 'divine proportions'. It was reaching towards the outlines of an immense, perfect square.
      In the same way I saw how Christ's face was stretching outwards to the outlines of a perfect circle. What I'd previously seen as a 'distorted' reflection of the face (in a convex mirror) became, instead, its perfection. I saw the attempt to harmonize the lines of that face with the outlines of an invisible, perfect sphere surrounding it.
      My heart beat faster; my breath escaped me. I felt myself in the grip of some demon or angel. This altarpiece contained, not only the golden rectangles inherent to human proportions (1:1.6 - Christ as Man, the Anthropos), but the squares and circles inherent to divine proportions (1:1 - Christ as God, the Soter).
      Scrambling for a pen, I made the following note:

       "The imperfect, amorphous lines which describe a face or figure are - through an artist's 'style' - perfected and apotheosized by making them reach out and harmonize with a divine, invisible square or circle surrounding it."

      That explained the widening of proportions present in so much of Fuchs' work.
      How many more 'secret' ways of seeing awaited me in this one painting?

VISIONARY REVUE

Paris, October 13, 2002

Today I found the following commentary by Fuchs on his Transfiguration of the Resurrected altarpiece:

      Borne aloft by cherubs and thrones, the resurrected Christ is made visible within this altarpiece. Perhaps it is also Man made visible - and transfigured in a universe that he perfects by, himself, being perfected.
      The idea of Anthropomorphy or 'the depiction of Man' goes back to an iconography where the creator of the picture recognizes himself in his depiction.
      Each person attempts to summon the universe into his own existence, in such a way that the universe corresponds to his own form. How else could he grasp it - except through his own form?

In his typical, scoped and discursive manner, Fuchs has summed it all up mysteriously: seeing and perfecting one's self in a sacred mirror; human and divine proportions; the image of Man transfigured by the Christ...

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE RESURRECTED - 1961-82
Ernst Fuchs

FALL 2007

THE VISION TREE - PART III

The dream came back again last night. Once more, Fuchs and I were painting the Vision Tree.
It felt as if a long period of time had passed, but now we were back at the villa in Vienna, painting directly onto the wall.

I found myself working, once more, on the left branch of the Vision Tree. Except, in the meantime, the outline of an eye had taken form in the foliage of the left branch.
This new eye was in profile, and seemed to branch off from the main eye, as if attached to it by a vine-like optical nerve. In profile, it resembled an Egyptian eye (the ‘eye of Horus’ motif) but there was also something strangely organic in its form. Tears were dripping from the lashes...

TREE OF PARADISE 1963 -72
Ernst Fuchs

      I set about solidifying the relationship of the eye to its leafy setting. But, the more I worked, the more the mood between us began to change. I sensed a certain tension and unease on his part - an unspoken reservation which he never fully articulated. His feelings were conveying a message which words had never spoken.
      In essence, it was this - that I had a certain degree of talent and vision as an artist, which he could see in my works. In particular, he liked my use of colour, and respected the interesting ideas in my paintings. But, they didn’t manifest the same degree of grace and refinement that his possessed.
      And so, when I was working on his paintings, it was always disturbing for him to see the ‘imperfections’ that resulted from my brushwork. In my dream, I could feel this all clearly and acutely.
      We continued working side by side, at times mutually inspired, at times with reservation - until Zen started scratching at the books beside my bed, and I woke up.

CONTINUE WITH
PART II