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VISIONARY REVUE
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CECELIA GALLERANI
(Detail)
Leonardo Da Vinci
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FALL 2007
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"I invite you to a little entertainment.
For madmen only, and one price only
- your mind. Are you ready?"
Hermann Hesse
STEPPENWOLF
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Her eyes gazed at me intensely - so dark and serious.
It was early morning, the Autumn equinox, and I was stumbling out of an apartment off rue des Acacias.
I recalled the baroque rooms lit by lava lamps and candles; the air thick with the sweet smell of hashish. I'd just bid goodbye to Juan, who was returning to Mexico that morning. As we embraced one last time, kissing each other on the cheeks, our eyes were noticeably glazed. Then the spiralling stairs descended to the building's darkened entrance.
There, in a passageway lined with mirrors, I saw Myrette for the first time.
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VISIONARY REVUE
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She'd escaped the gathering a few moments before. Now she stood, as if, waiting for me.
As she came towards me through the darkness, her beauty was frightening. Her whole manner and movement marked her as different. Much of the child could still be seen in her eyes: a child still searching - sometimes playful, other times fearful.
My mind grew delirious (I'd smoke too much that evening) and my thoughts raced across the centuries. Hadn't we met like this before, in ancient times? Maybe she was Lilith in the garden of Eden?
As much as I'd prefer to remember Myrette like this - her beguiling beauty, her blissful countenance, bathed in electric light - I have to go back and recall the darker aspects she revealed to me that moment: the guardedness apparent on her lower lid, as it rose slightly in defiance. She was wary of me, fearful of the ensuing hours and days - and the child slowly disappearing as she became, more and more, an object of beauty in some man's eyes.
Only now, as I look back on that evening, can I see her face rigid and tense, her teeth almost clenched, her eyes extremely guarded... eyes that, for me that moment, expressed nothing but joy, curiosity and desire.
We set out into the night, in the direction of the nearest Metro. The full moon glowed over Place d'Etoile. At the station's barred entrance, we realized it was too late: the last Metro had already departed. I stared down the Champs Elysées, thinking of the two hour walk to my studio in the Bastille.
Myrette, meanwhile, dismissed all thoughts of a night bus or taxi. We had the whole night ahead of us - why not walk?
We set out, walking east towards Paris centre. Between us passed the usual preliminaries, probing with words, seeking to understand each other through a simple exchange of syllables and phrases. Meanwhile, our gestures and glances betrayed so much more, sounding hidden depths.
Myrette hailed from the south of France, a student at the university here in Paris, studying art history. She supplemented her meagre allowance by dancing, like Esmeralda, in front of Notre Dame. Fridays, she read Tarot cards in a café in Montmartre.
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FALL 2007
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L'ARC DE TRIOMPHE
PLACE D'ETOILE
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I described, vaguely, my calling as imagist and icon-maker; my dedication to Visionary art. Our conversation quickly turned to entheogens, and their role in 'seeing' - in seeing the history of art in a way hitherto unknown until now. Seeing Unity. Discerning the Visionary Lineage.
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VISIONARY REVUE
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PARIS SACRED
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We reached Place de la Concorde, with its graceful obelisk illuminated by spotlights. She took me by the hand and led me to a small park in the shadow of le Petit Palais. There, she quickly rolled a joint which we, sitting on a park bench, passed back and forth.
Her hair, copper-tinted with touches of vermillion, was braided in parts, and otherwise hung loosely in dreadlocks. Layers of different fabrics shrouded her figure in shades of violet and black: a shawl with Amazonian patterns, a satchel with primitive motifs, and her pale skin marked with tribal tattoos. Meanwhile, her silver rings, her bracelets and pendants, flashed with arcane symbols.
The smoke loosed our thoughts while fusing our minds. Every word and gesture sounded new depths in our souls. We spoke freely, our conversation soaring to new heights of revery.
"When I first came to Paris," Myrette let fall, "I knew immediately that - this was home. Where I live, in Ménilmontant, there are so many immigrants - Africans, Arabs, wandering Jews - and I realized: they've found their home here too."
She spoke with some difficulty - her face and lips seemed to be numbed by the smoke - and I listened, partly-dazed, only half-aware.
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"Because Paris is, in its own unique way," she continued in a haze, "the centre of the world. When the sun rises in the morning, it appears between the columns of Place de la Nation in the east. Then it follows the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine, past the angel of the Bastille, until it reaches its apex just above Notre Dame."
She gazed into the dark night sky.
"Afterwards, it descends towards the west, past the pyramid of the Louvre, past the obelisk here at Place de la Concorde, then along the Champs Elysées until we see it set through the gate of the Arc de Triomphe."
I stared down the illuminated boulevard, and the triumphal arch at its end.
"The sun," she continued, "is following the path of the Seine - the ancient river, just as it always has."
I imagined the waters of the Seine, like the movement of the sun, streaming westward. All the boulevards and monuments |
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SUNRISE AT
PLACE DE LA NATION
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SUNSET AT
PLACE D'ETOILE
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she mentioned ran parallel to the river. All were marking the course of the sun.
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"It was called the decumanus in Roman times," she explained," the east-west axis of a city, which the sun traced out during the equinox."
In my revery, I recalled one morning in Thebes, when I sat |
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FALL 2007
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on the mud-packed walls of the Marsam hotel. It was the earliest hour of the dawn, when the sun rose over the eastern mountains and reflected off the Nile. I was spellbound.
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Over the course of the night, the sun had traversed twelve gates in the underworld, illuminating the subterranian river with its solar barque. Then it had risen that morning like a winged scarab over the eastern mountains. During the course of the day, the winged solar disk would reach its apex above the Nile - the Egyptian river of life - then descend like a ram-headed elder to the western mountains behind me - and the Valley of the Dead.
In ancient Egypt, a whole mythology was construed around their sacred space, created by two mountains, a river valley, and the sun.
Did Paris have its own sacred space?
In the ensuing silence, Myrette stared at me. She seemed to have divined my thoughts.
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VISIONARY REVUE
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"Paris is built on seven hills," she added, "but the two most important mounts are to the north and the south: Montmartre and Montparnasse, with the valley of the Seine between them. And there, at the heart of the river, stands the Ile de la Cité."
I stood up, feeling the dizzying effects of the joint we'd smoked. Or was it all she was saying?
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| "The cathedral of Notre Dame soars upward from that island in the Seine - almost exactly at the midpoint between the two axes: the east-west decumanus traced by the river, and the north-south cardo from Montmartre to Montparnasse. Notre Dame is the centre |
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of Paris - and Paris, for me, is the centre of the world," she said with a smile. "It's home - the sacred home we all hope to return to in our souls, like some lost Eden or heavenly Paradise. Only, most of the time, we're simply not aware of it."
"Notre Dame..." I said, feeling dizzier than ever. I was seized by an intense desire to see the cathedral this night.
Smiling, Myrette took my hand, and we set out.
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LE CAFE DE TEMPS PERDU
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We passed the obelisk at Place de la Concorde - that same obelisk which stood, at one time, before the Temple of Luxor. My memory flashed back to 2003, to my trip through Egypt, and when I'd stood before Luxor's facade. To the left of the entrance rose a single obelisk. And to the right - nothing. A gaping empty space.
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Now, on my right, stood the missing counterpart, the second obelisque which had been strangely displaced - three thousand years and half a world away. The effect was eerie. I felt a strange disorientation, as if I were hovering between two places, two moments in history.
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FALL 2007
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I would have stood there all night had not Myrette tugged at my hand and led me toward Rue St. Honoré. After a few moments (I'd lost all sense of hours and minutes), we paused before an empty café: Le Temps Perdu. The doorway was flanked by two long mirrors, the interior was dark, all the chairs were piled high on the tables.
"Do you remember," she asked, "the passageway where we just met - a hall of mirrors..? The first time I saw you, I saw your reflection - except, I thought it was my own face I saw in the glass..."
We stopped and stared. In the long mirror, I examined her face as she scrutinized mine - our eyes fixed, our gaze prolonged, our stare unbroken. Her eyes would not release me.
At first, I could not tell who I saw in the mirror, whose face her features resembled. Her expression evoked hundreds if not thousands of feminine aspects - women I knew, women I'd forgotten.
And yet, I was never able to sustain a single image, and see her - the Myrette reflected before me.
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For a moment my heart beat faster as I recognized Cecelia Gallerani. To a remarkable degree, Myrette resembled Da Vinci's portrait of a woman with an ermine.
Then, that enigmatic glance transformed and I saw new faces, each with a different name: Nadja, Molly, Hermine, Siri, Aurélia, Lizzie, Beatrice. I saw ever more ancient faces - antique statues, Phoenician goddesses, stone earth mothers.
This gaze into the beguiling face of the feminine lasted less than a second, and I was confronted once more with Myrette. |
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Her eyes gazed at me intensely - just like the first glance - so dark and serious.
What a proud spirit! She wants to dig as deeply into me as I into her. Without a care, unafraid, as quickly as we can, we want to tear through each other's lives.
The expression on Myrette's face takes on a startling, mysterious quality. She is there for me, like a gift, yielding to me, offering herself. But I have to look past that, past my own needs, wants and desires, and allow myself to see her truly, and understand the meaning of her mysterious gaze...
She is gazing at me with infinite care. Her hands are held open, their palms turned upward; her eyes are opened wide - she is expressing, not love but, more than that, Acceptance borne of Necessity.
Now she has opened her life up to me totally. She desires me enough to open herself up to everything - lovemaking, a child, separating, re-uniting, illness, madness, death. She accepts them all in me, and wishes to transform my desire for her into an entire world, into a child gazing newly at the world, an infant born from the union of light and darkness.
Yes, the darkness is also there. All those forces and desires within us, seeking unity, also begin to change, to become forces seeking separation.
Now she is no longer looking at me, but past me. She is peering through me, to a stranger. She sees things she knows |
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VISIONARY REVUE
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are unreal, but still, she fears them. Rather than gazing into the mirror, she is staring at my shadow. All she sees - is darkness; all she feels - is fear.
But the desire remains - to open our bodies to each other. And from that communion emerges a deeper mystery - the child in her, in me, the child who would fuse all the light and darkness in us in an endless cycle of separation and union, joy and pain, ecstasy and madness.
Suddenly, Myrette tugs at my hand, tearing me away from the mirror. It is with the greatest difficulty that I break my gaze from her reflection and refocus my eyes onto her - onto the real face of Myrette.
To my astonishment, her eyes are gilded with tears.
"What did you see?" I dared ask.
"I saw..." she tried to express the thought, but words failed her. After a few deep breaths, she responded, "I saw everything in you, and in myself - that is perfect..."
Then she turned to me, her eyes deeply serious.
"If it were up to me, this moment, to decide how this night will end, then I would want one thing only... for us to come together as we did just now, in the mirror. I want us to extinguish ourselves in each other's glance, then close our eyes forever."
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THE BIZARRE EVENTS AT KALAKMUL
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Rue St. Honoré led us to the Louvre. Passing under its baroque facade, we found ourselves face to face with the majestic glass pyramid.
At this hour of the night, not a soul was stirring in the Place du Carrousel. From here, we could see through the Jardin des Tuileries to the obelisk at la Concorde and, further beyond, the Arc de Triomphe. We stood, like the underworld sun, before one of the gates the decumanus. (See Map of Paris)
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FALL 2007
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THE MAIN PYRAMID
(STRUCTURE II) AT KALAKMUL
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Meanwhile, my sense of disorientation had increased. Had not my new-found companion led me here, I would have been lost. Though Myrette wanted to rest awhile, I insisted on walking - if only in circles.
Under the effects of entheogens, all measures of space and time had melted away. This complete loss of all bearings had happened to me once before. And then too, I'd insisted on walking, since the only way I could connect space and time was by creating small measures with my feet - which are commonly called 'steps'.
Myrette laughed at my predicament, and I recounted the strange story of Kalakmul, when I'd smoked up in Guatemala one hot afternoon.
The Kalakmul temple complex had only been discovered ten years before - a huge Maya city which was still, for the most part, buried under mounds of earth and vegetation. A two-hour taxi ride had taken me through endless jungles into the site's periphery. And there, in 'the western group' of former residences, I'd smoked a joint so intense that, the moment I'd extinguished it, I'd also extinguished all measures of space and time.
I wandered about in a daze, utterly incapable of remembering how I got there or how I'd get back. I'd agreed with the taxi driver to return in three hours - but now all measures of linear time were rescinded. The taxi was an indefinite distance and a timeless walk away.
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VISIONARY REVUE
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That was when I discovered that 'steps' were indeed a fortuitous way to re-create the measures of space and time that had otherwise vanished. Cautiously, I meandered toward the centre of the huge Mayan city.
In the outskirts of ancient Kalakmul, I noticed some stone steps overgrown with vines. These stairs had once formed the foundation to an outlying temple. At that moment, I experienced a brief epiphany. I realized that these 'steps', graven in stone, measured time and space for me: all I had to do was march up them.
The moments that followed remain engraved in my memory as one of the most incredible experiences of my lifetime. I marched up the steps. At that same moment, I 'attuned' my own steps to the steps of this temple ruin. Simultaneously, I was transported out of 'mundane' time and space into the sacred time-space of the ancient Maya.
I won't recount now the incredible complexity of the Mayan calendar system and their sacred architecture. Suffice to say, every twenty years, the Maya ritually rebuilt certain temples (one atop the other) to mark the new measure which had transpired in their sacred time and space.
By ascending these three ancient stones, I'd unwittingly stepped into the hidden time-space of Mayan culture.
The ensuing events are beyond all description. I passed from this outlying ruin to the main plaza, which is difficult to recognize since most of it remains lost in a forest of trees.
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But, through the dense foliage and random vegetation, I could still make out the main square. On two sides, astronomical temples had been built to mark the sun's equinox and solstices. (temples VI and IV). This whole plaza, I realized, was oriented toward the sun, the stars, and their calendrical cylces.
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FALL 2007
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I didn't simply 'know' this; I saw it. I saw golden beams of 'time-space' absorbed by the temples and redirected (like light through a prism) from the smaller temples to the main pyramid. Indeed, a small, strangely constructed temple (V) was absorbing all these beams and focussing them onto the main pyramid (II). I was awestruck. My heart thundered in my chest. I began to doubt my sanity.
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From where I stood, I could see the smaller northern pyramid (VII) which lay opposite the great pyramid (II). I say 'smaller', but in fact it appeared utterly massive. I stared at it in wordless wonder. For the first time in my life, I understood the relationship between architecture and sacred space.
A building that is truly consecrated as 'a temple' is designed in such a manner as to 'carve' its surrounding time-space. I could see this happening right before my eyes. This temple, due
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VISIONARY REVUE
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to its unique angular shapes, was carving up space and time - the sacred space and time which is otherwise unseen to our normal perception.
Then, as I cautiously approached the main pyramid, I reached a mental state merging ecstasy with insanity. I had to literally duck my head to avoid being struck by the golden beams of time-space that flashed, like lazers, over my head.
Though the climb up this pyramid was life-threatening in any state of mind, my situation was made even more precarious by the fact that I'd lost all sense of gravity. My feet hadn't touched the ground from the moment I'd set out.
Still, in a daze, I mounted the huge steps until, in a flashing apocalypse, I reached the summit of the pyramid. At that moment, I stepped into 'the centre' of sacred time and space. With my view unobstructed, the horizon became a perfect circle and I stood, blessed and enlightened, at its absolute mid-point. Space expanded to infinity and time exploded to eternity.
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Myrette stared at me wordlessly as I finished my account of the bizarre events at Kalakmul.
"Then can you see it?" she asked, gazing at the glass pyramid of the Louvre. "Can you see it even now?"
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FALL 2007
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I glanced at Mitterand's controversial construction: the four-sided pyramid carved in golden glass. "No. Not now... But I know it's there. That shape - which echoes the gilded pyramid atop the obelisk at la Concorde - is a desperate attempt, in our own day, to evoke the ancient, forgotten space - the sacred space that surrounds us all the time - though we just don't see it."
Myrette nodded her head gravely. Nervously, she began fingering her shawl, with its Amazonian weavings and patterns.
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THE FABRIC OF SACRED SPACE
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"Can I share with you," she began hesitantly, "an experience that happened to me last year? It describes exactly what you mean by 'sacred space'."
Beside us was an equestrian statue of Louis XIV - 'the Sun King'. We sat in its shadow and she began her story.
"I began wearing this shawl one year ago, and have kept it with me always. The first time I saw this Amazonian pattern was in a vision, a dream, a waking-dream. It was the first time, really, I'd genuinely hallucinated. It was during an all-night ceremony, when I'd ingested ayahuasca for the first time...
"I'd heard that the mixture is bitter to the taste. But for me, it tasted exactly as it should - like a sacrament. The curandero who led the ceremony called ayahuasca la medecina sagrado, and it is like that, a sacred medicine teaching us to see everything hidden in our souls, both good and evil.
"The plant taught me so much about myself - my past, my hopes, my uncertain future. She's tricky, la madre ayahuasca, playful and shape-shifting, sometimes frightening, sometimes caressing. It was like seeing a perfect reflection of myself, luminous and clear, then watching it darken and distort through my own hopes and fears."
She shivered uncontrollably, then smiled to herself.
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VISIONARY REVUE
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SHIPIBO-CONIBO TEXTILE
WITH KENE PATTERN
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"Towards morning, I left the ceremonial place and wandered through nature. The sky was still dark, the moon was up, the fields were covered in mist. I looked down at the ground, and suddenly, I saw them - I saw the patterns.
They were glowing green and blue, an infinite net of triangular shapes that hovered just above the ground. They were like the notes of an ancient unheard melody. I think I saw one of the many patterns hidden in Nature - the zigzags and meanders which ancient cultures engraved on their pottery.
"Then, when I returned to the ceremonial place, I saw the patterns again, but this time they were different. They glowed red and orange, and their shapes were infinitely more complex: overlapping triangles, diamonds and squares. A definite vibration or energy resonated through these interconnected shapes.
"What I saw, that moment, was the fabric of sacred space. It is the matrix woven with the strands of our lives, and it glows with all the incandescence of our souls. I saw the hidden sacred threads that hold us all together, meshing us into one vast community of interconnected spirits and kindred souls.
"It's always there, like you said, but we just don't see it. That is why tribal peoples inscribe it onto their clothing, even tattoo it onto their skin - to remind them. To remember who they are and where they've come from.
"These people don't need stone temples to carve out their sacred space - they carry it on them always. Just the way they |
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FALL 2007
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walk or work, with measured rhythms and melodic songs, places them constantly in the invisible sacred space. They remember what we've forgotten."
I gazed at the tattoos on her skin, the complex weavings and textiles draped over her figure - and for the first time I understood.
She gave me a conspiring glance, and we started out once more, toward the east - to Notre Dame and the rising sun.
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THE HIERATIC STYLE
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Past Pont des Arts and Pont Neuf, we followed the quai until we reached Place du Chatelet. By now, our minds had become strangely attuned: to a degree, Myrette had inherited my strange disorientation. I, on the other hand, had begun to see the secret, sacred disposition of Paris and its monuments. We'd reached another gateway on this nocturnal journey of the underworld sun.
(See Map of Paris).
But it was Notre Dame, which lay just across the Seine on Ile de la Cité, that exercised the greatest attraction. I felt drawn towards it as toward the centre of the world - it was home, our forgotten home... it was paradise.
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Myrette, meanwhile, insisted on sitting by the fountain at Place du Chatelet. In a daze, my eyes wandered over the Egyptian figures - enigmatic sphinxes spewing out streams of water, all aglow in electric light.
The moment my glance came to rest on one particular sphinx, a whole series of memories flashed through my mind. |
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How many hundreds if not thousands of sculptures had I seen like this on my journeys through Egypt, India, Mexico and Tibet?
All these cultures shared, I had slowly come to realize, certain discernable features. Finally I recognized it as 'the Hieratic style'.
While the moon arced over Paris, I explained to Myrette my odd discovery.
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VISIONARY REVUE
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"Each cultural style is an example of 'simplifying' the face or figure to reveal its underlying lines and shapes. A certain harmony arises when the multiple, amorphous lines of a face or figure are reduced to a few essential lines - defining the surface through curving, dynamic shapes which reach out and resonate with an invisible but perfect shape that surrounds it, such as a sphere, pyramid or cube."
Myrette stared at me curiously. She hadn't understood a word. My thoughts, it seems, were connecting so quickly that she could hardy keep up. (Hyper-activated thinking: one of the effects of what we'd smoked...)
I tried again.
"Think of the Mayan pyramid I saw. Just as a temple measures and 'carves' sacred space, so does a sculpture. It shows the human figure or face in harmonious relationship to those divine shapes that make up the sacred space around it. In the case of a temple, this is easy to see: the constant squares that a Greek temple measures out, or the triangles that make up an Egyptian or Aztec pyramid. These shapes echo through the sacred space.
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"But, in the Hieratic style of sacred sculpture, it is more difficult to discern, since the human figure is irregular in shape. Thus, artists began with the human figure in a profile or frontal view. Over millennia and across the generations, guilds and families of artists redefined the human figure according to harmonious lines and divine proportions which we now call 'the Hieratic style' of Egyptian, Buddhist or Mayan art.
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FALL 2007
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THE SACRED GEOMETRY UNDERLYING
OLMEC AND BUDDHIST STATUARY
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"Countless diagrams have been drawn to show the underlying proportion, charpentes, and 'sacred geometry' of these figures. They manifest the shapes of sacred space that otherwise remain unseen.
"But, more subtle still are the various 'distortions' in the eyes and lips, or the fingers and hips, which make up its Hieratic style."
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DISTORTION - PERFECTION
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Under the spray of the Egyptian fountain at Place du Chatelet, I continued staring at one enigmatic sphinx while my mind travelled back to ancient Thebes.
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"Once, during my travels through Egypt," I recalled, "I viewed an Egyptian statue under the effects of hashish. I stared at it intensely until, suddenly, I saw the distortions. And for the first time, I understood their hidden significance."
Her eyebrows arched; Myrette demanded that I explain these 'distortions'. To illustrate, I took out a notebook |
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| which I'd retrieved from Juan that evening, a notebook I usually carried with me to museums to make quick sketches. |
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VISIONARY REVUE
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AURELIA - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The area of distortion (c) is cross-hatched
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GUILLAUME JOUVENEL - Jean Fouquet
The area of distortion is marked with horizontal lines
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Among its pages were various drawings which, over the years, displayed these so-called 'distortions'. They are based on the way the eye sees. The eye seeks out 'points of recognition' which it scans and re-assembles to form the mental image. To achieve certain distortions, artists introduced anomalies into the space between these points, and so they went unnoticed.
Though the human eye is always in search of faults, it fails to find these hidden anomalies. Instead, it rests on the points of recognition, which seem to be 'correct', and so the figure holds together, despite the distortions present.
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The 'styles' of different artists and epochs emerge through these hidden distortions, which are always at play among the points of recognition.
Glancing at more of my drawings, Myrette began to see what I meant.
Meanwhile, I kept staring at the Egyptian sphinx above my head. Hesitantly, I continued my account.
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| "The more I stared at this Egyptian statue, the more I saw the hidden anomalies in its style. Then, in a flashing moment of illumination, I realized that these 'distortions' are, in fact, perfections. They are the subtle alterations in every line and |
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FALL 2007
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shape which makes the figure harmonize with an invisible, perfect shape surrounding it.
"Just as, at Kalakmul, I suddenly saw the sacred but invisible space that continually surrounds us, so did I now see a perfect sphere surrounding the Egyptian bust. I beheld the sculpture in its sacred space, in one of the shapes that constitute its sacred space. It seemed so obvious, the moment I saw it in this manner.
"All the lines and shapes that traced out its surface were, miraculously, 'reaching out' to the perfect sphere - echoing, vibrating and resonating with it harmoniously."
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VISIONARY REVUE
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Myrette began staring at the sphinx above our heads. Her gaze was fixed, her eyes wide and wondrous. She was starting to see what I meant.
"Hieratic sculptures use lines and volumes to carve space - to carve out time and space - in a perfect way."
I looked away from the sphinx above us, and to a more distant one in profile.
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"While I was in Thebes, I turned my glance away from that bust, and onto a bas relief beside it. Now, surrounding that face in profile, I saw a 2D shape - a perfect square.
"I realized that, first of all, the 'carving of sacred space' was achieved in |
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two-dimensions, through drawing and bas relief. Those anonymous craftsmen and visionaries discovered which lines in the human figure resonated with the sacred 2D space surrounding it. Thus they created what we now call 'the Egyptian style' of bas relief."
I showed her a photo of an Egyptian head in profile, and we gazed at it for some time.
"A square or circle is manifestly perfect in two-dimensional space. But an amorphous shape, like a human head, is not. Through 'stylistic rendering', that amorphous shape begins to absorb parts of the perfect but unseen square or circle surrounding it. When enough of the perfect square or circle is absorbed into the amorphous shape, it becomes graceful and harmonious. There is an echo or resonance, a relation, a joining of two into one, which we describe as harmony. Thus, the human shape is harmoniously linked to the divine shapes through its cultural style, its sacred style - it's Hieratic style."
As we gazed at the Egyptian head in profile, we began to see the invisible circle and squre surrounding this figure - the shapes that distorted (or rather, 'perfected') the face: broadening it, elongating the eyes, lengthening the distance between the eye and ear.
"I can't really explain why," Myrette began, "but I'm starting to see this figure as if it were huge. It's growing in stature, becoming massive."
"Exactly," I remembered. "That's what happened when I stared at the Egyptian bas relief. It seemed larger than life. It must be one of the effects of the widening - the figure becomes 'epic' and acquires a certain 'grandeur'. It's like standing too close to the screen in the cinema - the 'distortions' make the figure appear massive."
She withdrew her eyes from the image and suddenly, a shiver coursed through her body. "C'est vraiment bizarre."
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FALL 2007
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I showed her a series of other images I'd collected which manifest this effect.
"Drawings and bas relief achieve these effects through lines, which divide space into light and darkness - the dark outline, with a hint of shadow, traces out a shape in its flat, luminous space.
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"With sculpture, the lines begin to be break down, and volume appears in three-dimensional space. The defining lines widen, dissipate, and eventually dissolve. Now volume is the place where the light and darkness, the line and curved surface, meet."
I traced my finger over the curving line along the |
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middle of the headdress, which dissolved into the surface volume above the eye.
"One of the most important lines in sculpture is the 'outline', which contains the volume. It creates the figure's silhouette."
I traced my finger around the Egyptian bust.
"All these curving lines define shapes in the figure's volume - like the outline of the silhoutte, or the curving line in the middle of the headdress, separating light from shadow. These, and so many other, smaller examples, are the amorphous shapes that define a nose, an eye, a headdress.
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"And it is exactly these shapes that relate harmoniously to the invisible perfect shape surrounding it. In sculpture, that can be a cube, pyramid or sphere - or any of these in combination. Even now I can see it - the invisible, perfect sphere surrounding this bust, making the shapes curve gracefully, in harmonious accord with the divine sphere in its surrounding sacred space. There - in the curving arc of the eyes, nose and headdress." |
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Again, Myrette's eyes opened wide as she began to stare at the sculpture fixedly.
"Every part is simplified," she said. "But really, it's manifesting the essential qualities of the face - those qualities that relate it to the unseen, sacred archetype." |
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VISIONARY REVUE
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My voice grew low. "Each Hieratic style manifests perfection. All we see, through normal sight, is something which we recognize as beautiful and harmonious. But through visionary seeing, we transcend these qualities and begin to see perfectly. We behold the Sacred, which has manifest itself to us, this moment, in the figure's perfection.
"What does a sculpture of a king say? It says - this is the perfect man! This is man elevated to Godhood - and this is the Godhood manifest in man. The king in Mayan or Egyptian art is exactly what Christ was for Christian art, or the Buddha for Buddhist art: the manifestation of the Sacred in Man.
"This sculpture not only says that through its symbolism - this is the king or saviour - but shows it through its Hieratic style - this is seeing perfection. These sculptures are teaching us to see perfectly. Rather than seeing the style as a 'distortion' in the figure, we recognize its hidden perfection."
As I turned to Myrette, her eyes were fixed and spell-bound. She seemed absent-minded, even lost. Then suddenly she beamed with joy, and an enchanting smile formed on her lips.
Spontaneously, she kissed me. Then, abruptly, she stood up and walked away.
These rapid changes in her mood, from deep seriousness to impulsive passion, frightened me. But still, I followed her.
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HUMANIST VS. HIERATIC ART
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We left Place du Chatelet and crossed over the Seine to the Left Bank. Our promenade nocturne, which so far had followed the east-west decumanus, now turned south along the north-south cardo. Within minutes, we arrived at Place St. Michel (See Map of Paris).
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From where we stood, we could see Boulevard St. Michel rising upwards to Montparnasse. A few homeless clochards were sleeping in the shadow of the large fountain, but the place was mostly abandoned. We sat on the fountain's edge, beneath a huge gryphon spewing water. Above our heads, the Archangel Micheal struggled with Satan at the end of time.
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Myrette rolled another joint and we passed it back and forth. The entheogen immediately took effect, thrusting us into higher dimensions of perception. Staring at the triumphant archangel, Myrette confessed:
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FALL 2007
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"I was never really moved by ancient statuary - what you call works in the Hieratic style. I'm a student of the Renaissance. It's only art like this that really moves me."
Our eyes passed over the dynamic figures of the Archangel and Satan. To me, that moment, their apocalyptic struggle embodied the eternal battle of good and evil which transpires in every person's soul.
"Where's the Hieratic style in this statue?" she asked, deeply moved. "I don't see its stilled perfection. This is dynamic, powerful, moving - a momentary struggle between two great forces. Like Greek and Renaissance art, it appeals to our passions and evokes our emotions."
Her voice shook as she spoke. Her impassioned speech moved me.
"You're right," I admitted. "Hieratic art stills the eye, inspiring peace, tranquility and calm meditation. The figures seem timeless, frozen in eternity, and their graceful gestures are more symbolic than evocative. There's symmetry and centeredness, a static balance based on unity.
"Byzantine icons, Gothic sculpture and, to a certain extent, Netherlandish painting are Christianity's Hieratic styles. |
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VISIONARY REVUE
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They emanate an intense spiritual calm, equivalent to Egyptian, Hindu and Buddhist art."
"I still prefer the ancient Greek and Renaissance," she countered. "It's more human - what I would call Humanist art. A Renaissance Madonna evokes the divine mother through all the qualities of womanhood: tender, gentle, compassionate and caring."
Myrette gave me a long, mysterious look.
In the ensuing silence, she pulled out a notebook from her satchel. It was loaded with images she'd culled from books or cut out of magazines.
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PIETA
Michelangelo
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ST. THERESA
Bernini
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"Look! This is the Humanist style! Rather than figures in a stiff frontal stance, there's a dynamic twist. Their hands don't make symbolic gestures 'outside time' - they're powerful movements transpire in time, momentarily frozen in linear time, but manifesting all the passions of the soul. They don't have an archaic smile or empty stare; their faces express suffering, ecstasy, joy and pain."
"Yes, that's it!" I suddenly realized. "That's what happened to Western art. The Greeks had the Hieratic style - you can see it in the Archaic kouros figures - frontal and proportionate, two feet firmly planted on the ground. These statues were perfectly balanced for all eternity."
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FALL 2007
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KOUROS
Early Greek
'HIERATIC'
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HERMES
Praxiteles
'HUMANIST'
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Divining my thoughts, Myrette stood up.
"Then, one heal was gently lifted off the ground." Displaying remarkable balance, she demonstrated all she said. "From perfect balance, a tremour rippled through the body. The knee bent, the torso twisted, and the body began to collapse as the figure fell slowly to one side. To maintain balance, a counter movement was created, which coursed upward through the figure - the head turned, the arm rose, the hand released passion and emotion."
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VISIONARY REVUE
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"It was the beginning of the contrapposto." I said. "From Hieratic balance, which is timeless, static and unified, a more Humanist balance emerged - a stilled movement in linear time."
"But that movement expresses an emotion," she reminded me, "which explodes in the span of a second. There's spontaneity, life, human expression."
I returned my gaze to the Archangel Micheal and his fallen foe.
"Yes, but the static balance of the Hieratic style is centered in oneness. The more dynamic balance of the Humanist style is based on duality. There is a conflict of opposites. That opposition can be felt between two parts of a single figure, or it can be two opposing figures in a single composition."
"Renaissance art is filled with figures in motion - struggling, embracing, separating and re-uniting. Look, it's all right here..." Myrette showed me Greek and Renaissance images from her notebook. She stopped at the Laocoon group, which struck me, that moment, as the supreme example of the contrapposto in Humanist art.
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"The way I see it," I said, "the serpent in this sculpture disrupts the calm and repose of, what once were, perfectly static and timeless figures in the Hieratic style. It is symbolic of linear time, of conflict and overcoming, of passion and suffering. It's the serpent in the garden of Eden, the Fall of Man."
I held up her cutting of Masaccio's masterpiece, The Expulsion from Eden.
"Just the opposite," she said. "The serpent conspired with Eve to awaken Man. She gave him knowledge and divine awareness." Myrette's gaze was fierce and commanding, like Lilith or the Gorgon. "The Humanist style wasn't a Fall or decline in the history of art. It brought artistic expression to new heights. The Sacred had begun to |
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manifest itself through the passion and drama of human joy and suffering."
"Perhaps," I sighed. "But practically everything that followed after the Renaissance was decadent art - academicism, bourgeois portraits, genre painting. Christianity disappeared from Western art, and so did the spiritual. |
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FALL 2007
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"There were exceptions, of course. But it was a terrible decline - der Untergang der Kunst des Abendlandes...
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Look at Rembrandt's hanging piece of meat, or Francis Bacon. That's where Occidental art ended up - as flesh deprived of spirit, all meat and no soul, an obsession with bodily beauty or ugliness."
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Myrette gave me a long hard look - a look (I have to admit) that aroused new longings and desires in me.
We stared at each other wordlessly. I wanted to embrace her, impulsively, spontaneously, but the moment passed.
She shook her head. "You still have a lot to learn..." Then she stood - and set out towards the Seine.
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END OF PART I
CONTINUE WITH PART II
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