SHAKTI: VARIATIONEN UBER EIN THEMA VON GUSTAVE COURBET

Shakti   1998

 Öl, Acryl, Tusche und Blattgold auf Holz, 70 x 79 cm.

Dieses Gemälde präsentiert gleichzeitig zwei Bilder auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen. Eine Ebene formiert sich als Flachrelief, die andere ist gemalt. Obwohl die Bilder unterschiedliche Elemente darstellen, sind sie als parallele Metaphern zu verstehen. Sie verweisen dabei auf Gedanken, die an den Rändern des Gemäldes in Schrift erscheinen, sowohl auf Griechisch wie auch auf Sanskrit.            

                                                                          

Die Quellen sowohl des Relief-Bildes als auch des gemalten Bildes verweisen auf das Werk Gustave Courbets. Ich verarbeite ganz direkt zwei von Courbets Gemälden. Das bas-relief bezieht sich auf ein wohlbekanntes Werk Courbets, L’Origine du Monde. Der Bezugspunkt des gemalten Bildes sind zwei Gemälde mit dem Titel, La Source de la Loue.  Die Quelle des Flusses Loue war der Ort, an dem Courbet mehrere Arbeiten um 1864 malte.

L’Origine du Monde befindet sich jetzt in ständiger Leihgabe am Musée d’Orsay. Über Jahre hinweg schien es verschwunden zu sein, aber die Witwe des französischen Psychoanalytikers Jacques Lacan stellte es dem Museum zur Verfügung. Obwohl das Gemälde heutzutage nicht einen solchen Schockwert besitzt, den es vor einem Jahrhundert gehabt haben mag, ist es seit seiner Erschaffung doch vorwiegend als eindeutig pornographisch betrachtet worden. Die Kunsthistorikerin Linda Nochlin, die von einem feministischen und freudianischen Blickwinkel aus schreibt, hat L’Origine du Monde ausführlich interpretiert. Sie wird also eine Koryphäe in der Courbet-Forschung angesehen, und ausser einer kritisch-pathologischen Analyse des Gemäldes findet sie kaum etwas, was an diesem Werk zu retten wäre, abgesehen von der meisterhaften technischen Anfertigung. 

Während ich nicht daran interessiert bin, Professor Nochlins Urteil über die historische Betrachtungsweise des Gemäldes anzufechten, will ich mit meiner Arbeit allerdings die Frage aufwerfen:  “Warum hat das Gemälde den Titel Der Ursprung der Welt?  Warum nannte Courbet es nicht Jacquelines Scham, oder etwas ähnliches?  Es ist bekannt, dass Courbet ein ausgezeichneter Provokateur war. Trotzdem gehe ich davon aus, dass Monsieur Courbet nach etwas suchte, was man nicht vollständig verstehen kann, wenn man das Gemälde lediglich als eine Männerfantasie verurteilt. Es handelt sich bei Courbet vielmehr darum, die Idee der Lust mit der des Ursprungs, der Erschaffung selbst, gleichzusetzen, nicht im Sinne einer gedankenlosen Fleischeslust, sondern, in deiner universelleren Weise, eben das implizierend, was Duchamp, der wiederum Courbets Werk sehr gut kannte, Zeit seines Lebens bearbeitete….”Eros c’est la vie.” (Eros ist das Leben). Das ganze Universum ist von Lust getrieben. Wenn man sich bestimmte buddhistische Gemälde genauer anschaut, zum Beispiel verschiedene Darstellungen des Kalachakra (Rad der Zeit), sieht man im Zentrum des Rads drei Tiere in einem Kreis:  einen Hahn, ein Schwein, und eine Schlange. Sie repräsentieren jeweils: Lust, Begierde, und Zorn. Für den Buddhisten bedeuten sie die psychischen Kräfte, die das Rad in der Umdrehung behalten.  Ohne dass damit in irgendeiner Weise angedeutet werden soll, dass Courbet ein Buddhist war, möchte ich hier behaupten, dass er sich der Macht des Eros auf seine eigene Weise bewusst war, nicht nur in seiner eigenen persönlichen Erfahrung, sondern in einem umfassenderen, universellen Sinne.

In der Antike war Eros eine Gottheit, eine Kraft, mit der zu rechnen war und die verehrt wurde. Historisch gesehen, allerdings, wird Courbets Darstellung des weiblichen Körpers in seinem Gemälde von Freund oder Feind als eine Art Beleidigung oder Kränkung der Frauen betrachtet werden. Die Figur hat weder Beine noch Arme, sie hat kein Gesicht. Sie kann daher als eine Methode angesehen werden, die aus einem menschlichen Wesen, einer Frau, ein Objekt macht. 

Andererseits, was ware, wenn Courbet das Figürliche unpersönlich darstellen wollte, um es universell zu gestalten? Indem er das Gesicht, und damit die vorrangige Bezugnahme zum Persönlichen, wegliess, platzierte er die Figur in den Bereich des Unpersönlichen, des Universellen.

Obwohl ich die Intentionen Courbet bezüglich seines Gemäldes nicht wissen kann, kann ich behaupten, dass ich meine eigenen Intentionen kenne. Ich entschloss mich, die Darstellung der weiblichen Genitalien mit der Darstellung der höhlenartigen Quelle eines Flusses zu kombinieren, da die metaphorischen Parallelen zu mächtig schienen, um sie zu ignorieren. Ausserdem existieren zu viele Präzedenzfälle in der bildenden Kunst von der paläolithischen Zeit bis zur Gegenwart, wenn man nur einmal genauer hinschaut.

Es ist schon früher in Courbets Werken bemerkt worden, dass man, im Sinne einer freudianischen Lesart, die Darstellung der weiblichen Genitalien mit den Gemälden der Höhlen in Analogie setzen kann. Ich bin allerdings der Meinung, dass diese Analogie kein Problem der pathologischen Sichtweise ist, sondern dass sie ein weiteres Beispiel einer altertümlichen Idee ist, die Erde selbst als weiblich aufzufassen. Wir kommen nicht nur aus der Erde, sondern kehren zu ihr zurück nach unserem Tod. Wiederum will ich hier nicht behaupten, dass Courbet eine bewusste Gleichsetzung zwischen diesen Darstellungen machte. Vielmehr nehme ich bewusst Bezug auf zwei von Courbets Werken, um durch eine Synthese ein neues Werk zu schaffen. Zudem wird versucht, damit eine Art tantrische Transformation zu kreieren, eine Umwandlung von etwas, das vorher als profan bezeichnet worden ist, in etwas, das heilig ist.

Wenn man nun kurz einige thematische Überlieferungen betrachtet, stellt sich die Frage:  “ Was machten die prähistorischen Menschen in den Höhlen, in denen später oft Höhlenzeichnungen gefunden wurden?”  Von der Forschung ist vorgeschlagen worden, dass im Verlauf eines Initiationsrituals in das Erwachsensein, junge Menschen (männlichen Geschlechts, obwohl das nicht genau bekannt ist) wohl tief in die totale Dunkelheit der Höhlen geführt wurden, und sie dann alleine wieder den Weg herausfinden mussten. Dies war eine Methode, die heranwachsenden Menschen sich mit ihrer eigenen Furcht auseinandersetzen zu lassen, aber auch gleichzeitig eine wortwörtliche “Wiedergeburt” ihres Lebens aus dem Schoss der Erde erfahren zu lassen.

Es gibt zahllose Beispiele von Stein yoni Skulpturen, die überall von Europa bis Zentral- und Südasien gefunden wurden. Diese wurden oft von modernen europäischen Interpreten als Obszönitäten verstanden, aber wie es auch bei Freuds Theorien der Fall ist, das Pathologische liegt nicht bei dem Objekt, sondern im Bewertungssystem des Subjekts.

Schliesslich lässt sich anmerken, dass ich zur graphischen und konzeptionellen Fokussierung der Arbeit den Entschluss fasste, den Rahmen des Bildes mit Text zu versehen. Der griechische Text basiert auf Plotinus. Einige seiner Ideen erscheinen ausgesprochedn poetisch und bemerkenswert. Er hatte ein intuitives, mystisches Verständnis der Natur der Dinge, und ich sehe eine starke Affinität zwischen der Gedankenwelt des Griechen und Überlieferungen, die aus Indien stammen. Die beiden letzten Sätze des Gemäldes, auf Sanskrit, stammen von den Upanishads.  Ich setze nicht notwendigerweise voraus, dass der Betrachter diese Sprachen lesen und verstehen muss, um mein Gemälde anzuschauen. Ein Grund dafür, diese Gedanken in ihrer ursprünglichen Sprache aufzuschreiben, liegt vielmehr darin, dass wir nicht nur diese alten Sprachen vergessen haben, sondern dass wir auch die Ideen, die in diesen Sprachen einmal ausgedrückt wurden, nicht mehr verstehen. 

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Quellen und Textangaben

Gustave Courbet:  L'Origine du Monde  

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Gustave Courbet:  La Source de la Loue

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Übersetzungen der griechischen und Sanskrit Texte

Man stelle sich eine Quelle vor, die keinen anderen Ursprung hat, sondern sich in ihrer Ganzheit an Flüsse ergiesst, und sie wird von den Flüssen nicht aufgebraucht, sondern bleibt in sich selbst ruhend. Die Flüsse jedoch, die sich aus ihr speisen, und bevor sie jeweils in eine andere Richtung fliessen, bleiben alle noch eine Weile zusammen, obwohl ein jeder Fluss bereits irgendwie die Richtung zu wissen scheint, in welche er seine Strömung fliessen lassen wird.

Plotinus,  Ennead III.8.    Über Natur und Besinnung.

Aditi, Göttin der Energie,

Aus dem Göttlichen geboren durch Vitalität,

Mutter aller kosmischen Kräfte,

Sie wirkt im Herzen jeder Kreatur,

Sie ist fürwahr das Selbst.

Denn dieses Selbst überragt alles.

 Katha Upanishad II.1.7

Om. Dieses ist Fülle, jenes ist Fülle, von

dieser Fülle entsteht jene Fülle.

Diese Fülle von jener Fülle wegnehmend,

bleibt als Fülle doch zurück.

Om. Friede, Friede, Friede.

Isa Upanishad, einleitender Gesang.

Copyright  2005 Andy Feehan  

Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Übersetzung von Johannes Birringer

Max Ernst: Levity and Gravity in His Paintings, 1942-48

Is not everything full of significance, symmetry, allusion and strange relations?

Might God not manifest Himself in mathematics as well as in every other science?

Novalis

Max Ernst immigrated to America in 1941 as a refugee from the war in Europe. Having had his life and art disrupted by imprisonment in concentration camps in Vichy France, he wasted little time getting back to work once he landed in New York. His paintings from the late 1930s up to the time of his internment were among his most daring and imaginative experiments. Works from this period in decalcomania such as Swamp Angel and The Robing of the Bride remain some of his most intriguing and enigmatic. Although Ernst continued to work with decalcomania for some time after arriving in New York, he added another very curious element to the mix.

Works from 1942 suddenly featured applications of very fluid paint in ellipses. This “drip” technique represented a strong departure from any of his previous methods. It evoked rapid motion and suggested a flirtation with chaos itself. Ernst frequently had worked in “controlled accidents” that allowed chance elements into his compositions. Along with collage, Ernst added frottage, grattage, and decalcomania to his repertoire and, in each subsequent technical experiment, he allowed chance an ever-greater role. Over the years, his intentional control and force of hand loosened, blurring the line between activity and passivity, eventually arriving at the astonishing level of delicacy shown in such works as Europe After the Rain.

So Ernst, following several years of invention in decalcomania, further extended his sense of adventure, painting with a method that actually employed a fully-automatic function -- the law of gravity -- to control the paint, leaving the artist's hand momentarily out of the act altogether. Late in life Ernst wrote in his biographical notes, entitled Tissue of Truth, Tissue of Lies, a few playfully misleading comments regarding his “drip” technique. Offered here in response are some observations about the process, including a bit of speculation about Ernst’s method and his motives.

Regarding his activities in 1942, Ernst says: “As part of a group exhibition at the Wakefield Bookshop in New York, Betty Parsons showed a painting by M.E. that excited the interest of some young painters. They were especially fascinated by its technique. Max told them it was child’s play. ‘Tie a piece of string, one or two metres long, to an empty tin can, punch a small hole in the bottom and fill the tin with thin paint. Then lay the canvas flat on the floor and swing the tin backwards and forwards over it, guiding it with movements of your hands, arms, shoulders and your whole body. In this way surprising lines will drip onto the canvas. Then you can start playing with free associations.’ The picture, then entitled Abstract Art, Concrete Art, was later renamed Young Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly.”(1)

Young Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly, 1942 and 1947

Oil and enamel on canvas, 82x66cm.  Private Collection, Zürich

Ernst goes on to say, “It’s true that many New York painters adopted this technique, which they called ‘dripping’, and made abundant use of it. Especially Jackson Pollock, whom his friends nicknamed ‘Jack the Dripper’.”(2)

Ernst’s rather audacious claim regarding his influence upon Pollock will be addressed later in this article. But, for now, I return in more detail to the mechanics of Ernst’s original “drip technique”. Two distinct approaches to dripping are seen in La Planète Affolée, (The Bewildered Planet).

La Planète Affolée, 1942

Oil on canvas, 110x140cm. Tel-Aviv Art Museum

The auspicious title of this painting reflects both the scientific and poetic sensibilities of Max Ernst. It also contains a wry hint about the way in which this and successive works were created. In dripping paint from a can and a piece of string, Ernst employed a mechanical device that he did not mention to Pollock -- a compound pendulum, one suspended from two points.

Carefully observing the character of the lines present in each side of this painting, one might surmise that they were produced in two ways. The right side features no regular pattern, no rhythm or cyclical quality in the peregrinations: It appears to have been poured pretty much as Ernst described in his memoirs -- by holding a can on a string and simply swinging it with his hand over the canvas on the floor. On the left side, there is an order, an evident periodicity that suggests a Lissajous figure, also known as a Bowditch curve. Lissajous figures can be graphically reproduced with a compound pendulum. Compare the structure of the linear figure on the left in La Planète Affolée with the figure in this photograph:

From Science Magic, by Kenneth M. Swezey.   McGraw-Hill, 1952

This illustration shows a compound pendulum, comprised of a wooden dowel, string and a sand-filled paper cone with a small hole in the bottom. Ernst built a similar device and swung a can full of paint instead. He first masked the area around the paint drips, and then he let the can fly. At some point soon after launching, Ernst stopped the can and removed it: had he not, the can eventually would have stopped in a plumb position, leaving a less structured and less intriguing dribble in the center of its arc.

There may be at least two possible explanations for Ernst’s sudden use of the compound pendulum after coming to New York. The first is that he became aware of other artists using the device at that time. Anecdotes suggest that Stanley William Hayter occasionally demonstrated it to students in his studio, but I found no evidence of these ellipses in Hayter’s catalogue raisonné. (3) There were other reports of artists’ experiments with the device, but I know no work that supports them.

The second explanation is that Ernst already had seen the compound pendulum demonstrated at the University of Bonn years before. Compound pendulums have long been used in elementary physics classes to demonstrate the behavior of waveforms approaching one another at perpendicular angles. The pattern demonstrated by the young man in the above photograph represents a ratio of waveforms that can be duplicated electronically today. However, when Ernst was a student at Bonn, these forms were created by mechanical models and illustrated and explained in textbooks. One, in particular, is Spezielle Algebraische und Transzendente Ebene Kurven: Theorie und Geschichte, by Loria and Schütte. It originally was published in Leipzig in 1902, and it seems quite possible that Ernst knew this book.

From  Spezielle Algebraische und Transzendente Ebene Kurven.   Plate XIV

(Note the four figures on the lower right.)

In a contemporary classroom, these same waveforms might be demonstrated with an oscilloscope or illustrated in a chart such as the one below:

From Vibrations and Waves, by A. P. French.  Norton, 1971

The study of these waveforms goes back to the nineteenth century, beginning with the American astronomer and mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838). Among his many achievements was his English translation of Laplace’s Traité de Mécanique Céleste. In 1815, Bowditch published a paper in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences called “On the Motion of aPendulum Suspended from Two Points”.

Ernst's own lifelong interest in astronomy suggests that he knew Bowditch’s work. Thus, the execution of La Planète Affolée may have constituted a great intuitive leap that playfully links the physics of the compound pendulum with the physics of gravitation between two planets, such as that of the earth and the moon. Such a precise analog may be debatable, but in his paper, Nathaniel Bowditch demonstrated his “…equations…are exactly similar to those for finding the apparent motion of the earth viewed from the moon…”. (4) So, the real analogy is visual and more immediate, describing the apparent path of a planet in the heavens to an observer standing on another planet, over the course of time.

The French physicist Jules Antoine Lissajous (1822-1880) studied acoustical vibrations via clever devices that translated sound into visual media (using light beams and mirrors or trays full of dry sand). These graphic methods of “capturing” sound waves could be considered forms of “automatic writing” that pre-date any such notion within the context of art. Again, it is entirely possible that Ernst was familiar with his ideas as well.

Interestingly, the identical mathematics describes the behavior of Bowditch’s compound pendulum and Lissajous’ experiments with sound and light beams and mirrors: thus the interchangeable names for the figures described by the phenomena. I think Ernst was aware of this common thread and stitched it into his own work in 1942. In doing so, he expressed his life-long spirit of reaching “beyond painting” or any previous notion of art to enlarge the scope of his oeuvre.

Ernst and other surrealists -- particularly Duchamp, Man Ray, and Magritte -- also were interested in areas of mathematics that refuted conventional concepts of form and space. They all knew the ideas of the French mathematician, Henri Poincaré (1854-1912). Perhaps most engaging were Poincaré’s ideas regarding what is generally called non-Euclidean geometry.

Prior to the turn of the nineteenth century, the standard of the geometry of the cosmos was Euclid’s Elements. The so-called "fifth axiom of Euclid" relates to both the idea of three-dimensional space itself as well as its pictorial description. The axiom more or less states that “…through a point next to a straight line only one line can be drawn that is parallel to it, both of them intersecting only at infinity”. (5)

Three people previous to Poincaré produced geometries that disobeyed Euclid's fifth axiom -- Bernard Riemann, János Bolyai, and Nicolai Lobachevsky -- but the surrealists were most interested in Poincaré’s work. Certain aspects of Poincaré’s thought processes, including the juxtaposition of rational thought with intuitive leaps, must have appealed to Ernst. Poincaré claimed to be baffled about how he received his inspiration, as though he were simply a conduit for a system that was already in existence. Compare this to Ernst’s own sense of detachment, in which he describes his working method as “the exploitation of the chance meeting of two distant realities on an unfamiliar plane or, to use a shorter term, the culture of systematic displacement and its effects”. (6) Fascination with the unconscious, integral to the theoretical underpinnings of surrealism, by definition negates the central role of the artist as creator ex nihilo.

Returning to Ernst’s meeting with Jackson Pollock and the seminal work, Young Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly requires acknowledgement that Ernst already had visited the Poincaré Institute in Paris several times. Before 1942 he had surely acquired a taste for unconventional mathematics and probably knew of the synchronous theories of Bowditch and Lissajous.

Young Man Intrigued…was first shown in 1942 as a non-objective work entitled Abstract Art, Concrete Art and was initially comprised only of ellipses, with no references to a figure. In 1947, Ernst reworked the painting, adding the head and changing the title. (Coincidentally, Jackson Pollock was by then beginning his meteoric rise as a painter and was pretty well on track toward his mature style.) However, one painting of note by Ernst in the interim period is Euclid, done in 1945.

Euclid   1945   Oil on Canvas, 65.4x57.5 cm.  Menil Collection, Houston

The irony present in these works is the beginning of what Werner Spies called, in reference to later works by Ernst as “humorous allegories on the sudden senility of Euclidean space”. (7)

From 1942 until 1948, Max Ernst made about a dozen paintings utilizing paint poured from a suspended can. It appears that he used a compound pendulum in The Bewildered Planet 1942, Young Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly 1942, Surrealism 1942, Euclid 1945, and Sleeping Eskimo 1948 (8). But the less-regular ellipses in the rest of them probably were produced with the simple, hand-held pendulum that Ernst described to Pollock.

Also interesting is that, in La Planète Affolée, not only is the left-hand side an example of a Lissajous figure, but the right-hand side is an example of the "deterministic chaos" of Poincaré. So, Poincaré’s ideas are present in all Ernst's works in which a simple pendulum is used. (9) It is ironic that the arcs of both the simple and the compound pendulum have nothing to do with non-Euclidean geometry. But Ernst was referring to the fly itself as non-Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry does deal with objects changing their form while in motion.

The debate around Ernst’s claim of teaching Pollock about “dripping” has been around for decades. Ernst’s supporters have based their cases on Ernst's own word. Ernst’s detractors have noted that New York painters had already tried various pouring methods before Ernst showed up. The best argument for this was made by William Rubin in part IV of a series of articles called “Jackson Pollock and the Modern Tradition” in Artforum, May, 1967. Most pertinently, Rubin distinguished the difference in intention between Ernst’s consistent figuration and Pollock’s abstraction. He also described several different dripping methods of Pollock’s that had nothing to do with pendulums or mathematical principles.

Ernst’s continued interest in physics was evident in both drawings and collages from 1948, the year he painted Sleeping Eskimo, last in his group of “drip” paintings.

Ausstellungssignet   1948  Pen and Ink on Paper, 5.6x10.5 cm. (10)

This drawing was published both in conjunction with exhibitions by Ernst at both M. Knoedler & Co. and the Museum of Modern Art.

Once Upon a Time there Was a Mouse in Milo

From Paramyths, p.29 (11)

The graphs created by Ernst in both these works show Bessel functions which are prescribed solutions to differential equations found to govern a variety of wave motions, particularly those that are confined to the surface of spheres and cylinders.  

Six years later, Ernst was still referring to planetary gravitational fields. (Note the diagram on the head of Venus.) It's worth noting here that Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity suggests that space/time is not only curved, but it is curved by the force of gravity itself. This further refutes the Elements and contributes to Ernst’s recognition of “the sudden senility of Euclidean space”. Finally, it is altogether appropriate that Ernst had a strong interest in the work of Werner Heisenberg, whose “uncertainty principle” parallels his own disdain of positivist or absolute analysis of anything. It is in that spirit that this article is offered -- not as a definitive explanation of this aspect of the work of Max Ernst, but as a subjective insight into a larger unknown.

References and Notes

1.     Werner Spies, ed., Max Ernst: A Retrospective (Munich, Germany: Prestel-Verlag, 1991)  p. 322.

2.     Spies [1]  p. 322.

3.     Peter Black, The Prints of Stanley William Hayter: a Complete Catalogue (Mount Kisco, New York: Moyer-Bell, 1992)

4.     Nathaniel Bowditch, “On the Motion of a Pendulum Suspended from Two Points,” Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Volume 3, part 2 (1815) p. 434.

5.     Gerald Holton, “Henri Poincaré, Marcel Duchamp and Innovation in Science and    

      Art,” Leonardo, Volume 34, no.2 (2001) p.128.

6.     Max Ernst, Beyond Painting, and Other Writings by the Artist and His Friends (New

      York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1948) pp.16-17.

7.   Spies [1]  p. 51.

8.     Werner Spies and Sigrid Metken and Günter Metken, eds., Max Ernst Oeuvre-

      Katalog (Houston, Texas: Menil Foundation; Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont

      Schauberg, 1987) Volume 5, Werke 1938-53.

9.     For a discussion of a simple pendulum as a model see: "Poincaré, or Deterministic  

     Chaos (Sensitivity to Initial Conditions)" pp.131-133 in: Charles Ruhla, The

     Physics of Chance: From Blaise Pascal to Niels Bohr. (trans. by G. Barton) New

     York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

10.  Spies and Metken [8]  p. 65.

.

11.  Spies and Metken [8]  p. 94.

  

Essay Copyright 2001 Andy Feehan.  Images here appear under the doctrine of fair use, since no commercial intent exists.

Shakti: A Painting From 1998

Shakti 1998 oil, acrylic, ink and gold leaf on Masonite 28x34"

This work presents two separate images simultaneously, in layers. One layer is formed in a shallow relief, and one layer is painted. Although the images are two discreet elements, they are intended to be parallel metaphors, both pointing to ideas expressed in the border of the painting, written in Greek and also in Sanskrit. 

The sources of both the image in relief as well as the painted image lie in the work of Gustave Courbet. I borrowed, pretty literally, from two of his paintings. The bas-relief comes from a well known work of Courbet’s called L’Origine du Monde. The source of the painted image comes from a pair of paintings called La Source de la Loue. It was at the headwaters of the river Loue that Courbet painted several works around 1864.

L’Origine du Monde is now on permanent loan to the Musee D’Orsay. It had disappeared for years, but the widow of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan made it available to the museum. Although the painting may not create as much of a shock today as it did a century ago, it has been consistently regarded since its creation as blatant pornography. The art historian, Linda Nochlin, writing from both a feminist and a Freudian perspective, has discussed L’Origine du Monde at great length. She is regarded as an expert and authority on the work of Courbet, and, beyond a critical-pathological analysis of the painting, she finds little redeeming value in the work (except for its masterful execution). While I don’t intend to debate Professor Nochlin concerning what may be the way the painting has heretofore been regarded, I would like to pose the question,"Why is the painting called The Origin of the World?" Why didn’t Courbet call it Jacqueline’s Twat, or something similar? I know that Courbet was a world-class provocateur. Even so, I believe that Monsieur Courbet was onto something that is not fully comprehended if it is dismissed out of hand as a simple, prurient male fantasy. I believe Courbet was connecting the idea of desire with creation itself, not just in the sense of a kind of mindless human lust, but in a more universal way, implying the same thing that Marcel Duchamp, who was well aware of Courbet, played with all his life…Eros c’est la vie. The whole universe is driven by desire! If one looks carefully at certain Buddhist paintings, say for instance, any rendition of the Wheel of Time, one can see, at the center of the wheel, three animals in a circle: a cock, a pig, and a snake. These represent respectively, lust, greed, and anger. They are, for the Buddhists, the psychic forces that keep the wheel turning. Without saying that Courbet was in any way a Buddhist, I would simply like to suggest that he was aware in his own way of the power of eros, not just in his own personal experience, but in a larger, universal sense. To the ancients, Eros was a god, a force to be reckoned with and honored. Historically, however, Courbet’s treatment of the female body in this painting has been regarded by all, friend and foe alike, as a kind of insult to women, because the figure has not only no arms or legs, but also no face. It is therefore considered as a device that creates an object out of a human being, a woman. But what if Courbet intended to make the work impersonal in order to make it universal? By leaving out a face, the primary reference to the personal, he placed it in the realm of the impersonal, the universal. 

Whether or not I can ever discern Courbet’s intentions regarding this painting, I can say with certainty what my own intentions are. I decided to combine this image of the female genitalia with a painting of a cavernous source of a river because, for me, the metaphorical parallels were too obvious to ignore, and there are too many precedents in art, from the Paleolithic period to the relatively recent, if one simply looks for them.

It has been previously noted in Courbet’s work that, in a Freudian sense, one might analogize the image of female genitals and paintings of caves. It is my opinion, however, that the analogy is not a matter of pathology, but, quite the opposite, simply another example of an ancient notion that the earth itself is female. We not only come out of the earth, but we also return to the earth upon our death. Again, I don’t necessarily suggest that Courbet was making a conscious connection between these images…but I am deliberately taking two of his works and synthesizing a third work as my own. And I am also attempting a sort of tantric transformation of something, previously regarded as profane, back into something sacred.

Just briefly noting some thematic precedents, one might ask, "What was it that prehistoric people were doing in caves where, often, painted images are found? It has been suggested that, as a matter of initiation into adulthood, young people (probably male, although we don’t know) were led deep down into the total darkness of caves and made to find their way out. This was a way of forcing people to face their fears and perhaps also a way of acknowledging a literal "rebirth" from the womb of the earth.

There are countless examples of stone yoni sculptures, found everywhere from Europe to central and south Asia. Often, previous modern European interpreters have read them as obscenities, but here, as is sometimes the case with Freudian theory itself, the pathology lies not with the object, but with the value system of the subject.

Finally, as a way of both graphically and conceptually punctuating my painting, I have chosen to surround the image with text. The Greek is from Plotinus. Some of his ideas to me are both poetic and astonishing. He had an intuitive, mystical grasp of the nature of things, and I see a close affinity between his thought and many ideas found in India. The last two phrases around the painting, in Sanskrit, are from the Upanishads. I do not consider it necessary that anyone be able to read these languages in order to look at my painting. Actually, part of the reason that I included the ideas in their original languages is to suggest that many of us now have not only forgotten these languages, but we have also lost many of the ideas that these languages once expressed.

Sources and References

Gustave Courbet L'Origine du Monde

Gustave Courbet La Source de la Loue

 Translations of Greek and Sanskrit Texts 

“For think of a spring which has no other origin, but gives the whole of itself to rivers, and is not used up by the rivers but remains itself at rest, but the rivers that rise from it, before each of them flows in a different direction, remain for a while all together, though each of them knows, in a way, the direction in which it is going to let its stream flow;”

                  …Plotinus: Ennead III. 8. On Nature and Contemplation

  

     “The goddess of energy, Aditi,

                   Born of the godhead through vitality,

         Mother of all the cosmic forces

                          Who stands in the heart of every creature,

                              Is the Self indeed. For this Self is supreme!”

                      …Katha Upanishad II. 1.7.

  

“Om. That is Full, this is Full, from that Full, this Full emanates. Taking away this Full from that Full, the Full still remains behind, Om. Peace, Peace, Peace.”

                      …Isa Upanishad, introductory chant.