by Hagea

Artwork Description

Forgotten Things

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The “painting within a painting” seems to be a favourite theme for Victor Hagea. It was present in the meta-pictorial vision of the Unveiling, and in Rebus, which I have already discussed. But it resurfaces again in a series of stills, like Forgotten Things, Chilean Wine, or even in Italian Project. It consistently takes the shape of a puzzling item, a piece of paper torn, severed, or broken, and then pinned down on the background of the painting. Formally, this is a visual quotation we recognize from the Dutch Masters, which the artist welcomes in his paintings. What is the effect of such encounter will be the theme of my further reflection. But first, let us rehearse the original meaning of this puzzling detail, which Hagea seems to love very much. The piece of paper belongs to a large family of images, like scrolls, cartellinos, and even skin-like rolled canvases, present in the 17th c. Stills. They have been all perceived as metaphors of the picture representation, in general, but they all send to a deeper meaning, the vision of painting as skin. Why is it so, and from where does it come such excentric idea? The idea of canvas as a skin stretched upon the frame of the painting, just as the skin is wrapped around the human body, is an old metaphor in the history of images. The story behind this metaphor is Marsyas myth reporting the contest between Marsyas, the god of music, and Apollo, the god of poetry. Behind the fable stands the symbolic contest between poetry and music, the confrontation between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, which results in the flaying of Marsyas. The message of this pathetic vision is pregnant with meaning in that which concerns the origins and nature of creation. By flaying Marsyas, Apollo, the winner of the contest, wanted to show that creation is a painful endeavour, one which involves sacrifice. But he wanted to teach also “the proper way to skin the Fable,” that is, to discover the hidden meaning which stands behind the surface, and this is the strategy of any exegetical interpretation. The peeling off canvas as if one would flay out skin resurfaces in Mannerism as a powerful vision, particularly cultivated by such artists like Michelangelo, but is present also in the epochal work of the anatomist Vesalius, which gave the first description of the human body in his De humanis corpore fabrica (1543). This visual scheme pops out again in still-life genre, but this time turns the anatomical into a playful game: paper scrolls and cartellinos become skin metaphors, glossing around the transient epidermis of things in representation. They are no doubt good subjects to display the excellence of pictorial skill. The image comes back in the imagination of the Surrealist painters. I think, it might be fair to say that Hagea’s painting could be placed in-between these two streams. The artist is no doubt deeply concerned with the drama of his time, but in his stills he emphatically points out to the past, like in the title of his painting – Forgotten things. We are almost sure that the “forgotten things” are the exquisite res of the Old Dutch Masters. He is obviously much indebted to them, at least in formal terms. He wants to rescue from oblivion the forgotten things, to resurrect them, to reconstruct, or rather to “deconstruct” their trajectory, not so much the technique, but their spirit. The Italian project is an exemplary piece in that respect; it is also a research project of the artist himself. He deliberately juxtaposes Raffaello di Bartolomeo known as Raffaellino Del Garbo’s sketch of hands (1470-1512) to Caravaggio’s hands in his “Calling of Saint Matthews” (1599-1600), trying to follow in time the development of this pattern of representation, breaking though the chronological time. He shows how the imaginary operates beyond time on the level of memory, carrying out the forms, and bringing them back as epiphanic signs. And this is exactly how the metapictorial works. Hagea takes up the Vanitas theme established already in 17th c., but turns it into a postmodern existentialist reflection upon life, death, and the vanity of things. Indeed, an unmistakable sense of impermanence dominates the pictures. Thus, his little broken pieces of paper are like old reliques coming from the past, forgotten things, and found again, fragile bodies of butterflies from a lost memory. They are mnemonic signs, visions of painting as memory, lost and recovered again. Hagea’s painting is at once, a memento mori and a sublime gesture to resist oblivion. Because oblivion and remembering are the two facettes of the same coin, or rather say, of the same squared painting. Within its surface, the invisible hand of the artist meets the eye of the viewer, brushing the painting surface in worship and pure amazement at the painter’s skill. We may call this, the moment of paradoxality of painting. The paradox derives from this impossible association between that, which is impermanent, and that which is made now permanent. Durably contained in matter, almost solidified like a gem, the forgotten things seem as if inscribed in immanence, as well as in eternity. At the same time, the piece of paper, fragile in its appearance, faded out by time, points out dramatically to the thin layer of matter which is the sole reality of the thing, behind which there is nothing. No hidden meaning, no architext, or palimpsest, is expected to be revealed. The most pregnant meaning resists any flaying. And this is so, because the same eternal aporia seems to hunt the human condition: the play of memory. Man is under the power of dices, no matter where the metro ticket might take him, no matter how glorious his hand-made creation is, as long as the shadow casts even upon the most exquisite deep-blue vase. This is inexorably the sign of transience, and the reflection of our mortal condition, namely, to forget and to constantly remember things. Here, Hagea meets Magritte’s La condition humaine, a vision of impermanence of the world, a mere epidermic and fragile surface.

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