KAREN
LAUB-NOVAK
Syracuse, New York
It was on
the Lord's day, and I was caught up by the Spirit; and behind
me I heard a loud voice, like the sound of a trumpet, which said
to me 'Write down what you see on a scroll and send it to the
seven churches:…' I turned to see whose voice it was that
spoke to me; and when I turned I saw seven lamps of gold, and
among the lamps one like the son of man robed down to his feet,
with a golden girdle around his breast. The hair of his head was
as white as snow-white wool, and his eyes flamed like fire; his
feet gleamed like burnished brass refined in a furnace, and his
voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand
he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp two edged
sword and his face shone like the sun in full strength.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as thought dead, but he laid
his right hand upon me and said, "do not be afraid. I am
the first and the last, and I am the living one; for I was dead
and now I am alive forever more, and I hold the keys of death
and Hades. Write down therefore what you have seen what is now
and what will be hereafter.
--Apoc. 1:10-20
INTRODUCTION
How
do we interpret a painting, a drawing, a biblical text? How does
an artist interpret her own images? Interpretation is not a tidy
process. We are never sure we have the right interpretation, or
even the best one. Interpretation is open to misperception and
error. Interpretation is vulnerable to vacillation on the part
of the interpreter, or to misconceptions in the interior process
of the interpreter. The interpreter looking at a work of art may
read ideas into every image, into every color. He or she may read
much more into the work than the artist intended. The images may
create a stream of conscious connections in the viewer that was
not consciously intended by the artists. Sometimes an artists
may acknowledge these further connections as valid. On the other
hand, the artists may say that the viewer is reading far too much
into the work. The intention was much less complicated, more playful,
not so serious.
How do we
proceed? Is it one meaning vs. anything goes? Is any interpretation
as valid as any other? In painting from texts like those of the
Apocalypse, the Canticle of Canticles, and Ezekiel, the means
of interpretation the artists uses have more scope. What the artists
is doing as interpreter is not giving one idea, or one rule, but
a way of looking. Some ways of seeing are more fruitful than others.
Some ways are wrong. By returning to the Apocalypse, I don't intent
an "exegesis" of the text, an explanation of the imagery.
I hope to illustrate a way of working, a process of perception,
a visual language. A visual language grows from a process often
unconscious, non-conceptual: a nonverbal language within a language.
It is a language of images, symbols and media. Interpretation
here is the ability to translate a text into a new language. It
depends upon an ability to see visual connections. It is constituted
by three kinds of activity: perception, intelligence, and physical
action: eye, mind and hand. Interpretation is a response. Hermeneutics
is a guide to this response.
An even more
difficult problem in the Apocalypse is the conflict between dream
and vision. To be "in the spirit" leads us to the unconscious.
We often think the words dream and vision are synonymous. However,
I see a disparity between them. One derivation of dream (Archaic
German) is to deceive. (According to Freud the symbolic nature
of dreams is to disguise.) The derivation of vision (videre) means
to see, to perceive, to become aware of, to take hold of, to understand.
Is the Apocalypse deception or revelation? Do we (a) read these
passages as dreams according to Freud's psychoanalysis, where
every image would have a double meaning? Do we see these images
as the private illusions or neurosis of one man? Are they symbols
which mask John's motives, fears, desires, inhibitions or self-deceptions?
Or (b) do we read these images as having a logical connection
to a deeper meaning? Not as a activity of masking, but of unmasking.
To see John's experience as dream takes us down one path. To see
his experience as vision takes us in another direction.
But finally John is more than a dreamer or visionary. The Apocalypse
has the continuity of art and craft. As does William Blake, the
eighteenth-century visionary, writer and artist. John records
his visions and sustains them with an inner structure. These visions
are bounded by form. They come to a conclusion. John, as Blake
did, stood both inside and outside the experience. This brings
us to the next problem.
PART II
The
relationship to experience: standing in the experience and outside.
The interpretive problem of the artist takes a different path
from that of the verbalist. Tart is a language with rules of its
own. Its rules parallel and at intervals intersect with the verbal,
conscious, and conceptual. It is on one side unconscious, nonverbal,
non-conceptual. And on the other side, it is a standing back and
analyzing, criticizing, a conscious decision making. When the
artists steps back from her work she becomes an interpreter of
her own actions. She reflects on the conscious and unconscious
visions in front of her. The artist needs to be both intuitive
and reflective. The intuitive experience is standing within the
activity. The eye turns inwards. But that can lead down many wrong
paths. Into playfulness (but not artfully), narcissism or chaos.
In another step, the artist stands outside the work, criticizes
and interprets what is on the canvas or in the sculpture. This,
too, in excess, can lead down barren paths, into imitation, stiffness,
loss of spontaneity, dry and forced handling of the media. The
emotion, the self-interest of the intuitive stage is guided by
the activities f reflection, and criticism.
The interpreter of a work of art should choose a method responsive
to these two rhythms of the visual arts: to enter into the work,
and then to distance oneself from it. To respond unconsciously,
intuitively to the materials and to exercise judgment, to select,
to analyze, to criticize, the activity.
To enter into the intuitive and into the unconscious is to be
vulnerable to a loss of structure. To be vulnerable to meanings
within meanings that finally fracture apart into an absurd jumble.
Dream and fantasy are recorded in works of art through craft.
A work must have limits. Even in cinema; each sequence is a unit.
The dreamer as opposed to the artist has no boundaries and is
fixed in illusion. The artist as opposed to the dreamer will set
limits and become a maker. The artists will make concrete the
floating images, symbols, responses, dreams and feelings of the
imagination. Thus, without craft, free fantasies are without form.
They are merely scattered moments. Art grabs them, pulls them
together. Art exercises restraints, pulls and pushes, directs
and guides the medium. Art is work and exertion. The artists is
part dreamer and fantasizer. The artist is part maker and interpreter.
As an artist/interpreter
I will describe five dangers that have to be overcome in the act
of interpretation. Three of these dangers have two sides in conflict.
What makes interpretation so difficult is that one must, sometimes,
align oneself with one side or the other. Interpretation would
be simple if we could set out a series of rules to follow in a
straightforward manner.
The problems I see are five:
1. The tradition of the images. Are they literal or symbolic?
Dreams or visions?
2. The relationship to experience. Is the interpreter standing
in the experience or outside the experience?
3. Two forms of communication. On the one side clarity, and on
the other side suggestion. On one side analysis, on the other
composing a whole.
4. Medium, materials and tools. These may change the meaning of
the work. For example, the difference between the original language
and the language of translation, ore between a pen drawing and
a charcoal drawing.
5. The stages of development. The same image at different stages
in the life of at he interpreter. The effect of experience on
change.
PART I
Then
he carried me away in spirit into the desert. There I saw a woman
riding upon a scarlet animal, covered with blasphemous titles
and having seven heads and ten horns….The woman…held
a golden cup full of the earth's filthiness and her own foul impurity.
On her forehead is a name with a secret meaning- Babylon the Great,
Mother of all Harlots and of the earth's abominations.
Then I noticed that the woman was drunk with the blood of the
saints and of the martyrs for Jesus. As I watched her I was filled
with utter amazement….
Later I saw another angel: …and he cried in mighty voice:
"Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a haunt
of devils, a prison for every unclean spirit, and a cage for every
foul and hateful bird…."
"….So in a single day her punishments shall strike her-death,
sorrow, and famine, and she shall be burned in the fire…."
--Apoc. 17:3-18:9
John is "in
the spirit." The passages seem to read like a dream or nightmare
filled with fantastic imagery.
The problem for the interpreter is to decide (a) are these images
literal or symbolic. (b) Do these images disguise or reveal their
meaning? Are they dreams or visions?
Each image arouses waves of connections in the interpreter's mind.
Do we understand these images in a literal way or as meaning anything
we want them to?
The text advises us to look beyond the surface:
…the
angel said to me: "Why are you amazed? I will explain to
you the mystery of the woman and of the animal with seven heads
and ten horns which carries her…The seven heads are seven
hills…There are also seven kings: …the waters…are
peoples, and vast crowds, nations and languages…The woman
that you saw is the great city which dominates the kings of the
earth.
--Apoc. 17:7-18
Are these
images tied strictly to the cultural events of John's time or
are they paradigms in which we read the present? Do we compare
New York City and Babylon? Is John using many images to reveal
one idea or did he intend each image to reveal a multipli-city
of ideas?
Each act of the artist, each brushstroke, demands a response and
an interpretation. Not totally conscious but partly conscious,
partly unconscious. But there is enormous conflict within the
artist to be able to stand in and outside the work in a complimentary
rhythm. So, too, for the interpreter in any tradition.
How then does the view understand the work? How can the interpreter
stand in the tradition, in the activity of the original work,
and its maker? The artist, I said, interprets as he or she works.
Some of the interpretation is conscious, much of it is unconscious.
The artist makes decisions about putting colors in areas of the
painting by sometimes standing back and saying, "it needs
blue up here or a little brown over there." But much of here
decision-making is by habit, by the accumulated experience of
making and doing; the experience of noticing a problem and then
solving it without completely moving back into the conscious realm.
There is danger in the area for any interpreter. The influence
of the unconscious in interpretation can be fruitful or not. The
unconscious can also lead us down blind alleys. We can repress
good insights from our consciousness and our acts. We select and
arrange our paints and ideas consciously but we also unconsciously
select and arrange them. Some of the best material may be ignored
because we censor too severely our psychic life. We may reject
or accept ideas without being aware that we do. We may be narrowing
our interpretive abilities because of this censorship. It is the
unconscious, interpretive process that is the most difficult to
define and which on one hand can either increase our abilities
or diminish them.
PART III
There
are two forms of communication at war with one another. On the
one side, analysis and clarity; on the other, suggestion and the
composition of the whole. One aspect of interpretation is to decipher
symbols. However, the artist is busy encoding them. I see my own
work as creating enigmas, not revealing them. In my own work I
do not want to be literal and univocal, but to create several
levels of meaning. I am attempting to obscure, not to reveal.
As an artist I am asking the viewer to cope with several levels
at once:
(a) the media and the materials-paint or clay, ink, pastel, line,
texture, paper:
(b) color values-black and white, shades of gray, blue, red, yellow,
green; and also tone;
(c) shapes and forms within the media and the colors-the illusions
of space;
(d) images that are literal. Images that are obscure and symbolic;
and
(e) the unconscious. What lies behind the image? The viewer is
asked to participate in the work through his or her own paths
of intuitive understanding.
My intention
is not to reveal but to both reveal and hide. By hiding the literal
meaning, to reveal another level of our unconscious and conscious
enigmas. To ask the viewer to float on the edge of the unconscious.
Not to create in a literal sense a one-to-one relationship between
the inner vision and the outer form. Though my initial intention
as an artists seems to be in opposition to the act of interpretation,
the actual interior process of creating the work seems in many
ways to be similar to the process of interpretations.
The artist is in many ways attempting to create an illusion. The
interpreter is attempting to reduce the illusion to what is verbal
and articulate, in order to translate its meaning. As an artists
I am attempting to create a meaning by building up media and shapes.
On the other hand, both the artist and the interpreter go through
cycle of intuition, reflection, interpretation, and action. There
is one interpretive process that is attempting to create meaning
through images, symbols and media. There is another interpretive
process, coming from another direction, which is attempting to
see through the illusion.
Then a huge sign became visible in the sky. The figure of a woman
clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown
of twelve stars upon her head. She was pregnant, and cried out
in her labor and in the pain of bringing forth her child. Then
another sign became visible in the sky and I saw it was a huge
red dragon with seven heads and horns with a diadim upon each
of his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars in the
sky and hurled them upon the earth. The dragon took his place
in front of the woman who was about to give birth to the child,
so that as soon as she did so, he might devour it. She gave birth
to a male child…her child was snatched up to God and his
throne while the woman fled into the desert…
-- Apoc. 12:1
Later on the
dragon begins to pursue the woman who is then given
Two great eagle wings so that she could fly to her place in the
desert, …and the serpent ejected water from his mouth streaming
like a river in pursuit of the woman to drown her in its flood.
But the earth came to the woman's rescue, open its mouth and swallowed
up the river…
-- Apoc. 12:13
A literal
interpretation by an artist would show each image exactly as the
text describes it. My own activity was to read the passages over
and over, putting myself more and more in the place of the woman.
An act of reflection and feeling into the passage. The interpretation
in this case was to combine many sequences into one picture so
that the viewer will identify with the woman in labor. The viewer
will feel the danger, the fear as the child is caught away, the
darkness of the encircling evil, the strength of the woman with
the eagle's wings, the power of the wings as a part of the woman.
I attempted to give form to a series of images, events, and sensations
in a single drawing.
PART IV
The
media, the materials and the tools change the meaning.
One of the most important part of art is the relationship between
medium and the image. Art is first of all the concrete reality
of one single medium. The bond between the symbol and materials
cannot be separated in interpretation. The same image in paint
pen and ink, charcoal, watercolor or pastel, creates a different
evocative quality. Incarnation in one medium changes the meaning.
Each medium has its own qualities inherent in it. The change in
medium affects the meaning of a work in the same way that images
in writing are affected by the original language or the language
of translation. But not only do the materials create a different
evocative quality, they can also effect the way the artists works.
I drew the same image of a woman in pen and ink and wash, and
then with charcoal, pastels, and black spray paint. As I worked
with the pen and ink, the drawings became increasingly tight.
I used patterns of straight small lines and cross hatching. The
drawings were linear, small. The size of the drawing, its over
all composition and design were directly affected by suing pen
and ink. The amount of time the work took, the attention to detail
and tightness of the work began to distress me. I then tacked
up some very large sheets of paper and began to work on them with
black spray paint. Something very different began to happen. I
sprayed the black paint on the paper and then worked into it with
black charcoal, pressed charcoal, white pastel, black pastel.
The drawing opened up. The work came quickly. The line was loose.
The shapes open, less detailed.
Not only is the response of the viewer changed by different media,
but the artists herself works differently according to the nature
of her tools, materials, or media. Ink responds differently to
brush or pen. The use of canvas or paper affects the medium. The
medium has a life of its own. The concrete reality of the spray
paint or the pen and ink directed and embodied the idea. The medium
talks back. It sets its own agenda, its own direction., The medium
has inherent qualities that the artist must listen to, draw upon,
and understand. The artists consciously and unconsciously responds
to these qualities in the medium.
PART V
The
stages of life. The change in the interpreter.
The same image at different stages may appear changed to the eye
of the interpreter. In the beginning we haven't learned to understand
sequences. Memory is short. Reflection acts with little experience.
Interpretation is not a tidy process nor a linear one. The interpreter's
ability to respond to the conscious and unconscious activity of
his experience increases with reflection. Our interpretation of
T.S. Eliot after reading St. John of the Cross is enriched and
deepened; and we may even be annoyed. We first discover a difficult
style and symbolic language. Another reading finds a deeper theological
and stylistic level when we see the influence of St. John's poetry.
As our experience moves on different levels and broadens, it also
becomes deeper if we train the imagination and memory. We make
connections between the accumulated experience of the past, books
read, ideas exchanged, and our own present experience. We try
to weed out false starts. We retrace ground we've been over before,
but deepen our understanding of it. We criticize our methods in
a different way. We understand the work from another point of
view. We train our crucial judgment to "circle" rather
than to look at the passage or art work from only one point of
reference.
Twelve years ago I interpreted the Apocalypse in a series of 17
color lithographs. I fixed on separate images rather quickly for
seventeen different sections, made sketches, and then completed
one print for each descriptive passage I had selected. The seie
was finished and I was satisfied.
Twelve years later my intention was to reinterpret eight of these
images: The four horsemen, the locusts, the woman in labor, the
harlot and the new Jerusalem. I jotted down ideas and images on
scraps of paper. I started with the woman clothed with the sun
and the harlot Babylon, but never got to the other six images.
Unintentionally, my method and changed. This time, on drawing
would not exhaust the power of John's imagery. I did drawing after
drawing of essentially the same images. I felt I could go on for
months taking just one passage and reinterpreting it in different
ways. The avenues to track seems limitless, opening in every direction.
I kept doing more and more drawings. One phrase, one image, on
idea, led to another. Each shape on the paper suggested other
directions in which to go. Using different tools and media took
me in other directions. I didn't want to stop. There were too
many paths to pursue in the medium, form and symbolic content.
As children we stood within our experience. Ideally, we were encouraged
to explore, to discover, to act out a story but not too early
to interpret it. The child has an early ability to see connections
between things. To be naturally responsive to analogy and metaphor.
The young child should not be asked, "What is it?" She
is attempting to form her world, not to give justification or
explanation to another. She is telling a story, not giving an
answer. The child stands in the experience, not outside of it
analyzing it and describing it. To tell a story is an expanding
process. To ask the question, "What is it?" is to narrow
its meaning, its metaphors, to what another understands. One process
is opening, the other is closing. However, as the child matures,
the process needs to change. At each succeeding stage we want
to develop and retain the ability of the child to see multiple
meanings, the ability to see and to create metaphors and analogies,
to see the dragons in the clouds, to see the images in the written
word and on the empty canvas. But we need also to order our experience.
To expand this process of understanding by asking further questions.
To both empathize and to move to another level in the act of criticism.
The young child cannot interpret. Interpretation requires the
ability to stand in and outside his experience in a complimentary
rhythm. T he young child wants and should stand in the experience.
However, as she matures, she also needs to be guided to view her
experience, work and skills critically. On the other hand, too
often the adult has learning to stand outside. To prejudge, to
analyze. The reach understand of the self and work through preconceived
methods.
For the artist, the art of interpretation is the bring these two
activists of intuition and criticism into harmony. It is a difficult
feat to achieve. It is long-term task. And we often fail.
