Cat\u00e1logo exposici\u00f3n \u201cCiria, Heads, Grids\u201d C\u00edrculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid. Noviembre 2010<\/p>\n
Robert R. Shane<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria has painted several images of dance, such as Bailarinas (\u201cDancers\u201d) and Tres bailarinas (\u201cThree Dancers\u201d)(1). Some of his paintings, which do not necessarily contain \u201cdance\u201d in their titles, nevertheless seem to refer to dance. Vuelta a la locura (\u201cReturn to Madness\u201d) appears to be a duet danced en pointe between two parts of one psyche; and paintings like Ritmo de transici\u00f3n (\u201cRhythm of Transition\u201d), Rattrapante (Speedy), and Como llamas que se elevan (\u201cAs Flames that Rise\u201d) evoke dance movements through their figurative imagery and suggestive titles. All of these works are from Ciria\u2019s La Guardia Place series, 2007. However, I believe that an analysis of the role of dance in Ciria\u2019s painting will illuminate themes that appear throughout his oeuvre: the figure, its abstraction, and its movement.<\/p>\n \u201cHumanized Abstraction\u201d<\/p>\n The movement of the human body is the medium of dance, and therefore dance always possesses an intrinsically human element. As the dance critic and historian Selma Jeanne Cohen observed, even abstract dances without plot or narrative still have movements that suggest qualities of human behavior(2). At the same time, however, the dancer\u2019s specialized movements often abstract the body in a way that is not easy to empathize with. In fact, Cohen argued that it is the artificial skills of the dancer that are most interesting to us as viewers(3). A bodily, human element on the one hand, and artificial abstraction or stylization on the other, stand as two poles in between which dancers perform an infinite range of movement. This intertwined opposition has its analogue in art(4), and I believe that it is at that heart of much of Ciria\u2019s oeuvre. The spirit of this dialectic is operative in Donald Kuspit\u2019s characterization of the figure in Ciria\u2019s work as a \u201cfigure simultaneously abstract and human\u201d(5). This tension between the human and the abstract in Ciria\u2019s painting is compelling for many of the same reasons that we find the dancer on stage compelling: we are simultaneously drawn to the naturalistic body with which we identify, and yet are held in spiritual awe by the abstract shapes with which we cannot.<\/p>\n In contrast to most modern abstraction since Cubism, Ciria\u2019s La Guardia Place series is not about collapsing the distinction between figure and ground so that pictorial space mimics the flat surface of the canvas. On the contrary, Ciria\u2019s abstraction is very much concerned with the figure in space. In Dominio del espacio (\u201cCommand of Space\u201d), 2007 three overlapping circles, two long triangles, and vertical white streaks suggest the head of a figure and its appendages traveling through a space described by the single horizontal bar (perhaps a barre?) in the background. The space in the La Guardia Place series often resembles that of a stage, as in Tres bailarinas. The edges of the canvas are like the frame created by a proscenium wall. Looking through to the stage, we the audience observe a single horizontal interface between a backdrop above and a stage floor below. Similarly to the minimal spaces of Francis Bacon\u2019s paintings (which act as stages for his painted dramaturgy), Ciria\u2019s space oscillates between flatness and depth(6).<\/p>\n The same interface between backdrop and stage floor also appears in Bailarinas and establishes a fixed point of reference from which the dancers spring. From these visual cues, the viewer can orient herself and empathize with the human element within the painting. As in Matisse\u2019s mural-sized canvases Dance I, 1909 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Dance II, 1910 (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg) we see Ciria\u2019s figures breaking free of gravity and transgressing the line of the horizon. They are doomed, of course, to fall again; but they are boundless for that seemingly infinite moment described by modern choreographer, Doris Humphrey as \u201cthe arc between two deaths\u201d(7). We the viewers feel the vital leaps of these figures in our own bodies. As dance critic, John Martin pointed out, it is because of our own consciousness of gravity that we applaud someone who defies it(8). (Ciria\u2019s interest in gravity\u2019s relationship to the human body is even more explicitly presented in Monociclista desequilibrado (\u201cUnbalanced Unicyclist\u201d), 2007.)<\/p>\n As has been stated, Ciria\u2019s humanism is intertwined with abstraction. We feel the movement of Ciria\u2019s dancers not only through the literal depiction of the body, but also through the pure plastic forms he creates. In fact, some of the most dynamic compositions by Ciria are ones in which the body is not easily recognized. As in Malevich\u2019s work, which has played an important role in Ciria\u2019s development(9), \u201cthe dynamic of movement has directed thought to produce the dynamic of plastic painting\u201d(10). Malevich\u2019s square in White Square on White, 1918 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) floats on the canvas because of his purely plastic manipulation. The vast expanse of negative space at the bottom of the composition elicits a feeling of weightlessness as the square edges nearer to the top. Off-kilter, the diagonally placed shape transmits to its viewers the feeling of rising upward. Likewise in Bailarinas, we feel Ciria\u2019s figures move because the open space in the lower right, contrasted with the visual density of the forms breaking the horizon line, work in consort to produce the sensation that these forms are leaping. The burst of one dancer\u2019s red against a destaturated and fairly monochromatic stage intensifies the dynamism of their form, much like the powerful color in Malevich\u2019s Suprematist Painting: Eight Red Rectangles, 1915 (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam). Thus we read Ciria\u2019s \u201chumanized abstraction\u201d both through empathic identification with the bodies of the figures represented and \u201con the basis of weight, speed and the direction of movement\u201d(11), as Malevich wrote regarding the purely plastic construction of painting.<\/p>\n Dionysian Dances<\/p>\n Dioynsian themes dominate a number of Ciria\u2019s works. He has painted pieces about madness, such as Vuelta a la locura (\u201cReturn to Madness\u201d), 2007; music; and sexual intercourse, as in Pareja copulando (\u201cCopulating Pair\u201d), 2007. So it is no wonder that dance plays such an important role, literally and metaphorically, in his painting. After all, in The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, Nietzsche introduced his concept of the Dionysian by describing song and dance. The dancer, Nietzsche wrote:<\/p>\n \u2026feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy, like the gods he saw walking in his dreams. He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of primordial unity(12).<\/p>\n Ciria\u2019s painted dances likewise unite him with his medium. As he wrote: \u201cThe muses prod me around at their whim, I stopped being a person years ago to become painting and pictorial thought\u201d(13).<\/p>\n Ciria\u2019s abstract figures dance in Dionysian revelry. Dancing in his work is sometimes a component of a pagan ritual, perhaps a ritual in search of Nietzsche\u2019s primordial unity. In Aparici\u00f3n de la diosa Ishtar (\u201cApparition of the Goddess Ishtar\u201d), 2007, the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility and war whirls around and disorients the viewer with her mystical escape from the pull of gravity. In Ritmo de transici\u00f3n, 2007 there is the suggestion of a figure, arms spread wide and spinning. In contrast to the green aura around the figure, a bright red shape\u2015perhaps a beating heart\u2015emerges and is taking over. The transformation though rhythmic movement is like that of a shaman\u2019s dance.<\/p>\n Painting as a Performance of the Self<\/p>\n In her book Towards Art and Dance: A Study of Relationships between Two Art Forms, Elizabeth Watts noted that a child\u2019s first scribbles are kinesthetically motivated: it is the pleasure of movement sensations that inspire a child to first pick up a crayon and scribble on the walls(14). It is through scribbling continuous movement pathways that the child begins to define her relationship to her space (hence the warrant for Watts\u2019s claim that dance and art originate from the same kinesthetic source)(15). This type of primal dance-drawing movement was emerging in Ciria\u2019s work during the 1990s, well before the aforementioned La Guardia Place series.<\/p>\n The series of the 1990s, such as Cry Nude Europe, El uso de la palabara, Dibujos de Par\u00eds, or M\u00e1scaras de la Mirada, are often dark and amorphous. For example, the painting La chamber d\u2019ecoute, 1992 from Cry Nude Europe is haunted by a sense of memory, loss, and absence. As Celia Montol\u00edo accurately described, the territory of the paintings from this time seems displaced and the viewer is left without any security as she tries to navigate through it(16). However, within those series, there were moments that would come to characterize Ciria\u2019s work in the following decade. In bold contrast to the atmospheric images of the early 1990s, Red Field I and Red Field II, 1997 from M\u00e1scaras de la Mirada, are red expanses marked with the bold physicality of the artist\u2019s gestures. The black and white marks of paint firmly establish his presence. The striking white spiral of Noche en Torrej\u00f3n el Rubio I, 1999 is the emergence from within an abyss of a living body tracing its pathway. In that gesture, Ciria marks his location within an otherwise expansive and overwhelming space; he forces the painting to recognize his being.<\/p>\n The child\u2019s kinesthetic motivation for drawing, Watts pointed out, is eventually subordinated to shape-making and representation as is generally encouraged by adults; primal movement is channeled into social forms such as handwriting(17). Ciria\u2019s marks defiantly return to original movement. Here the primordial unity achieved by Nietzsche\u2019s dancer is best understood as reunification with the original self. We can see what Ciria meant when he said he gave up being a person to become painting: his subjectivity is present in the living movement of his gesture, which eternally paints and repaints itself on the surface of the canvas(18).<\/p>\n The Mask<\/p>\n After the La Guardia Place series, Ciria felt tired of the demands and rigid structure that figurative imagery imposed and needed a break from it(19). However, even though the figure has become more residual in some of Ciria\u2019s work after La Guardia Place, the dance impulse is still dominant, and is in fact most fully realized in his mask paintings, such those from the Desocupaciones series. M\u00e1scara cometa, 2008 and Desocupaci\u00f3n con hachas, 2008 retain the pictorial structure of his Bailarinas and Tres Bailarinas. Now abstract forms, rather than abstract figures, leap above the horizon line of a stage-like setting familiar to the audience of the earlier works.<\/p>\n Additionally, at this time Ciria moved away from his previously theory-laden working processes, such as \u201cDeconstructive Automatic Abstraction.\u201d In an artist\u2019s essay, he credits the mysterious muses with helping him to escape to a new instinctual mode(20). The muses about which he writes are thoroughly Dionysian in spirit (he even called them \u201cgluttonous and alcoholic\u201d because of the liquor missing from his cupboard each morning after their nightly visit!)(21). I would like to suggest that the inspiring muse who was most instrumental in leading Ciria to his artistic revelation must have been Terpsichore, the muse of dance. The new experience of painting that Ciria describes is one in which he felt compelled to move. New ideas were generated for him not by the eye or the mind, but by the moving body. Ciria recalls in his essay:<\/p>\n Suddenly, a drawing appears, a line, a painting, a little miracle in which the \u201cmuses\u201d take control of your hands and guide them into making something relevant, something that gives you ideas, something you\u2019re interested in exploring\u2026(22)<\/p>\n In other passages Ciria describes the kinesthetic motivation and physicality of the new working process: \u201cAn extenuating situation changing brushes and ranges, sweat and speed\u2026,\u201d(23), it was \u201cas if something had seized my hand and was guiding it\u2026.\u201d(24). Sounding like a dancer after a rigorous performance, he recounts: \u201cAt the end of every session I feel exhausted, my arms and legs trembling. Barely able to close the tubes of paint and wash my brushes\u201d(25). From his account, it is clear that his new process inspired by the muses\u2015which I am contending was inspired by Terpsichore specifically\u2015is an ecstatic ritual in which he is repossessed by the mode of dance-drawing that Watts observed in early childhood.<\/p>\n Often we think of masks as disguising one\u2019s identity, but this is not true of the masks of the Desocupaciones series that Ciria paints in his Dionysian frenzy. Rather, they are masks which mask the false self and thus allow an unveiling of the instinct and consciousness of the true self. Such masks\u2015which can be literal or metaphorical\u2015are already familiar to dancers and performers, such as the modern dancer Mary Wigman. While donning a mask for her expressive Hexentanz, 1914 (Dresden) she frightened herself: latent emotions that she did not know existed within her suddenly erupted(26).<\/p>\n Ciria\u2019s \u201chumanized abstraction\u201d is compelling because we the audience feel it dancing in ourselves as we view the work. Terpsichore showed herself explicitly in pieces such as Bailarinas and Tres Bailarinas, but she had already been quietly revealing herself in Ciria\u2019s earlier works and has continued her activity in his paintings since. Ciria\u2019s figures move through space and fight gravity. His abstract shapes and gestures join this Dioynsian dance. For the artist and his audience his painted dancing unmasks and awakens the self, which feels simultaneously primal and new.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1.The latter is based on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner\u2019s drawing T\u00e4nzerinnen, 1906. See comparison in Rare Paintings: Ciria, exhibition catalog (Madrid: Fundaci\u00f3n Carlos Amberes; Santo Domingo: Museo de Arte Moderno, 2008), pp. 120-121.<\/p>\n 2.Selma Jeanne Cohen, \u201cA Prolegomena to an Aesthetics of Dance,\u201d The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol, 21, no. 1 (Autumn, 1962): 23.<\/p>\n 3.Cohen, 25.<\/p>\n 4.For example, compare this opposition to Wilhelm Worringer\u2019s Abstraktion und Einf\u00fchlung (Munich: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1908) in which he contrasted the crystalline forms of abstract art to the naturalistic forms with which we usually empathize.<\/p>\n 5.Donald Kuspit, \u201cTragic Modernism: Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria\u2019s La Guardia Place Paintings,\u201d in Rare Paintings: Ciria, p. 170.<\/p>\n 6.Ciria\u2019s Crucifixi\u00f3n, 2007 and Creo que me duele, 2007 in particular recall Bacon\u2019s figures who suffer in isolation.<\/p>\n 7.See Doris Humphrey, \u201cWhat a Dancer Thinks About\u201d (1937), reprinted in The Vision of Modern Dance: In the Words of Its Creators, 2nd edition, edited by Jean Morrison Brown, Naomi Mindlin, and Chalres H. Woodford (Hightstown, New Jersey: Princeton Book Company, 1998), p. 60.<\/p>\n 8.John Martin, The Modern Dance (1933), reprinted in What Is Dance?, edited by Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 24.<\/p>\n 9.See Valerie Gladstone, \u201cDiving into the Unknown,\u201d Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria: Box of Mental States, exhibition catalogue (Miami, Florida: ArtRouge Gallery, 2008), p. 13.<\/p>\n 10.Kasimir Malevich, From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting (1916), reprinted in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 177.<\/p>\n 11.Malevich, p. 175. Italics in the original.<\/p>\n 12.Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), reprinted in Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory, 3rd edition, edited by Stephen David Ross, (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 165.<\/p>\n 13.Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria, \u201cThe absent Hand,\u201d Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria: Box of Mental States, p. 87.<\/p>\n 14.Elizabeth Watts, Towards Dance and Art: A Study of Relationships Between Two Art Forms (London: Lepus Books, 1977), p. 10.<\/p>\n 15.Watts, pp. 10-11.<\/p>\n 16.Celia Montol\u00edo, \u201cTo the Limit, and Beyond,\u201d Ciria: Las Formas del Silencio\u2015Antolog\u00eda cr\u00edtica (Los a\u00f1os noventa) (Madrid: Sotohenar, S.L., 2004), p. 31.<\/p>\n 17.Watts, pp. 16-17.<\/p>\n 18.Here I am recalling Merleau-Ponty\u2019s thoughts on a scene from Sartre\u2019s Nausea in which \u201cthe smile of a long dead monarch\u2026keeps producing and reproducing itself on the surface of the canvas.\u201d (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, \u201cEye and Mind\u201d (1961), in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, edited and translated by Galen A. Johnson and Michael B. Smith. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1993, p. 130.)<\/p>\n 19.Ciria, p. 81.<\/p>\n 20.Ciria, pp. 83-84, 86.<\/p>\n 21.Ciria, p. 82.<\/p>\n 22.Ciria, p. 81.<\/p>\n 23.Ciria, p. 83.<\/p>\n 24.Ciria, p. 85.<\/p>\n 25.Ciria, p. 83.<\/p>\n 26.Cited by Susan Au, Ballet and Modern Dance (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), p. 98<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cat\u00e1logo exposici\u00f3n \u201cCiria, Heads, Grids\u201d C\u00edrculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid. Noviembre 2010 TERPSICHORE IN PAINTING: JOS\u00c9 MANUEL CIRIA\u2019S IMAGES OF DANCE Robert R. Shane Jos\u00e9 Manuel Ciria has painted several images of dance, such as Bailarinas (\u201cDancers\u201d) and Tres bailarinas (\u201cThree Dancers\u201d)(1). Some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8798"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8798"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11254,"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8798\/revisions\/11254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joseciria.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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