BREAKING THE LIMITS.

As the art critic Donald Kuspit (1996) points out, many of the figures in Matt Lamb’s compositions inhabit a world in which they seem to have lost their individual shape, flowing as part of the background. In fact, the characters appear amorphous, differing from one another only by their faces, that are simultaneously transformed into typological patterns. The figures that can be identified have sacrificed their personalities, mixing with their counterparts. Quite often the characters fuse with the adjacent figures. In fig. 1.b, for example, the face of one of them grows from the legs of another; in fig. 6.b the extended arm of a figure ends as the neck of a floating head; and in figure 7.b the chest of a woman generates a new entity that parodies the gestures of her creator. All of this is clearly useful only to state the uncertainty of the ego, the exaggerated distention of which contains an essential Dionysian metamorphosis. Nevertheless, this has to be compensated with an Apollonian reflexive thought. In ‘Birth of the Tragedy’, written by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1871, western culture is explained as a struggle between these two forces, Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollonian (a word that is an extension of Apollo, an ancient Greek god) means order, legibility, perfect form, clarity and precision, with a focus on individuality, on the self. Some describe it as the visible art, connected with the power of dreams, of illusion. Through the Apollonian moment in art, the individual is reconstituted as a product of dreams. By contrast, Dionysian (a word that is an extension of Dionysus) means chaos, ecstasy, madness and instinctive emotions. It is excess (cf. Fig. 4.a, Fig. 4.b), dismembrance (cf. Fig. 7.a, Fig. 7.b) and rebirth (cf. Fig. 3.a, Fig. 3.b); it’s the search for the obscure forces of suffering, strongly bonded to earth (cf. Fig. 5.a, Fig. 5.b). Nietzsche explains that the Dionysian means affirming life, including the terrifying aspects in it, the desire to live one’s life delighting in the sacrifice of the best of oneself to an open merger. Not being overwhelmed by regretting a known part of oneself, or fearing an uncertain future; nor purging one's risky emotions, nevertheless, because of that vehement discharge; but further than that, what is Dionysian involves being oneself in infinity, identifying oneself with imperishable happiness, that joy that also includes the search for the ego and its simultaneous destruction (cf. Campbell, 1991).

The conflict between the Apollonian isolating integrity, the individual identification, on the one hand; and the Dionysian, absorbed dissolution and integration, on the other, is obvious not only in Matt Lamb’s pictorial representation, but also in that of earlier painters like Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. Frequently in the works of these three artists, the figures hardly detach from the background of the composition, or, in other cases, they submerge in it as if it were a huge ocean. In Lamb, as Kuspit points out, the figures are no more than transitional tentative illusions, generated in an impulsive manner caused by countless colors and textures. Sometimes the figures float, or fly, or fall into emptiness. This is the case in Picasso’s Fig. 1.a and Fig. 2.a, Miro’s Fig. 3.a and Lamb’s Fig. 2.b. In these and other works, the hand of the artist has an instinctive knowledge about the antagonism between the limits of the ego and the infinity of the whole, which is crucial in the development of the self as pointed out by Jordan B. Peterson (1999). An individual may even sacrifice his own integrity during development because this kind of search exposes the ineptitude of the self in the surrounding context. That is, the knowledge of oneself involves the awareness of one’s vulnerability. Nevertheless, through this kind of conflict, the emergence of the self is possible, and the weakness has to be recognized before it can be turned into fortitude. When the self is distended, it explores its limits (cf. Fig. 5a; Fig. 5b), it searches the points of contact with its contraries (cf. Fig. 6a; Fig. 6.b). It surpasses its origin and achieves the matrix liquid. In this fashion, the arms of the feminine character (cf. Fig. 4.a; Fig. 4.b) seem to extend to delimit her contour and at the same time create her own semicircular surrounding. It is precisely from a background that hardly contains a distended self that the latter transforms itself in generative matter, in a fountain of life, and finally transmutes into a tree (cf. Fig. 3.b).

The immersion of the self into the infinitude of universality can be found implicit in primitive societies with ritualistic orientation, where the conscience of the self is primarily mythical. The mythological subject, at its deepest level, works under two assumptions: one, that universal life is reflected over the entire environment (animism) and the second, that the universe answers the desires of each individual (self-centeredness). In fact the two intuitions are not only present in ritual cultures; they seem to be innate to all human beings. The mythic identity is very strong through the early stages of self development, although the socially imposed rational processes gradually replace it. The mythic imagination chooses formal representations that touch essentially primary internal inside meanings, and does not always reflect the external reality in an adequate fashion. In the presence of those primary meanings, the resurgent self changes its course, loses interest in unnecessary classifications, restrictive categorizations, or simple manipulations of its environment; on the contrary, it stays in mute paralinguistic admiration of the cosmic mystery. It is in this extolled stage that the self has to penetrate the profound meaning of the myth. That sense is normally achieved when entering an “altered state of conscience” that induces a new experience. This can be observed, for example, in the mask festivals of certain cultures where the individual takes part of the rite, disturbing his condition in such a way that he can attain deep significance. When the ritual mask is used, it is known that the participant in the rite is behind his mask. Nevertheless, he chooses to experience the appearance of the mythical being by compromising his individuality. It is in this mythical compromise of dialog, transformation and renewal, that the creative ability of imagination is activated. Its guiding function leads to self-discovery and evolving transformation of the personality. The unbridled possession suffered by the participant of the rite is one of the most pure ways of mythical identification. In the myth, the individual self is suspended, the superior sphere (world) and the inferior (the self) staying completely integrated.

IMMERSION THROUGH IMMOLATION.

The undeniable integration of the self in universal infinity materializes in the need for human sacrifice in certain cultures like the Aztecs. For these people, the human being and its surrounding had been created several times, and each creation was followed by a cataclysm that destroyed both completely. These consecutive destructions were caused (they thought) by the confrontation between the gods. To put a stop to that endless cycle, a reunion was organized in the mythic Teotihuacan City with the only purpose of solving the relations between the divinities and beginning a fifth Era: the so-called “Sun of Movement Era”. Its beginning was due to the willing sacrifice of one of the members of the tribe, offering his body to all the gods. The Aztecs thought that as human beings had been created through the sacrifice of the gods, they had to repay by offering their own blood in an expiatory rite.

Human sacrifice was essential in this culture because the individual could only exist through the creating strength of the gods, who required of men the provision of vital sustenance. Men must nourish the gods with the magical sustenance of life, found in the human blood and heart. As the Aztec ritual indicates, “if through the sacrifice of gods the existence and movement of the sun becomes possible”, it’s only through human sacrifice that time can be kept present. The people of the Sun set themselves the mission of nourishing the sun with the vital energy found in the precious liquid that keeps human beings alive. The ceremony offered to honor the sun was especially noteworthy. It took place on the day they called of “Movement”, commemorating the date in which the sun would be destroyed by earthquakes. The ceremony took place during a blood festival. One of the prisoners of war, whose body had been painted as one of the principal gods (white with red stripes), was provided with a baton, a shield and a bag containing eagle feathers and white paints. Upon his reaching the top of the temple he was sacrificed by the priests, who pulled out his heart and offered it to the solar divinity. During that day, all the people took part in the sacrificial rite, piercing different parts of their body until blood came out and keeping rigorous fasts that lasted until midday. The connection between auto-immolation and the emergence of life was explored by George Bataille in the last century. In his 1957 work “Eroticism”, Bataille explains the analogy between “every act of love” and “sacrifice”. Sacrifice, he proposed, is the voluntary action whose aim is the sudden change of the self that is its victim, its death. This “existence” of the soul, that was packed in the particular individuality, is released again through sacrifice into the continuity of the self (cf. Fig. 8.a, Fig. 8.b; Fig. 9.a, Fig 9.b). The violence exerted against affections and passions, being contained, denied or repressed, deprives the victim of their limited character, thus giving him/her an unlimited one. It frees them from their condition, denaturalizing or over-naturalizing them by projecting, perverting or transforming them into the infinite that belongs to the sacred sphere. The transcendental agent of the sacrifice is the divinity that strips and wounds the victim it desires and wants to “lovably” penetrate, being both its lover and its immolator. The soul, ready to be immolated, loses the reticence that made it impenetrable and opens brusquely as an alienated lover, facilitating the possession of the loved one (cf. Fig. 10.a; Fig. 9.b).

The relationship between the sacrifice and the sprouting of life is not only possible through the identification between victim and divinity. In another Aztec rite we see more clearly the association between sacrifice and procreation, concretely in the Festival of Toxcatl. On the day of the festival, a young man instructed during the whole year in his role as victim is sacrificed (he was previously selected among the best warriors captured during combat). He adopted the name and attributes of Tezcatlipoca itself, and during that year he was treated as a god. At the end of the year he was paired with four beautiful virgins of noble birth. When the fatal day arrived, during which he would be sacrificed, the young man bid farewell to the lovers with whom he had mated and was conducted to the Teocalli of sacrifice, there he proceeded to break the instruments with which he had distracted himself during his captivity. When he reached the top he was received by the supreme-priest, who rapidly reunited him with the represented god, extracting his heart on the sacrificial altar. By means of this rite, the god was able to leave his divine seed through his earthly representative.

The integration of the self in the whole surrounding can be interpreted metaphorically as the dependence of the individual towards the mythical network he inhabits. Professor Mirea Eliade (1963) has clarified the role of myth in primitive societies. For this author, one of the fundamental characteristics of the mythical approach is the strong certainty that myth is among all stories, the most truthful. The members of the primitive tribes repeatedly confirmed the truth of their myths by recreating them through rituals. Such representations of a myth gave the participants the power over nature. At the same time, the ritual repetition of history kept the myth alive in the hearts and minds of the believers. The concept of myth is equally valid in present society. Any parameter we use to explain the form of what surrounds us, or any framework we use as a model for our behavior can be understood as a myth. In other words, it is not necessary for the character of a myth to be so far away from us so as to make the story intrinsically fantastic. For the person that lives the myth, the question about the veracity of the story or belief simply makes no sense. As the member of a primitive tribe knows, the myth simply exists. That is to say, it is so deeply accepted that doubts never arise. This doesn’t impede those who live the myth from raising doubts about its meaning. On the contrary, questions about such matters normally play an important role in societies that are governed by a myth. The only query that cannot be framed is the basic one about the truth or falseness of the myth. For all tribe members, the notion of “truth” is not really appropriate once they are integrated in the myth. Asking about the “truth” of a mythical framework is to misunderstand the true value of myths. Some of these are strongly rooted at the base of society. Thus, the myth of one of the great Greek philosophers, Socrates (470-399 B.C.), constitutes one of the foundations of current western thinking. Synthesizing, the myth that Socrates introduces may be analyzed into two fundamental aspects: the first points to the fact that all the essential questions of life can be answered by making use of the power of wisdom; the second specifies that the “wisdom” that is reached by answering such matters is worthless unless it leads from mere intellectual game to a way of life distinguished by virtue. The mythical unification of the virtue of rationality and the rationality of virtue became such an absolute rule to philosophical thinking - even in the attitude of common people in Western world - that one can truly speak of a “sphere” of thought, as Stephen Palmquist (1993) has stated. This same designation can be applied to the myth implanted by another influential revolutionary that has been radically influencing the western world for the last two millenniums: the great reformer of the Hebrew religion named Jesus. Born about four centuries after the death of Socrates, Jesus introduced a new “mythology” through which man could reach a new comprehension about the divine presence on earth. The new Christian “myth” was rapidly combined with Socratic myths in a complex vision of the world, of which the principal idea is that the supreme virtue corresponds to the sacrifice of one’s own happiness in favor of other people’s well-being. Applying the terms world vision or sphere of thought to ancestral and modern myths allows us to explain why it is so natural to use words such us “rule”, “regulate”, or ”control” when talking about the influence of myths in the way of thinking in different cultures. Myth is an important source of meaning for the human being. In fact every individual has to compromise to a myth to live a coherent life, every self has to dip in the water of the whole to flourish as an individual entity. This is what in pictorial terms sustains the three artists we are analyzing. One of the problems of modern society after Nietzsche arises from the attempt to extract the myth from culture, without taking notice that by doing this the structural base of culture is also destroyed. In the same way, anyone trying to extract the myth out of religion ends up simultaneously eliminating the meaning of it itself. Nietzsche’s new myth is precisely the call to reject the destructive forces emerging from the alignment resulting from the false separation between scientific and religious values. What he was intending to introduce was a new “sphere of thought” in which life was affirmed while learning to recognize the personal myth in which one lives. Finally each individual has to choose the myth that will rule his life. The importance of this decision cannot be overestimated. Not integrating with any myth leads to nonsense and desperation. On the other hand, while embodying the mythological network is crucial in developing the self, it is also important not to cancel completely one’s individuality. The self can distend itself only up to that crucial stage where surpassing it would lead to dismemberment and the loss of one’s identity.

BETWEEN THE APOLLONIAN AND THE DIONYSIAN.

The exact equilibrium between the complete immersion of the self in the infinite continuum on the one hand, and maintaining the borders that lead to identify the isolation on the other, is reflected in the conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian that Nietzsche analyzed in the 19^th century. These two terms derive from classical Greek tradition. The Apollonian gave life to Epic poetry, reaching its greatest figurative splendor in sculpture; the Dionysian rites entered from the Eastern cultures around the 7^th century B.C. together with the orphic cults when the Greeks recovered their maritime commerce after four centuries of Phoenician hegemony, and achieved its richest expression in music and dance. The Dionysian was related to delight, and the Apollonian to dreams. Nietzsche uses these concepts to explain precisely the birth of classical tragedy from which one of the most known characters is Medea. In the homonym play, Euripides presents a character with a totally modern vision of destiny, who, through the Dionysian metamorphosis completes the evolution of her being confronting her most serious fears. Medea at the end defeats them all. Such victory frees her from the other members of the play. This heroic character personifies the deep vision Nietzsche had of life. Only by accepting its chaotic incertitude and by recognizing that happiness is never guaranteed, one can (according to the philosopher) live life with no fear or remorse. This recognition is possible only through the combination of the Dionysian and the Apollonian, the frenzy of distention and the prudence of regeneration, barely restrained at the exact point of dismemberment  (cf. Fig. 7.a, Fig. 7.b). Nietzsche conceives of the tragic force as controlled excess, tremor at the boundaries, the game of margins, the Dionysian questioning with the Apollonian reasoning. These notions help us explain the inclinations of the self (in post-modern Era) to oppose modernity directly. Modern tragedy presents itself precisely in the drama of freedom opposed to destiny, from which the spirit comes up victorious in the glorification of the hero, with all the moral strength confronting the beating of history’s inexorability. Contemporary tragedy is a new drama of movement, the spectacle of the tragedy of reason, the suspicion of that supposed victory, and the establishment of the antagonistic scope at an inferior level: corporal, emotional, sensitive, erotic. It moves from tragic modern optimism to a post-modern tragic irony that corrodes all established ways. The validity of the Greek tragic version in contemporary post-modern, consists precisely in a sustained pessimism, in the fortitude of disillusion, the demoralization of truth, science, goodness, equality, freedom and brotherhood. These are the signs of our contemporary tuning in with the Greek tragedy: the recognition of ambivalence, the dismantling of ingeniousness, the return to malevolence essential to any socialization, the truly valid substituted for strategic intelligence, the disenchantment in every absolute, the uncertainty of history, the relativist estheticism of time in their various forms, the methodic suspicion, the recuperation of the instant, the celebration of the process of development, of metamorphic possibilities, a prevalence of movement over the death of the senses and upon the sense of death, Dionysian – Apollonian erotic, a vertigo of abolished representation. Ironic laugh and a final grimace in the new sphere of comprehension where any Apollonian ethic-aesthetic is a reservoir of armed hands to defend a pragmatic coexistence and an ethics with no possible moral absolute.

Greek tragedy teaches us to maintain the equilibrium permitting us a partial surrender of our Apollonian control by uniting and connecting us to the Dionysian unleashing of the protagonist. As the character transforms herself in the play, we also experience the final catharsis. The Dionysian breaks down the individuality of the self, leading to an identification with the tragical hero, but the Apollonian restores the self through ritual purification. Nevertheless, this catharsis is not a purge but a revelation of reality and truth. What the spectator absorbs during the play is the illusion and the state of Apollonian reverie that restrains the Dionysian. The same message is promoted in the works of Picasso, Miro and Lamb. In them the individual submerges in the background of the paintings and emerges renovated, redefined, enriched by his/her penetration in a world separated from the margins of morality.

Nietzsche's opinion is that no experience is in itself good nor bad. Only those subdued by traditional conventions see life that way. The exercise of what Nietzsche called “the will of power” requires one to completely accept life with all of its qualities, Apollonian and Dionysian, with no remorse. Unfortunately the soul, free of these restraining concepts of morality, frequently sees itself devaluated and considered a pariah of society. Sometimes the characters in the paintings of the three artists present a clear feature of crucified victims, trapped in an infallible destiny (cf. Fig. 6.a ; Fig. 6.b). This is why they are willing to sink in the ethereal background that surrounds them. Here Nietzsche interpolates and reminds his contemporary society that it should - according to him - welcome the excluded members as essential instruments of change, capable of expelling the individual from the margins of his/her passive complacency (cf. Denneson 2002). When a society tries to punish an excluded member, what it is really trying to do is to abort a change, suppressing the instigator of ideas and renewed actions. The person who exercises the will of power constitutes an evolved kind of humankind that Nietzsche called “Übermensch”. This superior being rejects every established value. Being free of any restriction, rules and codes of behavior imposed by society, she elaborates her own rules. She knows perfectly well that life as it is given to her, lacks meaning, but she lives it fully, positively, in an instinctive and dangerous way. When she seeks the control of his own life he does not expect it to get better. Instead she takes what she wants in its current condition. She recognizes that reason cannot contribute much to life’s process of development because cruelty, injustice, madness and uncertainty infest it all. Euripides in Medea shows us this world beyond established boundaries. Nietzsche’s theories would explain this tragic situation as a desire to give in to the Dionysian, that natural and dangerous force of the margins that moves away from any illusion. At this stage of dramatic ecstasy, truth arises and one is able to exert his will of power once he has regained control. The Apollonian state is fundamental on this respect because it is essential to reach the equilibrium between the margins and the center.

The swaying back and forth between what’s known (the figure) and what’s unknown (the back) - as reflected in Picasso, Miro and Lamb - determines the essence of the self. The primary purpose of the being is the search for meaning, that is to say, to extend the control of conscience beyond its frontiers. It’s an irrefutable truth that every important act happens at the frontier between order and chaos. For that reason the need of meaning exposes the individual to the abyss of the unknown, allowing him/her to develop his/her strength and ability proportionally to the seriousness of his adaptation effort. It is through contact with the unknown that human power increases, basically if this happens gradually. The meaning is the subjective experience associated with this contact, in a sufficient proportion. The total sacrifice of the self would eliminate any possibility of developing or even the necessary toughness as an individual. The great myths reinforce the notion that a continuous search of significance, when adopted voluntarily and without deception, leads to self-discovery and one's integration with the whole. This revealed identity empowers one to withstand the tragedy of life. Up to this point it could be said that the true meaning is the uncovering of a deeper human instinct. The self is attracted to the unknown; his subjective sense of significance is the instinct that regulates the ratio of contact out of the limits. An excessive exposure transforms the change into chaos; an insufficient exposure promotes stagnation and degeneration. The adequate balance generates a strong individual sure of his/her ability to confront life, each time more capable in his/her relation with nature and society, progressively closer to the heroic ideal. The self, constitutionally unique, finds the meaning in all its creative activities if it has the courage to maintain its peculiar differences. The biological and social conditions define the limits of the individual existence. The continual search of significance offers the subjective means through which these conditions may be respected and even opening the possibility of surpassing the boundaries. The pursuit of those objectives is the instinctual impulse that makes life possible. When the search is abandoned, individuality loses its power of redemption. Throughout their artistic careers, Picasso, Miro, and Lamb looked after the unknown through plastic language, distending the limits of the self, but simultaneously making sure not to reach the fatidic disintegrating point that could impede a return to individuality. It is this common approach to the evolution of the self that keeps alive the message of their works.

CITED WORKS.

Fig. 1.a. Pablo Picasso. La nageuse. Paris. November/1929

Fig. 1.b. Matt Lamb. Red Hair. Chicago. 1994

Fig. 2.a. Pablo Picasso. Acrobate. Paris. 19-January/1930

Fig. 2.b. Matt Lamb. Light Background Redhair. Chicago. 1994

Fig. 3.a. Joan Miró. Character. 1934

Fig. 3.b. Matt Lamb. Archangel One. Chicago. 1988

Fig. 4.a. Joan Miró. Dutch Intérior. 1928

Fig. 4.b. Matt Lamb. Long Arm. [Chicago]. 1995            

Fig. 5.a.Joan Miró. Ladders Cross the Blue Sky in a Wheel of Fire. 1953

Fig. 5.b. Matt Lamb. Flying Puppy. Chicago. 1994

Fig. 6.a.Joan Miró. Man and Woman in Front...1936

Fig. 6.b. Matt Lamb. Holding Court. Key Colony. 1995

Fig. 7.a. Joan Miró. Swallow Love. 1934

Fig. 7.b. Matt Lamb. Sun, Sea & Air. [Chicago]. 1989

Fig. 8.a. Joan Miró. Mètamorphose. 1936

Fig. 8.b. Matt Lamb. Hello Goodbye Chicago 1995

Fig. 9.a. Joan Miró. The Birth of the World. 1925

Fig. 9.b. Matt Lamb. Untitled. Chicago. 2001

Fig. 10.a. Joan Miró. Woman in Front of the Sun. 1950

Fig. 10.b. Matt Lamb. Red Hat. Chicago. 1995

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Campbell, Joseph. 1991. Creative Mythology: the Masks of God. NY: Arkana.

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Denneson, Travis J. 2002. 'Society and the Individual in Nietzsche’s The Will to Power.' The Secular Web. 13 Oct.

Eliade, Mircea. 1963. Myth and Reality. New York: Harper and Row.

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Kawashima, Shigenari. 1988. 'Literary Criticism in Euripides' Medea.' Pedilavium 27 (1988): 49-59.

Kuspit, Donald. 2002. 'Madness and Matt Lamb.' In Matt Lamb: Peace, Tolerance, Understanding, Hope.

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Nietzsche, Federico. 1972. El nacimiento de la tragedia. Madrid: Alianza editorial.

Palmquist, Stephen. 1993. The Tree of Philosophy. Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press.

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