Page 38 - VICTOR HAGEA : Amazing

The memory of

The “painting within a painting” seems to be a favourite
theme for Victor Hagea. It was present in the meta- picTure or painTing

pictorial vision of the Unveiling, and in Rebus, which

I have already discussed. But it resurfaces again in a as palimpsesT

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 Of forgotten and

myth reporting the contest between Marsyas, the god

of music, and Apollo, the god of poetry. Behind the resurrected things

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