Page 65 - VICTOR HAGEA : Amazing
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symbolically stand for the humanity as a whole. very much about playing with subtle philosophical
But one should rhetorically ask again: is this a paradigms translated into paradoxical visualities. It is
Trauerspiel? a play of dualities and instabilities, making the image
a surface of witty entanglement between visibilities
Trauerspiel, as its name suggests (Trauer: mourning, and invisibilities. Hagea’s “November” is twice a
grief; Spiel: playing) was a most celebrated form of negation of sight: in the blind-folded eye, and in the
theatricality in Western Baroque, a state of mind meditative gaze of the black lady, turning away in a
and soul, associated with mourning and allegory, the gesture of denial of vision. For this reason, Hagea’s
melancholy absence – a theme memorably described “November” is a magical pictorial Spiel as well, a
by Walter Benjamin. But unlike the Baroque refine piece belonging to some kind of “aesthetics of
Trauerspiel, this particular drama of Hagea seems ambiguity.” This is a challenging term, which has
to head off towards a new goal, searching to get out not yet quantified by art theory, as far as I know, but
from aporia of Trauerspiel – from the irredeemable which might be occupied with phenomenal matters
melancholy mourning. Austere, almost ascetic in concerning visualities in-between and in becoming,
her physical appearance, the lady seems to grasp which escape fixed identifiable visual signs in
in the haziness of the horizon the redemptive light. the picture. Hagea’s drama depicts one of those
And like in a dialectical dance she moves her body, phenomena of presence in-between and in betwixt,
almost ritually, into a new space and stasis – the as the in anthropology of rite of passage, in which the
repose of silence. If there is anything melancholic subject is “in trial,” or en process (Julia Kristeva). To
about her pose, then her acaedia is that change make it clear and concrete, this procès is illustrated
of mind (metanoia), which is a coming to terms in the pictorial metamorphosis of the lady, slowly
with the past, acknowledging it, and transforming undertaken in the picture. The “amphibious form”
it. In full accord with her metanoic state of mind, (Buci Glucksmann) in the fold becomes the black
the blackness of her silhouette contains the whole silhouette in pose “chagrin réfléchi,” withdrawing
paradox of ascetic metanoia, that is, the fullness gently from the front stage in a theatrical gesture.
of nothingness. This we may call “the painting as Her phenomenal motion through the picture is
negative theology.” And it is here that the spiritual dramatic. It is a powerfully staged process. Between
thinking of Orient departs dramatically from the these two moments and two bodies there is the
Western Trauerspiel. invisible yet thick phenomenological matter that
fills up the entire picture of Victor Hagea. To fully
experience it is to undergo oneself through a similar
Pictorially speaking, Victor Hagea’s “November” rite de passage. This is perhaps the most intriguing
reflects profoundly his thinking. His painting is
dimension of “November.”
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