Page 66 - VICTOR HAGEA : Amazing

Let us now conclude that the mysterious lady is the

epitome of negation in the picture. She is No-vember.

She makes visible, through her hieroglyph-like
body, the mortal frailty of the human figure. But

if she might have some affinities with Melancholy

or November (which is said to be the season of

impermanence and black bile, “la maladie de

l’âme”), this drama is definitely not a Trauerspiel,
neither is it a mere elemental drama of the fall, in its

humid dissolution. Rather, it is the stage of playful

visualities upon invisibilities, in which the season
itself plays out its last glimpse before shadow takes

over. As Christine Buci-Glucksmann, the theorist

of the Baroque, might have said, the moment of

passage from seeing to voice, “du voir à la voix,” is

a reflection of the ineffable “tragique de l’ombre.”
All this is experienced in the picture as a thrill, as

an anticipation of things in their absolute stillness

and silence of voice. And it is here indeed that the
apophatic dimension of “No-vember” revels itself:

in the paradox of the oxymoron that is the fullness

of absence. This is Victor Hagea’s “November.”

For that matter, his Spiel radically contradicts the

most celebrated negative poem of Thomas Hood,
November.

Nicoletta Isar,

Copenhagen, 4th September 2008

noVember 2007-08 oil on cAnVAS 29½x41½ in. /75x105 cm. 
noVembre 2007-08 HUile SUr toile 29½x41½ in. /75x105 cm.
noVember 2007-08 Öl AUf leinWAnd 29½x41½ in. /75x105 cm.
66 noiembrie 2007-08 Ulei Pe PAnzA 29½x41½ in. /75x105 cm.