Niram Art Magazine - NIRAM ART NUMERO 9

MAIA’S EMBRACE, by BIANCA ANDREEA MARIN

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 08:07:55 CST

Bucharest, November 2007

"They shoot horses, don't they?"

D'AYA THEATRE COMPANY

Directed by: Chris Simion

Distribution:

M.C. – MAIA MORGENSTERN

Gloria – Antoaneta Cojocaru

Robert – Tudor Aaron Istodor

Actress – Ela Ionescu

Joe – Cuzin Toma

Pregnant woman – Ioana de Hillerin

Husband of pregnant woman – Mihai Marinescu

Girlfiren of the sailor – Carmen Lopazan

Sailor– Gabriel Fatu

Scenography: Adina Mastalier
Choreography: Carmen Cotofana

The train arrives in Bucharest at 10.15 a.m. The schedule is set, the maps are bought, the watch is carefully inspected for accuracy. The last train leaves at 11.45 p.m., and we have to be on it. The itinerary has been carefully planned by my husband, who was born in Bucharest, whereas I, an outsider, a province girl, have to trust his better judgement. However, we decide together on the theatre play we want to see. ‘You cannot come to Bucharest and not see a play,’ he says, as he is an absolute theatre maniac, capable of seeing the same play more than thirty times. ‘It has to be with Maia Morgenstern,’ I say, and he instantly agrees, ‘I want to see her live.’

I have been fascinated by this woman since I was a child. I remember whispering her name carefully, and wondering about its strange sounds. One night, my mother said to me that Maia Morgenstern was to perform on the scene of the small theatre in my native town. Her tone of voice gave me the impression that she was talking about the most impressive and wonderful thing ever to happen in our small town. It was the event of a lifetime. I kept her name in my memory for years, only to discover her later, in films, to reject or to adore her on TV, to let my eyes linger on her images in magazines, to let myself be conquered by the enchanting modulations of her voice when speaking in her native tongue, to ponder on her particular beauty, without ever resolving to myself the question: is she or is she not a beautiful woman?

He asked me whether I liked her. I didn’t know what to answer. All I know is that she seems to be a fascinating woman, a natural born actress, a mix of sensuality and motherhood, and the toughest person I have ever seen. I have watched her speak in many interviews, and she has always shocked me with sharp, harsh answers whenever she dislikes the questions, which cut the flowing of the interview like a knife. I fear her and, am attracted to her at the same time. Poor journalists who have to interview Maia Morgenstern!

We go straight to Laptaria lui Enache, to buy the tickets for the show which will start at 7 p.m. “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”. Of course, nobody is there, and after a long walk on the streets of Bucharest, between Cismigiu and Stirbei Voda, we come back for the tickets. The elevator presents us with the strange reality of a communist relic: the elevator woman who is sewing a cloth inside it, sitting on a small chair, whilst her only job is to push the buttons between the floors, instead of letting the visitors do that by themselves. I almost want to take her picture. I think there are only 4 floors so her job seems even more ridiculous.

The place, the famous Laptaria lui Enache, disappoints me from the start: a dark, small room with a low ceiling, a claustrophobic cave. We arrive late, after walking for more than seven hours on the streets of Bucharest (‘You have to see this, and this, and that. You cannot leave without seeing …,’ my husband kept on dragging me, on the streets of his native town, my feet sore, my back aching, only granting me two short coffee breaks), and we cannot find front seats. The view isn’t great, the small, dark cave is full, people sitting everywhere, at the tables, on the tables, on the chairs, on the floor, almost entering the improvised stage. At a desk, at the back of the room, Maia is reading thoughtfully some papers. Our eyes are focused on her but we seem to be the only ones aware of her presence. The other people in the audience are drinking and talking, perhaps accustomed to her presence in a way that we can never become. She walks to the bar, gives directions, passes by us whilst we are both holding our breath. Nobody watches her, nobody bothers her. I look at her, and realize that I see her first as a Mother, secondly as a Woman, and only then as an Actress. And I am sure that she does all of them to perfection; she cannot be something without being that something perfectly.

At last, the show begins, and the nice lady at the desk transforms herself. She announces, in a voice of thunder that the dance contest is to begin, and that she is the Master of Ceremonies. She walks, she jumps, she cries, she moves, she dances, all with such a power and frenzy that our eyes are glued to her. Maybe the other actors are also good but they are swollen by the monstrous flood that has erupted on the small stage. Her black wig falls down in the frenzy, revealing her beautiful gray hair but she doesn’t seem to mind. She is not Maia Morgenstern anymore, a mother of three, a sensual woman, but MC, Master of Ceremonies of a barbarian contest. She is the Ultimate Actress. Tough, unjust, despicable, hateful, mean, arrogant, she is all that her director wants her to be, with a cruelty that makes my blood clog in my veins. The significance of her name, the flow of her energy makes me imagine her as a river. She is a deep, powerful river with blasting waves, during a howling hurricane, she is an icy blue ocean with rough-edged icebergs, she is the primordial feminine principle of the water that gives birth, in screaming pains, to everything. We all draw our forces from her.

The plot unravels in front of us and keeps on going. The tired dancers are sweating. I can almost feel their tiredness in my own hurt body, the sore feet, the torn muscles, the stiff joints. The pain. It seems to me that the entire day spent on the streets of Bucharest has only been a pre-figuration of this show, that the actors are suffering from the same pain as mine. The chair is uncomfortable, and I can’t move my back. I lack the forces to keep my back straight because of the stiffness of the spine and the pain but there she comes again, forcing me, forcing the actors, to stand up again, and again, to go on. She is torturing me with her torrents of energy as she is torturing the poor dancers. I close my eyes during the dance breaks only to wake up suddenly to the cry of her voice. She drains me of all my energy. We are all, audience and actors alike, a wreckage in her arms, pulled away by the flow of her waves. I am no longer in the audience. I am on the stage. My head resting on my husband’s shoulder, I feel part of the dance contest, slowly moving my tired, exhausted limbs, unable to utter a word against her. I haven‘t come to a theatre play that evening, I have become part of one. I have become one with the mass of speed-walking dancers who stumble and groan whilst their muscles scream in agony. Dancers fall to the floor, their limbs convulsing. The music won’t stop. We have to keep on going, her voice urges us, she has no pity for our glassy eyes and clenched jaws. She pours a bucket of water on an exhausted competitor.

Suddenly, she rushes into the audience and whispers something to a girl who is sitting at the table in front of us. I exchange glances with my husband: ‘What is this?’ He has no time to answer. She comes directly to us, embraces both our shoulders and asks me, looking straight into my eyes: ‘Would you like me to tell the man in the coloured shirt to come to you?’ I smile stupidly and utter: ‘No, thank you,’ and turn my head away from her glance. My only memory is the thought that she has such a tender smile. In the intimacy of the encounter, the river has turned into a peaceful, maternal spring. No, I haven’t imagined it. I am a part of the play. We all are, even if we don’t realize it. But SHE knows it.

Some pairs leave, others change their partners. One dancer collapses. In the midst of all this insanity, two people find a ray of love. A delicate, thin man with big, dreamy eyes and a dark-haired young woman who is the only one who dares confront the frightening MC. The end is near, the disillusion – great. There is no prize, the dancers have drained their forces for weeks for nothing, it is all a scam. I don’t have time to realize that the contest is over. I am still dancing, letting my husband’s body to support my trembling moves.

A blast startles me. The dark-haired woman is dead. ‘Why?,’ I ask. The fragile-looking young man answers me: ‘They shoot horses, don’t they?’

There is no curtain in Laptaria lui Enache. If it were, they would have had to lower it with me on the other side. After all, I have always liked horses.

The train leaves at 11.45 p.m. We say our farewell to the beautiful city, after a final walk on Kogalniceanu Street. We vow to come back to it one day: he loves this city, and I have fallen in love with it, too. He takes pictures of me with the river Dambovita glowing in the darkness. I seem to have been around a river all night long. We fall asleep in the compartment. Half dreaming, my husband says to me: ‘The most beautiful thing that happened to me in our journey to Bucharest was Maia’s embrace. Have you noticed that we were the only ones in the audience whom she embraced?’ I smile and think that this was MY most beautiful thing in Bucharest. The line between ME and HIM, as always, keeps dissolving. I remember one of my favourite Chassidic stories: ‘My wife’s foot is hurting us,’ said a Rabbi to the doctor who came to see his wife.

So, I rephrase: ‘The most beautiful thing that happened to us in our journey to Bucharest was Maia’s embrace.’

Photographies by Bianca Marin

FEATURED ARTIST : IOAN IACOB

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 08:00:17 CST

IOAN IACOB was born in 1954 in Romania. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Düsseldorf with Professor Gothard Graubner. In 1981, he was awarded the Fine Arts Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation and in 1982 the Max Ernst Scholarship of the town Brühl (Germany). In 2005, he partipated at Artist’s Village Ein Hod on invitation by the Town of Düsseldorf. He lives and works in Germany.

He has had solo exhibitions in prestigious galleries in Germany, Belgium, France, United States, Israel and Romania. Among his most recent exhibitions are: at The Contemporary Art Gallery of the Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu;The Mogosoaia Palace,Foisor, Bucharest; The National Art Museum, Cluj-Napoca (in 2007) and in 2005 at Artist’s Village Ein Hod, Israel; The Contemporary Art Gallery, Haifa, Israel, etc.

PAINTING MENU

“We live in the times of the image / state of mind which causes not only the type of emotion that is to be evoked but also the type of attitude that is to be taken. Without being phsycally involved, Ioan Iacob forces this apparently causal conexion between image and object. The painting gains new visual and social codes. Everything is literal, concrete, true. There is a feeling of protective tenderness. A world enjoying its peace. Ioan Iacob will not recognise the fatal risks of the utopia. However, he adjusts the reality according to his own theories.
   Ioan Iacob’s painting is a perfect example of adjusting the data to an idea. The premature innocence is a memory or, better said, a digression.
   Ioan Iacob has his own, quite far-seeing.conceptual system. He enjoys every day life. And thanks to it, he regains all that is hidden. The legitimacy of the elements of the interior space. The painting menu is almost classical: portrait, static nature, landscape.
   Almost in a classical way, the painting is reduced to the constituent elements: ground, texture, colour, brush stroke... Ioan Iacob is always enaged in a fresh relation with the canvas. When he starts a painting, he automatically organizes the visual data of our reality. Strangely, he organizes them in individual graphical worlds.
   Ioan Iacob helps us clarify the relation we have with the visual objects. He imposes a place, a situation, a wanted life-style...our very own existence.
   By unlocking or turning abstract the reality, the painting gains a hidden language that is unknown to us: luminosity and the beginning of the story. One is not always sure whether the luminosity is the fiction or if the beginning of the story is the truth. Actually, the luminosity and the beginning of the story contain a bit of them both.”

Liviana Dan

(from the Catalogue of the Exhibition: Red Darkness, Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu, 2007)

EUROJUDAICA FESTIVAL, SIBIU, ROMANIA

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:57:01 CST

ISRAELI ART IN ROMANIA:
EUROJUDAICA FESTIVAL

As part of the manifestations organized in order to celebrate Sibiu as the European Capital of Culture 2007, the Brukenthal Museum has organized several art events throughout the year 2007. At the Eurojudaica 2007 festival, the Brukenthal National Museum held the group exhibition of several of the finest Israeli artists.

NATOUR NATOUR
YAEL SHVARTZ
AVIVA BEIGEL
H.I. BEN SHIMON
DANIELLA WEXLER RACIN
YEHUDIT LEVIN
SILVA ZALMAMSON
YOSSI RAZ
HAIM DRUCKER
OFIR NAVE
HARY SHAYA
IGOR KAPLUNOVOCH

SIBIU, ROMANIA: EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2007

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:56:03 CST

The Brukenthal Museum is one of the oldest in Romania. It was founded by the Baron Samuel von Brukenthal in the town of Sibiu, in the heart of the Romanian region Transylvania. Samuel von Brukenthal (1721 -1803) originated in the German lesser nobility from Transylvania. He studied law, political administration and philosophy at the universities of Halle and Jena being trained up in the spirit of the European Enlightenment. An appreciated scholar and a qualified diplomat, Brukenthal worked his way up at the Viennese Imperial Court and finally he became "aulic" chancellor of Transylvania. That was the time he made up his painting collection. In 1773 it was mentioned in Almanach von Wien and considered as one of the most valuable private collections to be found in Vienna at that time. Sharing the interest in sciences of his time, Brukenthal collected rare books, numismatics, archaeological and mineral items as well.

DADA HERITAGE : THE JANCO DADA MUSEUM AND EIN HOD ARTISTS’S VILLAGE

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:54:50 CST

Marcel Janco, a renown painter and founder of the Dadaist movement (anti-artists), is seen as one of the most important artists of Jewish - Romanian origin, and he currently belongs to the cultural and artistic heritage of both Romania and Israel. Marcel Janco, born in Bucharest in 1895, had joined a group of artists at the Café Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916, and was among the principal founders of the Dada Movement. Dada was a unique artistic movement which had a major impact on 20th century art. It was established in Cabaret Voltaire, in Zurich, Switzerland, by a group of exiled poets, painters and philosophers who were opposed to war, aggression and the changing world culture. Among the founders were Marcel Janco, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, and, another compatriot of Jewish origin, Tristan Tzara.
   Dada soirées featured spontaneous poetry, avant-garde music, and mask wearing dancers in elaborate shows. The Dadaists teased and enraged the audience through their bold defiance of Western culture and art, which they considered obsolete in view of the destruction and carnage of World War I. The Dadaists objected to the aesthetics of Western contemporary painting, sculpture, language, literature and music. The group published articles and periodicals, and mounted exhibitions. The seeds sown in Zurich spread throughout the world, resulting in new Dada organizations in Paris, New York, Berlin, Hannover, and more.
   Janco designed masks and costumes for the famous Dada balls, and created abstract relieves in cardboard and plaster. He had an eclectic style in which he brilliantly combined abstract and figurative elements, expressionistic in nature.
   In 1922, Marcel Janco returned to his native Romania, where he made his mark as a painter, theoretician and architect. In 1941, he moved to the land, which was to become the nation of Israel in 1948. It was here that Janco was founded the New Horizons Group. In Israel, Janco painted idyllic watercolor and oil depictions of Safed and Tiberias and was captivated by the exotic sights of the Orient.

In 1953, on the ruins of an abandoned Arab village, Marcel Janco established the artists’ village known as Ein Hod, which now boasts the The Janco Dada Museum. Ein Hod is a picturesque artists’ village, the only one of its kind in Israel and one of the few such villages in the world. Nestled in natural vegetation and bordered by an ancient olive grove, it lies on the western slopes of Mt. Carmel, in a breathtaking landscape looking out toward the sea and the Crusader fortress of Atlit. Nowadays, Ein Hod is a unique and romantic retreat where painters, sculptors, ceramists, actors and many other artists form every artistic fields, live and create. Throughout the years, ten of Ein Hod’s artists have won the Israel Prize.
    In 1967, Marcel Janco was awarded the Israel Prize for Painting. In the last years of his life he worked together with his friends to erect the Janco Dada Museum. Janco died ten months after the inauguration of the museum in 1984.
    The Janco Dada Museum is situated in the center of the Ein Hod Artists’s Village, twenty km South of Haifa. The museum contains several display galleries. The permanent display is dedicated to Marcel Janco’s seventy years of artistic creation, the entrance gallery is available for young artists and special projects, and the lower gallery exhibits contemporary art.
    The museum also features a youth wing and a DADALAB, a unique art laboratory.

ON WILLIAM BLAKE’S ART - PART I, by CATALIN GHITA

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:48:28 CST

Excerpts from the forthcoming book

Revealer of the Fourfold Secret: William Blake’s Theory and Practice of Vision

If one pays attention to the artist’s own phraseology, Blake’s secret of transforming experienced visions into aesthetic ones lies in the artist’s fidelity to the original, as emphasized by Allan Cunningham, in his Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1830): ‘Amongst his friends, he at length ventured to intimate that the designs on which he was engaged, were not from his own mind, but copied from grand works revealed to him in visions; and those who believed that, would readily lend an ear to the assurance that he was commanded to execute his performances by a celestial tongue’ (Bentley, Jr., Blake Records 636-37). In his unpublished Life of Blake (c. 1832), Frederick Tatham adds a significant detail concerning the infallibility of the ‘artistic copy procedure:’ Blake ‘persisted that while he copied the vision (as he called it) upon his plate or canvas, he could not Err; & that error & defect could arise only from the departure or inaccurate delineation of his unsubstantial scene’ (Bentley, Jr., Critical Heritage 217). It is perhaps more important that the consciousness of the artist involved in this type of creative process is automatically transferred to a level which prevents it from erring artistically and spiritually. Despite what Blake believed in regard to his aesthetic fidelity, some questions loom large, and they are raised by a significant number of textual modifications, which evince that the artist is not entirely free from error since his work requires revision.

THE EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY THROUGH SELF-PORTRAITURE by RAYMOND ROCA

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:42:44 CST

The exploration of identity, a concept central to the human condition and sense of self, has been a theme that has resurfaced repeatedly throughout the history of art, with artists often using their works as a key means of expressing their complex identities to their audiences. After being restrained by the abstractionist, formalist tendencies of modernism, the relationship between art and identity has become increasingly significant during the post-modern era, in a context of growing multiculturalism, post-colonialism, feminism and civil rights. One of the most important ways in which artists have articulated their identities through their works has been self-portraiture, which has enabled the expression of the artist’s personal identity, as well as of collective identities relating to gender, culture and sexual orientation.

Three artists whose practice has centred on the expression of identity through self-portraiture are Frida Kahlo, Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura. Due to changes in their context, however, each of these artists has approached this genre in different ways and has utilised it to focus on different aspects of their identity.

Frida Kahlo, born in 1907, was a Mexican artist who painted mainly from the 1920s until her death in 1954, and is best known for her self-portraits. Her artistic practice was profoundly shaped by a traffic accident in 1925, which left her heavily injured, unable to walk properly and in periods of extreme pain throughout the rest of her life. Although influenced by surrealism, Kahlo refused to categorise her work, instead stating that, “(unlike surrealism), I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.” Indeed, Kahlo’s sixty-six self-portraits can be seen as intense and personal explorations of her post-accident reality, as well as of her complex, multifaceted identity, influenced not only by her accident but also by her heritage and gender.

PHOTOGRAPHY TODAY : DANIELA MITICA

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:34:48 CST

Daniela Mitica was born in Bucharest on the 13th of May 1968. Her first passion was the ballet, and she graduated from the Fine Arts high school Nicolae Tonitza in Bucharest. Between 1983/1984, she opted for painting and sculpture.

She was introduced in photographic art by the professional photographer Nina Mihaila. Both her photographic and her painting works are characterized by an interesting vision, the young artist observing the world around her with a fresh eye. She is interested in pointing out through her art what the common person sees. According to her own words, “my works tell everything about me. I believe art should be taken seriously, because it expresses all the joys, heartaches, dreams and feelings of despair that dwell within our souls. We should discover art in every body, in every gesture, in every thing…” Her works surprise us by the return to symbols, even though, at first glance, they seem purely simple.

Indeed, it is in pure, everyday simplicity that lies the light of understanding. It is this light that Daniela Mitica uses in order to show us the beauty of her world.

El exilio como modo de conocimiento, CATALIN GHITA

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:32:54 CST

Aunque el tema del exilio es la más fecunda de la historia de las ideas, no pienso hablarles ni del clásico binomio intra muros/extra muros, ni del destino de los grandes exiliados. Más bien quiero insistir en un aspecto a menudo despreciado, cuando se trata del alejamiento, tanto físico como espiritual, de un espacio-matriz, cuyas fibras seccionadas reverberan fuertemente en el interior del que se distanció de buena gana, o, como acontece muchas veces, se vio obligado a partir.

Suponemos que un hombre nace en cima de una montaña. Habiendo vivido allí durante toda su vida, ni siquiera se da cuenta de que vive en las alturas. En su medio familiar, enviudado de la posibilidad de poner las cosas en perspectiva, el hombre no está conciente de las dimensiones del espacio que ocupa; por consiguiente, no puede establecer una relación entre este espacio y una población del campo. Siendo constreñido a viajar hacia abajo de la montaña y a mezclarse con los extranjeros del campo, puede ubicar en el abismo, tanto las coordenadas espaciales de su casa, como los aspectos definitorios para su propia persona (elementos de comportamiento, de traje, de forma de expresarse, etc.). En otras palabras, el exilio físico, impuesto o como reflejo de una decisión personal, es, a mi ver, una de las más profundas experiencias gnoseológicas que pueda atravesar un individuo a lo largo de su existencia.

MIRCEA ELIADE Y RUMANÍA, de JOSÉ ANTÓNIO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:27:07 CST

UN CADUCEO DE SABIDURÍA, BELLEZA Y MISTERIO.
MIRCEA ELIADE Y RUMANÍA

En un sueño que relata en sus diarios, Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) se ve volando en un ataúd que cruza Europa y llega finalmente a Bucarest. Su inconsciente, sus deseos, lo afincaban en su Dacia Félix, en su espacio original desde el que fecundó al mundo de las ideas. Sin embargo, el prestigio que adquirió como sabio y erudito de alcance universal frecuentemente nos hace soslayar la dimensión rumana de la que nacieron muchas de sus preocupaciones, punto original desde el que también proyectó su búsqueda para desentrañar el simbolismo sagrado. Es desde su sensibilidad rumana que igualmente volcó su imaginación y su creatividad. En diciembre de 1944, anota en el Diario portugués: “abandoné el yoga y la filosofía por la cultura rumana y por mi literatura.”

Ineluctablemente vinculado en todos los planos -étnico, metafísico, filosófico, ético, biológico, artístico, erótico, antropológico, vital, estético, literario, folklórico, histórico, existencial, ontológico, axiológico e, incluso, onírico- a su condición de rumano trashumante, nunca renunció a su origen ni a sus afectos; su conciencia rumana palpita en el fondo de su supra-conciencia humana. Sus dos matrimonios con rumanas -con Nina Mareş primero, y con Christinel Cottesco, después- le ayudaron a afianzarse en su centro y a enriquecer su cosmovisión rumana. La primera fue fundamental en sus relaciones con políticos e ideólogos nacionalistas en la agitada década de los treinta; ella le confirió la necesaria estabilidad y seguridad que le permitió acometer su labor de escritor y estudioso, una vez pasado el vendaval pasional que vivió en la India con Maitreyi. Con la segunda, y ya en el exilio, estableció un nexo metafísico íntimo gracias al cual preservó viva su lengua y su escritura. Para Eliade, igual que para Heidegger, la patria es la lengua, expresión simbólica del ser.
Las obras que Mircea Eliade consagró al estudio y al análisis de la cultura rumana son numerosas y variadas, tanto en su temática como en su enfoque. Su libro Los rumanos, latinos de Oriente es una visión sucinta del desarrollo histórico de los pueblos geto-dacios hasta su cristalización en la cultura rumana contemporánea; este breve libro lo escribió en pocos meses, mientras se desempeñaba como funcionario diplomático en la Legación Real de Rumania en Lisboa, donde estuvo desde febrero de 1941 hasta septiembre de 1945. En De Zalmoxis a Gengis-Khan. Religiones y Folklore de Dacia y de la Europa Oriental, revisa con acuciosidad la leyenda del maestre Manolo y la balada de la cordera, y somete a examen el folklore y las leyendas rumanas desde su rigurosa y original perspectiva de historiador de las religiones. Y en su monumental y poco conocida -incluso hoy en Rumanía - antología en dos volúmenes, Escritos literarios, morales y políticos de B. P. Hasdeu, profundiza en el perfil de uno de los caudillos culturales rumanos.