“Comedia Humana”

Comedia Humana

This is a cycle based on the story of humanity. It is inspired by  the Sistine chapel which begins with the creation and ends with the last judgement. Like Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine chapel the two sections tell one story in two parts. Where we came from is the first and where we are going is the second. The first section is the rise of man from primates in trees into consciousness and civilization. The second half tells the story of modernity up to the postulated fall and in the end the rebirth into the natural state where the cycle begins again. Like the Sistine chapel where the coming of the catholic epic is told in the voice of old testament prophets and Greek sybils I am using multiple traditions of symbolism in the belief that they can speak to each other and tell a common story. I have episodes referencing modern science and evolutionary theory, Greek gods and heroes, Babylonian and Jewish ideas such as the primeval garden and a model of cyclical death and rebirth based on Hinduism.  The idea of mixing these ideas is one I have taken from renaissance humanists like Ficino or Bronzino and later poets and writers such as Blake, Joseph campbell and Tolkien.

In the courts of renaissance Florence painting and poetry were seen as sister arts. This led to the type of literary paintings in which a culturally literate viewer could read a painting like a poem. I have set out to create a work in that tradition.

In the beginning is a tree in a walled garden, the walls already crumbling . The cosmic bull gallops on rain clouds fertilizing the earth while in the distance is the first of many towers in the painting. This one is a statue holding the disc of the world and the energy of thunder in the primeval unity of mass and energy. Below in the waters lies leviathan still ruling the waters of consciousness. Monkeys climb the boughs of the tree in the garden. One takes a red fruit cultivating the development of human’s eyes in the quest for fruit while another is bitten by a snake that begins to uncoil from the form of the ouroboros or the snake biting its own tail in eternity. As it uncoils eternity is left behind and we enter into time and the bite brings awareness of death. Two figures a man and woman flee the walled garden of nature and enter into the world of human awareness. There is a man with a two faced head in his hand showing that no longer is consciousness unified as in the statue from the background in which mass and energy were contained in his hands in the form of the earths disc and lightning but have separated and life and death are now separate and motivating elements.. Continuing there is a family group, an old man speaks while birds circle his head giving him inspiration for his sounds. He is part of a family of multiple generations, they huddle together as babies crawl over them born early so their heads can continue to develop to carry the large brains that make us human. The man looks down into the water and sees a crocodile and prepares to protect the vulnerable early humans.

Now thoroughly separated from nature humans form hunting parties and shamanism as a way to reconnect to that which was lost. A figure like Dionysus carries a staff that grows into a tree climbing up to the sky. He now possesses the connection to the eternal in his staff which echoes the world tree of Norse and biblical mythology at the center of the world. He gives his blessing to the hunters who carry a deer they have slain and gives meaning to life which must live on life. Behind these figures strengthened by greater abilities and organization early migrants spread out to populate the planet. In the foreground a man carves a statue of the many breasted goddess of nature using simple tools to solidify a cultural idea and tradition , while developing the beginnings of technology. Next to him another exchanges shells with a stranger as these different groups of settled figures interact and begin to trade.

In Part two we deal with the mixed blessing of technology and agriculture. In the back is another tower. This one crowned with a lion with a man’s head referencing the early nature god worship in Babylon, Assyria and Egypt. In the beginning Prometheus carries the flaming torch holding the fire he stole from the gods and representing both mankind’s new technical prowess that put him at the top of the animal kingdom. He takes the crown from the old man at his feet as his power grows so does his dominion over people and less developed civilizations. moving forward a mother holds her baby and a sheep this is the epoch of human sacrifice characteristic of the Homeric age in which Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia for a wind in troy. It will not be the only reference to the Homeric stories in the paining. Theseus slays the minotaur in the foreground ending the sacrifice Crete demanded of Athens of seven young men and seven young women. By slaying the minotaur, he ended the ritual of human sacrifice and a primitive epoch in humanity in which men were sacrificed to the gods. Figures sow seeds and grow plants in the back while the new civilizations built by agriculture become larger and turn to priests represented by the man raising a staff toward a floating figure in the sky. In the front a scholar holds a compass and writes developing the knowledge and intellect of mankind while Hermes the god of commerce whispers in his ear alluding the foundations of language and mathematics in trade. There will be a pyramid in the distance showing the rise of civilization. Behind Theseus two figures hold bushels of wheat and rough early coins as they begin large scale trade.  Finally, a figure in a helm and rod of government hold down another figure as mankind multiplies and various tribes meet, they from larger cities through conquest and conversion. At this point we have come to the modern world and are ready for full fledges societies we can recognize. The next painting will tell of our time and the future.

As we begin A figure representing the early city states submits to a king as the centralization of states grows and the stage is et for the modern world. A figure hoists a flag of nationalism in front of a triumphant column reminiscent of Trajan’s column and showing three myths: The rape of Europa, The sacrifice of Iphigenia and the eagle devouring Prometheus liver, all foreshadow what is to come. In the front an old man with fading laurels falling from his head slumps over a model of the pantheon representing the development and fulfillment of classical humanism abandoned in the mad search for technology and power. He is put to sleep by a woman holding opium poppies. While the figures behind carry on obliviously. A woman rides a sphinx while carousing with satyrs. The sphinx as the symbol of unescapable fate is harnessed by those with the hubris to try to lead her. The babies are deceit, who pulls has his hands on the sphinx and wears a hat with a second face and a serpent, ignorance with a blindfold and asses ears pulls the harness and truth with a hat designed with an eye in it and holding a mirror representing a clear reflection and vision is tied and ridden over. The woman on the sphinx represents idealism and innocence as she is open exposed and looking up and not forward. Her arm is grabbed by discord with snakes for hair and a torch to light the conflagration. The dove of peace escapes from her hand. Two soldiers raise the cannon of war while death hovers above. The cannon is decorated with the figure of mars and figures are tied to the wheels who rise fall and are crushed by the wheel of fortune turning, bringing new people to the top and destroying others. This foreshadows the new order of the world in the next piece. The cannon has a dog sculpted that matches the dogs heads on the soldiers helmets making a three headed dog reminiscent of Cerberus and hades. In the wall are the lines from Yeats: Turning and turning in the widening Gyre, The Falcon cannot hear the Falconer, Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

The final painting begins with the cloud and ruins under the cannon continuing into the new painting as the echoes of war shape the new world. Just as in the beginning the clouds rain fertilizing the earth for new life. A mother mourns the dead youth in the ruins of the old world while a three men rise up above. The lowest holding a glass case with a young tree in it while the top two figures of the united states and soviet untion flight over the globe while their hands meet in eastern Europe. (it is not drawn yet but the Russian will have a bear on his hat somewhere and there will be an eagle on the figure of America. As the clouds represent the fertilizing sky that can be personified as Jupiter the woman on the bottom is Leda who gives birth to his children out of an egg showing new life beginning again from the ruins. Her babies crawl forward into a new world. This world is dominated by tech and shown by visual wordplay. The figures holding windows, faces and an apple alongside the amazon are the new powers of tech. the figure behind them holds a rocket and points to the sky where two figures wrestle a satellite into place. The fountain that the tech people approach is the fountain of youth an dbaptism that has appeared in so many myths and stories. It is the drea of tech utopianists like Ray Kurzweil. At the bottom of the fountain is the labrynth symbolizing the search for the center of understanding and the hope to unify all knowledge. At the top is the unbroken sphere representing the cosmic egg reformed and on the first level is a harpy like figure representing the monsters that can form in the waters of the fountain of dreams. Around the upper section of the fountain are Hera, venus and Athena. The man with the apple is presenting it to them in a quotation from the Homeric epics when the apple of discord is given to paris to choose between the goddesses and in the process he launches the Trojan war. This brings the downfall of troy. The lines of Christopher Marlowe “Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium--Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.--.  Will be carved on the fountain.

 Behind is the great tower, part Babel of the new world and built in the shape of the double helix of DNA. The allegory of the fountain foretells its fall. As the tower is total and unifying so is it’s fall. This brings us full circle to complete the cycle in the garden again. Now monkeys inhabit a new primeval landscape with a tomb that as a final reference to the dream of tech will have the lines from Ray Kurzweil’s poem All watched over by machines of loving grace : I like to think (it has to be!), of a cybernetic ecology,  where we are free of our labors, and joined back to nature,  returned to our mammal, brothers and sisters, and all watched over,  by machines of loving grace.