Blue Reincarnation Narcissus painting by Jaisini
gleitzeit
The theme of Narcissus in Jaisini's "Blue..." may be paralleled with
the problem of the
two-sexes-in-one, unable to reproduce and, therefore, destined to the
Narcissus-like
end. Meanwhile, the Narcissus legend lasts. In the myth of Narcissus a
youth gazes
into the pool. As the story goes, Narcissus came to the spring or the
pool and when his
form was seen by him in the water, he drowned among the water nymphs
because he
desired to make love to his own image. Maybe the new Narcissus, as in
"Blue
Reincarnation," is destined to survive by simply changing his role
from a passive man to
an aggressive woman and so on. To this can be added that, eventually,
a man creates a
woman whom he loves out of himself or a woman creates a man and loves
her own
image but in the male form. The theme of narcissism recreates the
'lost object of desire.
"Blue" also raises the problem of conflating ideal actual and the
issue of the feminine
manhood and masculine femininity. There is another story about
Narcissus' fall, which
said that he had a twin sister and they were exactly alike in
appearance. Narcissus fell
in love with his sister and, when the girl died, would go to the
spring finding some relief
for his love in imagining that he saw not his own reflection but the
likeness of his sister.
"Blue" creates a remarkable and complex psychopathology of the lost,
the desired, and
the imagined. Instead of the self, Narcissus loves and becomes a
heterogeneous
sublimation of the self. Unlike the Roman paintings of Narcissus,
which show him alone
with his reflection by the pool, the key dynamic in Jaisini's "Blue"
is the circulation of
the legend that does not end and is reincarnated in transformation
when autoeroticism
is not permanent and is not single by definition. In "Blue," we risk
being lost in the
double reflection of a mirror and never being able to define on which
side of the mirror
Narcissus is. The picture's color is not a true color of spring water.
This kind of color is
a perception of a deep-seated human belief in the concept of eternity,
the rich saturated
cobalt blue. The ultra hot, hyperreal red color of the figure of
Narcissus is not supposed
to be balanced in the milieu of the radical blue. Jaisini realizes the
harmony in the most
exotic color combination. While looking at "Blue," we can recall the
spectacular color of
night sky deranged by a vision of some fierce fireball. The
disturbance of colors creates
some powerful and awe-inspiring beauty. In the picture's background,
we find the
animals' silhouettes, which could be a memory reflection or dream
fragments. In the
story, Narcissus has been hunting - an activity that was itself a
figure for sexual desire
in antiquity. Captivated by his own beauty, the hunter sheds a
radiance that, one
presumes, reflects to haunt and foster his desire. The flaming color
of the picture's
Narcissus alludes to the erotic implications of the story and its
unresolved problem of
the one who desires himself and is trapped in the erotic delirium. The
concept can be
applied to an ontological difference between the artist's imitations
and their objects. In
effect, Jaisini's Narcissus could epitomize artistic aspiration to
control levels of reality
and imagination, to align the competition of art and life, of image
with imaginable
prototype. Jaisini's "Blue" is a unique work that adjoins reflection
to reality without any
instrumentality. "Blue" is a single composition that depicts the
reality and its immediate
reflection. Jaisini builds the dynamics of desire between Narcissus
and his reflection-of-
the-opposite by giving him the signs of both sexes, but not for the
purpose of creating a
hermaphrodite. The case of multiple deceptions in "Blue" seems to be
vital to the cycle
of desire. Somehow it reminds one of the fates of the artists and
their desperate
attempts to evoke and invent the nonexistent. "Blue" is a completely
alien picture to
Jaisini's "Reincarnation" series. The pictures of this series are
painted on a plain ground
of canvas that produces the effect of free space filled with air.
"Blue," to the contrary, is
reminiscent of an underwater lack of air; the symbolism of this
picture's texture and
color contributes to the mirage of reincarnation.
By Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb New York 2003, Text Copyright: Yustas
Kotz-Gottlieb ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED Send private comments to author Gtt...@aol.com
The Art of Paul Jaisini by Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb
http://jaisini.artbabyart.net/