Thursday, August 23, 2007
"SOCIAL EROTICISM"
is the title of an article in NY Arts Magazine by Lisa Paul Streitfeld. The article discusses the painting by the same title of Anton S. Kadinsky.
A bold exposition of this ideal of erotically charged self-containment is in Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky’s monumental painting Social Eroticism. The painting was begun in Crimea in 1989 at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was finished at the turn of the millennium and premiered at "Icons of the 21st Century," a show I curated at the Lab Gallery in the Roger Smith Hotel in January 2006. The emergence of this painting was a result of the tireless efforts of Zorianna L. Altomaro, who began representing Ukrainian art at a time that her country had broken free from a long history of oppression. Her gallery is called Zorya, which means star in Ukrainian. Need we look further for a sign pointing to the return of the Goddess?
Rising with its nationality like a phoenix out of the ashes, Social Eroticism positions Kandinsky at the center of a new galaxy. Here we have a visual manifesto of a movement. At once mystical and erotically charged, the painting proclaims a union between religion and sex that is as old as recorded history and as new as–well, contemporary art. He pays homage to postmodernism by utilizing the style of fellow Ukrainian Kasimir Malevich to transform Soviet instruments of power into symbols of fertility; missiles floating above the outstretched hand of the woman represent sperm aimed at the Sputnik egg above the male. Suprematist lines integrate this contemporary Adam and Eve into the downward pointing triangle of the Luria Kabbalah, representing the fallen feminine. Now we witness a revisionist myth of the Garden of Eden where man and woman have followed their instruments into a descent into
matter. ...
Social Eroticism is not only a passport but a guarantee that we will get the bi-millennial recurrence of the hieros gamos myth right this time around. How else are we to realize the ideals of equality and freedom proclaimed by the Age of Aquarius?
Somehow I have a hard time believing that this "equality and freedom" is going to bring anything good for those who equate freedom with the freedom to do what is right. The combination of religion and sex in the Roman Catholic Church is a prime example of this so-called freedom run amok. If we buy this new feminine "religion", the next innovation in liturgy is going to be the Hieros Gamos. No thanks, I'll pass.
