TOM
HIBBARD Reviews
Apollo: A Ballet By Igor
Stravinsky by Geoffrey Gatza
(BlazeVOX [Books], Kenmore, N.Y., 20140
GEOFFREY GATZA’S APOLLO:
NIETZSCHE, ROSE SELAVY AND THE FORGOTTEN
UMBRELLAS OF ELMWOOD AVENUE
“…this [artwork]
itself is our catastrophe…it says that
the catastrophe…has already occurred because the very idea of the catastrophe is impossible.”
-Jean Baudrillard
Did
the universe begin as a mistake, a crime?
As some horrendous mishap?
According to Christian mythology, in its beginning, Creation was a smooth-running
paradisical garden inhabited by only a solitary couple, Adam and Eve, along
with all the natural creatures and God.
God told Adam and Eve they could do anything (eat anything) in paradise, except they could not eat the fruit
of two trees at its center—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the
tree of life—perhaps more potent or toxic fruits whose taste would catastrophically
cause them to become self-aware and dissatisfied. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, Adam
and Eve listened to the snake, “the serpent” and ate the fruit of those trees. God cast them out of “paradise”—and thus
began the bumpy history of civilization.
In the same way, at an unsuspecting lulling blissful moment in oblivion of
spring 2011 (“April is the cruelest month”), poet and publisher Geoffrey Gatza
decided to visit an exhibit at the local art gallery, the Albright-Knox art
gallery on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, New York.
The day was rainy, and Gatza took with him an umbrella. Art galleries are similar to paradise. The walls and floors are spotless; the
lighting is precisely beneficially measured; the abundant spacing of the artworks is idyllic. As Gatza absorbed and enjoyed discussing one
of the works at the Albright-Knox gallery with friends (noting that white is an
“ambiguous” color), he was asked to leave by a security guard because he was
carrying an umbrella.
In this way, Gatza was also cast out of paradise. In my opinion, both the fates of Adam and Eve
and Gatza are similarly somewhat arbitrary and predictable. Though God expressly gave them this one restriction,
as God of all Creation, he must have known that Adam and Eve would succumb to doing
what they were told not to do. The mysterious prohibition itself tasted of forbidden
fruit. This Adam-and-Eve tale could only
be some sort of preface to the unfolding of human development, with the so-called
“Fall” in the Garden as the revelatory opening of the discourse of humanity becoming
responsible for its actions. Had everything
gone as outlined and continued in endless bliss, many essential events
and ideas that in Christianity’s own doctrine lay ahead could not have taken
place, including the giving of the Law, the ideas of grace and ascension, the
Apocalypse, the appearance of Elija and of God’s son—Jesus, who, in his lifetime, compared himself to that self-same
serpent in the wilderness being “lifted up,” that is, articulated and embraced
for what it really meant and was (is).
(Ferlinghetti once said about Kerouac that he liked his writing once he
understood what Kerouac was doing.)
Especially considering it occurred in an environment of artists,
artworks and art curators, Gatza’s being asked to leave the gallery is a
serious matter. As presented, this
shocking incident has many implications that concern art, literature and humanity. Because of its apparent capriciousness and callousness,
it constitues something similar to an atrocity—a subject very relevant to 20th
and 21st century Art (and religion).
As Gatza says, he attended the art gallery “all my life”; as he
purchased his ticket no one mentioned the umbrella; no signs were posted about
umbrellas, and the gallery could have simply taken the umbrella to a place
where Gatza could have picked it up as he exited. As with the cautionary tale of Adam-and-Eve,
the “crime” of Gatza, the crime against Gatza reflects on humanity as a
whole. In both the instance of Gatza and
Adam and Eve, peaceful assurance turns into alienation. Paradise turns into hell.
With “hurt feelings” and “wounded,”
Gatza is forced into unexplored darkness.
He is required to explain and articulate on his own the significance of
what has taken place. As Sartrean
“humanism” rises beyond the limits of what is forbidden, placing “the writer” at
a level equal with the creator, Gatza must “invent himself” from accursedness
and negation. As a literary or artistic
movement is christened in its very condemnation, as speech is the unaccountable
child of silence, Gatza must recover “totality of being” with his own myth of identity
and homeland, his own dialetical badge of history and historicity. He must populate it with real people and a
new style of perception.
* *
Now I am ready to tell you of the birth of
Apollo
How he fell in love with the charming
dryad,
Caissa and how the game of chess was
invented for her.
In dying to the art of the Albright-Knox gallery, Gatza lives to the art
of a new world. Jacques Derrida
describes the encounter with “differance”
as an “adventure.” “Tout dans le trace de la differance est strategique et adventureux.” (“Everything about the trace of differance is tactical and
adventurous.”) From the cavernous,
generous vantage of possibility issues
the discovery of nothingness. For Gatza,
the Albright-Knox gallery, a life-long fixture, has become a thorn-filled emptiness
and desert that he must now contemplate in a quantum, a pluralistic manner. On a new stage and with a new cast of
characters, Gatza must transform his world into a new pattern, a new
arrangement of meanings. He must be
prepared (in venturing forth) to say as Marcel Duchamp said to Brancusi at a
Paris air show in 1912, “It is all over for painting. What could be better than that
propeller? Tell me, can you do that?”
From the fragments of his shattered world, from the simulacra of
fragmentation, Gatza must alter his vision, must escape the art gallery of his lifetime. Rather than a question of defending himself
or “righting the ship,” it is a question of opening up “a space of alternate
theoretical possibilities” unrelated to but prompted by what has gone before,
of chance, of improbability, exploration, free-association. As his main focal point, Gatza lights on a
lesser-known ballet by Igor Stravinsky titled Apollo, intertwined with purported complexity and luster associated
with the game of chess. Calling his
multi-media book or collection—which includes many photographs—a “one-night only” production, Gatza speedily brings
together a global tornadic storm of Greek gods, dryads, “jealous Hera,” the
sun-god Apollo and his sister Artemis, the seer/wise man Tiresias (whose habit
of being in the wrong place at the wrong
time causes him not only to become blind but also changed into a woman) together
with a cast of unlikely artistic luminaries—Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Dizzy
Gillespie, Gertrude Abercrombie, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Donna di
Scalotta and Duchamp’s famous “female alter-ego” Rrose Selavy. The invention of the game of chess by Euphron
the god of sport (in fact chess was invented in India) in order to seduce the
nymph Caissa is introduced as an enticing symbol of multiplicity and discovery. This rousing creative super-nova of
space-time is enhanced by an array of formal devices—tableaux, variations, pas-de-deux, pas d’action, codas, endgames, recipes, poems, dramatizations,
letters-to-the-editor, collages, artworks, pantheons, diagrams of famous chess
games, photos, bio blurbs. In this wildly
fantastical literary dance of the extremes of emotion and benignity, mortals interact
with gods and many new things are born into existence.
Despite its reference to the term “post-avant” (after-before), Gatza’s Apollo is a return to the avant-garde. This is underscored in the appearance of Duchamp
and Stravinsky and “the Duchamp heritage” as a main source of imagery. Duchamp, famous for his ground-breaking
abstract Armory painting Nude Descending
A Staircase and his “readymades” (found art objects) is one of the most
respected and idiosyncratic, innovative artists of the 20th
Century. Rather than confirming a
pragmatic unchanging metaphysics, Gatza’s Apollo
is a work intended in Derrida’s words “to transform concepts, to displace them
to turn them against their presuppositions…and to thereby produce new
configurations.” Yet this is obviously
more than wantonness and destruction.
“Artists like Rainer, Reich, Gaburo, Chopin and Ashley command
considerable respect,” writes Nicholas Zurbrugg in his book on Postmodernism,
“for continuing the positive avant-garde tradition of working outside and
against the financial barrier, the aesthetic barrier, and the barrier of the
imagination that condition prevailing cultural and critical expectations.” In calling literature “an exigence and a
gift,” Sartre himself concedes that
Whether he wants to or not, and even if he has his eye on eternal
laurels, the writer is speaking to his contemporaries and brothers of his class
and race.
The avant-garde is an attempt to perform the same function vis-à-vis
“change” and social transformation as a cataclysm or tragedy but without the
cost in human life or widespread destruction.
All of this supports the criticism that non-objective artworks that are
too refined and formulated are in danger of abetting the very problem they intend to solve—namely the
removal of the meaningless iconic arbitrary absolute. The color white may be “ambiguous,” just as a
law may be a good law, but, without a greater substantiveness infused into the
universe surrounding these artworks and laws, there is an ominousness and
menace that emanates from their justification and ideology. An artwork such as Gatza’s Apollo (which, though concurrent with
it, should not be confused with Stravinsky’s actual ballet Apollo) must take place entirely in fragments and “posthumously” in
the space between other artworks. The
end result should contain none of the volatility of the notions of inclusion
and exclusion, of “elsewhere” or “outside.”
Perhaps it should even supply a measure of what Derrida describes as
“pedagogic ballast” providing inertness and stability.
* *
The voluminous poetry in Gatza’s Apollo
reinforces the Dadaistic enhancement of disintegration and reconfiguration. Every line seeks to burst into undiscovered regions
of compassion, more basic and interesting particles of Being.
In Scalotta’s silvery mirror
Striving upwards, climbing
To meet the lordly gray sky,
The ivory towers reflect life;
In reverse she sees Camelot
The castle projected in silver.
Up the road and down the river she watched;
Weaving her songs into blossoms and roses.
To her all things are possible, for
everything is impossible.
She is free to be playful in her
paradoxical island of Shallot
The curse has come
Cried Donna di Scalotta
RE: Why didn’t I say, why didn’t I say, no,
no, no
Part two – oh god, I could do better than that
She forgoes literature discovering other
forms of writing, law, philosophy, physics and so on. Finding no solace, she transforms further
into logical statements and equations.
These expressions divide their forms, converting into sets that can be
in the universe and sets that do not need a universe to formulate their
function.
Dark rills begin, the words of every
generation of humankind appear,
Pour forth from her eyes and nose in
analogous driblets of India ink.
Her dark hair is a tangled thicket of
possibility.
A madwoman of the woods, a queen of trees,
A murmuration of starlings lost to the
exaltation
of the moment.
Yesterday
To exist is the
continuing act of becoming. In the cold
winds, recollect; you will never be yourself.
A full being, never. Death brings
finality and vultures, a virtue portrait that looks backwards in regret at the sparrows that could have been saved
from afternoon rooks. Paint dries ever
so slowly.
51 Years Ago
It was by accident
that he was driven from home.
A soldier and a
boy, cold and shivering, he survived.
He would lock
himself in the bathroom.
On the jealous
toilet he read comic books.
Yellow flowers
erode, orange shells explode.
SELAVY
White Knight
to d4
In festive rituals
and Carnivalesque reversals, servants would dress up as their masters, men
would go out in drag, dogs would dress as cats, and mice would dress as
cheese. The leader of these events was
entitled the Lord of Misrule. He was an
officer appointed by lot at Christmas to preside over the Feast of Fools and
other revelries for the ritual of Saturnalia.
DUCHAMP
Black Knight to e8
I didn’t know, I
would have worn a fancy dress. Who shall
I be, if you are the Lord of Misrule?
SELAVY
White Pawn
to f4
You shall be the
salt seller. As the spoonerism of your
name, Marcel Duchamp, le marchand du sel, a merchant of salt. Ha!
Done! With a wave of her arm. You
are thus reborn!
* *
Do we need to consider the possibility that there might be some justification
in the action of the security guard at the Albright-Knox art gallery? In his response, which could and should be
considered a self-examination and healing apologia,
Gatza seems to feel that in some way he is responsible for what took place. At any rate, he feels a responsibility for
explaining it and dispersing the pain of it.
I remember my dad, a lawyer, once telling me that in a car accident
there is never one-hundred-percent liability on one side or the other. If artworks are “over our heads,” in the
sense that cold rainy days bring regeneration and bright blossoming, it is also
true that umbrellas are over our heads and may be an unwelcomed defense
mechanism in art galleries. Perhaps
Gatza’s umbrella was perceived as a threat to Art. In his study of Nietzsche, Spurs, Derrida ends by discussing a
separate fragment found among Nietzsche’s papers with the words “I have
forgotten my umbrella.” Derrida discusses
this fragment at some length and concludes that “[Forgetting] belongs to the
nature of Being and reigns as the Destiny of its essence.”
Thus, in a thousand ways, has the
“forgetting of Being” been represented as if Being (figuratively speaking) were
the umbrella that some philosophy professor, in his distraction, left
somewhere.
Would it then be culpable
or complicit for a “philosophy professor” to remember his umbrella? Could
Gatza’s umbrella have had some significance or volatility of which he was
unaware? Undoubtedly so, but, in my
opinion, by the same reasoning, the bizarre actions of the security guard could
never be and should never be construed as a form of virtue.
Nietzsche famously
discusses the sun-god Apollo in The Birth
of Tragedy as a symbol of negation, which he contrasts with the god of wine,
Dionysus, associated with impulsiveness and emotion. In Christianity, except for a new Testament
apostle, “Apollo” is treated as a dark figure, in Hebrew “Abaddon,” in Greek
Apollyon—“the destroyer”—due to his invulnerable preeminence. As a symbol of renewing complexity, of reconfiguration
and reconciliation, both the figure of Apollo and the game of chess seem to
have some inappropriateness. The game of chess, which has a military ancestry,
is really a symbol of limitation not of liberating multiplicity and possibility. The imaginativeness suggested by its decorative
and colorful pieces is a superficial
complexity, more an “impressive” technical difficulty than complexity. Despite the many photos Gatza supplies of
various views of chess boards and different arrangements of the pieces (in
panels grouped in varying sets of numbers), the “game of Kings” has a sense of emnity
and stagnancy. It is “tactical” yes, but
what are its tactics? Its aim is superficial
rather than liberating and profound. Apollo
and chess could be seen as being in the camp of the Albright-Knox security department,
with its tyranical authority.
As images of
discovery and diversity, the sun-god Apollo and the game of chess might not reflect
the dark rejection that invariably occurs
in the struggle of life. However it
would be unfair to say that the formal carnival variety of Gatza’s work doesn’t
distance itself from the repression and despotism of artistic or any other sort
of effeteness. Happily and admirably,
Gatza’s work has overcome the characteristic human fear of Creation
itself. It is an “invitation au voyage,” with its content flowing from hurt and honest
inquiry, the lengthy straightforward substantiveness contained in line after
line, strophe upon strophe of Gatza’s beautiful poetry and writing, searching
for the multiple and the non-manipulative.
In the end it sheds a true light on what took place in Albright-Knox
gallery and the problems that are posed by these sorts of occurrences. It is the Being that humbly rises above
negation—even from the gods—that remains heroic. There is no intent to deny laws, the Law or
lawfulness in the archetypal artistic response, in the scientific, reasoned,
philosophical striving for imaginativeness and reconciliation. There is only the wish to place authority
with humanity, with contemplation and suffering, with intent, with parody, with
the empirical fullness of competent knowledge—the law tempered in mercy,
justice, the experience of life. What
does artificiality (artifice) and loneliness have to say? This is the paradise at the end of the journey whose peace resides in
the forbidden fruit of self-awareness and understanding—the ability to perceive
joy not in sameness but differance.
*****
Recently
Tom Hibbard has had several articles published on visual writing, one in Big Bridge, issue 17 and also in Galatea Resurrects, issue 19. Hibbard has also had an article on the work
of Belgian artist Luc Fierens in Word/
For Word, issue 22 and an article on Jack Kerouac’s poetry also in Big Bridge, issue 17. Several poems following Kerouac’s style and
visual writing were recently published in Cricket
Online Review. His book of poetry The Sacred River of Consciousness is
available online at Moon Willow Press and Amazon.com. And his book Place of Uncertainty is available online at Otoliths Storefront
from Lulu. Hibbard is working on a new
collection of poetry and further articles on visual writing.
