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ARCADIA curated by Barbie Chatsworth

Released online 1 December 2020

Arcadia One.

Arcadia, what’s that? It’s a region of Greece, part of the administrative region of the Peloponnese. An attractive area, pastoral and mountainous. Arcadia is historically secluded and known (whether rightly or not) as having being peopled by simple herdsmen leading unsophisticated, happy lives. In the 20th century, economic woes led many an Arcadian to emigrate, plenty of them to the mythic dream that America held. It’s that historical isolation which lends body to something of Arcadia’s mythic character as an idyllic paradise. Wikipedia, over there in California, will tell you too as much. As a mythic idyll, a paradise, Arcadia can’t be compared to a utopia. It’s not a constructed place of the future, but a place One, a first place, a first place prior to what? A first place prior to the depredations, the corruptions, but at least the discontents, of civilization. A most fitting idea for Greece, known as the cradle of European civilization. In this sense whilst Arcadia may be part of an administrative region of Greece, Arcadia is the opposite of that, a region prior to administration. The myth of Arcadia is a myth of a place which is contented, since it is not civilized, and lends itself to another myth, that if only we could undo what is troubling of civilization, we might find some contentedness. Civilization, with all the sordid compromises and the problems of how people get on in an organised way, might somehow be corrected, if only we might return anew something of the One of the original scene. Perhaps the most famous painting of Arcadia is Nicolas Poussin’s Et in Arcadia ego (I too in Arcadia), held in the Louvre, although Chatsworth House has an earlier version of the scene by Poussin. These paintings show a tomb in idyllic Arcadia, stumbled upon by some of Arcadia’s peasant folk. There too, can be found death, the titular ego, and these paintings are known as memento mori, marks of death. It might be said of the idea of nature, that it is real insofar as there is always a return there to the same, a natural consistency, not moved here and there as of the deeds of civilized men. But even there, in that ideal of a natural place, there is the depredation of death. Indeed the idea of a natural consistency is of a real which always leads to death. The place of Arcadia in is quite rich, and being peopled by gods for whom death was not so inevitable, is not necessarily so natural. Arcadia is named for the hunter . Arcas had been born of , a god of great horror, since there was no limit for him, with , a in the retinue of (a daughter of Zeus, and goddess of hunting). Zeus had disguised himself as Artemis in order to rape Callisto, with Arcas resulting from this deed. Zeus’ sister and wife became jealous of Callisto, and transformed her into a bear, and fearing what Hera would do to his son Arcas, Zeus placed him in remote Arcadia. Arcas, unhappy with his father, and at a feast of his maternal grandfather king Lycaon placed himself on a burning altar to be sacrificed, and calling on his father to make him whole again if he is such a great god. Zeus indeed made his son whole, but in anger at Lycaon, he was transformed into a lycanthrope, a , with Arcas as the new king of Arcadia. Arcas one day saw a bear who, being a hunter, he wishes to kill, and so he cast an arrow her way. The bear, being Arcas’ mother Callisto, had seen her son and moved joyfully towards him to reunite their family. Zeus, seeing this scene, caught Arcas’ arrow, mid-flight, and seeing the horror of their disunity made Arcas too into a bear and placed them both into the stars as the and . This business enraged Hera who took out her fury in arranging that they should never dip below the horizon to receive water. Arcas’ bones were buried in Arcadia, and who knows if it might perhaps be his tomb depicted by Poussin. Arcadia was also the principal seat of the worship of the minor god , who was born and lived in Arcadia. Pan is said to have given Artemis her hunting dogs, the same Artemis whose apparition Zeus had taken to father her half brother Arcas. Pan was a god of the wild, of shepherds and flocks, of mountains, fields, groves and woods, and of fertility, and springtime. Pan is associated with phallic display. A creature of wit and mischief. Part man part goat, Pan was known for his musical pipe made from the hollow reeds which remained of the lovely wood- nymph Syrinx, her sister having transformed her thus that she may escape Pan’s interest. The subject of Pan was taken up by Plutarch who claimed Pan to be the only god who died. This theme being taken up by Christian scholars who took advantage of the pun of the pan of pandemic, or pantheism, meaning all (perhaps Pan’s place as a god of theatrical criticism has a relation to this pan-pun in association with pantomime). That Pan is dead was taken to indicate that all the old gods died, and the death of the old gods was associated by some with the birth of Christ, and a new civilization. In fact the pan, all, of pandemonium is not etymologically related to the god Pan, however the word panic is, such was the effect of pan’s noisy, uncivilised mischief. In the modern myth that if only we were to lift the sexual repressions which civilisation has placed upon us, such as to allow us to live alongside one another, we would be closer to an idyllic state, better off, happier - to the extent that we are not living in a world of great repression any more, we can see perhaps the folly of this proposition, panic being closer to the result. And so you may see that Arcadia was not at all so calm and placid, nature among the gods was marked by brutal flux, of horror, of distress, not of a natural balance towards death, but of the horror of life without limit. The Arcadia of Greek myth is a far cry from its romantic revival since the Renaissance from which Poussin drew. In fact there was no idyllic place One, there is no point of origin, and so the ideal of a return lacks the dignity to which it aspires. What is lost was never there. And so we find ourselves here, on-line, among this art put together in a show relating to Arcadia. We might here consider an old idea of art as sublimation - we replace what was unspeakable in life with what can be revered as a work of art, we raise what must be covered over with the dignity of what shows that unspeakable by hiding it. Indeed we can see the whole panoply of the Greek myth surrounding Arcadia as a way to cover and at the same time raise the horror which civilization was created to treat, to a new dignity. Indeed if there is a horror there, in the place of the origin, is it not more likely the horror that there is only a void there in the place of an origin, the myth as such is a device which covers by giving a being to what did not exist, which lends it a being in myth. Perhaps we see this aspect of art still sometimes, and perhaps you may find it among the work which Barbie Chatsworth has selected for this show, a selection by which Barbie perhaps veils a certain barbarism, whilst displaying it quite beautifully by means of that veil. But if there was never a moment One, a good foundation, a foundation of a good, or of long lost goods, there may be bits and pieces, one by one, collage, bricolage, by which art may at times find dignity, anew each time. There is a point or register in which this patch of colour, scrap of material, mark, isn’t reducible to an equivalence with comparable others. A given artwork isn’t entirely reduced to a type of art. If there is meaning, perhaps there are scraps which escape it, and perhaps something singular which is not reducible to a value which is determined relative to the rest. There might be odd aspects which being useless in relation to value, are amenable to find their own singular use, an obscure use One, aside from the value inscribed vis-à-vis the Other. A use One with whom there is no moment One, and not entirely reducible to a good, imagined as a value One. In this sense, and not aside from the lived world, from which it draws, we can find something in these bits and pieces, these scraps, from which the art happens, something of the offer which Arcadia makes, and which Arcadia cannot offer.

Alasdair Duncan 2020

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