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1-1-1997 Matta: Surrealism and Beyond [Essay] Curtis Carter Marquette University, [email protected]

Published version. "Matta: Surrealism and Beyond [Essay]," in Matta: Surrealism and Beyond. Eds. Matta Echaurren and Roberto Sebastian. Milwaukee: Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, 1997: 11-17. Publisher Link. © 1997 Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University. Used with permission. Matta: Surrealism and Beyond Curtis L. Carter Matta stands at the crossroads of several recognized early on by his teachers and current interests in art of the modern era. later by members of the art world. His He has long been connected with early education was entrusted to the Surrealism, which continues to attract the Jesuits from whom he received a lifelong attention of artists practicing today and the quest for knowledge and a deep concern art public. Recently, the importance of for the welfare of mankind. Matta studied Matta's role in the movement has received architecture at Santiago's Universidad heightened attention. Similarly his influence Cat61ica and drawing at the Academia de on Latin American art is of increasing inter­ Bellas Artes with artist Hernan Gazmuri. est in the context of multicultural con­ These studies helped prepare him for his cerns of the past decade. Most recently eventual connections to the European art Matta comes to attention with respect to world. Little is known of his early works, critical examination of emigre artists and but apparently some were saved by family their influence on American art of the for­ members and friends. Lillian Lorca de ties. All of these developments point to Tangle, a fellow art student, recalls that Matta's unique role in twentieth-century Matta received an award for a still life art and attest to his status as a figure of exhibited at the Museo Nacional de Bellas major importance. Artes.2 Having left Chile in the 1930s for The art of Matta, produced during a career Paris, Matta served for a time in the archi­ that spans over sixty years, represents a tectural office of Le Corbusier before significant life achievement. Matta's life and deciding to become a painter and estab­ work exemplify the internationalization of lishing his place in the art world. art brought on by changing world condi­ In part because of his geographic migra­ tions and the convergence of American and tions and also because of his independent European cultures. They represent a pas­ beliefs about art, Matta remains an out­ tiche of latent issues that have recently sider. He holds a similar status with respect surfaced with reference to art and cultural to his place in art history, where he has yet identity in the discourse over multicultur­ to be acknowledged for the full range of alism. A brief overview of his connections his accomplishments. Matta characterizes to the Surrealists, the Abstract himself in this respect: "I am an outsider Expressionists, and, to a lesser extent, identified with outsiders, all my life has younger Latin American artists, provides a been spent farawaying and unfarawaying . ... context for viewing the developments in [S]o that being an outsider is another his art from the late thirties to the present. mode of being .. . . I don't know if I am These connections also provide a frame­ Chilean, I don't know how to be Chilean, but work for the evolution of his aesthetic to be it one does not have to be there .... In which embraces Surrealist techniques, this case to be away ... is more productive Freudian psychology, modern science, and than to be there.'" Being an outsider a humanistic approach to the role of art in means being free to select elements of society. Matta's art also invites exploration one's surroundings from a broad spectrum of its relations to literature and dance of of cultures. From his Latin origins, Matta the twentieth century. drew inspiration from the Spanish poet Matta was born in 1912 in Santiago into a Federico Garda Lorca (who he met at his prominent Chilean family with strong aunt's home in Madrid), the Chilean poets European ties.' His artistic gifts were Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, and

II other literary figures of ·the mid-thirties Andre Breton, and his acceptance by the and early forties. 4 He credits the works of young Abstract Expressionists in New these literary artists as influences on his York, it would appear that he was a virtual political views concerning injustice, and on artistic and a social magnet. His earlier the imagery of his paintings. His occasional experiences in Europe, which brought him visits to Chile and other parts of Latin into contact with important poets, artists, American after 1950 helped to keep him in and other creative individuals, confirm a touch with the political struggles and the widespread interest in his art among a artistic developments there. His visits to wide range of conceptually and artistically Mexico provided contact with pre­ gifted persons. Breton credited Matta with Columbian imagery which was subse­ revolutionizing pictorial space and the use quently reflected in his paintings. of color in painting, resulting in new ways of seeing the world compatible to the lat­ Through his association with the Spanish est discoveries in science. He praised poet Lorca, Matta was introduced to Matta's innovative uses of color for sym­ Salvador Dalf. Dalf's philosophy of painting bolic purposes and his bold experiments was instrumental in attracting Matta to with a wide range of unusual shades of Surrealism. Dalf expressed succinctly the color. William Rubin cites the influence of essence of his Surrealism in these words: the mystic Eliphas Levi on Matta's use of "My whole ambition in the pictorial domain light. Levi wrote in his History of Magic the is to materialize the images of concrete following: "There exists a mixed agent, nat­ irrationality . .. in order that the world of ural and divine, corporeal and spiritual, a the imagination and of concrete irrational­ universal plastic mediator, a common ity may be as objectively evident . .. as that receptacle of the vibrations of movements of the exterior world of phenomenal real­ and the images of form .... This universal ity."s Dalf subsequently presented Matta to agent of the works of nature is "astral Andre Breton, the axial figure of light.'" Surrealism, and Matta joined the Surrealists in 1937. Along with many other artists working in Europe during Hitler's reign, Matta was in Matta's connections to the artists of his exile in New York from 1939 to 1948. His time are of particular importance for an early paintings were introduced to New understanding of his role in twentieth-cen­ York artists in a one-person exhibition at tury art. Like the other Surrealists, he did the Julien Levy Gallery in 1940, and he later not draw upon a vast knowledge of art his­ exhibited at Pierre Matisse Gallery. tory.The earlier rejection of past traditions Lectures on Matta given by fellow in art initiated by the Dadaists and Surrealist Gordon Onslow-Ford in 1941 at Surrealists created a barrier to the art of the New School for Social Research also the past that Matta did not choose to provided access to his works for New Yo rk reexamine. Matta himself noted that the artists.7 Matta was welcomed in New York young Americans with whom he came into by younger artists such as Robert contact in New York were better informed Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Arshile and more concerned about art history Gorky, and William Baziotes, with whom he than were he and his Surrealist associates. shared his Surrealist ideas on painting and Among his fellow artists in Europe, the drawing. He was for a time close to United States, and Latin America, Matta Motherwell, and also to Gorky." was for the most part greatly admired. Motherwell, one of the Abstract Judging from his acclaim among the Expressionists, once described Matta as Surrealists, as expressed in the writings of the most energetic, enthusiastic, poetic,

12 charming, and brilliant young artist that he relate these discoveries to the exterior had ever met! Younger artists in Latin world. America, some of whom encountered Like Cezanne, Matta understood that art Matta on his visits to Cuba, Chile, and expresses a theory of knowledge of what other Latin America countries, refer to can be known: and offers unique Matta as an important influence on their approaches to how it can be known's He work.'o While in New York, Matta also directed his art to finding alternatives to enjoyed the friendship of Marcel Duchamp the conventional ways of representing the whose paintings The Passage from The Virgin appearances of the familiar world. In keep­ to the Bride and The Large Glass: The Bride ing with his Surrealist orientation, Matta's Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915- approach to creating art focused initially 1923) were important references for the on the interior landscapes of the human development of Matta's art." He cites psyche. His curiosity about the inner life Passage for its attempt to address the rep­ was fueled by the influences of Freudian resentation of change, showing movement psychology and aided by his experiments from one state to another.'2 The Large Glass with the Surrealist techniques of automatic may have been instrumental in shaping writing and the principle of chance. Matta's ideas concerning space and move­ Perhaps he shared the anxiety of Freud and ment. During his time in New York, Matta others that the appearances of the exter­ was also in contact with Yves Tanguy, nal world are not trustworthy as a source whose ideas on the representation of of knowledge, and first turned inward in his "being-scapes," consisting of inner fears search for truth. He did not accept the and desires, interested him." constraints of rational, logical modes of Later on, Matta found himself at odds with thought, insisting rather, on the freedom to both the Surrealists, who distrusted his extend the range of experience to include growing interest in science and humanistic emotions and whatever other features concerns, and the Abstract Expressionists, might reside in the irrational unconscious. who rejected Surrealism in pursuit of the He claims to have invented his own visual problems of formalism in art. Matta language and techniques for making art. returned to Europe in 1948 to pursue his Although he might rival William Blake in own direction grounded in Surrealism, but visionary imagination, Wassily Kandinsky in receptive to incorporating broader human­ his use of abstract forms to depict the itarian and scientific interests. emotions, or J. M. W Turner in his render­ ings of atmospheric space, the lack of sig­ The cultural framework that shaped nificant precedents for Matta's works in Matta's work is thus essentially conceptual traditional art history lends support to his and ideological in character. Particular ide­ claim to have invented a unique visual lan­ ological reference points in Matta's con­ guage." In his approach to a language of ceptual framework derive from two art, Matta thus began with the intent of dominant intellectual constructs of the using the shapes and colors of paintings to twentieth century: Freudian theory of the map the interior realms of consciousness, unconscious, and the culture of modern in the manner of the Surrealists. science which C. P. Snow and others have identified.'· Freud serves as a means to Beginning in the late thirties, he applied his examine the inner life of the unconscious, visual language to the development of a while science provides experimental meth­ series of paintings called psychological ods'to explore the external world. Matta's morphologies." The result of these early task was to discover the hidden wisdom paintings was a series of explosive visual and creativity of the inner unconscious and metaphors that attracted widespread

13 attention in the art worlds of Europe and impact of technology on human existence. the Americas. Morphology, as the term is At this time, Matta introduced humanoid employed by Matta, refers to the visual figures into his art, perhaps inspired by his forms and structures he used to express exposure to the totemic images of the internal activities of the mind. An Northwest Coast Indians. The totemic example of these early paintings is influence can be seen in sculptures such as Psychological Morphology, 1938 (cat. no. I). It The Clan, 1959 (cat. no. 35), and in Je consists of an explosive pictorial space m'arche, 1949 (cat. no. 7), which includes a filled with brightly colored, soft-edged humanoid figure perhaps referring to the abstract forms which float loosely on the role of the warrior in modern society. In canvas. In this series, he eschews the realist the fifties, Matta continued his commen­ approach to art focused on representation taries on society, often using compressed of the external world. The paintings go spaces created with rectangles composed beyond figuration, in the direction of pure at right angles to the picture plane. The abstraction, but they are endowed with Unthinkable, 1957 (cat. no. 13) is a latent symbolism that invites the viewer's metaphor of creative thought seeking to imaginative responses. Matta used mor­ break out of an enclosed structure. The phology as a means of developing new subject of eros or sexuality is often a part images of human beings. As in the biologi­ of the iconography of these paintings as cal sciences, morphology in his paintings well as of Matta's drawings. Threshold of marks change and transformation in the Love, 1955 (cat. no. II) features an orgias­ evolution of things. His account of the tic scene of lovemaking with two development of his morphological paint­ humanoid characters. In contrast to this ings recalls Hegel's notion of the evolving erotic scene, Woman Looked At, 1949 (cat. stages of the pre-rational mind and the no. 8) portrays a Wessel mann-like female corresponding developments of form in nude depicting the horrific side of human art. In each case the evolution of forms is sexuality. The images in these paintings accompanied by dialectical activity consist­ offer a commentary on some of the major ing of a process of change and transforma­ issues of modern society: war, human free­ tion. dom, and sexual strife. Matta's paintings subsequently evolved In the course of developing these aspects through several stylistic phases, but with­ of his work, Matta essentially becomes a out ever leaving entirely their early philosophical humanist whose primary Surrealist foundations.After the psycholog­ desire as an artist is to use art to advance ical morphologies, he developed a more human understanding and to revolutionize abstract style with planar,geometric shapes society through the discovery of new con­ and swirling lines laid over the softer, bio­ cepts of human beings. His evolving morphic shapes of his earlier work. approach to art is practical and didactic, Children's Fear of Idols, 1943 (cat. no. 2) and referring back to Plato's idea of art as Inscape, 1943 (cat. no. 3) are representative techne, or art useful to satisfy some human of this stage. Matta's shift in 1944 from psy­ need. Perhaps Matta was influenced in this chological morphologies to social mor­ direction by his initiation into the arts phologies reflects his growing concern through architecture, which is an applied with the human condition in the external art form. In this respect he dissociates him­ world. These works were intended to self from the Kantian, romantic aesthetic of express social concerns that would chal­ art for art's sake. The point of making art, lenge people to become engaged in according to Matta, is to communicate a addressing issues such as injustice and the humanistic vision that gives sense to the

14 life in the external world which he shares The philosophical connections of science with others. Matta once remarked, "A pic­ to Matta's work are deeper than they ture is not a canvas on the wall, it is the might at first appear. Although he is not a impact that hits the bull's-eye of your scientist by training, and while his initial mind." And the artist is a public servant Surrealist interests might well be suspect in whose task is to wake up the masses of a community of scientists whose work is people who are in bondage to their sur­ guided by empirical observations vival without regard for the conditions. I. In processed according to rationalistic means, Matta's words, "What I want is an art that Matta nevertheless has a great deal in com­ has been invented by society and is at the mon with the interests of science. He disposal of everyone to be used, not an art embraces openness to truth and a com­ one goes to a museum to see, but an art mitment to open-ended inquiry and ques­ that helps you know yourself and grow. tioning that are inherent to scientific That's what art is for."I' The artist does not inquiry. Like the scientists who guide offer solutions to society's problems, explorations into outer space and the according to Matta, but helps to engage search for advances in medicine, he is com­ others by expressing his own ways of con­ mitted to the quest for ideas that will fronting societal problems. advance the conditions of human life. His An essential component of his shift of visual works show considerable awareness emphasis from the interior landscape to of scientists' concerns such as the explo­ the exterior world is Matta's concern with ration of time, space, and motion. science. He explored the connections Moreover, he greatly admires the work of between art and science in the mid-forties Albert Einstein, whose investigations led to concurrent with his· growing interest in the theory of relativity, even to the point of societal issues. Matta held the view that sci­ ranking Einstein as equal in importance to ence and art share a common goal of try­ Freud. ing to understand the functioning of reality: "... science is as poetical as poetry."20 Matta One important aspect of Matta's painting regards the artist's task with equal serious­ that has not been widely noted is its affin­ ness of purpose as that of the scientist. He ity with the other arts such as literature understands that there is no necessary and modern dance. Concerning literature, opposition between the methods of art he said, "What is called literature is the fan­ and science when both aim at the discov­ tasy of the mind, an extraordinary creation ery of new knowledge beneficial to human of the mind."21As was noted earlier, Matta life. Science expands the boundaries of art, drew inspiration from Lorca, Neruda, and and art is a catalyst to science encouraging Mistral. Lorca's rejection of formalism in favor the broadening of scientific inquiry to of emotive expression in his writings may unexplored areas of human experience. He have contributed to Matta's anti-formalist looks to science for new ways of imagining practices. Matta also credited Neruda's and inventing reality, which he then Residencia en 10 tierra (1932, 1935) and his attempts to visually represent in his paint­ Canto general de Chile (1943) with influence ings. The reality that he depicts is distinc­ on his paintings.22 Similarly, Matta drew tively different from that which is normally seen, both in its forms and its colors and in upon the poems of Mistral such as representations of space. Reality as por­ Desolacion (1922), and Tala (1938).23 In part trayed in Matta's paintings emerges from the literary influences concern narrative the imagination as stimulated by biology, content pertaining to the writers' subjects chemistry, or astrophysics, rather than of melancholy, chaos and desolation, politi­ from conventional observations or memo­ cal strife, human suffering, and death. In ries of actual past experiences. Matta's paintings these themes are trans-

15 formed into their corresponding visual from the point of view of the dancers. Just symbols. as Matta's experiments moved painting beyond its traditional compositional forms Although there are not such direct, or through the use of morphology, Graham's well-documented connections between explorations of the unconscious through Matta's visual compositions and concur­ dances based on ancient and contempo­ rent developments in modern dance, the rary myth and Cunningham's improvisa­ common element of importance of rhyth­ tional experiments with time and space mic motion and his concern with the visu­ forever opened new possibilities for cre­ alization of time, space, and motion invite a ative dance. comparison of his art and the dance of his time. Similarly his interest in fashioning Matta's life in art spans many of the major images to depict the psychological dimen­ cultural and artistic developments of the sions of the unconscious mind is shared by twentieth century. Through his work, he certain artists of the dance. The paintings has attempted to connect art to the cul­ Untitled, 1970 (cat. no. 24) and 115 sexplose ture of science. In doing so he has tran­ 1982 (cat. no. 32), a work commonly asso­ scended the irreconcilable gap that Tolstoy ciated with the outbreak of AIDS, offer an had seen earlier between traditional cul­ especially fine representation of Matta's ture and the new sciences. In a world use of rhythmic motion. In the latter, the struggling with so many kinds of disrup­ presence of a sombrero above a whirl of ture, Matta's efforts on behalf of reconcili­ energized lines suggests the representation ation are welcome. His commitment to of an actual dance, perhaps, in this instance, addressing major changes in the world a dance of death. helps to establish the social relevance of his work. His openness to art and artists in During the time when Matta was develop­ culturally diverse settings offers a model ing his art, dance in the United States was for exploring the differences that have undergoing major new developments as become so important in a multicultural choreographers and dancers participated approach to art. His vision of the social in the search for new understanding usefulness of art offers a potent antidote through movement. Martha Graham's phi­ for the view that art is peripheral to the losophy of dance was based on the idea life of society. For all of these reasons, his that "dance is a fundamental aesthetic vehi­ work warrants an important place in the cle for expressing personal and collective art history of the twentieth century. inner worlds."H Her dances were intended to give concrete form to the inner hidden forces of life which are located in the unconscious.2s The dances of Graham par­ allel Matta's probing of the unconscious in his art. On another level, Matta's experi­ ences with the development of pictorial forms correspond in interesting ways to the movement experiments of choreogra­ pher Merce Cunningham. Using the princi­ ple of chance, which was also used in Surrealism, Cunningham experimented with time and space in the creation of dances. He advanced the scope of modern dance by applying chance to common movements and gestures as experienced

16 Notes 19. Miller, "Interview with Matta," 16. 20. Miller, "Interview with Matta," 17. I. Matta prefer~ed the mythical I 1111 / 11 as his date of birth.There is some question as well about whether he was 21 . Miller, "Interview with Matta," 17. actually born in Santiago, or another site in Chile. 22. Eduardo Carrasco, Matta conversaciones (Santiago: 2. Valerie Fletcher, "Matta," in Cross roods of Modernism: Four Ediciones Chile y America, CESOC, 1987),75-77. Cited in Latin American Pioneers: Diego Rivera, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Fletcher, 237. Wifredo Lam, Matta (Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in association with Smithsonian 23 . Fletcher, 237. Institution Press, 1992), 251 , note 7. A selection of Matta's early works consisting of two watercolors and twenty 24. Alice Helpern, The Technique of Martha Graham (Dobbs drawings was exhibited at the Packerston Gallery in Ferry, N.Y. : Morgan & Morgan, 1994),4. Houston in 1991. 25. For information and photographs of Graham's dances 3. Matta in Cecilia Valdez Urrutia, "Roberto Matta: Premio see Barbara Morgan, Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in nacional de arte," EI Mercurio (Santiago), 2 September 1990. Photogrophs (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. : Morgan & Morgan, 1941, Cited in Fletcher, 23 I. 1980).

4. Fletcher, 235-37.

5. Salvador Dali , Conquest of the Irrational, 1935. Cited in Sidney Janis,Abstract and Surrea/istArt in Americo (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944),28.

6. Cited in William Rubin, Matta (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1957), 6.

7. Nancy Miller, Matta: The First Decade (Waltham, Mass.: Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 1982), 24.

8. Miller, 26.

9. Miller, 25.

10. Lowery S. Sims, "New York Dada and New World Surrealism," in The La!in American Spirit:Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-1970 (New York: The Bronx Museum of the Arts in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1988), 177.

I I. Romy Golan, "Matta, Duchamp et Ie mythe: Un nouveau paradigme pour la derniere phase du surrealisme," in Matta (PariS: Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee national d'art mod erne, 1985), 37-51.

12. Nancy Miller, "Interview with Matta," in Miller, II.

13 . Miller, "Interview with Matta," II .

14. Sir Charles Snow, Two Cultures and the Scienti(lc Revolution, Rede Lecture, 1959, Cambridge University. Snow offered a plea for intercommunication between exponents of scientific and humanistic disciplines. Ironically the discussion did not include the arts or the social sci­ ences. See Gerald Holton, ed., Science and Culture:A Study of Cohesive and Disjunctive Forces (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965) for an examination of this issue by various scholars.

15. William S. Williams, "Cezanne's Rapport," in Writers on Artists, ed. Daniel Halpern (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988), 196.

16. Wassily Kandinsky and Joseph Mallord William Turner have visual means in common with Matta, but there is no evidence that Matta drew upon the work of these artists.

17. For an analysis of Matta's morphologies see Alvaro Medina, "The Mobile Matter of Sebastian Matta," in Art Nexus, no. 17 (September 1995), 68-75.

18. Roberto Matta: Paintings and Drawings 1971-1979 (La Jolla, Calif.:Tasende Gallery, 1980), 10-12. 17