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$8 N o 9 Enrique Martínez Celaya Robert Brady works+ Mary Rakow Richard Berger CONVERSATIONS Erik d’Azevedo The Veil Reprint from works + conversations, No. 9, October 2004 including the following articles: “From the Editor” and “Self and Beyond Self,” Richard Whittaker; “Looking for a Context for Martínez Celaya’s Work,” Mary Rakow “UNBROKEN POETRY (HERMAN MELVILLE)” 1999 OIL, TAR, AND FABRIC ON LINEN 96” X 96” FROM THE EDITOR claim be made that there is a difference between the The title of the painting on the cover The Veil authentic and the inauthentic. We are placed in the suggests a possible theme for issue #9. Exile was realm of being, which is where the work of Martínez considered because both Enrique Martínez Celaya Celaya is located. This is not the being of Aristotle, of and Erik d’Azevedo have experienced cultural eternal substance, but the realm of man’s being, the dislocation. But “exile” and “the veil” both imply ontological space of experience. separation; one of loss, home left behind, the other of If contemporary relativism is, as Martínez Celaya something covered over. Both provide points of puts it in Guide, “a drain through which all of the departure for many levels of consideration. possibilities of art eventually will vanish” - then what Martínez Celaya, born in Cuba, emigrated to Spain, could the antidote be? As I understand Martínez then to Puerto Rico and then to the United States. Celaya, it will not lie in religious dogma, metaphysics, In his own words, “Whether I’m in the United States science or pseudo-science. What is left? or in a Spanish country, I’m always two people, one The perennial questions have been with us for happy to be there and one who’s a foreigner.” thousands of years and there is a wisdom tradition d’Azevedo, as a child, was taken to live in Liberia. which speaks to these questions. It tells us that the Although his family returned to the United States, ontological realm of individual life is something like an the experience, he says, “changed [me] irreversibly unexplored forest, one that cannot be explored by from that point on... I’ve felt ever since then that I proxy. Each of us in this forest is something of an exile. never quite fit into American culture.” Yet there are myths, fairy tales and the teachings of the These facts serve as a starting point for reflections great religious traditions which shed some light in this about the condition of dislocation, separation and darkness. And what about art? Didn’t it once aspire to estrangement. The heading “Self & Beyond Self” which find its way to the edge of clearings in this realm? I’ve used for the Martínez Celaya interview suggests In our issue, we have two additional articles on another way to frame these themes. From this point of Martínez Celaya and his work. Mary Rakow’s meditation view, the work of Martínez Celaya is rooted in the is a revelation about the level which writing on art can perennial question implicit in the Socratic call to know reach. As Patrice Wagner told me, “I gave Enrique his one’s self. This is a knowledge that opens upon unimagined first one-man exhibit,” and she has contributed a little depths and bears relationship to the great religious recollection of her own. traditions. Our estrangement from this knowledge goes Richard Berger’s meditation, “To All Artists Known beyond the specifics of cultural dislocation. Who am I? and Unknown,” can be seen as an example of the veil Each of us is grounded in mystery. of how little we know of each other; of lives lived in As Martínez Celaya writes in Guide, a book-length isolation. Sometimes that veil is pulled back a little to self-interview, “I have continued considering the ideas profound effect. My own account of meeting artist of Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Wittgen- Prentiss Cole is a happier story, of a veil passed stein.” Martínez Celaya’s reading in Western philosophy through, that of my own automatic reactions. Kathleen is considerable, and helps provide some context for his Cramer’s “Gold Diggers of 2004” is what? Well, it’s statement in Guide, that most current art is about finding gold. Where to find it? Deep. Or maybe disappointing because its aims are too shallow and too sometimes it’s hidden in plain view. Anyway, while the self-conscious. “How,” Martínez Celaya asks, “can I digging is going on, Cramer reminds us that it’s find a way of living... where freedom and duty are not important to remember to have a good lunch. contradictions.” The problem is not one that science The three portfolios speak for themselves. The night can solve for us. If it could, perhaps the artist would photography of Walter Kennedy and the photogravures have continued his career in quantum electronics. of Unai San Martin are both powerfully evocative of the What can ground an ethics today? Not particle poetic face of the world always so much in eclipse physics. What can guide my own ethical choices? For beneath our day-to-day concerns. The birds and angels Martínez Celaya, art is an exploration which is never of Robert Brady give a small peek into the work of this far from such basic questions. major Bay Area artist whose extensive body of work is The veil is what stands between the false and the often described as opening upon the archetypal. And, of true, what deflects our attention, and if we can no course, we have the next episode in Rue Harrison’s longer use capital letters for our terms, at least let the adventures of Indigo Animal. Welcome to issue #9 - RW It was four or five years ago when I first heard of the wants both. “To make an artwork requires measurable artist Enrique Martínez Celaya, John Evans, poet-book things like discipline, ideas and some skill but also dealer [Diesel Books], mentioned him as someone I requires other things that come from the inside as well would find worth looking up. He’d moved to Los as from mid-air,” he says. Angeles, John told me. Over two years were to pass Most of us would claim to find things out for before we met. I had learned that Martínez Celaya was ourselves. It is not enough to be the recipient of the teaching at Pomona College and, one afternoon, visiting opinions and claims of others, especially in relation to my mother in Claremont, I thought I’d try to catch him on one’s own life, but how many follow that principle? campus. It happened he was in class and, by the time I’d Required is personal verification. As Martínez Celaya located the building and room, his class was just ending; puts it in Guide, “Biographical facts are neither a the timing was perfect. guarantee nor a requirement for authenticity... It turned out, to my surprise, that Martínez Celaya Whatever I have to offer can’t be recollected in the word, was familiar with works + conversations. We talked for ‘Cuban’ or even ‘Hispanic’ or even ‘Westerner’.” he perhaps thirty minutes. Remembered most clearly was adds further, “to find oneself in a collective set of traits his quiet directness and a quality of dignity and depth. I’d is a delusion.” Moreover, “some things are not signs to yet to see his work and knew little about him otherwise. be decoded by a specific culture. Take the heart- We agreed our conversation should continue. wrenching image of a mother with a dead child in a Not long after I returned to the Bay Area, I received Kollwitz drawing. This suffering will always be true. If two books in the mail, an impressive hardback in art is centered in these types of fundamental German and English published by the Contemporary experiences, then it will always have meaning. If it is Museum in Honolulu, Enrique Martínez Celaya 1992 about fashion or culture, then it’s unlikely that it will to 2000, and a small paperback entitled Guide, the survive... But basic human emotions and desires, and artist’s fictitious account of a drive up the coast to things like trees, animals, landscapes, the sun, the Santa Cruz with a trusted friend, a framework in which moon, and so on, will still matter and will still define Martínez Celaya articulates his thinking and the human experience.” questions which form the background of his work. Carl Jung writes that we are, each of us, embedded This little book made a singular impression on me. in nature. The statement seems self-evident, but to what I couldn’t remember encountering anything else extent is it possible to feel this truth today? The meat I written on art which spoke so directly to my own eat has lost its connection with actual animals, for experience and interests. I could hardly contain my instance. And what is someone plugged into an I-Pod excitement and emailed my enthusiastic response. The embedded in? Baudrillard describes us as being so conversation which had begun, continued. disconnected as to be in orbit, embedded in dreams, Martínez Celaya’s credentials are unusual. On the fantasies, spectacles. As Heidegger says, being is always very brink of taking his doctorate in quantum falling away from us. electronics at the University of California at Berkeley, An investigation into this hidden realm is an essential he switched directions and turned toward a career as possibility of artmaking. It is one way of thinking about an artist.

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