Analogy(s): Escri(ptoPin)tura in "word(s)" of Lilia Carrillo*
The pictorial work of Lilia Carrillo (1930-1974), as that of other artists of his generation, revolutionizes the pictorial language in Mexico, it is extracted of the confinement in the speech stereotyped of "the Mexican thing" produced by the authors of the muralismo and protagonists of so called by " Mexican school of painting ", during the first half of the 20th century.
The present test is busy with making see, from three Lilia Carrillo's pictorial works, a plot of bridges between the images and the words, since both constitute a system of communication that interlaces. On having used so many parentheses between cutting and joining the words, which give body to this test, a (des) realizes visual construction of the language to make to notice his multiple capacity of production of sense; his complexity and significant flexibility while phonetic alphabetical system.
This way then Lilia Carrillo's work painting does not stop the being being a writing, but a plastic writing, a metalanguage, and in addition voluntarily cryptic, for his condition of abstract, and for the deeply discreet spirit that seems to have characterized the personality of the painter.
When I write rebuscadamente: Escri(ptoPin)tura am referring to the necessary conjunction and conjugation of the painting and the writing like human communicating skills, that is to say, is a baroque intentional rebuscamiento, putting emphasis in the fact that the words always say more than they seem to say, and at the same time there goes implicit a will to twist the language to demonstrate that we can manipulate the linguistic tool, as well as the painter does with his utensils of work to produce a plastic speech.
Theoretical threshold
To begin the reflection I mention here a discursive image it brings over of the words, the epigram that later I transcribe, originally it is written in Greek of the 5th century b.c., and it is of anonymous author; the translation has been done to the Spanish by Agustín García Calvo, in his first draft- During the student movement of 1968 - he turned out to be written on the door of the Center of Free Studies of Philology, which worked some years in the Faculty of Letters of Seville; García Calvo was doing with this called of attention to the young participants in the mentioned social movement, it is necessary to mention that three works of Pulley to which this test refers were produced also in 1968, here in Mexico. Three reflexive moments opposite to the political sociocultural agitation that happened during that year, and of which our painter took part, not only as part of his historical circumstance, but as political activist with his skills of visual artist.
The epigram:
The words, so, comrades, to take the words and let's go them carving one up to one
With love, it yes, since we have name of friend of the word;
Since they do not have certainly any part in the males about which we think day
After day, and then in the nights we re-turn in dreams,
But they are the men, wrongly men, that, enslaved
To the things or money, also as slaves they have in use to the words.
But they, with everything, incorrupt and benign: yes, it is true that for them
This order or cosmos is woven, many-colored deceptions quite he;
But if, analyzing them and giving up them, it them leaves one to act like free at some time,
In inverse sense his own deceptions go to undo they,
As Penélope for the day was feeding the gentlemen
With hopes, but in turn by night it was returning towards the real thing.
The abstract painting excludes the evident narrative thing of any naturalistic or realistic imagination, (des)appears and (abs)brings, does a re-production textual and textural to of and with the pictorial representation, perverts and distracts her, relaxes and distorts the function and the sense of the pictorial images that adjust to some institutional character. It makes the work evident of painting, the pictorial gestual of the picture, the incorporation of the body in the production of the image, returns visibly and pensable matérico of the painting, in terms, of matter. It changes the image of a structural counterfoil apparently been founded on the mother model, that of the figure of the mother, support of the reproductive matter, the model activates against yes same, turns it effectively active, powerful, discovers that it acts with the mask of the father and at the same time it recognizes his own complicity in the game. It unmasks and dismantles the story of the father, the logos that imposes the linear story; and it makes present the material concrete substance of the being in general: image. He presents like that another metaphor of the feminine thing, so much in general like in the concrete case of the production of painting; a metaphor seriously very strange, rare, in revolt against the canon machist of the painting, as rigid code limited to the form and the figure.
From this theoretical lease of critical alternative character, I put in scene a hermeneutic radical feminist of a few Lilia Carrillo's pictures, to begin with that for his title they unite with the question of The Word and the words. Attending to the recommendation that across his translation García Calvo does, I want to follow the imaginative "different" sense of this semantic field, the "imaginative" relations between painting, writing, criptoescritura, criptopintura: three pictures, identical with the year of 1968 - the three: conceptual, because the terms of reference that give title to the pictures turn out to be extremely symbolic, not simple at all, not concrete at all, in femininely and plurally, already for the title itself.
I have proposed to present a speech radical feminist on the painting and the interpretation of the images created by women. This means to put the writing at liberty, to make him flow in speculative drifts without frame or fixed scheme, a bit deliriously, necessarily, according to Mendiola.
We begin, if the conscience humanizes respect of the body and the psyche itself they depend on the revenue in the language recognizing the joint between things and words, between me of every whom and his circumstance, the conscience in relation to the interior space / exterior, which we are called a world initially from a psychoanalytic look begins for the mouth and the language, aspectual and conceptual speaking, the language of the meat that enters in touch with the source of food life and with it gradually, apparently for(d) Effect of the repetition, an interior is admitting / exterior that it leads to the subject to acquiring gradually the competition in the use of the language, in a language, a code, the mother language, being this one the first "representation" that the creature elaborates to communicate to him this way the same conscience of his own existence, his first contact with other one that it makes to him know of yes same. Then, to form the jumps to the analidad and the genitalidad, according to the psychoanalytic Freudian model, they control the smell, the sight, the ear as definitive checking, between me and the different thing, from any relation of gestualidad corporeal with the mother or the one who does the paper of realizing the mother work, forming this way the autopossession of the existence as present individuality. That concentrates on the undeterminable space of The Look, holistic sum, Eye-subject, the turned subject (a) arouses of yes and of his circumstance. Spatial conscience.
About what does he speak to us in the word the space? Of the freedom. To spread carries to the free thing, to the opened, allows to the human being to place and to be lived in the world. Because" I Fill of merit, but poetically the man lives in this land "to saying of Martin Heidegger, when it looks for the essence of the poetry in Holderlín.
Therefore, if the words are a metaphor of the reality and the metaphor subjective value of the reality, this way also the abstract painting is a metaphor, a subjective value of the reality. A way of acceding, of knowing and communicating the human existence as valid as the phonetic - alphabetical language and all the forms of communication that depend on this one system. The word as logos commanding synthesized in the terms of reference man like substantive homogeneous, exclusive and crooked designation, the so called universal masculine neutral one is questionable, for inaccurately, because she, the woman also poetically lives the land, to what the oblivion, the slip? Poetically, this way he lives, in this case, Lilia Carrillo manifestly with his works, which of her have come out as person and have turned history. Then, everything operates as spacing, and in this case: for the unit of the conscience of this Eye - subject of The Look.
Then, the pictorial language, the escri(ptoPin)tura, comes to be a spatial manifestation, human representation, as notion of vital experience overturned in the work; already not a statement on the object of the desire, but presence of I her hold deseante in the pictorial gestual herself, which is a physical fingerprint, An inscription, an outline, which leaves communicating brand brings over of the desire, of the desire that it encourages to the human spirit for reaching self-consciousness, contemporary "liberation". It notarizes other one, another simbología, other images, which they speak about the royal presence of the concrete otherness, to be there poetical in the intimacy of I her hold identified as woman.
I return to say that Lilia Carrillo's works are disarticulations of the pictorial speech, they undo the figures of the linear paternal statement; this painter misinforms the form, desvirtúa the Logos. He does not say the world according to the wound of the father: words and things. On the other hand it transmits a World, His singular World, as The Look: textures and colors. His works, then they are estimated as images of communications in key, "cryptic", "material", "ctónicas"; and nevertheless they develop into images of thought opened for the Utopias of to report.
In his works the linearity gives glimpse on no part, not neither in the margins, nor in the frames, nor in the contextual immediate space; the paternal line personified in the personality of figural dilutes in the skill of the outlines textual and texturales hipermatéricos like lyric, that blur the limits, the borders between the fields of color and the planes of depth of the images.
Lilia Carrillo (des)writes and (re)writes the communicating inscription at the same time from the imagery, in vibrations, fluyente, indeterminate; but present, visibly present, as message of the Eye - subject (a) to the secret scheme, the intimacy, where they happen and appeal the significancias in which orality-analidad-genitalidad they get confused, in agreement to the materialistic concrete Imago of her (s) mother (s). The place of bridge where they begin the human communications, before the wound of the sex - kind, when the possession on determines the identification of the games of exchange between objects and subjects of the desire, according to Kristeva: La Chora.
The pictures Words…
The title of this picture is a pre-syntagmatic phrase, points at a disorder conscious of being a disorder; but it is a description of the paradigmatic condition of the language, which in yes same possesses neither order nor any sense; the free words are parts that never line up do not even order for yes same, and nevertheless they are the possibility of reporting.
Let's remember that the language is a "computer", a "jerarquizador" and a "seducer" of the sense, it is the code of the commanding logic; it suits not to forget that the pure language like code "does not "generate" communication, still before he has to be articulated for él/la fastened / fastened, position in the space (interior-conciencia/exterior-emisión), generating then yes the sense or many senses ... the possibility of response.
In this work of Pulley, the fields (des) figurative divide the picture staying this one organized like tríptico, nevertheless, the chromatic unit yellow ocher that forms the bottom, it stays traslapada, partially "escotomizada", and of her only two columns are seen to the flanks, since there is a species of central polychromatic "strip" in the one that like dances the colors they are formed and desforman, being deformed and transforming, according to the drift of the look of the one who observes the image, that is to say, of his way and interest to estimate her. An inability to enclose the Symbol, a (des) occupation of the Symbol. In this picture there is there his desire almost monotonous, three parts, two wings, and a polytonic, polychromatic head office, replete with distinguishable images between yes. The monochromatic field in yellow ocher constitutes the plane of bottom, which I want to compare with the event of La Chora.
The format of the horizontal rectangle of the work remains divided in three parts, as already it explained, and the central "strip" of the picture measures approximately the double of width in relation to the flanks, a measure that trebles the space, spreading out in him. As the Shade of the Father, symbol of the phallus, Lo Otro, The Strangeness; it is so, the central "strip" the one that breaks this monochromatic harmony of the bottom, which proves as a frame to a certain extent rigidly, seriously; nevertheless the yellow color is in representation of the lighting, of the possibility of thought, an act of reason identified with the virile spirit. While the central strip treats itself about a not tidy, not serious, not solemn, but chaotic, festive, poetical, plastically very worn out thought, a carnival gestual. Therefore, the place of the phallic symbol neither makes concrete, "nor "means", rather: to undo and "reports"; the contrast turns dynamics the work.
Lilia Carrillo combines in free Words the painting gestual and the field painting. The dominant outline to the interior of the "strip" is the curve; many outlines in thick curved lines, all apparently with an ascending direction and from left side to right; Also there is a cadence of movement indicated by two fields of dominant color coffee; apart it adds outlines, lines and paces, some of them manage to be closed in chromatic curbing that figures a species of sphere of kaleidoscopic combination as the one that is located in the low left angle of the polychromatic "strip" that agglutinates colors as: violet, ocher, lilac, red, whites. The outlines and the lines indicate a movement of wrist in curves of half moon, (des) notarizes, palimsestos sobresignificantes, invention of another writing.
Another detail is that between the central "strip" and the flanks there is no incisive separation, there is no definite border and she is not because the deployment gestual of the center that is not a center and it does not have center bedaubs itself, yellow ocher spreads on the fields, stretches thin threads of color, the red some and other whites that cross the desert ocher, to right, left side or down. It makes get on the separated thing, which is contradicted, alludes the paradox, a work where the red one plays a key paper.
To explain why the "strip" gestual does not have center, one follow " the direction " established from the disposition of the spots of color and of the curved outlines about which I spoke before, then the direction goes of the low left angle to the right Superior of the "strip" gestual, begins with the kaleidoscopic sphere before described and on her and to the left side a black spot spreads; this one direction insinuates a band of color, another field gestual inside the field gestual before described, both black fields accompany an eruption of colors intermingled in spots of white, red, coffee, violet, dominate in extension and therefore in vibration. The polychromatic eruption spreads towards the top left angle, and as ocher comes closer the monochromatic yellow field the tonalities of his mixtures are moving from the blue - white to the white - yellow, yellow ocher; and I joust in the low part that corresponds to this one described area another part of the "strip" gestual has a dominant bottom-texture in tone soft ocher mixed with white much.
Apparently the "strip" gestual low in waterfall, pell-mell anarchic, that is left to fall down from the top right angle of the picture, contradiction of direction; a "sinister" arm, of black color it spreads on the yellow ocher of the dominant plane of the bottom in his top right angle to go down rightly where it begins the "strip" gestual; the black that is the sum of all the colors reduces the colors and leaves them, empties of them giving up them to dancing. Such a waterfall spreads on the yellow bottom ocher, where far from invading it joins, adorns the base that supports his fall, which makes it shine. It is a question of a plural, lyric exercise of the creative possibilities that Lilia Carrillo finds in the plastic abstract expression. A mosaic of possibilities, every outline is a fingerprint of personality, every outline fulfills a function, like every word; both in the significant one and in the meaning, put there by the voluntary joint of the creative one. The body operates freely for the possession escopofílico of the emission / receipt of the significant gestuales in yes, over the logic, which rather they betray her spoiling it.
In the tapestry of these many textures and colors, they are analogical it that names the title of the picture: free Words, as the cards doing the soup for the game of dominoes, you register always with the possibility of face, but still without this one, still in the crux, with implicit significance and action. Surprise treats itself of small boxes of invention, small boxes in order that every the one who begins to cover his fantasy, without prejudices, without limits, in condition of pure contemplation and free reflection; Because as well as with the language the pure structure is not enough but it is necessary to go beyond the mere mechanical joint and accede to the comprehension and jump of there to the creation, to the invention; this way also in the pictorial abstract exercise it is not enough to take in it counts only the mimetic aspect, but beyond the matter, from the own exaltation of this one, for what the pictorial abstract offer that now occupies us is a door opened for the Utopia, because his painting is considered to be lyric, full of desire, his pictures are sums of emotions, " Free words ", then, it is a question of a torrent of emotions without logos, without center and without price or fixed appreciation for the look, liberates the words, liberating the outlines, because across them she, the painter, liberated his emotions.
Which are the lost words? In what conditions do words get lost? Do they get lost when they are not said or when they are said of more or of less? Do they get lost when the memory does not guard anything, when they turn oblivion? Or will loss be because they have been useless, perhaps because they did not manage to be included?
The language: computer, jerarquizador and seducer of the sense, is the code of the commanding logic; by then not to forget that the pure language like code does not generate communication for yes same, but still he has to be articulated for él/la fastened / fastened generating then yes the sense or many senses.
It is a question then of the olvidos, seems to me, if it is true that with the words the memory is woven. To lose the words is to leave them to fall down in the oblivion, certain oblivion, an oblivion, already be in a conscious or unconscious way.
Do not those thoughts that do not happen for the words exist? Everything indicates that not, there are no thoughts that do not happen for the field of the words, there one finds the unit of the communicating conscience (emisora/receptora/interpretadora); but the messages that we weave with these words sometimes we guard them in the memory and sometimes not, select or there are selected the recollections that we have to guard, we forget others or they forget, because both one and another case happen to us even without realizing. We cannot forget to will, the oblivion is impossible as act of the conduct, happens, is there, happens, without nobody controls him well to good. Though it is true that generally all the time we want to forget, we need to forget to live. But these themselves, the words, the language, it makes the liberation possible (n), is true, from the metalanguages; like, for example, Lilia Carrillo's pictorial speech, which gives the orders whom it observes to working in elaborating his own thoughts and feeling his own emotions; being like that, this creative of images, a woman for yes, consciously of being there in the body gestual that like that it chooses to report (), and being, at the same time, more than a woman or the women for with other persons, provided that now actually it is the picture, the image that like that puts us in touch with her.
In this work the plane of bottom repeats the monochromatic formula of yellow ocher, and what was a "strip" gestual polychromatic in " Free words ", here relaxes, one withdraws the inflexibility of the spatial organization, the compressed thing descomprime, encorsetado is liberated. On having given up, the words enter the zones of the oblivion, touch the problem, affect the conscience, open thresholds towards the different, different intimacy; and this way they cover the olvidos of the words, the forgotten words make resound, bring them to the memory, without changing them, without evading them, without breaking them, as well as forgotten words. They eliminate the spatial restrictions of the phallus, one forgets the metaphor of the penis as Verb - action. The flows happen psicosemióticos without patriarchal control. We understand each other better. Since in the abstraction expressionist not - figural, always. One writes in the image the criptopintura that dissolves the escotomías of the fetish, we see and name what is below the illusion falogocéntrica that it dissolves without thinking the difference. We see and name the abyss of the instituted language, the crack matérica, the fold of the sense between significant and importantly, beyond the intercommunications falogocéntricas... The operative psicosemiótico of the hiancia, where the world and the person separate between the indeterminations of the patriarchal subject - object.
In Words losses the colors are less mixed, more definite. It is a question of the same structure, the motive diegético to a certain extent also is the same. In both cases already here considered the topic of the painting they are the words as problem, the words as confinement in the division of sex - kind, and his infinite subsequences, nothing more that in two different conditions, some they are free, are liberated, and others are or are lost, deprive themselves ... before "strip" of the oblivion relaxes and transforms in band prolicromática, where the colors now leading are black, violets, red and whites, these that before only were very dispersed rubbings, they become condensed.
In this picture, the polychromatic band gesticulates already with more freedom, the yellow bottom lives ocher and moves freely for the whole surface, let's say that the pleasure has broken his molds, one has given step to the transgression, which in the previous picture scarcely was insinuated shyly, here despliega in a festive way. A carnival against the instituted logic, happiness like liberation of the olvidos.
Once done the mask, once constituted the order of the linguistic code and that the free words have made the oblivion present, in the pictorial work comes the self-consciousness, the turnover of other subjectivities, other instances of presence of I her hold (a), from what it has stayed behind and after the words, behind and after them in the field of The Look that identifies a world and a conscience in a world; the transcendent field of the intentions, desires, feelings, thoughts, of the painter, which has resulted in an image. Pero después las palabras quedan detrás de las imágenes posibles, latentes y presentes en el cuadro, según los sentimientos, deseos y pensamientos de quien observa, lee, descifra y disfraza, o si se prefiere, reviste, también con su discurso la escri(ptoPin)tura de Lilia Carrillo, quien apenas figura, pero figura ya a propósito de los campos de color, un ocre muy pálido domina a derecha e izquierda, y ambos quedan separados a través de una grieta en el centro.
Though also it is the rain that joins sky and land. A metaphysical rain. Without figures, without story. In agreement to the demand to square the circle of the divinities in terms radical feminists.
Beyond the same words, beyond the pure structure; in this work, in this another condition of the words with Lilia Carrillo's treatment, already there is "neither "strip" nor "band" because across the black wound the colors have flooded, they have irrumpido and bus, inhabited the whole space of the picture, and instead of the institutional symbol already only the opening stays in an elongated and curved spot, since like hinge, because it joins and separates, half-opens and half-closes. Already nothing is neither clear or different, the mixture is total. There get lost the edges and the brands of separation, we see a critical transgression of the mechanisms of incorporation and exclusion. In fact: a miracle. Since this image of escri(ptoPin)tura is invoking the conscience of a code of the future, the Utopias, the knowledge that he carries to liberate ourselves of the picture of the binary one of kind, to dare to go out for us of the cage that everything resolves or am thinking about solving in series of two in bottom.
In this picture it is left to see the plot, the oil makes up the fabric, colors his texture, traviste the kind, literally. And it leaves it to see as such. Disguise and truth, copy and genuineness. Nothing is since it seems to be, the communicating miracle consists of seeing the painting and of knowing that it is there to undo these traps, to liberate The Look. That at the time manages to see and to name the intermediate space, the separation between whom it looks and the painting, to be there to undo these traps, to liberate The Look. That at the time manages to see and to name the intermediate space, the separation between whom it looks and the painting, to be there of the words as narrative scheme, as figures of conduct, prejudices, stereotypes, in the jail of the jealousies. And behind them he appears after now, already here, the liberation.
Conclusions
This one, to my to deal, has been an arrangement of the pictures Words ... that delivers the process of transformation of the first work identified with the Apollonian beginning, and that already in the second and third work will be consolidated in correspondence by the Dionysian beginning. In a metaphor of critical appropriation of the painting and the writing, another way of speaking in code, provided that with these communicating gestuales, her, the painter Lilia Carrillo, she could penetrate into the world of the macho as opposite presence, as opposite politics, opposite, logical opposite, ethical opposite, aesthetic opposite economy, because it dares to want to know and then to invent. It does his images according to the feminine, feminine vibration and feminist of the abstract informal painting. It dares to be for yes, to create according to his intimacy, and at the same time to be with other persons, at liberty, in order that also other persons are for yes, at liberty, according to his intimacy, which, then, already turns out to be our intimacy in act and reminded.
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*The first version of this test was presented as presentation in the Colloquium VIII Annual of the University Program of Gender Studies, UNAM, in October, 1998, city of Mexico.Entrevistas
** Feminist, critique of art, teacher and investigator UNAM. It belongs to the Mexican section of the Critics' International Association of Art AICA-UNESCO. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.