Fri. Sat. Sun.
Oil, acrylic, sand, cement, plaster, bronze, iron, and ash on canvas
Triptych, 160 x 80cm (each) x 3, 2024
This triptych is inspired by the three-part structure of Christ’s story—Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection—as well as by Dante’s enantiodromic conception of descent and ascent in the Divine Comedy, where the road to Heaven runs through Hell.
Rather than elaborating on the triptych itself, I want to share some of my reading notes from the period during which I worked on these three paintings：
Friday
Jun. 5, 2024
(Reading Dostoevsky’s The Possessed for the third time.)
“Stavrogin is everything, Stavrogin is nothing.”
Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin––Dostoevsky’s frozen Lucifer—is the most fascinating character I have ever encountered. At first, I was captivated by the aura of mystery surrounding him. Now, I begin to understand: his rage (and matricidal impulse), his revulsion for others, his emotional detachment, the mask he wore, his isolation, his divided nature, his narcissism, his self-punishment, and his incapacity for love. I come to comprehend his grotesque acts of self-destruction—seducing a child and driving her to suicide, marrying a crippled half-wit, and ultimately hanging himself in his mother’s house. His fate seems partly shaped by childhood trauma—an absent father and a narcissistic mother—and partly by profound disbelief. I have painted childhood trauma several times before (most successfully, I think, in The Inferior Predator); now, I want to understand nihilism.
Saturday
Jun. 25, 2024
The dualistic structure of The Possessed
“The structure of his novel depended upon the relationship between Pyotr and Stavrogin. The metaphysical and political plots come together when Pyotr and Stavrogin come together. Stavrogin does not believe in the dialectics of Kirilov or the messianic nationalism of Shatov, and Pyotr believes neither the “bright (liberal) hopes” of Virginsky or the Fourieristic (communist) dreams of Liputon. Pyotr destroys the world about him, and Stavrogin destroys the world within him. They are body and soul, noise and silence, destruction and unfaith.”
–––Dostoevsky’s Notebooks for The Possessed, edited by Edward Wasiolek
Jul. 7, 2024
“It is quite simple, the beautiful is the ideal.”
“If someone proved to me that Christ the ideal is outside the truth art and that in reality the truth art were outside of Christ the ideal, then I should prefer to remain with Christ the ideal rather than with the truth art.”
“My whole literary activity has embodied for me but one definite ideal value, but one aim, but one hope, and that I do not strive for fame and money, but only and solely for the synthesis of my imaginative and literary ideals, which means that before I die I desire to speak out, in some work that shall as far as possible express the whole of what I think.”
–––Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 1868-1871
Sunday
Jul. 24, 2024
(Israeli Prime Minster Netanyahu addressed the US Congress in a speech lasting less than an hour, receiving 58 standing ovations).
Thought for the Day
“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.
A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lie cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”
–––Hannah Arendt, German historian and philosopher (1906-1975)
Aug. 10, 2024
A deleted monologue for Stavrogin from Dostoevsky’s notes:
“Unlike all of our young generation, I cannot welcome the reign of mediocrity, envious equality, stupidity coupled with a lack of individuality, the rejection of any kind of duty, or honour, of any obligations. I can’t welcome the rejection of my country, just as I can’t welcome those whose only goal is destruction, and who cynically reject any principle that might reunite them after their goal of total destruction has been realised, when the rout profanation and plunder of everything will have brought about the moment when it will no longer be possible to continue life even with the small supply of products and things left intact in the general destruction of the old order. They say that they want to work––they won’t. They say that they want to create a new society. They haven’t got the bonds to create one for a new society, but they give no thought to these things. They do not think! But their doctrines have all become so complex as to divert them from thinking altogether. The golden mean. No. I am not a democrat.”
Friday (detail)
Saturday (detail)
Sunday (detail)