The Art of Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myths, Modern Symbolism, and Roberto Bolano's 2666

The Art of Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myths, Modern Symbolism, and Roberto Bolano's 2666

By Armando Ortiz

I was first introduced to the art of Gustav Moreau’s while reading Roberto Bolano’s novel 2666, but really knowing who he was and his art came later. While reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, I learned more about Gustave Moreau. This is when I discovered that the art cover on Bolano’s 2666 was taken from Moreau’s piece titled, Jupiter and Semele. The cover art and the novel it protected fit well with the apocalyptic story that was told inside. 

The symbolism and message projected in that painting was religious, cryptic, political and imbued with so much epic mythology that to come to a full understanding of them is quite a challenge. Nonetheless, even in darkness there is a flicker of light that shines a light that reveals a hidden path. The abstractness of a painting or song is what eventually makes us take a second look, which then opens up to the door a greater understanding of its meaning. This has been the experience I had while learning about Moreau and his art.

My quasi rediscovery came about as I was engrossed in the midst of Ulysses and hit upon a conversation on art and literature that one of the main characters was having, where he described different artists and ideas the concepts they present in their works. In this case the “paintings of Gustav Moreau are the painting of ideas.” (James Joyce, Ulysses p.185)

This reintroduction to his work prompted me to read more about the artist, and become more familiar with his works of art. I learned that Moreau’s art is very apocalyptic and many of his paintings are in watercolor, a medium that was not used much those days. His paintings look apocalyptic with his use of bible imagery and what seems to be related to death and the spirit world. At times you might see angels carrying a dead body. At other times some paintings have a woman carrying the head of a man on a platter. In another instance a head appears to a woman. 

Watercolor paintings are as challenging as using oils. When using oils, you mix white into different colors to replicate light, but with watercolor one builds colors on top of the blank white paper. Once that lightness or white is gone. it is hard to recapture -it can be a compelling process. The hues and combinations of colors are key to his art. In some areas he seems to have saturated the paper with multiple layers of color to the point that backgrounds turned purple or brown. They are contrasted by peach colors or faint lines and deep blue colors that make up his skies. His technique makes you think of light, and how when we look out towards the horizon it is difficult to assimilate into a painting. Though one may try, light and refraction plays a big part in the way we see light and color, and yet Gustave succeeds in this with his paintings.

In his book Gustav Moreau, Jean Selz explains that in Moreau’s attempt to explain his paintings he imbued them with greater meaning. By explaining his works with greater detail than could be seen. (Jean Selz, Gustave Moreau p.36) I was engrossed in learning more about his work and when I visited France I made sure to visit his museum. In 2016 I visited Paris, France and visited the Gustave Moreau Museum. Moreau’s most famous paintings are found in this museum, his former studio. His whole studio seems to have been an attempt at explaining the process of making art. When you walk up the wooden stairs of the building and enter it as if the whole space is a library to the process of his artwork. 

Entering the three story studio is like entering his mind as an artist that from the outside does not seem to be significant. Once inside you see the art he created and the artifacts that helped him create his new paintings. Leaving behind sketch books, incomplete paintings, framed sketches, a library of reference books from all over the world. Everything inside is like a representation of what he considered art. He examined mythologies from Europe, but also of other countries. As you continue to look at his reference books you discover that he studied Buddhist art and the jewelry that decorated the personas were inspired by them. Inside glass cases you find marble hands and feet that most likely served as reference to his works.

A recurring theme of his are the chimera found in many of his paintings. Chimera can mean illusion, dreams or the seeking of things that might not be there. When you visit his museum you see before your eyes the different manifestations of illusions and dreams. In some aspects of understanding one can say that life is a dream, but also that dreams are what make us humans. After carefully looking at one of his most famous paintings I began to wonder if it was a representation of an ancient Maya stela imbued with all its ornaments and jewelry and its symbols undecipherable. 

As you continue to explore, some of the framed paintings seem to be sketches and appear incomplete. Taking a step back I think of all the ancient art that exists today. All that is left is the stone artifact, its color faded and no longer visible, yet it still is a piece of workmanship and it is art. The illusion or dream that Moreau was trying to encapsulate can only be appreciated by visiting the museum. It is there where you get a hint of what he was attempting to do- to encapsulate humanity into symbols that were cross-cultural, the symbol of life and people's thoughts, dreams, goals and illusions.

One need not worry about reading his notes on his paintings. Even if it revealed his worries and thoughts about what he wanted to encapsulate on canvas. What he managed to paint is something that is very much along the lines as one of those songs that one likes to listen to over and over. There is a connection in this case with his creation and the outside which still happens even today. Some might ask, well, what is so special about that, and I say that the same concerns that people back in his day had still exist today. Though the symbols used today are slightly different, there is that concern of whether this life is a dream or not. Moreau created works of art, but also explained what the intended message of his works were. Furthermore, his whole studio was an affirmation that art is a process, it was left as proof of how we must be open to ideas, and that process is influenced by everything around us. 

We are the creators of our destiny and we choose how to define the forces around us, and we can recreate the meanings of these forces as a means to create art. The artist, at times is a prophet and at other times a jester too. In order to appreciate the scope of Gustave Moreau’s art one must experience his art, read about his art, and pay a visit to the place that houses his art. Returning to my initial introduction of his work through Roberto Bolano’s 2666. The characters in that book are also living in a world where cultural traditions play a role in the storylines, but these traditions are also challenged. His characters ultimately make independent choices and attempt to recreate their world in a world that is both filled with traditions, myths, sacred, irreverence, lies and mundane symbolism. Maybe, by him talking about Moreau is his novel and having the art cover be his makes Bolano’s novel more compelling and a testament to the power of art.

Roberto Bolano's The Spirit of Science Fiction: Book Review

The Spirit of Science Fiction: Book Review

By Armando Ortiz

The novel The Spirit of Science Fiction by Roberto Bolano starts off with a dreamlike quality, drawing readers into a world where the characters and scenes feel remarkably real. At first glance, the characters appear as artistic and youthful individuals, much like the poets and artists today. However, as the story unfolds, the layers are peeled away, revealing deeper insights into their lives and circumstances. The setting in which most of these young writers reside is slowly unveiled, akin to the discovery of an ancient tomb, with its contents yet to be fully revealed.

Bolano portrays the artists as predominantly low-class individuals, living in poverty and existing on the margins of Mexico’s capital.While they enjoy the freedom to be who they are, this freedom comes with its own set of consequences. Art becomes an impulse that drives each of these young poets, and their poetic journey intertwines with their experience of poverty, creating a communal bond among them. Despite the squalid situations some of them endure, Bolano brings Mexico City to life through his unique descriptions. Whether riding a motorcycle through the streets or standing outside a mechanic’s shop, the imagery transports readers to the heart of the city. From cafes to public bathhouses, Bolano captures the city’s essence, highlighting the spartan lives of the artists in their rooftop homes, a striking contrast to the opulence found in the upper echelons of modern-day Los Angeles.

Water emerges as a recurring theme throughout the novel, weaving its way into the narrative. At times, a reader might begin to vacillate between Egyptian and Aztec mythology. Tlaloc, the god responsible for rain, seems to be there in essence, along with the reminder that the city was built on top of a lake. Rain in Mexico DF, communal latrines lacking water, and the elusive luxury of hot water all contribute to this thematic exploration. Bolano’s treatment of water, akin to Federico Lorca’s poems that delve into rivers and its creatures, adds depth to the novel. While Lorca’s lines pay homage to rivers and oceans, Bolano breathes life into Mexico City, with its people becoming akin to a school of fish swimming through its streets. 

At its core, The Spirit of Science Fiction narrates the story of poets and artists who, despite living among the masses of the city, find themselves in unique but mundane situation Their suffering, an emblematic trait of true artists, lacks the conventional glory that comes with publication and fame, but that isn’t their driving force. These are anti-poets, living a poet's life in a place that has seemingly forgotten them. Yet, they give the city its pulse and contribute to the diverse realities that poets worldwide bring to their homelands.

Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myth and Modern Symbols

(Jupiter and Semele, 1894-95) G. Moreau

Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myth and Modern Symbols

By Armando Ortiz

(Fairy and Griffon) G. Moreau

                Understanding Moreau’s works of art and how I came about learning of his work came full circle when realizing that the cover of Bolan’s 2666 was taken from Moreau’s epic piece Jupiter and Semele, where the symbolism and message being projected from his painting are both religious, cryptic, political and imbued with so much epic mythology that to come to a full understanding of them is quite a challenge. The cover and the novel it protected fit well with the apocalyptic story that is told inside. Nonetheless one comes to understand that even in darkness there is a flicker of light that either shines a light that reveals a hidden path or it simply lights the cigarette of someone who is just standing on the sidewalk contemplating the darkness. Though subconsciously I had been exposed to his work during my reading of Bolano, it was only while reading James Joyce’s Ulysses that I became interested in knowing who was Gustave Moreau. The quasi introduction came about as I was engrossed in the midst of a conversation on art and literature that one of the characters in Ulysses was having with one of the main characters in the novel,

“Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelly, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.” (Ulysses p.185)

(Death on the Pale Hore, 1865) G. Dore

I wanted to learn more on this artist, but this was only one part of the puzzle because aside from his name I was aware of two other Gustave’s that also made masterpieces in their perspective fields of art and in their time, and these are Gustave Dore who is best known for his etchings and engravings of master works such as Don Quixote, Divine Comedy, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and The Raven. I discovered Dore while reading 2666 where his work appears several times, becoming in a way an apocalyptic and quasi mystical message of the world that Bolano was depicting. It was then that I was able to appreciate many of Dore’s pieces of art, especially those depicting legions of angels and the fallen angels casted as demons.

(Mermaids/Whitefish, 1899) G. Klimt

Gustav Klimt who is best known for painting people that looked to be both floating in a dream world and going down the current of time had a certain appeal when I first saw his work, and as time has gone bye an appreciation for his genius has only increased. But both these artist will be touched upon on a later time. The fact that there are a number of accomplished artist with the name Gustav is enough to make anyone that likes connecting the dots spend months on end studying the lives of these artist. Nonetheless, their names do partially open the door to a better understanding of the late-19^th and early 20^th century art world.

                 

                Gustave Moreau’s art is very apocalyptic and what really stands out is that many of his paintings are watercolor, a medium that was not used much those days. It is one thing to paint landscapes with oils and mix white into different colors, but with watercolor one builds colors on top of the blank paper, and once that lightness is gone it is hard to recapture.

“It is in them that Moreau displayed his boldest technical freedom and the most remarkable facets of his personal style. <<Watercolor makes a man a colorist,>> said Delacroix. This is true of Moreau.” (Jean Selz p. 56)

(Persus and Andromeda, 1870) G. Moreau

His work is very compelling. The hues and combinations of colors are key to his art. In some areas he seems to have saturated the paper with multiple layers of color to the point that backgrounds turned purple or brown, all of which was contrasted by peach colors or faint limes and deep blue colors that make up his skies.

(Phoebus and Boreas, 1879) G. Moreau

“In the room that housed them (Moreau’s paintings) there was an auto-de-fe of vast skies all aflame; globes crushed by bloody suns, hemorrhages of stars flowing in purple cataracts on somersaulting clusters of clouds.”  - J.K. Huyusmans

His technique makes you think of light, and how when we look out towards the horizon is virtually impossible to assimilate to a painting, because though one may try, light and refraction plays a big part in the way we see light and color, and yet Gustave succeeds in this exercise with his paintings.

“Moreau undoubtedly saw in his painting much more than they were able to express. The dream he had of them was a vision more literary than pictorial. In his descriptions of his paintings he went so far as to mention elements which could not be represented graphically, such as fragrant smells and sounds. In this respect the careful notes which he wrote to explain his most important painting are very revealing.” (Jean Selz p. 36)

(The Apparition, 1876) G. Moreau

One need not worry about reading his notes on the paintings he created. Though it might reveal the artists worries and thoughts about what he wanted to accomplish on canvas. What he managed to paint is something that is very much along the lines as one of those songs that one just likes to listen to over and over. There is a connection in this case with his creation and the outside which still happens even today. Some might ask, well, what is so special about that, and I say that the same concerns that people back in his day had still have, and though the symbols used today are slightly different there is that concern of whether this life is a dream or not and lies beyond.

“Moreau did not remain enslaved to those traditions (Impressionist movement of the late 19^th century) so greatly respected  by the painters who, like him, were devoting themselves to interpreting scenes drawn from mythology or the Bible……… he sought to express personal thoughts and to develop ideological themes. The need to invest even the smallest detail of a picture with significant symbols that his most understanding admirers occasionally confessed that they could not decipher them.

                In order to grasp how the painter was able to fuse his intellectual vision with his particular type of pictorial expression, it is necessary to examine his work from the beginning of his career.” (Jean Selz p.6)

Roberto Bolano's Antwerp: Book Review

“An urge, at the cost of nervous collapse in cheap rooms, propels poetry toward something detectives call perfection.” – Roberto Bolano, Antwerp

Roberto Bolano's Antwerp: Literary Shadow Puppeteer

by Armando Ortiz

Let me begin my discourse by talking about Roberto Bolano’s novelette, Antwerp. It’s a brief and compelling novel. In the story, a detective searches for a missing person, their role in the crime unclear. It also includes a woman that might be a prostitute, a vagrant or then again she might be a victim of a crime. In addition, the novelette includes a person that’s either a cop impersonator or quite possibly a dirty cop that is using his badge to exploit people. Lastly, there is a writer who is living a vagrant’s life or better put, the writer is poor. 

One of the recurring scenes found in this particular work are of people being in and around a campsite. There is a camp keeper, who is always watching television, and inside the camp people wash their clothes, do their cooking, and in one extended scene they set up a makeshift screen using a white blanket to watch a film. They mostly lurk behind trees or are walking around their tent which in turn gives the reader a sense of them being shadows. A gruesome discovery is made on a path leading to the campsite, and no one seems to know what’s happened. Everything is a mystery to the reader and to the characters. The work also shifts scenes alternating with a seaside town during its winter season, so people are few. Another setting is of his characters walking up the stairs or closing doors, and in essence closing the doors to the world. It’s in their rooms where they become themselves.

All these characters seem to be in search of something. Whatever that is, it’s at hands reach, yet far enough to be unreachable. It's as if the characters in the story were aware that they are dreaming but cannot find a way to wake themselves up. The reader suddenly becomes a cast away with the characters in an ocean of uncertainty, and we wait for help to come. The story setting, to me, is very postmodern. This is due to the barren and somewhat lifeless landscape that he describes, yet the elements of nature are there, present. It’s a stark contrast to the energy of a bustling cosmopolitan city. Hashima Island a.k.a. Battleship City, is an abandoned Island that was used for mining, and once housed as many as five thousand people. It reminds us of the extremes we sometimes go to exploit the earth, and our own people, and then leave them abandoned and forgotten like many towns in the American Rust Belt. 

Bolano tells a story that revolves around the overlooked people of society, those of whom everyone’s turned a blind eye -the forgotten ones. Since, no one really pays attention to them; the detective spends more time suspecting strangers and distant shadows than actual suspects. People, if you can call them that, in both books are out living and surviving in an environment that seems metaphorically post-apocalyptic, but that quite possibly represents the fringe and marginalized of every society. It is a reflection of those whose life and death is at play every second of their life. At times I got the feeling that I was looking at a photo album, a collection of slides that had been abandoned in an alley dumpster.

Antwerp is a very illusive piece of work. It’s like being in a dream or watching a mystery film. There are moments where one gets the feeling of being sedated and high on drugs. The characters are desperately searching for that elusive dragon, seeking the master key that will solve all the world's questions. It’s as if one is on the operating table and the anesthesia needle has already pierced the vein and the white liquid is about to enter the bloodstream. 

Bolano’s brief novel challenges Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, as his characters survive the desolation without resorting to cannibalism, yet both authors metaphorically employ similar themes. In McCarthy’s novel, some characters hunt humans for nourishment and for pleasure. Scavengers walk around ready to pounce on anyone that’s weak and in plain view. Antwerp portrays a world of fringe characters who exploit each other, including the dirty cop preying on vulnerable women, without the backdrop of a nuclear winter. 

Bolano’s Antwerp reminded me of Jim Morrison’s book, The Lords and New Creatures. Morrison’s writings seem to naturally fit well with Bolano’s story.

Cinema derives not from painting, literature,

sculpture, theater, but from ancient popular

wizardry. It is the contemporary manifestation

of an evolving history of shadows, a delight in

pictures that move, a belief in magic. Its

lineage is entwined from the earliest beginning

with Priests and sorcery, a summoning of phantoms.

with, at first, only slight aid off the mirror and

fire, men called up dark and secret visits from

regions in the buried mind. In these séances,

shades are spirits which ward off evil.

Literature, like cinema, has its roots in theater, oral tales, and what Morrison labeled “ancient popular wizardry.” Though Bolano’s is telling a story and Jim is describing the inner trappings of the ancient practice of show play, both works complement each other. Jim describes what Bolano, the storyteller, is doing- is a symbolic form of shadow puppetry. His literary voice becomes a light and with a combination of words he manages to create objects that come alive, which in turn project shadows in the corners and crevices of our mind. Jim specifically talks about the history of film and goes back to the days of shadow puppetry, and keeps going farther back in history all the way to the Shamans who told their stories around a bonfire. 

This eerie reality is also, in a sense, what Bolano conjures up by telling his story. He gets us, sits us around the fire he’s made, and begins his strange tale. 

Morrison tells the reader the following:

When men conceived buildings,

and closed themselves in chambers

first trees and caves.

(Windows work two ways,

mirrors one way.)

You never walk through mirrors

or swim through windows.

In Bolano’s piece, one of the characters thinks, “who was the first human being to look out a window?”  You find yourself looking through a peephole, and looking at things that ought to be private. The torture of a person is supposed to be anonymous and secret, yet he puts the reader there, in the middle of everything, and describes the scenery in rather pornographic and violent detail. The reader becomes a wall in one of his scenes, an insect, a book- an accomplice. We become peeping toms. The peeping tom only looks and observes, just like we all do when we look at ourselves in the mirror or peer through the windows to see if it will rain.

Cinema has evolved in two paths.

One spectacle. Like the Phantasmagoria, its

goal is the creation of a total substitute

sensory world.

The other is peep show, which claims for its

realm both the erotic and the untampered obser-

vance of real life, and imitates the keyhole or

voyeur's window without need of color, noise,

grandeur.

Bolano has a cinematic effect that is hard to describe, it seems that his frugal use of words works wonders, and conjures up images in every reader. As if his writing has a preternatural energy, which makes such a short story worth reading. One will not be disappointed and the images and thoughts it brings forth from the mind will have the reader making connections with things that the mind has seen, heard of and experienced in life.