For Drawing III our last projects agenda was to tell a story. It didn't take me too long to decide to tell the story of the origin of love, as told (or sung) by Hedwig from the fantastic musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I have had quite the history with this play, it has been in and out of my life for years now and I just can't seem to leave it alone. Or maybe it can't leave me alone, I'm not yet sure. The lyrics can be found here.
Summed up, the story of the origin of love goes like this. Long ago, when the earth was still flat there were three types of people. They looked like two people glued up back to back and some of them were two men (children of the sun), two women (children of the earth), and one woman and one man (children of the moon). These beings roamed the earth and gained knowledge and were very strong and extremely sentient. The gods became scared of how able these beings were becoming so Zeus decided to split them in half with his lightning bolts. One fateful afternoon he did so. We were torn apart, straight down the middle. Another god started a storm and swept us all away all over the ends of the earth, alone and stranded. The loneliness we associate with love is really the pain of the wound that split our hearts in half. The search for love is the search for the other half, and once we have found that other half, making love is the closest we can come to becoming one being again.
My piece is in response to that. It is painted in Acrylic on canvas on two separate pieces so that you can switch their positions. They can be either together or apart. There is lots of thought put into what is behind each of the heads. On one side you have a closed eyed contemplative faced young man with the earth and a galaxy behind him. On the other you have an open eyed man with a brain, and the sun behind him. I believe that the sun and the brain are similar celestial objects whereas the earth and the galaxy are also similar celestial objects. The sun and brain emit energy, the earth and the galaxies are places where energy has pacified, it is not as turbulent and on the surface (or inside) of these tranquil environments more complex materials can be found, those such as the human brain.
There is an interesting pattern that arises if you think about this in a evolutionary manner and look at the levels where material has reached some sort of stable form. Atoms, galaxies, suns, planets, humans. They all reach a maximum complexity at which point more complex entities emerge, almost like condensation, and begin their own journey towards maximum complexity. I talked about this last year when I wrote an essay on material evolution.
This piece is also meant to show the tension that comes from love. Love is not possible without separation, just as these two beings can only see each others faces when they are separated. As one, they are ignorant of the pain. Are they better off this way?
The pictures below are of the work underneath the paint and also a sneak peek of my oil painting project that I'm working on in class, which is in half an hour. And my egg painting got on the wall! So that's good.
