The Sentimentalist Interview with Madeline von Foerster, by Gilles de Montmorency
The Sentimentalist is an alternative music, art, film, and fashion magazine, with a fascinating secondary focus on the art and cultural obsessions of the past. The following interview appeared in their Winter 2001/02 issue, which can be found, along with their most recent publications, at www.asthetik.com.
GILLES: Your best work seems to defy both time and place, referencing obscure or arcane symbols of the Occult, the barren landscapes of the Surrealists, and the claustrophobia of Medieval art, the whole having been meticulously rended in oils by a Flemish Old Master painter. So where exactly do *you* come from?
MvF: I was born in San Francisco. My family's cultural origins: German, Austrian, and Russian, exerted varying degrees of influence on my identity. I attended art school in Mannheim, Germany, for a time before returning to the San Francisco area to complete school at the California College of Arts and Crafts.
In your early development as an artist, who/what inspired you?
Although as a child different things attracted me than do at the present, my aesthetic sensibility has actually been rather consistent. I have always appreciated things that looked old and slightly arcane. I loved the beauty inherent in mystery...I used to spend a lot of time looking for secret passages in the flat where I grew up! During my childhood, there were three artistic discoveries which had great influence: the Carravaggio painting of Christ being lowered into the tomb, which I saw in the fifth grade when the Vatican Collection toured this country; the Helga Pictures which I saw at the same museum two years later; and a tiny book of Hieronymous Bosch which some intuitive adult gave to me when I was about seven years old, which sits on my bookshelf to this day.
What about recent sources of inspirations?
I'm afraid that's difficult to narrow down! But here are a few of them: All the fifteenth century Flemish Masters, with van Eyck and Memling as particular favorites, but also David, Van der Weyden, Van der Goes, and several others. Bosch, Brueghel, Durer, and Grunewald. And all of the alchemical illustrators, whether engravers or manuscript illuminators. Most of them are unfortunately anonymous. I also have a passion for certain Surrealist artists: namely, Leonor Fini, Remedios Varos, Leonora Carrington, Hans Bellmer, and Ernst Fuchs.
The Pre-Raphaelites were inspired by romantic medievalism and poetic symbolism; William Morris (in particular) was motivated by an urgent need for social reform. Some of your paintings have addressed social equality and animal rights - would you perhaps classify yourself as a (neo) Pre-Raphaelite painter?
That's a wonderful, albeit somewhat confusing titile! Morris realized that the changing economy had rendered his creations unaffordable for common people...and he actually quit making art in order to devote the rest of his life to social activism! I'm very glad that advances in mechanical and digital reproduction obviate this necessity for myself. At one point, believe it or not, I only made political art, which I stenciled and wheatpasted around my hometown. However, seldom was it beautiful art. Now I'm trying to learn how to make something beautiful, and the "message" therein is usually far subtler than my earlier agitprop. I haven't lost my ideals. I think beauty affects people in important ways. Attempting to create beauty in contemporary American culture, where aesthetic needs, human needs, are always given a back seat to profit and the bottom line, is meaningful.
Do you have any religious beliefs? If not, is it a
problem for you that God does not exist?
I was raised in a very atheist household, and though I await evidence to the contrary, I do not believe in God. I am, however, an extremely spiritual person, fascinated by the universe, human beings, and the history and workings of our planet. I have religious experiences constantly -- moments of wonder, awe, revelation -- despite lacking religion. Scientific topics fascinate me in an almost religious sort of way. I think more people would feel this way if as many of them explored current writings on astronomy and cosmology as absorb, unquestioningly, the various bibles of our species. The universe itself is far more amazing to me than the concept of a God/dess in control of it all.
What are some of your obsessions?
I think I've already mentioned several... I'm also obsessed with Jung, who is a huge inspiration to me. I'm obsessed with dreams, and monsters. Just recently I noticed how many of my pieces have monsters in them. I don't see them as evil. In my work they are usually messengers from the collective unconscious, or other parts of ourselves. I relate thusly to the early Alchemists, who were also trying to make sense of the universe through symbolism (as well as hermetic processes). Their art is very Jungian to me, in the way that every imaginary model of micro or macro cosmos can symbolize the Self.
Four is a number of completion: so which four books are the most sacred to you?
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco; Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, by Jerry Mander; Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan; The Plague, by Albert Camus ...All of these books are sacred texts, as far as I'm concerned.
You were commissioned by Unto Ashes to create an original oil painting for their CD "Saturn Return" -- please describe the creative process, and also some of the esoteric symbols in the painting and their meanings to you.
They wanted a piece that would show the caprices of fate, and the opposing forces of creation and destruction, but with triumph given to neither. After some frustrating preliminaries, we all decided a chess game might illustrate this simply but elegantly. Saturn, and the indomitability of time, are depicted on the capital of the column holding the chessboard. The words carved into the side of the chessboard, "Tangi Reminiscor" ("to be touched, to remember,"), are a quote from an Unto Ashes song on Moon Oppose Moon, their previous album. The pregnant queen, of course, represents potentiality and promise. The Sphinx adjacent her symbolizes obstruction and ruin. I have always loved the Sphinx, formidably guarding her path by means of riddles issued on carrion-scented breath.
Mythologically, I think this kind of creature represents the need for us to confront our own most ugly selves, our own unanswerable questions, as we to proceed towards enlightenment. Probably no one will notice this, but at the stage of the chess game in which my painting is set, the outcome is not yet knowable. Both players have a chance yet to win the battle, though the war, of course, belongs to Saturn (Father Time).
What are you working on at present?
I am presently finishing the botanically-inspired painting I mentioned, which has been extremely enjoyable. A very magical woman posed for me for this painting, and there are some magical beasts in it as well! It's the largest piece I've done so far (aside from a breast cancer mural for which I was an assistant), so there's room for all that and twenty-five species of plants besides. This painting is really my tribute to the incredible tapestry weavers of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, so it's meant to look somewhat like a Medieval tapestry.
In terms of your artistic development, do you have any regrets? What about hopes and dreams?
I regret not working always a little bit harder, squeezing a little bit more out of each and every day. What do I hope for? I hope that before I die I am allowed the chance to do the very best work that I am capable of. I hope that somehow my work brings some modicum of grace into the lives of those who see it, thereby rendering my efforts worthwhile. I hope that art-makers worldwide succeed in our mammoth task -- that of changing the current omnicidal tide of culture -- before everything worth saving on this planet has been razed, or eaten. I believe there is still time to make a new myth. There is still a chance for imagination to rise to power.
