Art criticism is the Venus de Milo carrying
in her armsthe head of the
Victory of Samothrace.
Luis Cardoza y Aragón
Introduction to the subject: Bronze
This essay on the recent sculptural work of the renowned Michoacan sculptor and painter Jorge Marín (Uruapan 1963) covers a productive period, a fertile five years of his production, from the beginning of 2004 to the end of 2009.
It is a large and varied body of work, consisting of almost a hundred pieces in different formats, with a figurative tendency, made in bronze, divided according to thematic characteristics for their analysis and contextual location.
I asked the author about the foundry where he worked, because I was curious about it, since the finish of his pieces seems to me impeccable and excellent, and I also asked him about the raw material in which he delivered his originals.
He kindly, sincerely and unequivocally replied that it was irrelevant.
And it is true: It does not matter what raw material he models in - the process by which material is added or removed as the piece is formed or refined - his figures before casting them, nor the quantity or quality of his two-dimensional sketches, nor how many drawings he has made beforehand, many of which undoubtedly have artistic value in themselves, because, as Henry Moore said, "there is no good sculptor without a good draughtsman"; Or if he makes the originals with the most common means, clay, plaster, wax, plasticine or suitable chemical products, with greater manageability of contemporary appearance, when finally the author exposes them in a forceful way, occupying a place in space, by means of that alloy of copper and tin, bronze, used by sculptors since ancient times.
Let the artist himself illustrate his preference for this metallic raw material, the vehicle through which he expresses the images, ideas, feelings and emotions of his creative work:
I have found in bronze an intrinsic strength that allows me to create dynamic bodies, full of movement, that defy gravity because they rotate and sway in space, hardly resting on one point. However, there is a contradiction: the sensation that bronze evokes is one of coldness and hardness, something that does not suit my work, but I try not to let its essence dominate my sculptures. By tightening or loosening the forms, volumes and tendons, I try to make my pieces triumph in this struggle and speak for themselves, and by coordinating the bodies, part by part, I try to give them a voice of their own that communicates something different to each viewer. I think that a work of sculpture is like a mirror in which each viewer finds a different image, because they themselves are projected in so far as they correspond to their desires, worries or frustrations.
I believe that what is truly interesting for the many followers, audiences and spectators of Jorge Marín's vast and renowned oeuvre, as well as for the undersigned, is to visualize, as far as possible, the artist's sources of inspiration; to note some glimpses of the motives and procedures of his artistic conception; to try to understand the engine and the impulses of his development, in order to explain to us, and again, as far as possible, what is that mysterious magnet that draws us so powerfully to contemplate his pieces?
What is it that makes us fall prey to the inevitable fascination of observing these mysterious, enormous and enchanting anthropomorphic creations of impeccable conception and workmanship?
Or do we try to perceive for what reason or unreason we must necessarily fall under their overwhelming influence?
Even if Braque wrote the brilliant aphorism that says it all: ".... In art, the only thing of value is that which cannot be explained"? I think that the profession or trade of criticism has always been about proposing the enrichment of points of view, diversifying the perspectives and places from which the work of art is viewed, and formulating some of its possible interpretations with the appropriate argumentation... Tasks that will undoubtedly contribute to the achievement of a better enjoyment and pleasure of its contemplation.
This text is also a celebration of Jorge Marín's obvious mastery of the artistic means and techniques required for the masterful work he has done in the last five years, in this still lush period of his age, in this period of abundance, when his work has long possessed the unquestionable ability to transmit the ominous power that emanates from his creation, It is in this material that many of the most famous three-dimensional works of all times have been created since antiquity, some of which are referred to in this text, since only those who are unaware of the vicissitudes of the evolution of art could suppose that there is spontaneous generation in this field.
This is certainly not the case of Jorge Marín, who, in addition to his academic studies at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, formerly known as the Academia de San Carlos, added to his training at the Escuela Manuel del Castillo Negrete of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and the Secretaría de Educación Pública, extensive work as an expert restorer of works of art. In addition, his plastic work has received several national and international awards.
The flight, the mask and the face
...We all want to fly, I want to fly.
Jorge Marín
For the sake of minimal methodological considerations, the sculptural work of Jorge Marín that we are examining here has been divided into several segments or facets.
But first, in a general way, we begin with the approach to the identity, the aspect and the outline of these impressive winged figures, of anthropomorphic appearance, that come from the rich imagination of the Michoacan sculptor, although other formal and conceptual antecedents have intervened in their conception, as well as, of course, his experience as a costume designer in several professional film and television productions.
All of his recent works, as well as many of his earlier ones, are of proverbial beauty and are presented to us in an unusual and mysterious setting, as if they were magically out of time, or rather, in a fixed time that no longer passes, that only is.
Sculptor of being in the fullness of being, Jorge Marín captures in his works this magnificent state as if it were a compact and dense crystalline fruit, a flashing cleft from which the whole universe escapes and bleeds in a moment of dazzling splendor.
Of human, beautiful, muscular and youthful complexion, the rapturous sculptural representation of these winged beings would be the moment of high tide in the sea, the blissful agreement of the world with itself.
They are twofold, possessing both divine and almost bestial qualities; some of them increase the impact of their presence by being mounted on spirited horses, maintaining an attitude of expectancy; they are mysterious, because they are masked; aggressive, because they carry weapons, showing their readiness for battle; and powerful, because, in addition to their imposing physique, they are also equipped with wings, which give them, as the poet says, "the instantaneous omnipresence".
The angelic (or demonic?) appearance of the winged limbs on his back -"All angels are horrible", according to Rilke -is, by the way, a remarkable wealth of sculpture in his drafts: they are never copied, we find variations in position and feathers.
Nothing could be further from interchangeable models; they are similar but unrepeatable, like the features of human identity, because, as the sculptor says, "we all want to fly".
The detailed, long and meticulous care of its morphology refers us again to the characteristics of the raw material used, as well as to the testimony of the sculptor:
The bronze gives me the opportunity to immerse myself in the details of the modeling and to enjoy them; sometimes it is precisely those tiny, almost imperceptible areas that make the sculpture speak; the wings, worked feather by feather, encourage the viewer to accompany them in their flight and to fear the fall; it is those meticulously worked muscles, veins and tendons that make him perceive the genuine effort to achieve physical stability, as a mimic of the human ideal in its longing to balance its emotions, thoughts and matter.
Ambiguous beings that could also pass for emblematic protectors, they present themselves as a fearsome and powerful species of stubborn warriors and insatiable predators.
Beasts over the World
Some of these monsters (such as those in the present section of his production, which includes eleven examples of a series the author has titled "Beast over the world") sit or crouch on a sphere - "whose circumference is everywhere and whose center is nowhere," as Pascal would say - seizing this curvilinear geometric object, an imitation of the world, as if it had always been their absolute property or they had taken possession of it since the beginning of time.
This image is somehow reminiscent of the Christian iconography of God the Father or God the Child calmly holding the earthly sphere in the palm of his hand.
Especially in this series, they are not arrogant. Their serene and peaceful poses have a balance that seems at the same time easy and surprising; some of them, with their arms resting, finally transmit, if an image of sufficiency, also an atmosphere of relaxation and peace.
We have located some of their mythical origins in order to propose certain data for their possible understanding and clarification, and therefore the possibility of their greater contemplative enjoyment.
In order to do so, we have to refer to several sources from different cultural and chronological areas, which Jorge Marín has brought together, with a careful power of synthesis and his own original invention, in the three-dimensional creation of these fantastic beings...
Let's go by parts: let's concentrate on the mask... What would be the specific meaning of its symbolism and the key to the conformation of this being that not only has winged extremities on its back, but also a device on its face that ends aggressively in a sharp point?
Pre-Hispanic Mythology
Let us now follow Don Alfonso Caso, in his book The People of the Sun, regarding one of the invocations of Quetzalcoatl in Aztec mythology, as described by the brilliant Mexican anthropologist and modern-day tlamatinime (wise man) who observed him as he appears in his depiction in the Codex Borbonicus.
In the intricate and complex wardrobe of this main deity of the pre-Hispanic pantheon, there is a mouthpiece whose resemblance and similarity to that of the angelic demons or demonic angels of proterva and dazzling beauty that make up much of Jorge Marín's sculptural work is obvious... And disturbing...
The body and face of the god are painted black, says Alfonso Caso, because he is the priest par excellence and the inventor of the self-sacrifice, which consists of drawing blood from the ears and other parts of the body, piercing them with the thorns of the maguey and with eagle or jaguar bones. That is why we see in his headdress a bone from which comes a green sash topped with a blue disk, indicating the chalchiuatl, the "precious liquid", the human blood. In addition, as priestly attributes, he carries in one hand the censer or incense burner with a snake-shaped handle and in the other the pouch for the copal.
At the level of his mouth he has a red mask, like a bird's beak, which in some pictographic representations is also decorated with snake fangs.
This mask characterizes him as a god of the wind, a form in which he was worshipped with the name Ehécatl, a Nahuatl word that means wind in Spanish.
The "duck's beak," as anthropologists call it due to its resemblance to the prominent snout of these aquatic birds, the mask or mouthpiece, as it will be seen, had homicidal qualities of fulminating effectiveness, according to the pre-Hispanic mythological event of the creation - or recreation - of the world.
After four previous failed attempts by the gods to create human beings, which ended in cosmic disaster, the sun was lost in the final catastrophe.
Since there was no one to illuminate the world, all the gods gathered in Teotihuacan and decided that one of them would sacrifice himself to become the current and fifth Sun, which, like the previous ones, would culminate in its end, in this case by means of catastrophic earthquakes.
Two gods prepared for the sacrifice. One of them, rich and powerful, offered balls of copal and liquidambar to the deity, and instead of maguey thorns stained with his own blood, he offered thorns made of precious coral.
The other god, poor and sick, could only offer balls of hay and maguey thorns dyed with his own blood.
The gods fasted for four days. On the fifth day they stood in two rows, at one end of which was the huge brazier of the sacred fire, into which they would throw themselves who, purified by the ordeal, would illuminate the world with their light.
The poor god and the rich god presented themselves for sacrifice. It fell to the rich god, the most powerful, to take the first place, but the three times he tried, he stopped at the edge of the flames without daring to jump.
The poor god jumped with determination and courage and fell into the center of the divine brazier, which raised a great flame. The rich god, ashamed of his cowardice, finally threw himself down and was consumed bit by bit.
The last embers were still burning when the tiger and the eagle threw themselves violently into the fire. The tiger came out with his skin stained as it is to this day. The eagle also came out of the trance with some burnt feathers, which is why it has black marks on the tips of its wings and tail.
The sacrificed gods disappeared, but the sun did not appear in the sky. The remaining gods looked to the ends of the horizon to see where it would appear, until finally the sun came out, and almost immediately the moon appeared, shining almost as brightly as the first, a daring that outraged the gods, who hit him in the face with a rabbit, leaving marks of the impact that still remain, because for the Aztecs the spots of the moon represent a rabbit.
But the sun did not move. Stopped at the edge of the sky, he strictly refused to take his celestial path because he demanded the sacrifice of the other deities.
Venus threw an arrow at him, but the Sun caught it on the fly and killed him. The flight was generalized. In his invocation of the god Ehecatl, blowing strongly with his duck's beak, he pursued and took the lives of the other stars or deities, because no matter how hard they tried, they could not hide from the wind that reached everywhere, a procedure that for the Aztecs the sun does daily before starting its daily journey through space.
Commedia dell'Arte
But if we are talking about masks, this beaked one that Jorge Marín places under the eyes on the face of his characters, which, if it could correspond to a theatrical genre, would be tragedy or drama and not comedy, although it does not resemble any of those used by the characters of the Commedia dell'Arte, it certainly bears some resemblance to them, the similarity and the resemblance exist, especially in those of the two archetypal members of its cast, called Il Capitano and Zanni, due to the prominence with which the large false noses protrude.
Originating in Italy in the 16th century, the Commedia dell'Arte is a combination of performances by professional actors, as opposed to the Commedia erudita, whose texts were written in their entirety. It is therefore considered an improvisational theater, although its plays were structured by a cannovaccio, that is, a predetermined sequence of events in which each actor, according to his character, had a repertoire of phrases and jokes from which he built his role and the scenic sequence was developed.
The male characters wore masks, but the female characters did not. In this way, the Comedia del Arte is a half-mask theater that allows the actors to speak freely.
In the mythical conformation of these creatures with magnificent bodies of perfect anatomy and marine origin, their winged condition refers us to formal considerations that operate not only in the exclusively Judeo-Christian religious field, because of their resemblance to angels and demons, but we have also found some references to their similarity in the geographical area of Asia, in legendary stories from India and Thailand...
The ominous - and blessed - flying menace in the Asian mythological bestiary
Garuda, also known as Superna, is a bird of Indian mythology, often depicted in paintings, sculptures, and bas-reliefs, as well as in illustrations in narrative fiction or religious writings.
Sometimes he is depicted with the head and wings of a bird and a human body, and sometimes he has only a human face and the claws and body of a bird.
It is considered the king of birds and is under the iron rule of Vishnu, a deity shared by both Hinduism and atavistic Thai beliefs.
As for its pigmentation, it is generally found with a pale face, golden body and scarlet wings.
Legend has it that Garuda was born from an egg laid five hundred years ago, and that when it hatched, its body expanded to touch the sky.
It is also said that when he took his first flight, the overwhelming wind created by the flapping of his wings caused the mountains to move away, while the brilliant rays emanating from his body set fire to the four corners of the cosmos.
Among Garuda's amazing feats were flying to the moon and defeating the gods in battle.
For the Thai people, Garuda is a symbol of royalty and supremacy. In fact, he represents the monarchy and the government.
Therefore, the image of the majestic creature appears on banknotes and on the coat of arms of the royal flag of Thailand.
Other fantastic creatures belonging to the geographical area of Asia and coming from its rich mythology bear similarities to these images, but their allusion would be prolix.
The above examples are enough to give us an idea of the main characteristics of this mysterious presence in Jorge Marín's work.
Equestrian facet
In this facet, several sculptures of smaller format, with sculpted and integrated solio, have as their theme the three-dimensional representation of the horse, some of them with mythical roots.
There is a winged centaur with arrows, sitting on a ball with three hooves, reminiscent of the classical Pegasus, the winged quadruped that was born from the blood of Medusa after the hero Perseus had decapitated her, a winged mount on which he rides and escapes from his hasty trance.
Pegasus was an emblematic figure of Mexico at the time when the country was called New Spain. A small sculpture - not very well proportioned, by the way - of this fickle steed still stands in the center of the main courtyard of the National Palace, alluding to the supernatural protection his image has granted the country in times of danger.
However, in the specific case of this work by Jorge Marín, in his centaur, it is from the human back that the flapping wings unusually sprout, and not from either side of the horse's back, as is the case in his traditional iconography.
An even more dynamic complication is provided by Centaur and Angel, in which the former gallops with a beaked mask over his face and is ridden bareback by an angel, while in The Flight 1, another horse gallops a winged being without a mask in an urgent escape trance.
Another centaur, Impume, carries a long spear in his human-shaped arms. Its author titled it In the midst of the crowd.
Finally, another trotting horse, with a superb outline, is depicted with a braided tail, solitary and full of verve.
It is the same model, with slight variations, that we see in another sculpture, mounted by two men, one of whom holds a ball in his hand.
The impeccable execution of these figures reveals the collection of information on equestrian sculpture in the history of art, as well as the Michoacan sculptor's masterful ability to dynamically represent the acquired knowledge of equine anatomy.
Fragmented sculptures:
The broken, fragmented, almost always static figures, a segment that is of great interest in Jorge Marín's work, possess such a heightened dramatism that they could easily be included in the current of Expressionism that emerged in Europe, more precisely in Germany, between the world wars and has hatched in our country since the last century, being a large part of Orozco's pictorial work and Mathias Goeritz's sculptural production privileged examples of its Mexican manifestation.
The inclusion of this modality in the Mexican sculptor's oeuvre is due, according to the artist, to a fortuitous event, an intervention of luck and chance: it happened in his studio that, after a sculpture had suddenly fallen from its pedestal and almost completely destroyed it, he picked up its fragments, disheartened, and closed the work session for the day.
Later, when he saw it again, he unconditionally accepted its torn configuration because, among other things, this accident accentuated its expressiveness and is in line with everyone's personal history, given that the vast majority of us suffer blows and mishaps in life that we must necessarily overcome. If we know how to deal with them, these inevitable vicissitudes end up enriching us and making us stronger.
This philosophy in the face of disaster has led him to consciously make premeditated fractures in the conformation of his pieces, with unquestionable skill, since it summons in the spectator a painful empathy of high tragic qualities.
In this sense it is -for me- especially touching the certainly pigmented with accurate decision, Fracciones V... JPG.
In this part of his work there are also three busts, a format that tends to recreate portraits, which also show cracks, entitled respectively by their author: Apocatastasis Bust, Footballer Bust and Bust of Alfonso.
The warriors who accompanied the sun
We found three fascinating pieces (one wishes there were more of these characteristics), which although fragmented are not broken or cracked and, without being merely decorative objects, are of small format. They have enigmatic titles: The Condition of Cirro 1, The Night of Cadens and The Feast of Camirus.
Given their scanty proportion, it is easy to imagine that in the realization of their modeling only the extension of the hand was required for their containment and invoice. In the hands they rested and in them they were shaped. This is how the demiurge modeled his creatures according to the sacred texts of ancient religions.
Anthropomorphic figures, consisting only of the upper part of the body: head, trunk, wings and upper limbs, we assume literally encased in a tubular structure with a round base, which gives them a graceful character.
Thus, in the piece entitled La fiesta de Camirus, in a more ostentatious manner but similar to the other two pieces mentioned, the ephemeral feathered limbs have the identical outline of a woven rhomboid garment of Purepecha origin, called a quetzquémetl, which the women of Jorge Marín's homeland have used to protect themselves since pre-Columbian times.
Given that the figures are bald or have shaved heads without any hair, that the sharp mask protrudes like a beak, and that the few visible parts of the human body are covered with feathers, their resemblance to birds is immediate and unmistakable.
As Jorge Marín somehow allows when he writes that 'there is a common language for men of all times, the questions and answers are as variable as the cultural and intellectual diversity of each one', I will risk a very personal interpretation.
This brings me to another Aztec myth:
To celebrate the victory of the sun over its nocturnal enemies, the stars and its sister, the moon, whose triumph meant a new day of life for mankind, the warriors killed in battle and those offered to the gods on the sacrificial stone emerged from the east, accompanied by cries of jubilation and battle, accompanied by cries of jubilation and battle, According to the informants of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, they "carry the sun on their shoulders" until noon, and when the afternoon begins, the luminous deity is carried by the souls of the women who died in childbirth, who are equated with the warriors because they died taking a prisoner of the gods, they died taking a man, the newborn, prisoner.
After four years of following the sun from dawn to dusk, the souls of the warriors and the victims are reincarnated as birds with beautiful plumage, flying peacefully and sipping the sweetness of the flowers with their beaks.
The pretentious and graceful posture, in a seemingly studied pose, through which Jorge Marín's winged specimens are seen, recalls the souls of warriors killed in battle in pre-Hispanic Aztec times.
Perhaps it is not an ideal or appropriate hypothesis, but I believe that the souls of those ancestral warriors who accompanied the sun can be imagined as these light and charming anthropomorphic birds.
The incomplete and fragmentary state of the pieces that make up this lot or part of Marin's work is reminiscent of the great variety of ancient stone torsos that have lost their heads and limbs over the centuries (or have discarded superfluous parts), which is why the French writer Marguerite Duras entitled one of her most interesting and delightful books by apostrophising time as a 'great sculptor'.
Maritime sculptures
(Rafts)
That boat without oars is mine.
To the wind, to the wind
whatever the wind wants
José Gorostiza
In lonely boats, solitary figures sail across imaginary waters (although one, carrying a spear, is accompanied by a strangely immobile steed). Several of them are beautifully rendered female specimens, full of sensuality, rare representations of this genre in this period of the work under consideration.
But despite the marginal situation of virtual isolation in which they find themselves, there is nothing melancholy or forlorn about their isolation.
One of the women, for example, plays happily with a ribbon; another, Luisa, on a raft with a flag, waves it in a peaceful posture.
In this section we find whole and fragmented figures, winged and implied, with and without masks. Their common denominator is their position on rafts of similar or identical shape.
We believe, without being certain, that several of these pieces are tributes the sculptor paid to his models and close friends, given the titles he gave to the works in this facet of his oeuvre: Daniela on a raft, Victoria kneeling, Paz en balsa, Luisa en balsa con bandera (Louise on a raft with a flag), etc.
Playful
This section brings together around 30 pieces of various sizes, three of which are miniatures, depicting a variety of characters in the midst of games - hence their Latin name - between circus and gymnastics, or daring jumps that are also feats of strength and balance, using buckets, hoops, chairs an other objects as props.
Most of them, as their titles suggest, are surfers who seem to be sliding in the middle of the wave, or as they say in the jargon of their water sport: "in the tube", without the support of the board, held on a ring or circular band, sometimes interrupted and incomplete, although it should be noted that there is also a couple - man and woman - entitled Abrazados (Embraced), held in the air and framed by three concentric ovals.
Six of these pieces are made up of pairs, some of the same shape, placed at the end of the curvilinear band, at the same equidistant measure of what would be the faithful of the scale, or the point where they coincide with the base.
In this section we also find divers on the platform, during the previous task of concentration, before diving into the pool, whose actions are depicted with unquestionable truthfulness and verisimilitude.
The figures, mostly mounted on a cubic solio of various sizes and sometimes only on a thin plate, have the possibility of being set in motion.
They sway, hardly resting in one place, a dynamic that adds the fourth dimension, time, to their three-dimensionality. In this ambulatory way, albeit in a small space, the figures move alone or in pairs, with or without wings, and some of them even without the usual mask, whose function, according to the sculptor, is to make them anonymous:
By covering the faces of my figures, I try to depersonalise them and leave as the only means of expression the body, a universal symbol in itself, an element common to all human beings; something as familiar as one's own image and as alien as the anonymity conferred by the use of a mask.
The angelic reference of his winged figure recalls the aforementioned 'Terrible Angel' of the Duino Elegies, although, as the poet himself, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote in a letter to Witold Hulewics (1925), the elegiac angel 'has nothing to do with the angel of Christian heaven (but rather with the angelic representations of Islam)'.
Another conceptual coincidence is that, for both Rilke and Marín, the angel is sometimes merely an aesthetic or erotic figure, with many modernist angelic-ephebic motifs, as in Cocteau. Rilke and Marín, in their respective artistic fields - poetry and sculpture - propose virile angels, neither pubescent nor androgynous. In the notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, the former writes: “If it is true that angels are male, it can be said that they had a male accent in their voices, a glorious masculinity”.
Review
Before considering, in a necessarily synthetic and panoramic manner - with the intention of indicating the location of the corresponding aesthetic context of the Marinian work - the moments of splendour in the expression of figurative sculpture which, with the passage of time, offer conceptual coincidences or present formal antecedents with the recent Mexican work that concerns us, it is appropriate to ask ourselves what function this art has had in the field of culture, and why the sculptural representation of the human (and equine) body, in general and in our subject in particular, has had as its favourite models well-known plastic artists, although the intention of this review is also informative and somewhat didactic.
Let us recall that the word sculpture comes from the Latin verb sculpere, which means "to chisel or work, to rough, carve or cut", and which also refers to modelling in a solid material such as wax or clay, so that the general concept of plastic art fits.
Both activities, chiselling and modelling, were practised hundreds of years before the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, Greeks and Romans, in relatively similar conditions to those in which they are still practised today.
A significant fact: in most religions and ancient creation myths, the human body, before being breathed or given life, is first moulded in clay by divine hands.
But let us not forget that since the beginning of human history, that is, since the invention of writing, most of the people who have inhabited the world have been illiterate, so sculpture has also had a pedagogical or didactic function, directly and visually illustrating certain concepts or passages, especially religious ones, to the masses.
In the Middle Ages, for example, during the Romanesque period, the reliefs on the sculptured façades of religious buildings were often called "stone catechisms" or "bibles in stone", the main purpose of which was to transmit certain knowledge and news to the majority of the illiterate population.
Although sculpture sometimes had a purely ornamental function, as in the case of reliefs inspired by plants or geometric motifs, and in purely decorative styles such as Islamic or Hebrew, it plays a fundamental role.
The ancient Greeks and Romans, for their part, captured in their statues their concept of 'ideal beauty', artistically representing the human image that they attributed in their imagination to the protective deities of their ancestors.
The Auriga of Delphi
But the ancients also took as their models human beings in situations that, if not everyday, were at least common knowledge, as in the case of the work known as the Auriga of Delphi, dating from 474 BC, the probable authorship of which has been attributed to three sculptors: Pythagoras of Regio, Sotades of Thespiai and Onatas of Aegina.
Her upright and hieratic posture, as well as the folds and drapery of her clothing (she wears a long tunic - Xystis - fastened to her body by straps), is shared - over the centuries - with various Marinian pieces.
It is one of the few original bronze sculptures that have come down to us, certainly not intact, and although its presentation in the isolated form in which it has survived shows a different appearance from that which it must have had in the original set, it is possible to point out some essential features.
The upright, long-robed figure in an impassive pose is reminiscent of older figures. There are elements such as the pronounced frontality that characterised the free-standing archaic sculptures of the early period (i.e. sculptures that were not part of a building, such as statues or similar, destroyed during the barbarian invasion or Christian reconstruction), which disappears in this sculpture thanks to the introduction of nuances that give it greater three-dimensionality and what is known as the quality of a "round figure", i.e. that it can be seen from any point around it.
The feet are placed at an angle to the body, so that the body has a slight lateral twist, in accordance with the position of the arms (actually the rest of the fragment of one and the whole of the other) and the head. This torsion can be seen in the play of the folds of the tunic, tight at the waist and loose on the torso.
The head, on which we find eyes inlaid with glass paste and a diadem with traces of silver, is divided into four equal parts by an axial axis at the level of the nose.
Created in 474 BC to commemorate the victory of a chariot driver (charioteer) at the Pythian Games, holding the remains of the chariot reins, the flaming figure was part of a larger ensemble that included the chariot drawn by four to six horses. It is also intended to reflect the final victory ride rather than the events of the competition.
The figure is 1.80 m tall. It is cast in several parts and then welded together, as was customary at the time.
This, as far as the representation of the motionless human figure is concerned.
The Discobolus
As for the kinetic quality of the poses, in which the movement stops at a point of difficult and extraordinary equilibrium, which many of Jorge Marín's sculptures show, it would correspond, in all due proportion, to that of a famous classical precedent: The Discobolus, the original of which, now lost, was cast in bronze, the favourite material of its creator, Myron, who lived in the 5th century BC; we know this work from its Latin copies in marble.
This sculpture, like all his works that have come down to us, reflects Myron's preoccupation with movement, his profound studies of anatomy and his desire to represent reality strictly as it should be, or as we see it.
He fixes the moment immediately before the athlete throws the discus, so that his whole body is in tension, the head or, more precisely, the face, however, does not reflect any anguish or concern, for the competitor is serene, concentrated, perhaps even for contemporary tastes too confident and calm (an attitude which Wilkelmann, the great German scholar of classical Greek sculpture, finds characteristic of this artistic period, and gives as an example the hardly peaceful and noble face, in the face of tragic circumstances, of the sculptural group Laocoön and his sons).
The musculature of the Discobolus is quite marked, although perhaps somewhat flat, if we take into account that it is a body that performs a very violent twist, in which the lower part is contrasted with the upper part.
At the time of its manufacture, when the roots of our western culture were also being established, according to Greek philosophy, ‘man is the measure of all things’; thus, anthropomorphism and anthrocentrism were essential not only for the sciences and the arts, but also for a full understanding of the world.
The Greek and Florentine canon
The harmonious perfection of the human bodies represented in Jorge Marín's sculpture refers us to the canon of proportions, which is the system of ideal measurements of the human figure and its rules of composition, based on mathematics and geometry, used by the ancient sculptors.
The Greek artists of the Golden Age (5th century BC) attributed the canon to Polyclitus, and although it has since undergone variations in the hands of ancient and modern artists, it was established at the end of the 15th century by Leonardo da Vinci and has since been accepted by most painters and sculptors (including Jorge Marin, as can be seen in the harmonious relationship between the whole and its parts in his creations, albeit adapted to the specific needs of each piece).
The fundamental measure of da Vinci's Florentine canon, based on the famous frontal drawing of a perfectly formed man, is the head. It is considered to be the eighth part of the total body in height, the face being the tenth part and equal in height to the length of the hand.
In the corresponding drawing by da Vinci, with the man standing upright and his arms outstretched, he defines a perfect square, with the lines running vertically down and through the ends of the hands, and those running horizontally through the ends of the hands, and those running above the head and under the feet.
The diagonals of this square are cut at the last lumbar vertebra and fixed in the centre of the whole figure. By drawing a horizontal line through this central point, the human body is divided into two equal parts, and each of these into two other parts, by parallel lines through the middle of the chest and at the knees.
However, it is not only action and movement that are embodied in the representation of the human bodies in Marin's work, in which various meditative or reflective poses in his statuary also play a significant role, referring to moments in which time has stopped sculpturally, when his figures are absorbed, thinking or pondering.
Michelangelo's David
For this reason, let us now recall the David of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).
1564), when in the Italian Renaissance the architect, painter and sculptor (whose work Jorge Marín passionately admires), portrayed him three-dimensionally at the very moment when ‘his body language’, we would say today, manifests the prior and absolute certainty that the Israelite hero has of hitting the aggressive moving target approaching from afar (Goliath's forehead), with the throwing stone in his right hand and in the other hand holding the sling at one end of which he immediately places it, and then throws it with an absolute and divine certainty, which has been transmitted with sublime intensity to the rapt spectators of all ages who have had the joy of beholding it.
Rodin and Bourdelle
To conclude this non-exhaustive review, this brief approach to what seem to us to be the sculptural antecedents of Jorge Marín's work, it is inevitable to refer to the brilliant work of the Frenchman Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), and to one of his most famous followers and pupils, Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), because of the correspondences with the work of the Michoacán artist that concern us, not only with regard to the dynamism and corporal magnificence, but also to the analogous underlying intentionality of his three-dimensional production.
Francois-Auguste-René Rodin is chronologically on the edge of two periods, concluding the elegant 19th century tradition of the neoclassical, in which he had been trained at the School of Decorative Arts in Paris, in a strictly academicist manner although paradoxically far from the academy, and opening new horizons that revolutionised sculpture, which is why he has been called ‘the first modern’.
From a very young age he was an extraordinary and passionate student of anatomy.
anatomy.
Accused of casting the moulds for his sculpture The Age of Bronze (due to the perfection and grace of his proportions) directly from the young male model, he was victorious in this scandalous public dispute, in which he had the support of the Impressionist painter and sculptor Edgar Degas, and achieved unexpected and sudden fame which he later increased throughout his life with multiple contributions.
The Thinker (Le penseur) and The Kiss (Le Baiser), originally executed in small format for The Gates of Hell, which was to be the threshold of the Museum of Decorative Arts, which was never built, are two of his best-known creations, later executed on a larger scale.
The flow of the irregular movement of his figures was considered for a time by some of his contemporaries to be formless, but what was considered a flaw now appears as a triviality next to the grandeur that opened up his work to new possibilities of artistic expression.
What we would like to emphasise about his work, and what our sculptor agrees with, is that despite his unquestionable anatomical wisdom, his figures lack logic in terms of proportions, since these are justified only by the demands of the corresponding emotion or feeling and the psychological characteristics he captured, using the dynamics of the human body according to his own aesthetic criteria, for the artistic purposes he set out to achieve and largely succeeded in doing so.
As for the work of the aforementioned French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, due to the thematic similarity with the work of our Mexican sculptor, it is necessary to mention his divine warrior, Heracles the Archer (perhaps related to the winged warriors of the Michoacan sculptor), a dynamic bronze sculpture that has stood since 1938, almost opposite the Faculty of Law, in the Plaza Dante of the University of Buenos Aires.
He represents the divine Heracles in the task entrusted to him by Eurystheus of driving out of Lake Stymphalus a flock of enormous man-eating birds - with beaks, wings and claws of bronze - whose poisonous droppings were ruining the crops. The hero accomplishes this task by shooting arrows poisoned with the blood of the Lernaean Hydra from his bow, an action in which Bourdelle shows him flexing his entire body to the utmost in order to bring down the monstrous mythological birds.
I hope that this brief review of the sculptural activity in the history of art will allow us to reflect on and appreciate the important contribution made in this field by one of the most valuable Mexican plastic artists of our time: Jorge Marín.
Dra. Lily Kassner
Spring 2010
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