Hello Kali!
(The Recent Drawings of Huston Ripley) The drawings of Huston Ripley can undoubtedly be labeled Visionary, bubbling up from the artist's unconscious insistently, itself firmly rooted in even deeper levels of collective imagery, while conjuring up for viewers windows onto a singular world, crowded with imagery and action and aura. They are also obsessive-compulsive, in the best sense, a relentless and recursive projection of a unique inner world densely populated by beings, bodies, faces and phalluses, eyes and eggs, nipples and navels, scimitars and sexual cynosures, serpents and skulls, brains and breasts, all portentous, archetypal, metaphysical, psychedelic, sexy, and ultimately affirmative. I have long linked Ripley's work in my mind to the rich traditions of Asian art, in particular the fecund figures of Hinduism, even though there are not any explicitly Asian, Hindu, or Buddhist elements in them. It's more that, as a philosopher, I naturally reach for more sophisticated and historically significant theories through which to relate and articulate the more primal pleasure I get from the drawings. Now a key element of Hindu metaphysics is the triadic pantheon of Vishnu / Brahma / Shiva, symbolizing the inter-penetration of creation, sustenance, and destruction. (This is also directly analogous to Hegel's dialectic of thesis / antithesis / synthesis). I find this fusion (and fructification and pullulation) of elements in Ripley's drawings, in that they clearly portray the idea of creativity through the themes of halos, bowls, cupped hands, eggs, sex, and prominently featured faces and heads, often with relatively passive expressions, yet still exploding or expanding with activity. Sustaining is seen again in the idea of food and general sense of ingestion and of course sex, (penises serve as the lingam here, to the yoni of the egg and vulva), and there is a nurturing effect in the relatively gentle hand gestures, often supporting and inviting. But there is also a Shiva-like vision and celebration of destruction and death, and all these things are intricately intertwined and rendered, all with a sense of spontaneity and immediacy. They are also reflected in the theme of Eating, which is a hybrid of sustenance and destruction, as Freud noted. From his fine and final Outline of Psychoanalysis – “…the two basic instincts operate against each other or combine with each other. Thus the act of eating is a destruction of the object with the final aim of incorporating it, while the sexual act is one of aggression with the purpose of the most intimate union.” The Cosmic Egg regularly resurfaces in these drawings, bobbing up as a kind of veined brain, ready for omelets, an organic orb, a pregnant crystal ball for sexual soothsaying, again suggesting creativity, rebirth, but also brunch. As Kali drinks blood and devours her devotees, yet she is still thought to be compassionate, in these drawings the hand gestures, facial expressions and smiles are more ambivalent and inviting than might be noticed at first glance. Reminiscent of Tibetan wrathful deities, who seem such scary aggressive demons, but whose prime function can be protection and reassurance. Here again is the Hindu / Hegelian dialectic which allows me at least to feel fascination with and from these drawings, as opposed to the possible incomprehension or even revulsion of a more pedestrian perspective, such as a suburban mall or bourgeois boudoir. (Perfect for urban bohemian bars, on the other hand.) I also see this type of dialectic in the gender of the drawings, all of which are obviously extremely sexual in nature, though to me the effect and significance are more essentially psychological and spiritual. I suspect some may find them sexist too, though again I would disagree, since a closer look reveals the females in this dream world to be not only sexual but also supremely strong and self-assured, as necessary as and complementary to the perhaps predominantly masculine sexual energy of the drawings, male and female, sex and death, fear and fun, as intertwined as the fact that we must destroy something in order to eat it (become one with it) in order to live. There is something achingly ancient about these drawings and the same time quite contemporary. The fact that this prolific, persistent process actually began on napkins in bars and diners of a gritty city makes it a bit post-modern, and again links it to food and sex. So, stare at these drawings for a while; dig the dialectic.
HAROLD WEISS, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Philosophy
Northampton Community College
Voicemail: 610-861-5547
hweiss@northampton.edu
www.northampton.edu/faculty/hweiss