Liminal Encounters by Dr. Mark Bartlett
Happily ensconced on the deck overlooking Lago Maggiore, the sky reminds me of an Alf Lohr painting. The mountains rise all around it as they have for millennia. Nothing stirs its surface as it spreads itself beyond both north and south vistas and disappears around it’s sinuous shores. How far it goes is impossible to know from this deck, though it’s safe to speculate that it goes far. I always find myself wondering how deep the lake is, and what the contours of its bottom are. I can’t help myself from drifting into metaphysical speculations. How far does light penetrate? Is the lake floor secluded in utter darkness? What would it be like to swim below the surface along the join where the sunlight meets darkness?
Again, I imagine Lohr’s paintings.
It’s a rare, warm evening in September that, though the sun has drifted below the western range of Italy’s alps, is still illuminated by the scattered cirrus radiatus. They streak across the sky as the resplendent lingerie they are. Well, as you can see, I’ve shifted from metaphysics to physique, I mean, physics. However you want to imagine it, they drift slowly and resplendently across the sky with the now silvered lake, as clear as any mirror, directly below, so they can gaze at themselves with the fervor of Narcissus. (I’m reminded of Lohr’s paintings.) Azure has deepened to an azul with a mix of the slightest of emerald undisturbed by the French dog that ferociously barks, though also timorously, in the via that borders the western side of C’s piazza, though that is far too grand a term for what exist there. Its not even paved, though a 16th century church made of rough hewn stone by peasants and is no bigger than a small warehouse stands on its eastern flank. It is extraordinarily beautiful even in, or perhaps because of, its ancient decrepitude. Night has now descended and the French dog has easily given up his watch, probably because his enemies have the advantage where they lurk in the darkening shadows, while he stands guard in a ridiculously revealing pool of lamp light. Such is the wisdom and caution of man’s best friend.
Again, I imagine Lohr’s paintings.
They keep coming to mind in this unexpected place precisely because they reflect on such exquisite lightnesses and darknesses. They sometimes even bark like the ferociously timorous French dog. What I’m trying to suggest is that Lohr’s work embodies the keenest of contradictions that make us human. They can challenge the French dog vociferating in its pool of lamp light, or, float through our imaginations as do the cirrus radiatus over Lago Maggiore. Having looked at literally hundreds of them, personally, I can only imagine his body of work as an epic commentary on our human, often messy, condition. His works articulate these themes with extraordinary precision, and passion.
As we all know, the photograph is the medium of voyeurism par excellence. It captures its subject and holds him or her there, forever, in just that pose, for our eyes. Yet, today, that form of pleasure is deeply in need of revision. It seems to me that such a straight-on gaze needs a bit of foreplay. Ives Kline once perfected that by first painting his female models in blue paint, before having them press themselves onto canvass. He showed only the canvasses as paintings. In contrast, Lohr is less literal and so goes deeper. He abstracts the photo with paint in order to tap into the liminal zones where our desires are formed. His masterful photo-paintings render the photographic like the cirrus radiatus floating over Lago Maggiore. Like music, they conjure up in us possibilities that the literal photograph forecloses. They address the soul and not just the eye. They suggest ways that we can go beyond ourselves and the limits we too easily cave in to, even though we set them, or at least agree to them, on some level. So to treat the photographic with paint is a form of transgression that allows us to feel and see the w
Happily ensconced on the deck overlooking Lago Maggiore, the sky reminds me of an Alf Lohr painting. The mountains rise all around it as they have for millennia. Nothing stirs its surface as it spreads itself beyond both north and south vistas and disappears around it’s sinuous shores. How far it goes is impossible to know from this deck, though it’s safe to speculate that it goes far. I always find myself wondering how deep the lake is, and what the contours of its bottom are. I can’t help myself from drifting into metaphysical speculations. How far does light penetrate? Is the lake floor secluded in utter darkness? What would it be like to swim below the surface along the join where the sunlight meets darkness?
Again, I imagine Lohr’s paintings.
It’s a rare, warm evening in September that, though the sun has drifted below the western range of Italy’s alps, is still illuminated by the scattered cirrus radiatus. They streak across the sky as the resplendent lingerie they are. Well, as you can see, I’ve shifted from metaphysics to physique, I mean, physics. However you want to imagine it, they drift slowly and resplendently across the sky with the now silvered lake, as clear as any mirror, directly below, so they can gaze at themselves with the fervor of Narcissus. (I’m reminded of Lohr’s paintings.) Azure has deepened to an azul with a mix of the slightest of emerald undisturbed by the French dog that ferociously barks, though also timorously, in the via that borders the western side of C’s piazza, though that is far too grand a term for what exist there. Its not even paved, though a 16th century church made of rough hewn stone by peasants and is no bigger than a small warehouse stands on its eastern flank. It is extraordinarily beautiful even in, or perhaps because of, its ancient decrepitude. Night has now descended and the French dog has easily given up his watch, probably because his enemies have the advantage where they lurk in the darkening shadows, while he stands guard in a ridiculously revealing pool of lamp light. Such is the wisdom and caution of man’s best friend.
Again, I imagine Lohr’s paintings.
They keep coming to mind in this unexpected place precisely because they reflect on such exquisite lightnesses and darknesses. They sometimes even bark like the ferociously timorous French dog. What I’m trying to suggest is that Lohr’s work embodies the keenest of contradictions that make us human. They can challenge the French dog vociferating in its pool of lamp light, or, float through our imaginations as do the cirrus radiatus over Lago Maggiore. Having looked at literally hundreds of them, personally, I can only imagine his body of work as an epic commentary on our human, often messy, condition. His works articulate these themes with extraordinary precision, and passion.
As we all know, the photograph is the medium of voyeurism par excellence. It captures its subject and holds him or her there, forever, in just that pose, for our eyes. Yet, today, that form of pleasure is deeply in need of revision. It seems to me that such a straight-on gaze needs a bit of foreplay. Ives Kline once perfected that by first painting his female models in blue paint, before having them press themselves onto canvass. He showed only the canvasses as paintings. In contrast, Lohr is less literal and so goes deeper. He abstracts the photo with paint in order to tap into the liminal zones where our desires are formed. His masterful photo-paintings render the photographic like the cirrus radiatus floating over Lago Maggiore. Like music, they conjure up in us possibilities that the literal photograph forecloses. They address the soul and not just the eye. They suggest ways that we can go beyond ourselves and the limits we too easily cave in to, even though we set them, or at least agree to them, on some level. So to treat the photographic with paint is a form of transgression that allows us to feel and see the w