Christine Sefolosha: painting wild beasts
By Roger Cardinal

In order for a comparison to realize its full potential, it must give rise to a dual reflection: what is it that the two entities in question have in common, and in what respects do they remain, despite everything, different? The proper use of analogy sharpens our critical faculties and hastens our awareness of particularity, at the same time as it enhances our view across the wider territory.

On first seeing the paintings of Christine Sefolosha, several commentators have been spontaneously struck by its resemblance to the wall-painting of the Upper Paleolithic era (1), that is to say, to those wonderful frescoes which, in the course of the last century, were revealed to modern man at sites with names like Font-de-Gaume, Altamira, Niaux, Marsoulas, Trois-Frères, Pech-Merle, Lascaux, Cougnac, Rouffignac and Chauvet. What is astonishing is that it was essentially a twentieth-century audience which first enjoyed these discoveries (which are often 're-discoveries' of neglected sites, for we know that it took several decades for archaeologists to recognize Altamira as authentic); furthermore, I would venture to say that Paleolithic art, having been utterly forgotten for thousands of years and then suddenly brought before our gaze, definitely forms part of the history of modern art. Indeed, certain well attested affinities allow us to state that the expressions of human beings from the most remote times have had a considerable impact upon a good many artists of Modernism, including Brancusi, Hans Arp, Klee, Miró and Tal Coat. (2)

Inasmuch as Christine Sefolosha also seems to prompt the same comparison with the animal portrayals of prehistory, one ought to consider what it is in her work that constitutes a legitimate reminiscence, and what it is that, on the contrary, turns out to be her own original and personal contribution. Of course, in either case, what we are talking about is those wild quadrupeds which take centre-stage. If one examines the walls of, say, the Lascaux and Chauvet caves, one will find a relatively limited bestiary reflecting the distribution of species during those remote epochs, such as the bison, the cow, the ibex, the horse, the reindeer, the lion, the bear, the rhinoceros, etc. Admittedly one occasionally comes across evocations of purely chimerical beasts, such as that famous animal at Lascaux which the Abbé Breuil dubbed the 'Unicorn' (despite the fact that it boasts a pair of long, rigid horns...).

It is perfectly clear that there is no complete overlap between the prehistoric bestiary and that found in Sefolosha's work, for she brings in fresh species such as the wolf, the gazelle, the chamois or the boar, not to mention a host of fantasy creatures, which, depicted in spiky and baroque profile, defy all attempts at categorization. Having said this, I maintain that the important thing is not to press for a watertight match between two sets of motifs, but to appreciate their convergence in respect of the kinds of animals concerned and the way they are treated. What are the attitudes of the lions upon the walls of the Chauvet Cave, what exactly are the cows up to in the Nave at Lascaux, in what ways do the bison take up their places upon the ceiling inside Altamira? Rather than attempt an exhaustive description, I would draw attention to the fact that each animal is almost invariably shown from the side, and that, in so doing, the artist tends to foreground its posture or movement: thus we see famished lions creeping stealthily towards their prey, or startled cows which skip into the air, or, again, heavy and cholerical bison which embody an impatient, tense presence, or else curl up sleepily, as if in a nest. As for Sefolosha, the animals which crowd her drawings do much the same thing: shown in profile, in such a way as to emphasize their anatomy yet equally to bring out an attitude, even a preoccupation, they reveal themselves to be desperate or docile, alert or weary: that is, their postures tend to either extreme of the muscular scale and in consequence are demonstrably conditioned by the dictates of natural behaviour in that situation of uncertain survival which weighs constantly upon all animals in the wild. I feel moved by the tenderness with which she handles certain fragile creatures, like the marvellous Sleeping Creature (Endormi, 1998), which, caught within a kind of splash of oily tar, huddles upon an alien ground like a newborn child abandoned.

Since I lack space to examine in detail the full series of visual affinities of this kind - I admit one should also take into account the Mesolithic frescoes of the Spanish Levant and the rock paintings of the San people of Southern Africa, which are crammed with animal references - I shall simply note that the fundamental link between prehistoric paintings and Sefolosha's imagery is a surprisingly acute sense of animal dynamism and bodily warmth. In point of fact it is wrong to speak of realism, given that proportions and pertinent details are not always compatible with objective appearances; and yet the reality-effect is very persuasive, and indicates a prodigious capacity for empathetic projection in either case.

A good deal of ink has flowed in the attempt to determine the meaning of Paleolithic art, to identify some sort of characteristic and coherent system of expression. Having by now worked their way through hypotheses ranging from the supposed 'animal magic' theory to the notion of vast structural complexes, specialists of prehistoric art are nowadays concentrating upon the idea of a symbolic connexion between the representation of the wild animal and the activity of the shaman. (3) Crudely put, this entails a semiotic approach in which the picture of a bison is seen to correspond not to some real beast lurking outside the cave, but, as it were, to an internalized bison, a talismanic or emblematic beast whose meaning is inseparable from a whole set of invisible and supernatural connotations. In a recent study of these issues, Professor David Lewis-Williams associates the outline drawn upon the rock-face with a ritual act through which the shaman, and no doubt the other members of his social group, grapple with the sacred dimension of existence. Lewis-Williams envisages the image upon the rock surface - and most especially the image buried deep in underground corridors which are difficult to get to - as a porous membrane separating the immediate world from that other world into which the shaman must travel in order to lay claim to spiritual and therapeutic benefits. The phenomenon of handprints upon the rock - whether imprinted directly in ochre or silhouetted by way of sprayed pigment - is seen as the expression of a desire to pass through the surface and gain access to the supernatural domain hidden just behind it. In much the same way, the fact that the occasional anthropomorphic figures tend to assume a hybrid form - a man with the head of an animal - is seen as proof of a spiritual or religious aspiration, in so far as shamanism (as anthropology has pointed out, drawing on the evidence of the practices of a good many tribal societies of recent times) implies a close mystical bond between the designated individual and his elective animal. (4)

Although Sefolosha is prepared to admit to her affinity with animals - "they are symbols of my inner visions, my states of consciousness", she says (5) - it would of course be facile to see her as a 'sorceress' or some sort of modern shamaness, one whose ritualistic gestures were inseparable from a context of enigmatic or even magical beliefs. Neverthless, it seems inevitable that her depictions of great white deer bounding, of horned goats leaping, of weighty cows or whinnying horses should, in their tonality, if not their spirit, be seen to reflect an affinity with the depictions of those distant predecessors of which I have spoken. The comparison is all the more seductive in that her methods - the pummelling of ductile substances, the dreamy exploration of undefined shapes, the combining of separate elements, the cultivation of blemishes and accidents - often give the same impression of a half-aleatory process, one which welcomes the unforeseeable yet is governed by strict ritual. For, just like the primordial artist who, faced with an uneven cave wall poorly lit by a flickering candle-flame, drew inspiration from the suggestions of its surface, Sefolosha cultivates a dialogue with the materials she is handling, interrogating the support with its ink-stains and earthy pigments, and, with the help of her brush, coaxing the hazy silhouettes into legibility, so as to impart articulacy to what Gérard Sendrey has termed her "savage impulses". (6)

All the same, the differences from the parietal art of the distant past should not be overlooked. I have said that Sefolosha doesn't have quite the same repertoire of motifs; and one finds in her work one creature that would be hard to pinpoint within the art of the Paleolithic, namely the bird. (Among the few accredited examples may be cited the unique owl scratched upon the roof of the Chauvet cave, and a pair of screech-owls, also scratched, at Trois-Frères.) For her part, Sefolosha revels in portraying the winged tribe, releasing whole flocks of birds of prey, storks, bitterns, pigeons, white doves, black crows. But what is most striking here is that her birds frequently merge with other species, to produce hybrids which one is tempted to call spectral, such as the winged horse or the goat with long sharp eagle's claws.

The most telling variation is the anthropomorph with a bird's head, an elective motif which I see not only as a variant on the image of the archetypal therianthrope - that is, the image of the shaman or divine sorcerer with an animal head complete with horns or antlers - but also as a symbolic commitment of deep import whose satisfactory interpretation would doubtless require an investigation by means rather more subtle than those of cod psychoanalysis. It is clear that we are venturing close to Surrealism and its search for the most incongruous forms of hybridity. (7) It is also clear that the symbolic function of the bird-sorcerer is to facilitate "the innocent play of metamorphoses, in the space between soaring and huddling", to adopt a phrase of Anne Lou Steininger. (8)

Let us simply take note that, responsive as she is to the visual transformations which are in a sense engendered by the 'flight' of the imagination, Sefolosha herself recognizes a link between the bird and the activity of artmaking: "When I was small, I always had the same dream: I would pass through the streets of my town a few feet off the ground, borne upon invisible wings. Today I know I still have wings: they are my pencils and brushes." (9) One is hardly surprised therefore to come across a recent painting bearing the title Self-Portrait with Wings (Autoportrait aux ailes), a formulation which suggests that the artist might still experience dreams of flying. If it is the case that the magical flight is a universal metaphor for shamanic ecstasy, it is equally possible to say that this ecstasy, wherein the shaman escapes the gravitational pull of everyday life, begins to look like a metaphor for the artistic impulse.

It certainly would appear that, deep in the unconscious (or perhaps I should say at the lowest levels of consciousness) creativity pursues its path according to an obscure logic which defies the premisses of daytime rationality. On the psychic beach caressed by the waters of a departing dream, in the "vacillation of shadows on the walls of a cavern" (10), anything becomes possible. Low down, at the level of automatism and unreflecting gesture, amid those scribbles and polychrome spillings across which pass the hands and imagination of the crouching artist - for Sefolosha loves to paint on the ground - everything comes together to create meaning within a single network of correspondences, in which the indistinctness of stains and textures evolves into the assertiveness of the line, and in which horns, hooves and wings combine to link the earth to the free air. Velocity, vertigo, vivacity of the mind. Amid these contorted and proliferating apparitions, all sense of weight, of fixed definition, of permanent identity simply dissolves. This is what Jacqueline Roche-Meredith recognizes when she tells us that Sefolosha "summons up before our eyes creatures which take the liberty of having no precise identity, of fluctuating between the human and the animal realm, between masculine and feminine, between being and non-being". (11) I am tempted to add that, in her work, Sefolosha invites us - somewhat like the painter of archaic times - to press our palm against a virtual surface, the membrane which separates perception from premonition.

The formless yet fertile blotch, the inquisitive trace of finger or brush, the unorthodox disciplines of curiosity and improvization, these are so many signs of an engagement which forces us to jettison the distinction between the enigma inherent in all artistic representation and the inherent enigma of existence itself. Dare I say that it is essentially this metaphysical perspective which corroborates the view that Christine Sefolosha's creative project coincides perfectly with that of the cave artist, each of them trembling in the face of the great mystery of a human condition which is at once sublime and utterly vulnerable? Edith Carey puts it well: "For death permeates her inner world, whose essence is nocturnal". (12)

Roger Cardinal
March 2003

N O T E S
1) See above all Edith Carey's remarkable study 'Quelques réflexions sur le bestiaire de Christine Sefolosha', in the catalogue Christine Sefolosha. Goudron, Pelure d'Oignon, Terre, Chexbres: Maison des Arts, 1999, pp. 2-3.

2) See my chapter 'European Modernism and the Arts of Prehistory', in New Perspectives on Prehistoric Art, edited by Günter Berghaus, New York: Praeger, forthcoming.

3) See for example Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams, The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves, New York: Abrams, 1998.

4) See David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave. Consciousness and the Origins of Art, London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

5) Quoted in Isabelle Fabrycy, 'Des animaux plein la tête', Le Matin, 23 October 1999, p. 19.

6) Gérard Sendrey, 'Christine Sefolosha', exhibition brochure, Bègles: Galerie Imago, April 2002.

7) I propose two parallels: the figures clothed all in feathers in a famous painting by Max Ernst (The Robing of the Bride, 1939), and the apparition, in a mind-blowing sequence from Georges Franju's film Judex (1963), of a magician whose head is completely enclosed in an enormous bird's head: his open palm holds up an inert turtle-dove. (If I remember rightly, the bird is not dead, as one assumes, but wakes up and flies off...)

8) Anne Lou Steininger, 'Sur leur trace depuis longtemps...', in Christine Sefolosha. Goudron, Pelure d'Oignon, Terre, Chexbres: Maison des Arts, 1999, p. 7. It should be noted that bird symbolism has a long and rich history. Simonne Jacquemard offers a summary of the bird's recurrent role in mythology in her book L'Oiseau (Paris: Robert Delpire, 1963, pp. 92-106). She links it with death and the afterlife, emphasizing the importance of the 'magical flight' in shamanic traditions. In his essay Lascaux or the Birth of Art (Lausanne: Skira, 1980), Georges Bataille considers the schematic image of a wounded man with a bird's head which forms part of the notorious Well Scene deep below the Lascaux cave.

9) The phrase is quoted by Laurent Danchin in 'Christine Sefolosha', Art Brut et Compagnie. La Face cachée de l'art contemporain, Paris: Halle Saint Pierre/ La Différence, 1995, p. 170.

10) Laurent Danchin, ibid., p. 171.

11) Jacqueline Roche-Meredith, 'Christine Sefolosha', in Création franche, No 21, January 2002, p. 21.

12) Edith Carey, 'Christine Sefolosha laisse intervenir le hasard...', text on the invitation card to the exhibition 'Christine Sefolosha, forêt de songes', Chexbres: Maison des Arts, 1999.

View the Sefolosha Image Gallery
Order the Limited Edition Catalogue
Read Roger Manley’s essay on Christine Sefolosha
Read Roger Cardinal’s essay: Christina Sefolosha: Painting Wild Beasts
Read the Artist’s Bio written by Christine Sefalosha

Three Visions: Christine Sefolosha, Michael Krauth and Sandra Sheehy
May 29-June 29, 2003 Cavin-Morris Gallery 560 Broadway New York, New York 10012
tel: 212.226.3768
www.cavinmorris.com
Exhibition Press Release