Comments on the Messianism in the Oeuvre of Aris Kalaizis

Prof. Dr. August Heuser signs in his essay a par­al­lel between Paul Klee " Angelus of Novus " and Aris Kalaizis' image "make/​believe". In it he sub­or­din­ates among oth­er things to both artists a mes­si­an­ic impulse which rebels against a mater­i­al­ist his­tor­ic­al understanding.

The ques­tion, what real­ity may be, has been answered fre­quently and vari­ously, but it still remains as one of the most dif­fi­cult ques­tions in the his­tory of philo­sophy. What is it that »whatever holds the world togeth­er in its inmost folds«? How, one may ask, is real­ity con­sti­tuted and con­struc­ted? From where do we gain cer­ti­tude in our world? Of course, the answers giv­en are alto­geth­er ambigu­ous and only few answers are indeed con­vin­cing, albeit pos­it­iv­ism and mater­i­al­ism have tried to per­suade us otherwise.

Sot­toreal­ism

In the ideal­ist­ic-pla­ton­ic tra­di­tion of philo­sophy, real­ity is con­sti­tuted from above, from an idea down­wards. The word meta­phys­ics may also be trans­lated as after, behind, or bey­ond phys­ics. Accord­ing to that rationale, philo­sophy assumes that it must be super­nat­ur­al, if a thing does not enter into the world as phe­nom­ena. What Jew­ish theo­logy calls mes­si­an­ic is always some­thing prom­ised and providential.

In the pub­lic­a­tion »Rubbacord«[1], the Amer­ic­an art his­tor­i­an Car­ol Strick­land, while dis­cuss­ing the work of Aris Kala­izis, refers to the Brit­ish author Har­old Pinter whose drama makes »dark allu­sions and gives impulses laden with mean­ing« aimed at leav­ing the audi­ence in a state of uncer­tainty, in which they »sup­posed to arrive at their own con­clu­sions.« Some­where else she says, the behold­er is invited by the artist to »search beneath the sur­face, to immerse them­selves in the hid­den allu­sions like an arche­olo­gist search­ing out traces of a past civil­iz­a­tion.« This sub­al­tern world she calls »Sot­toreal­ism.«

Using the term »sot­toreal­ism« we may appre­hend all that which lies beneath real­ity, what is not real­ity con­struc­ted from above, but what is sus­tained from beneath and makes everything pos­sible from there. We are, so to speak, talk­ing about the basic struc­tures of real­ity, its ground­ing, and – quite lit­er­ally – its found­a­tion­al con­di­tions. In say­ing that, we must ask the ques­tion wheth­er it is pos­sible that real­ity is not only con­sti­tuted from above, but also from below. Since we have the term »sur­real­ism« refer­ring to the super­nat­ur­al, we may now also inquire if »Sot­toreal­ism« aims at that which is beneath the nat­ur­ally sens­ible and appre­hens­ible. Goya's »Caprichos« are aimed in that dir­ec­tion. They uncov­er the sub­struc­ture of being and show what real­ity draws upon, so that it may be real, and from where real­ity stems from, namely from the dual­ism of reas­on and fantasy. Using the title of the piece of art just men­tioned, we may describe this situ­ation a bit bet­ter: »The Sleep of Reas­on Pro­duces Mon­sters«. Is sleep­ing reas­on a pre­con­di­tion and could we thereby mean a pre­con­di­tion of real­ity, that is, is sleep­ing reas­on what lies beneath reality?

The Real­ity of Man­kind and of Angels

In 2009, Aris Kala­izis relied on two real­ity-makers – a photo he took him­self as well as a photo he took from a news­pa­per. He made those two pho­to­graph­ic images the point of depar­ture for visu­al cos­mos that is now titled »make/​believe«. The paint­ing shows Pope Bene­dict XVI. walk­ing into a cham­ber through a wide opened door. The scene may pos­sibly be loc­ated in the Vat­ic­an. He passes under a lighted dome, his arms spread out wide in order to greet – maybe a crowd of pil­grims or a del­eg­a­tion, or maybe only the behold­er of the paint­ing. Still in the doorframe, he is fol­lowed by three bish­ops, behind them vari­ous staff mem­bers. On the right side of the paint­ing, we see a Swiss Guard, to the right we see the fig­ure of an angel with larges wings dressed in an ordin­ary suit. The angel is a man strangely wear­ing con­tem­por­ary cloth­ing. While his left hand seems to be open­ing his shirt's col­lar but­ton, his right hand is poin­ted harshly down­wards to the floor.

The essen­tial sym­bol­ic sig­nals set in the paint­ing come from the lighted dome, which spills light into the cham­ber from above. But the fig­ure of the angel also gives us such sig­nals by point­ing down­wards to the ground. Of course, the eye of the behold­er will not find any­thing on the floor that may jus­ti­fy the angel's point­ing down. What is the angel's motion aim­ing while it is point­ing in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion of the light?

The picture's title »make/​believe« cites two atti­tudes of human beings in the world on the one hand, doing and pro­du­cing – to do things and to make things char­ac­ter­izes the mater­i­al con­sti­tu­tion of man­kind and on the oth­er hand, we have faith as the know­ledge of spir­itu­al things in the world. One is inclined to ascribe the heav­enly light and the fig­ure of the pope to the spir­itu­al inter­pret­a­tion of the world. Faith is gen­er­ally thought to be some­thing con­cern­ing the heav­ens and can­not just be pro­duced by humans – not even by the pope. It always stays a super­nat­ur­al event. But the heav­enly har­binger, the fig­ure of the angel, we might want to attrib­ute to a tran­si­ent domin­ion, a place in between. He has come from the heav­ens, but he is motion­ing us towards earth. And in doing so, he is refer­ring us to the place of cre­at­ing and pro­duct­ive doing. It looks like we are able to gain some spir­itu­al light from cre­at­ing and doing things, and then the vari­ous spheres of heav­en and earth (and hell) seem to some­how belong togeth­er – which would res­on­ate with Pope Bene­dicts thes­is that faith and reas­on belong together.

In 1920, Paul Klee drew his »Angelus Novus« – his »new« angel or »young« angel. Wal­ter Ben­jamin bought this pic­ture in 1921. Klee's wife Dora had giv­en Ben­jamin one of her husband's draw­ings before – it was »Intro­du­cing the Mir­acle« (1919). This gift let Ben­jamin take note of Klee, and he would become an admirer of his art. Ben­jamin incor­por­ated the »Angelus Novus« into his dis­quis­i­tion »Theses on the Philo­sophy of His­tory« (1940) as the Angel of History.

Benjamin's dis­quis­i­tion is an essay in the his­tory of philo­sophy or the his­tory of theo­logy. It makes a mes­si­an­ic claim. He argues against a mater­i­al­ist­ic inter­pret­a­tion of his­tory and speaks about the mes­si­an­ic impulse with­in the his­tory of man­kind. The cli­mactic ten­sion built up by philo­sophy and theo­logy also shapes the con­text of this paint­ing by Aris Kala­izis – the ten­sion between a pap­al fig­ure inspired by the heav­ens and the Angelus point­ing down­wards to earth. Like Klee, the Angelus of Kala­izis refers to that which lies beneath, the neth­er­world, and tries to make sense of it. Both fig­ures open up areas of per­cep­tion and understanding.

Wal­ter Benjamin's essay may cer­tainly not be simply trans­ferred fully onto the paint­ing by Aris Kala­izis. But using it, we may find the trail of an abund­ant inter­pret­a­tion. It is indeed aston­ish­ing that Klee as well as Kala­izis have both made the fig­ure of the angel fruit­ful when envi­sion­ing their pic­tures. In the case of both artists, the angel stands for his tran­si­ent and inter­me­di­ary qual­it­ies between heav­ens and earth, that is, between the vis­ible world and the world unseen, between the world above and the one below, between yes­ter­day and today – forever short of the future that wants to deceive us in believ­ing in mere pro­gress. The Angelus novus by Aris Kala­izis refers towards the found­a­tion of that which makes up our world. Fol­low­ing this train of thought, the Jew­ish Philo­soph­er Ger­shom Scholem, one of Wal­ter Benjamin's friends, could inter­pret the Angelus Novus as a mes­sen­ger of the Kabala, the rev­el­a­tion of the equi­val­ent ana­logy of the above and the below.

View­ing the »Wun­derbar« as Reality

The large-scale paint­ing »Die Stunde der Entwelt­lichung« (2012) cites a word used by Pope Bene­dict XVI in his fam­ous lec­ture giv­en in Freiburg when he vis­ited Ger­many in 2011. The Ger­man word »Entwelt­lichung« means some­thing like de-sec­u­lar­ize or de-world­ful­ness. Its usage caused an out­cry, because it was under­stood as a mes­sage to the church and its rep­res­ent­at­ives to refrain from sec­u­lar struc­tures and options and instead to turn towards more spir­itu­al mat­ters. Accord­ing to that read­ing of the whole issue, it was about an oppos­i­tion of sec­u­lar and sac­red realms, between the spir­itu­al life of church and the sec­u­lar life in the world.

Draw­ing on Klee's title »Vor­führung eines Wun­ders«, we might also use the title for this paint­ing. Aris Kala­izis depicts a bar room scene some­where in the red light milieu that bears a sig­ni­fy­ing sequence neon let­ters in cerulean blue: »Wun­derbar«. This ref­er­ence is indeed ambigu­ous. The »Wun­der« or mir­acle, as the pro­verb goes, is faith's dearest child. And the bar, on the oth­er hand, is the quint­essence of sec­u­lar life: alco­hol, debauch­ery, leis­ure time, self-centered­ness, the world's van­ity. The bar is, of course, also a place of yearn­ing, a space bey­ond or out­side every­day ordin­ary life, and without its commitments.

Two men are stand­ing at the bar. The hour is prob­ably an early hour in the morn­ing. The day is break­ing. The bar­tender wear­ing a white shirt has already cleaned off the sur­face of the bar. The morn­ing news­pa­per is already lying on its top. Is there the sil­hou­ette of a cler­ic on the front page of that news­pa­per? A first or final glass of water has been poured for one of the guests. Opposite

the bar­tender there is the fig­ure of a strange or mira­cu­lous guest, with long hair under his hat. He some­how seems to be removed from the peri­od implied in the pic­ture. He is wear­ing his­tor­ic­al gar­ments. His right hand is lean­ing on the bar, his left hand his press­ing the head down onto the bar. Above him, a woman's body is float­ing without some­thing that the painted wanted to be cut away – her head.

When look­ing at this pic­ture, the behold­er also will go away with a sense of an irrit­a­tion. It is really »The Hour of Dis­em­bod­i­ment« or in the Ger­man »Stunde der Entwelt­lichung«, the hour that is bey­ond or tran­scends the ordin­ary order of being. It is the hour of won­ders that the artist brings before our eyes. It is not clear if the oth­er two fig­ures in the paint­ing are actu­ally real­iz­ing the mir­acle hap­pen­ing in front of them. But it is also not cer­tain if the body float­ing out of the frame belongs to the head that is being pressed onto the bar. Many ques­tions remain unanswered.

A lot of things stay in the open, des­pite the painter's mas­terly clar­ity that marks the paint­ings by Aris Kala­izis. The real­ity of these paint­ings is a real­ity that is left open. It can­not be pinned down or fix­ated, but is a real­ity into which »the splin­ters of the mes­si­an­ic have been strewn about«. What Wal­ter Ben­jamin is say­ing with respect to his­tory, Aris Kala­izis asserts in his paint­ings. He paints pic­tures bey­ond and out­side the homo­gen­ous and empty imagery of his con­tem­por­ar­ies. In every second – or apply­ing Ben­jamin to this con­text: – in every square cen­ti­meter of his can­vas there is »the little gate through which the Mes­si­ah may enter«. In that sense, his paint­ings are search­ing and quest­ing mes­si­an­ic paint­ings, as Pius Siller said in anoth­er con­text. That is, they have mean­ing and refer to field of mean­ing bey­ond the ordin­ary con­struct­iv­ist tend­en­cies of our think­ing. He leaves real­ity open, so that altern­at­ives may appear therein and wide fields of mean­ing, if we notice them or not. Airs Kala­izis fore­goes the con­struc­tion of real­ity as some­thing already in def­in­ite exist­ence. It makes me think of what the philo­soph­er Markus Gab­ri­el said: »I claim that exist­ence isn’t the qual­ity of objects in the world or with­in fields of mean­ing, but that the qual­ity of fields of mean­ing is that some­thing may emerge with­in them and through them.«[2] I call the abil­ity to let mean­ing emer­gence mes­si­an­ic, and it is exactly what one may wit­ness in the visu­al cos­moses depic­ted by Aris Kalaizis.

Prof. Dr. August Heuser was born in 1949 and is the dir­ect­or of the Dom­mu­seum in Frank­furt am Main as well as the Museum of the Dio­cese Limburg. He has widely pub­lished on con­tem­por­ary art and lives in Frankfurt/​Main.

1 Aris Kala­izis: „Rub­ba­cord“, Biele­feld 2006.
2 Markus Gab­ri­el: „War­um es die Welt nicht gibt“, Ber­lin 2013.