Aging Art

In a fascinating discussion of Enrique Martinez Celaya’s painting Thing and Deception in his God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Cultural Exegesis) , Daniel Siedell quotes Martinez Celaya’s comments: “I chose a seemingly banal image, a chocolate bunny rabbit with all its reference to childhood, treat and wish. It is magnified until it is larger than a human and then it is broken, with visible seams. The rabbit by itself is both sentimental and resistant to sentimentality. The red veil makes it both safe and threatening. The veil is delicate but suggestive – maybe blood. The veil reveals and hides and sets up a metaphor for the real. It is from there that the title Thing and Deception comes from. The rabbit and the veil exist in the whiteness of the canvas. Shadows of buried images can be seen. It is painted with a special mixture of paints to give it a powdery consistency. Over the years it has developed cracks that I find wonderful, the fragility and ageing of the object directly interacts with the image and the suggestions of memory and mortality that are invoked by the covered rabbit.”

A bit later, Siedell quotes his discussion of his changing perceptions of the painting: “I have come to see it as a work about mortality. I originally thought it was more related to sentimentality and memory but now I see it as a work of passage. A work of premonition and finality.”

These observations are revealing in all sorts of ways: The fact that Martinez Celaya views his painting not as a fixed and finished object but almost as a living thing that acquires new features as it ages; the fact that, having produced the painting, he continues to interpret what he made and to change his opinion about his own art; the religious hints are provocative – chocolate bunny – perhaps an Easter bunny – broken to pieces and then reconstituted behind a blood-red veil, not to mention the Eucharistic overtones.