What Lies Beneath: Part Two

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I am the Bastard Angel and the Virgin Devil
I am Again and Then and Was and Ever
I am assembling and the wind is blowing
I am the tale telling itself again

― from Big Bang: The River Jordan by Jeffery Beam

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In the first part of my guest post on the forthcoming Dark Movements exhibition, I write about how I see the Horse as a totem for Clive, his guide to a place located beyond conscious thought. The artist describes his relationship with the Mari Lwyd, the skeletal horse of Welsh mumming tradition, using a quote from Picasso: ‘A form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange hostile world and us: a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors, as well as our desires.’

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The psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who was an artist himself, saw the creative process as having the potential to go beyond the individual into something deeper which reflects humankind. Although Jung acknowledged it was perfectly possible for art to be produced with its creator in conscious control, his fascination was for the artist who obeyed his impulses, as if possessed by an external force.  Montserat Prat, writing about The Mare’s Tale in the Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ monograph, published in 2011, describes how the final drawings in the series are imbued with a frenzy and intensity. These drawings were executed by Clive on his hands and knees, day in day out, over several months. His grief is palpable and raw. In the last drawing of the series, On the Mountain (2002), it as if the Mari, the artist and his father have become one, an embattled creature, weary and broken from a war that has been waged and lost. There are no victors here.

On the Mountain, 2002

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In 2013, The Mare’s Tale became a work for chamber orchestra and voice by composer Mark Bowden and librettist Damian Walford Davies, based on the Mari Lwyd series of drawings. Clive designed and directed the production. After a decade, the Mari of the artist’s imaginings had turned into an archetypal symbol from our ancient history, a Horse God galloping through time.

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The Bronze Age Uffington White Horse

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We are now fifteen years on from when Clive created the series of drawings, which became known as The Mare’s Tale, and Jordan Morley is the new player in the theatre of the artist’s soul.  The Quickening (2015) shows the dancer lost in a reverie, dreams flowing into him from his maker’s hand, which magically change the once spectral beast into a majestic flesh and blood animal, with flowers blooming in its belly. Jordan describes the experience of being painted by Clive as ‘a runaway dream that has a life of its own’.  The Muse and the Mari are merging to become the artist’s conduit, catalyst and spirit guide. All are transformed.

The Quickening, 2015

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The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semi-human, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, ‘divine’. ― C.G. Jung

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Carl Jung viewed the dreamscape as a place of the future, where transformation can happen and potential is explored and unleashed. There is a sense of optimism in this cycle of the Mari paintings, which would not have seemed possible at the time of The Mare’s Tale.  The evidence suggests that we are witnessing an artist creating a dream for the collective mind.

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Jeffery Beam, the American poet, has said he felt compelled to join Clive and Jordan in their Dark Movements quest, describing: ‘A Troubadour-like romance, and born of it our collaboration’.  In a recent post at the Artlog, Jeffery writes movingly of the collaboration: ‘I had been in a terrible Dark Night, unable to write much, fearing I was written out completely. As Jordan has become a muse for Clive, Clive has re-ignited the duende that has always been the source of my work.’  And so the poet is transformed too. There is magic at work here.

Yarden, 2015

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Your glove tells mysteries
Keep it there and my
Imaginations fill the Universe
Remove it every dream fulfills

from Glove by Jeffery Beam

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As regular Artloggers will know, Derek Jarman – the filmmaker, artist, author, gardener and gay rights activist – is a long time hero of Clive’s. The two men share a history common to gay men who grew up in a time before the legalisation of homosexuality.  They each went on to document their stories in a unique and deeply personal way, which ultimately speaks of universal truths. Both men found solace, meaning and inspiration in nature – Derek Jarman at Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, Clive at Tretower Castle and later at Ty Isaf, his home in Wales.

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Tretower Castle, 2004

 

Spring at Ty Isaf

Prospect Cottage, Dungeness

Jarman, whose work was influenced by Carl Jung, wrote of his hopes for the future of the gay community, shortly before his death from AIDS in February 1994: ‘I had to write of a sad time as a witness — not to cloud your smiles — please read the cares of the world that I have locked in these pages and after, put this book aside and love.  May you have a better future, love without a care, and remember we loved too.  As the shadows closed in, the stars came out. I am in love.’

Derek Jarman and Keith Collins, February 1994

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Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. ― Victor Hugo

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In the time that has elapsed, since The Mare’s Tale, is the nightmare slowly turning into a dream and ultimately an awakening for the artist? The gay community is equal before the law and an HIV diagnosis is no longer the death sentence it once was, at least in some in places in the world.  Man and horse are leading us beyond the battle ground to unexpected scenes of hope.

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Clive told me he was in an elegiac mood, as he prepared to meet the Mari once more, yet what is becoming increasingly evident is the thrum of a much-anticipated spring after a long, dark winter in the paintings he is currently creating. Healing, transformation and renewal are the themes that are coming to the fore.  In Flowering Skin (2015), the fear which once permeated the haunted landscape of the Mari Lwyd is gone. Instead, we see a horse Clive might have ridden as a child, descending towards a wild place that his father, a man of the Welsh Borders, might have recognised as home.  The flowers blooming across Jordan’s body are straight from the heart, an outward manifestation of enduring love; a sign of what remains after the grieving is over. The artist is kindling his own bright, burning light in the cosmic darkness.

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I had only to open my bedroom window, and blue air, love, and flowers entered… ― Marc Chagall

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One of Jung’s favourite quotes was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: ‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.’  I do know that Clive would consider himself a ‘poor sort’ of artist if he only chose to look to his past at this significant point in his career. Instead, the artist is boldly heading towards his future, whilst re-examining his own personal mythology and the history, writ loud in many gay men’s lives, which has led him to his hard won state of grace. I have a feeling both Dr Jung and Mr Jarman would approve.

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Flowering Skin, 2015

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Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart… Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. ― C.G. Jung

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Dark Movements, a multimedia exhibition charting the artist’s 15 year relationship with the Mari Lwyd, will be held at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre from 11 June – 25 July 2015. The Curious One is curating a board at Pinterest on the exhibition.

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