| Artist: | Matta |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Inscape (Psychological Morphology) | |
| Date of Work: | 1939 | |
| Nationality: | Chilean | |
| Context: | Biomorphic Abstraction | |
| Movement: | Latin American Surrealism | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: replaces the natural landscape with the "Inscape," a psychological interior. He was interested in the idea of an "internal model": the unseen made visible in evocative, seemingly everchanging forms that are visual analogies for the artist's psyche; poetic metaphors for the conscious and subconscious. The play of forces that compose us, decompose us, and continually recompose us is his theme. The biomorphic is evident here in these free form, organic shapes that invite the viewer to free associate. Space is convulsive and spasmodic rather than geometric or measured. Matta believed that "reality can only be represented in a state of perpetual transformation." Style: uses psychic automatism, in which the subconscious dictates the forms through an undirected play of thought. What evolves in the process is what Matta called "Psychological Morphology": abstract imagery in a state of continuous evolution and metamorphosis. His liquidy colors look flamelike and illuminated from within, which only adds to the mystery. Matta makes use of biomorphism: organic, semi-abstract shapes derived from elemental sources in nature, such as clouds, water, eggs, rocks, plants, human bodies, and microscopic organisms. Biomorphism is the opposite of Mondrian's rigid, geometric abstraction (the grid). The biomorphic has a primordial resonance with all life forms; it implies vitality, growth, and transformation. Matta draws from dreams and the subconscious as sources for creativity. He works as spontaneously as possible. Context: Matta is a second-generation Surrealist (his key works date from c. 1940); living in New York from late 1939 to 1948, he bridged the gap between European Surrealists of the early thirties and American Abstract Expressionists of the later forties, who learned alot about psychic automatism and other surreal strategies through Matta. Born in Chile to a family with many European connections, Matta also bridges the Old World with a New World attitude. He held a strong, utopian belief in what he called "international humanism." Nationality, he insisted, has little to do with remaining physically in the country; he talked about what it was like to be an outsider "farawaying," something he himself experienced when he lived in Paris from 1935 to 1937. Turns against his early training as an architect to pursue a more poetically, emotive art that emphasizes intuitive experiences and associations. Matta helped make modernism more international by drawing from European Surrealism, but making out of it something all his own in an act of cultural self-definition; he, in turn, then influenced the post-war New York School of Abstract Expressionism, making modernism truly an international exchange. | ||
