The
Rose Project
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
Shakespeare: Sonnets
In 1997,
a renowned Canadian Artist, Ms. Rae Johnson, curated a show called “Divine”
for the Propeller artists’ collective of which I was a member.
My triptych, “In the name of the Rose”, was inspired by
the movie of the same name based in an Umberto Ecco’s novel.
The plot of “In the name of the Rose” takes place in a monastery during the Middle Ages, where the monks study and copy manuscripts containing the knowledge of humanity. Only a selected group of them carry out the task, and in great secrecy.
The plot of my triptych takes place in my mind.
The Rose was and still is an important symbol for Christianity. The Celestial Roses of the Gothic cathedrals in France as important architectural components were conceived to relate the mysteries of the gospel. In the Dark Ages, Christian and Muslim mystics believed that God could be found within the petals of a rose.
It triggered a visual concept, which briefly explained, talked about the integrity of the mind and emotions, and put the Rose at the centre of the triptych, with the right and left portions of the work representing the two different lobes of the brain, or two different natures of knowledge: one, the rational one, and the other, an intuitive one. God within the petals of the rose in the central panel was a quest for wholeness, within my own capacity to make sense of the external and internal realities.
As I wrote at the time, the “triptych extended the labyrinth inside the rose to the modern technical world represented by the microchip architecture of the left side of it, and a maze of primal emotions on the right. This was intended to suggest an eternal dichotomy within humanity, and a continuous effort to unify opposites through God”.
The piece is a mixed media, which included oil painting and polyester resin textured surfaces. The dominant red was partly chosen due to the flower itself, and due to the texture, with which I wanted to resemble the colour of bricks as a fundamental and traditional construction element.
In Year 2000, I initiated a series of drawings and paintings on the same subject. This time there was a difference: I was reaching for a more dramatic form of expression, in which the rose was the theatre of expression and freedom. It was neither an intellectual abstraction nor an allegorical reference, but about the moments I spent living and working within the rose, the central piece of the earlier triptych. The titles in Spanish in rhyme refer to a sensual connotation, which sometimes I find absent in the English language.
© Alberto E. Martorana 1993-2006