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Critical Essay
Madness and Reason: Lita Cabellut's Quest and Vision
An interpretation of her “Interpretation of Don Quixote”
by Jerry Cullum, 2010
Lita Cabellut’s rise from Spanish street child of gypsy origins to internationally celebrated painter
gives her a unique perspective on Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the novel that might be termed Spain’s
anti-epic. For the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is at once a hero and a Pure Fool after the
manner of Parsifal, but with no Grail at the end of the quest, only rueful realization of his past
madness and where it has led him.
Those who, like Cabellut, have been all too familiar with the street will recognize the longsuffering
quality of the figure of Sancho Panza, declared a knight’s companion and dragged along on his
master’s errantry. And every woman will recognize the condition of Dulcinea, elevated to Lady Fair
whether she wishes to be or not and thus likewise swept into the dream of Don Quixote to restore an
age that has passed, or to make an age come into being that never existed outside of literature.
The heroic combination of monumental painting and psychological insight in Cabellut’s “Madness &
Reason: An Interpretation of Don Quixote” might itself be thought to be a quixotic venture by
contemporary skeptics. There are those who say that the time has passed when painting could
contain such possibilities; thus it requires a venture of major proportions like Cabellut’s to challenge
such assumptions.
Defying the ingrained expectations of contemporary theory, Cabellut’s heroic enterprise of
interpretation succeeds spectacularly. Representational painting is here restored to something like
its full possibility of psychologically communicative glory.
In order to comprehend the nature of that success, it might be useful to recall the nature of Cabellut’s
efforts to transmit emotional and intellectual inwardness through the medium of paint. She has said
in the past that “When I finish a painting and I sit down alone to re-examine and rediscover what has
come out of my soul, I always read in the canvas, through the eyes, the mouth, the gestures, the
colors, the lines fighting or kissing, a poem." She has also emphasized the importance of her
innovative surface textures as well as her brushwork and her palette: “The technique that I have
developed over the years through much caution, investigation and help from various chemical
laboratories has been based on my obsession to give a skin to my characters…. The human
condition can be read in the color and structure of the skin. Emotions come out through our pores.”
All of these past strategies and inward concerns converge and are deployed with stunning acuity
in these “Madness & Reason” paintings defining the characters of Sancho Panza, Don Quixote, and
Dulcinea.
Various sequences of portraiture define the trajectories of the trio. Since Cabellut uses both surface
texture and expressionistic brush strokes to convey emotional conditions, my brief survey considers
both formal concerns and content.
It might be best to begin with the stunning, immense portrait Sancho Panza XII. The canvas itself is
set with deep creases that are matched by the broad strokes and swathes of paint that define the
craggy face and suggest his condition as patient companion to the erratic knight-errant Quixote.
Various sequences of portraiture define the trajectories of the trio. Since Cabellut uses both surface
texture and expressionistic brush strokes to convey emotional conditions, my brief survey considers
both formal concerns and content.
It might be best to begin with the stunning, immense portrait Sancho Panza XII. The canvas itself
is set with deep creases that are matched by the broad strokes and swathes of paint that define the
craggy face and suggest his condition as patient companion to the erratic knight-errant Quixote.
Sancho Panza XVII, quite different in palette and emotional tone, is resigned but reflective, in sharp
contrast to the self-evident misery conveyed in the twelfth painting in the series. The lyrical paint
handling conveys as much as the headgear does that this is the heroic Sancho Panza as Don
Quixote perceives him, but also perhaps as Sancho Panza really is…for the illusions in the story are
also, at some depth, unperceived realities even when fated never to come to fruition.
Don Quixote II is splendidly rendered as the would-be chivalric knight in his first flush of determined
glory—a self-perception that will be echoed more subtly and with greater complexity in subsequent paintings.
Don Quixote VII, distinct from the other paintings from the series on display at Bill Lowe Gallery,
appears to be Quixote as he is and as he sees himself at the same time—clearly a hero clad for
struggle, yet rendered with a relative lack of expressionistic brushwork, presenting the hands as
well as the facial expression, and thus introducing a mood of realism that will transform back into
interior consequences in later paintings.
Don Quixote VIII returns us to a tightly composed image of the face of a fearlessly gazing knight
whose lips are compressed in determination. The surface is unflawed, perhaps further suggesting
that this represents the purity of his self-perception.
The masterfully monumental portrait head of Don Quixote X is more like Shakespeare’s King Lear
than like the confident knight Quixote set out to be at the quest’s beginning. The surface texture
remains coherent, but the brushstrokes with which the hair and beard are rendered are utterly
chaotic, transmitting the emotional content via the paint itself.
However revelatory the sequences of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote may be, it is the Dulcinea
paintings that are the deepest works of “Madness & Reason.” Perhaps the greatest of them is the
monumental idealized Dulcinea XII, in which the gentle lineaments are disturbed only by the gridwork
of tiny pores that characterize Cabellut’s involved use of surface texture.
In other sequences of smaller works, she appears to be, at different moments, skeptical (Dulcinea
Composición 1 & 2), downcast (Dulcinea Composición 3 & 4), and somewhere between meditative,
downcast, and dubious (Dulcinea Composición 6). As if to reflect her uncertain emotional state, all
these works are rendered in a predominantly dark palette.
When seen as Don Quixote’s sees her, Dulcinea is intrinsically placid. Yet even the astonishing
Dulcinea IX, with its idealized Vermeer-like pose and tranquilly positive palette, contains a seemingly
anomalous smear of red at the chin, as though the outward sign of an inner injury appears even
through the gauzy textures of Don Quixote’s dream vision of her. (“Sentiments form scars,” Cabellut
notes in the interview in which she describes how emotion flows out through the pores.)
In Dulcinea XIV, the red streaks have come to dominate the portrait, and the disturbed expression
suggests that the world as perceived by her has begun to become dominant, and ultimately to break
through the exquisite screen of chivalric vision pursued by Quixote.
Dulcinea XX is another dark painting, and perhaps the equivalent in its resigned realization to the
stormier self-discovery of Don Quixote X. Yet there are many other Dulcinea paintings here that
appear under slightly different titles from the primary sequence, and it is clear that Cabellut means for
Dulcinea to be a more complex figure than either the single-minded Quixote or his similarly
uncomplicated reluctant companion in deeds of chivalry.
The entire body of work might at first appear to follow the sad trajectory of Cervantes’ novel, as
illusion is replaced by insight earned through experience. However, the viewer’s simultaneous
perception of the sequence is quite different; the paintings evoke moments of elation followed by
contemplative reflection, and our own psychological journey through this remarkable imaginative
realm is likely to be far more joyous than the path trod by Cervantes’ characters. Cabellut’s version
of the tale leaves us purged by pity and terror as in a Greek tragedy, and we are emotionally and
existentially the better for having had the experience.
Critical Essay
Interview with Lita Cabellut from
Dubai newspaper AL EMARAT AL YOUM
by Ali Al-Ameri, 2010
1. It seems that childhood memories typically
accompany artists throughout their lives, and also interweave into
their work. What was your childhood like? What details do you
remember from that part of your life, can you give me details?
My childhood is the universal story of any child who lives in the
streets, anywhere in the world. It is difficult to describe now,
kilometers away, from my experience and with consciousness a
situation like that which affects children living on the street.
Despite being one of them, life erases and sweetens those childhood
memories that we strive to retain with false sentimentality. The
child on the street never worries about what he does not have, the
majority don’t even know what they are missing, nor do they miss
that which they could have had, and have the right to have. Their
entire bodies and beings are “today”, the coming few hours, the
present moment. But now, each detail that I could give you would be
based in the consciousness and morality of the Lita of the present.
I don’t trust my memories.
2. How have these memories influenced your
experience of being an artist?
Just as our bodies contain memories, and we are capable of reacting
physically to the memories stored in our bodies, the soul and the
mind also contain memories. A true artist has and should have the
necessity to use all of these stored experiences. In my case, my art
is a suitcase of latent sentiments.
3. Your artwork transmits to the viewer a
sentiment that makes us tremble because of its devastating beauty;
works that electrify the viewer upon contemplation and that make us
remember the lost happiness and love of tortured souls. What is it
that your art can contribute?
Solidarity, respect and compassion for the human being.
4. Do you think that it brings consolation to a
lost earthly paradise?
That is a very complex question, if we take for granted that the
human being is capable of understanding the large complexity of
paradise. I think that our intellectual capacity is not capable of
responding to this or to give a universal explanation.
5. In your paintings and sculptures there is a
tragic world. Where does this pain come from?
You call it pain, but it goes much further than pain. Pain is the
origin and the beginning of an entire branch, a whole extension of
feelings, fragility, loneliness, tenderness, incapacity, feeling
disconcerted, faith, and love. All of this is derived from and is a
consequence of the initial act, pain. Pain is intelligence and
wisdom, if it does not hurt us nor is important to us, there is no
difference between the human being and a lizard. Ethics should be
painful for us, if we want to call ourselves human beings.
6. Is there loneliness and cruelty?
Yes, in my sculptures and my paintings there is loneliness. My work
gives space to those people ]who have existed, who exist and are a
part of our human condition. It is about those who have no voice,
those who we don’t want to see, to whom we do not give a place, who
we do not want to recognize. I paint the creatures that travel by
night, the heroes of loss and chaos. The blind owls, I try to paint
them, give them a voice and visualize the always open wound that we
have as human beings.
7. It seems like your art concentrates on the
eternal expression of man and his psychological worlds, more than
the external worlds. Why have you chosen the human face as a means
to show all of these expressions?
I chose portraits because they are something inevitable. They are
mirrors, either whole or cracked.
I have portraits I have made in every corner
Mirrors that reflect impossible losses
You look like me.
And all of us like eachother.
The same profiles have fears
And the same eyes, that which we desire so much!
8. In your poetry, how do you see the relationship
between art and poetry? Above all I notice that poetry has
impregnated your art work.
Poetry is the song of the soul’s choirs.
When I finish a painting and I sit down alone to re-examine and
rediscover what has come out of my soul, I always read in the
canvas, through the eyes, the mouth, the gestures, the colors, the
lines fighting or kissing, a poem.
9. Is there a trace of the Arab culture in the
components of your personality, given that your art is filled with
intense emotion?
Arab traces? Of course, my nose, my dark eyes. I am a gypsy, in
Spain the gypsies are Arab descendents. My passion for music and
flamenco dancing…the birthmother of all of this is Arabian art. But
what I really want and desire deeply is to be a daughter and sister
of this marvelous planet earth.
10. I have observed that you paint in large
spaces, and it seems to me that you do so with all your body and
emotions. Is it possible that the spaces are so small that they are
not large enough to capture all your emotions?
A very good observation, on your part, but things are not as they
seem. The physical space where I paint is small, tiny. My studio is
enormous, but in this giant space I have made an island in the form
of a podium that forces me physically and psychologically to enter
into the canvas. Three steps backwards, and I fall off the podium.
One step forward and I enter into the world that is my canvas. I
paint with my body and all of my being. Yes, they are dances of
passion and very intense expeditions.
11. I have seen that you use a very special
technique to create your paintings, as well as the strokes you use
to paint; what can you tell us about your technique?
The technique that I have developed over the years through much
caution, investigation and help from various chemical laboratories
has been based on my obsession to give a skin to my characters.
Sentiments form scars. The human condition can be read in the color
and structure of the skin. Emotions come out through our pores. The
muscular activity in a scream or a smile is so fast, so rapid, that
our eyes cannot retain the thousands of lines that form the scream
or the kiss. My technique is a part of the mechanics of my work.
by Mauricio Cortez
"It is a great
pleasure to introduce the paintings of Lita Cabellut who I believe
is one of the most significant artist in an expressionist genre
today. Her art has given me much inspiration from the moment I
encountered it for the first time.
Lita Cabellut, an artist in the true sense of the word, possesses a
painterly method that is complex and intriguing. The content and
breadth of human emotion depicted in her work is exemplary. She is
able to take our most common feelings and transform them into a
remarkable picture of the human condition.
While listening to Lita Cabellut one discovers the depths of her
sensibility and her knowledge of history of western art, and with
those foundations she makes a melting in a very special way, and
results in an artist of the present who visualizes the human
spectrum and gives it a very particular meaning. As we observe
Lita's paintings, we start uncovering worlds that were not there
before; characters and very settle universes of color that did not
seem to be there in the beginning. They flow with life, and slowly
appear as far as our spirit let itself be guided by our sensorial
and intellectual compass.
I am glad to share her work in the context of this book along with
the essay realized by the art critic from New York, Robert Morgan.
In a time as uncertain and restless as today, it is enlightening to
find an artist as Lita Cabellut, who seems to comprehend the human
soul further that the mere and stamp it in to her canvases in
beautifully poetic language. Her paintings go beyond the ordinary
into the extraordinary. They reside in the realm of intimate
expression, beside the most prominent art of the past."
A Voyage Through the Eyes of the Figure: The Paintings of Lita
Cabellut
Robert C. Morgan (New York Art Critic)
"I am reminded of great poetry when I look at the paintings of Lita
Cabellut.
There is something ineffable about them. To view a painting by
Cabellut is to understand the course of figuration; that is, to
empathize with the manner in which the figure is drawn, to see
through the eyes of the artist into the eyes of the figure. This is
what great poetry does, and this is what great painting attempts to
portray. In the best sense, painting is concerned with the subtle
passages of time, the hidden interval. Painting is a voyage, a
happenstance disguised as certainty. It is viewed through the legacy
of forgotten histories, remote geographies, lost continents of
thought, and brilliant intuition. It is the power of mind and body
fused into an inseparable whole, an elasticity if self confronting
the necessary of its own figuration. This constitutes the vocabulary
of art, the specific language, that gives us the power to understand
who we are and how we live in the world.
This is the perennial challenge for the artist, to make this voyage,
to gain access to the language of art. It is a most personal affair,
a private journey.
To discover one's language as an artist requires a significant rite
of passage, a passage through the darkness where true insight
reside. To view the paintings of Lita Cabellut is an act of reliving
this experience. It is a journey through the darkness into light.
For each of her paintings is possessed by a specific light. Cabellut
understands this light. It is the kind of luminescence that one
finds in the great masters, the axis between the Spanish and the
Dutch Baroque painters of the 17th century. It is the light if the
late Rembrandt, the ambient stillness found in Velazquez, the
tortured silences found in Ribera, the passionate ecstasy found in
Murillo, the gentle pulsation of the light that transforms the
ordinary into the transcendent as found in Johannes Vermeer. For
Cabellut, the discovery of painterly light is not fixed; it is
persistent and temporally engaged with the surface. The consistency
if her canvases is about the oscillation between the temporal
process of her pictorial technique and the desire to secure that
process in time, to place the image within time, to give it the
sense of being natural, to project a mood that hovers between the
immanent and the transcendent. This is where I would locate the
painterly achievement of Lita Cabellut.
In this case, one cannot ignore the technique, because the way she
paints is also the way she thinks. To place an image within time is
not a fanciful gesture; the process involves a thorough formal
knowledge of painting, an awareness of the history of art, and a
motivation to go beyond the ordinary. Here is the paradox. For
Cabellut, the act of painting was about the ordinary - people she
would meet by chance. She had no preconceived idea as to whom she
would meet or how she would arrange a sitting. She allowed life to
intervene upon art and art to intervene within life; but the process
of this two-fold intervention was always shifting. Cabellut
understood early in that life influences art and art does the same
with life. Though separate, they are in a sense together, Art and
life play off one another.
But the technical apparatus is something she discovered through
great study, focus, and concentration. This happened at the Rietveld
Academy in Amsterdam in the early eighties. One can talk about
inspiration, of course, but the language is limited. The point is to
get at the practical aspect by which the signifying process of art
begins to take hold. For Cabellut it was not merely an act of
painting with oil on canvas. She wanted another kind if tactile
relationship to the surface, a manner that went beyond the banal
expectations of how to paint a picture. She wanted to fix the image
in time, to give her portraits the sense that these human beings
were living souls; she wanted to give evidence of these souls, to
give them light, to persuade us that they existed in time and that
she perceived them in a unique way.
The Italian technique of fresco bueno has a fascination for her, but
then so did the Baroque notion of the oil painting. How to find a
synthesis between the two? How to determine a new kind of process
that would be fitting to the subject matter? How to give the sense
of a glowing luminescence to these figures and portraits? And
finally, how to place them within time?
For Cabellut, it was not possible to separate the manner of the
technique from the emotional impact that she wanted to project
trough the content of her work. The form would follow in relation to
the process of how the paint would be applied. Not to force the
form, but to allow the form to emerge on its own through the process
of painting. Not to allow the form to become a predetermined entity,
but to allow it to flow with a certain grace, a surprising
evanescence that would go deeply within the interstices of her life
experience, This is what she wanted to achieve - going back to the
outset of her career when she first showed her work publicly in the
town of Masnou (outside Barcelona) at age sixteen. Already she felt
a connection with the classical painters of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
Cabellut has lived in the Netherlands for over twenty years, yet she
is fully cognizant of her inner-sensorial relationship to Catalan
and Spanish culture. She understands completely that the axis
between the Netherlands and Spain is not only a political one, but
also an aesthetic one. She chose to enter into this axis, to make a
profound connection through her painting. This required a special
sensibility, a way of dealing with paint that was not predictable,
but that could allow the figure to emerge in a way that was intimate
and expressive.
Her technique involved the layering of plastic over the painterly
ground. She gradually began to embed the viscous paint into the
plaster by working with dry pigments and medium, adding water to the
compound. This allowed a flowing sensation to occur whereby a relief
effect began to emerge. The result was a rich, thickly endowed
pigment that spilled around the edges to give the canvas a highly
textured appearance. The excess water wan then removed from the
plastic. The eventual drying of the paint revealed a cracked surface
that occurred as a consequence of the plaster engaging with the oil
pigments. She employed a large brush with a special binding agent
that would adhere the cracked pigments into place, thus giving a
translucent luster to the raised area of paint. The precision of
this technique was as important to her as working with precious
alloys or with highly sensitive stoneware.
Cabellut is deeply in tune with her materials. She has been quoted
as saying on several occasions that her interaction with materials
is the essence of her craft. Her handling and manipulation of the
materials becomes essential each step of the way. She gives
fastidious care to each application while at the same time allowing
her work to move in a free form direction. The balance between
control and indeterminacy has become a factor that collectors
identify with her work. The formal and technical operations are
directed toward the content of the paintings - to give the utmost
sensation, though always with restraint, to achieve a sense of
immateriality about the portrait. Paradoxically, Cabellut uses
materiality to get at immateriality - which is another way of saying
that she goes for the transcendent perception through the immanence
that she endows to each painting.
Lita Cabellut is searching for subjects that have a special
character, that - in a sense - represent all of humanity. She wants
to delve into the soul of humanity, to represent all people as
having a common ground, to show that we are all somehow connected to
one another. Thus, we are seeing the figure through her eyes, but we
are also experiencing the figure's eyes regarding us. Through this
approach of seeing, we begin to come to terms with the power of a
figurative art that expresses more than the fashionable exterior and
gives us instead a view from the interior looking outwards. When we
look at the paintings of Lita Cabellut, we experience ourselves."
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