Lila

by Daniel Mirante

Originally published in Art of Imagination ‘Inscape’ magazine

The name Ernst Fuchs has become celebrated as a seminal influence upon contemporary visionary art, having inspired such luminaries such as Brigid Marlin, HR Giger and Alex Grey.

Many design motifs in these and other contemporary artists’ work, such as transparent jewel-like forms, seraphic architectural curves, and halo-like light effects depicting spiritual energies, can be traced to Fuchs, whose art has passed through many phases, and through which he has comprehensively mined the secret history of mystical arts.

Fuchs is a mythical artist, belonging to another world-age. In this culture of distraction and dissipation, the sheer abundance, range and diversity of the Fuchs oeuvre – enough to fill a museum – seems miraculous.

And yet despite the intensity of peoples admiration (and possibly in equal measure, their dislike) of Fuchs art, he is virtually unknown in the contemporary art canon. Why such an artist, of such technical virtuosity and thematic intrigue, is virtually ignored outside of Vienna and the Internet, whilst Dali, Ernst, Giger and Alex Grey have found popular appeal, is an enigma.

My theory is this : Ernst Fuchs work has not found broad appeal because the religious, gnostic elements richly presented in his work are alienated from our current culture. Whist the new age can ‘read’ the psychedelic, eastern iconography of Alex Grey, or vicariously enjoy the biomechanical nightmares and fetishistic sexuality of HR Giger, Fuchs is more difficult to relate to. Fuchs explores the realms of Zoroastrian, Hebrew and Gnostic Christian revelation, which is still highly esoteric, and capable of stirring uncomfortable feelings.

The art of Fuchs forces an examination of the Western roots of spirituality, affirming revelatory spiritual power within Christianity. In the wake of Darwinism, and the world wars this has not been a popular position. And yet Fuchs himself had to work through the perplexities and obscurities, and the devestation of post-war Europe, to find the shining pearl hidden in the mire of matter. This spiritual journey is very much evident in the transformations of his subject matter across the development of his ouvre.

We will see upon examination that his work is a long climb out of nightmarish despair. His early picture cycle, Die Stadt (the City) depict cross sections of torturous, rent bodies in reductionistic, grid-locked environments. In his ‘Bikini Atoll’ series, created in 1947, with names like ‘The Threatened World Egg’, refer to atom bomb testing and the nightmare of nuclear holocaust. painted within an optimistic post-war climate, “aroused ill will… that this frightening, threatening style of painting was totally unnessesary”.

In 1948, the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism was founded, together with Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, Rudolph Hausner and Anton Lehmden. This period involves a quantum leap in Fuchs technique, under the influence of Albert Paris Gutersloh, who laid heavy emphasis on the technique of the Old Masters. The most bizzare images were created during this period, a mixture of liturgic and demonic imagery, cruxifiction scenes teeming with nazi’s and anti-Christ elements.

Fuchs then spent 12 years in Paris, living in impoverished conditions. During this time his art begins to incorporate alchemical elements, magical symbology, and new energies. The paintings begin to ‘light up’ from the inside. The artist turned to Catholism and the writings of Meister Eckhart, and began purifying himself spiritually. This involved a pilgrimage in 1957 to the Benedictine Monastery Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion where he made paintings on religious themes such as Moses and the Burning Bush, leading to a commission to paint three altar paintings on parchment, the cycle of the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary (1958-61), for the Rosenkranzkirche in Hetzendorf, Vienna. The paintings were unfortunately ill-received, the staid congregation unable to relate to the energies of the paintings.

Back in Paris he set himself the monumental task of ‘apprehending the gigantic forces that move the Cosmos’. By his own admission he consciously and intentionally evoked and channelled spirits into his work, which resulted in the glistening, crystalline Cherub cycle, which still has a contemporary feel. In my judgement the summit of his oeuvre were the incredible, graphite masterpieces ‘Job and the Judgement of Paris’, ‘The Triumph of Christ’ and ‘The Anti-Laokoon’. These works not only represent but testify to the triumph of Eternal Spirit transcending the realms of chaos and sin ; “Overcoming death by Prophesy” as Fuchs puts it.

In the depiction of mythic realities his work is eminently traditional to the highest degree, a form of traditionality that aims toward the roots of history itself, the verschollener Stil, ‘hidden prime of styles’ as he calls it, which occupies the rubric of timeless ’sacred’ or ‘holy’ art. Fuchs reports a vision of a vast angelic spirit gradually unfolding the book of art in which all the styles of art were revealed as their time came round. Each real style was revealed as being in its way sacred or holy.

In a sense, Ernst Fuchs, and artists working on similar currents, have been responsible for guarding the sacred flame through the dark night of materialism, so this flame could be passed onward for the preservation of the arts of the divine.

Links

www.ernstfuchs-zentrum.com/html/galde1eng.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Fuchs_(artist)
www.ernst-fuchs.at