Carnival— Now at Principle Gallery Alexandria
Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom. It has a universal spirit; it is a special condition of the entire world, of the world’s revival and renewal, in which all take part.
–Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (1965)
This is a new small painting, 4 by 6 inches on paper, that is now at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. It is included in the upcoming Small Works show, which opens next Saturday, December 2.
After I had finished this little guy, I struggled with its title a bit. It has a feel that can take you in a lot of different directions. I finally settled on highlighting the joy I saw in it, that feeling of simply celebrating one’s existence and unique place in the universe.
That brought me to Carnival.
Carnival is, as most of you know, the celebration of earthly pleasures that takes place before the abstention of such things during Lent. It is a time of revelry when social standing, profession, caste, age– any identifying title that separates us into narrower slices– is set aside. Masks and costumes are donned to maintain an anonymity that separates one’s regular life from one’s life in the Carnival. The unity of the crowd is part of Carnival.
We’ve applied the term Carnival to other non-religiously aligned celebrations. However, the traveling carnival with its midway filled with sideshows, games of chance, burlesque and plenty of food and drink is very much in the same spirit. One sheds their outside status once they enter the carnival grounds and they simply become part of the surging crowd.
I can see this applying to this painting. We stand on the mounds we build or find ourselves on. But there are moments of clarity and joy when we realize that, while we celebrate our individuality, we are forever an equal part of something far greater and more powerful than ourselves– a spiritual state of universality where all the titles, status, accumulated wealth and notoriety of this world are worthless.
I would like to think we need to maintain our individuality and uniqueness while still recognizing the meaning we find in shedding that identity to be part of the Carnival every so often.
That’s a lot of weight for a small and simple painting. But I think it can carry the weight.
Here’s a song from The Band, that seems to be ready-made for this painting. With lines like: We’re all in the same boat ready to float off the edge of the world, how can it not fit? Here’s their Life Is a Carnival.
Redtree Times 