There are times where a thing is revealed not by what it is but by what it is not. It is my assertion that Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy reveals itself in this way. The tragedy Nietzsche is exposing is that the two great forces and the corresponding perspectives represented by the Greek gods of Apollo and Dionysus shall never meet. Like the form of Greek play that Nietzsche is referencing, tragedy can manifest itself in other forms of art.  In the case of Kevin Mahoney’s latest body of work tragedy becomes apparent in the sensitive observational and conceptually based portraits of close friends and colleagues and manifests itself most strongly as a sense of yearning. Kevin Mahoney is a candidate for  the Flagler College BFA program for Fall of 2014.

 

 

In Nietzsche’s work titled The Birth of Tragedy Apollo is described as the god of light, appearances, boundaries and moderation. Nietzsche uses Schopenhauer’s notion of a man immersed in the veil of Maya or illusion to flesh out Apollo. Schopenhauer’s description of a sailor peacefully sitting in a rowboat buoyed by trust in the principium individuationis  promts Nietzsche to go on to state “we may even designate Apollo himself as the marvelous divine image of the principium individuationis, from whose gestures and gaze all the joy and wisdom of illusion, together with its beauty, speak to us.”  Mahoney’s work and his drawings in particular expresses the Apollonian qualities thoroughly in that they build substantial meaning through what they appear to represent. Mahoney’s drawings are strong representational attempts at capturing gesture, light and character in a very traditional manner of the sketch using charcoal and chalk with minimal indigenous color choices.  In fact it is in his color choices that Mahoney’s pieces start to depart with the Apollonian.  If Apollo represents the principal of the individual then the individual is dissolved in the substrate materials of Mahoney’s drawings and settings inherent in Mahoney’s video work make a clean break from the expected. Here the Dionysian dynamics come into play. Nietzsche ascribes “the essence of the Dionysian, which is presented to us most closely through the analogy to intoxication.”  Not only is Nietzsche speaking of the literal state of intoxication, but the intoxication of dissolve, the sensation of losing oneself in the crowd and recognizing a larger unity with ones fellow man.

For example, one of the subjects of Mahoney’s drawings is of a friend in the simple act of vacuuming a floor. For the drawing surface Mahoney has chosen to use an irregularly shaped selection of cardboard. By breaking with a traditional rectangle and suggesting the arbitrary, Mahoney is addressing the area surrounding his presented object. He has addressed the shared space. One could say that Mahoney has transcended the individual space and entered collective space.  This gesture could be a sign that the artist is sending an invitation.  Mahoney is asking the viewer to share his space.  Once intoxicated by this communal space we start to seek the limits of our boundaries.  As a viewer one of the first things we look for is the possibility of a narrative. In this case Mahoney has provided us with a figure. The figures gesture is subtle  and has its back to us as the viewer. The figure in this picture plane is performing a subtle act of cleaning that we can relate to that is all of us that have ever vacuumed a floor.  So now we have broken the boundaries between creator and viewer and we are in Mahoney’s drawing and we are finding common narrative with his subject matter. We are undeniably in the realm of the Dionysian but there is a missing element to my analysis. The element that is essential to gluing these two forces together. How do we adhere Mahoney’s work to the archetypical dynamic of these ancient forces.  How is this tragedy Nietzsche speaks of delivered.   I have shown Apollo in Mahoney’s choice of subject matter and build up of appearances through traditional material references. I have shown Dionysus in Mahoney’s insistent object-ness, his here and now-ness of chaos and boundless form.  But where lies the marriage. Where does the appearances meet  the forms. Where does the embedded idea of the work meet the actual thing that occupies the authentic moment?  That is just it. They don’t. There in lies the tragedy. Strengthening this argument for the “absence” in Mahoney’s work is a conceptual piece done entirely out of Xerox copies. The copies are of scanned photographs taken from the roof of a local parking garage. The photographs are purported to be long distance portraits of friends. Mahoney is making his work based in St. Augustine Florida. The first portrait is of a friend in Sweden. The other is of a friend in Tallahassee Florida. Mahoney is generating a collection of people separated by space so vast that their visage is reduced to a blurry horizon and then the moment of contact once more removed through a copier machine. This is classic star crossed lovers theatre.

 

 

What reverie would be complete without music ?  After all isn’t Dionysus the god of music as well as wine?  When asked what Mahoney’s personal reaction to his own piece was, he responded to the sense of implied rhythm in the action he was capturing. 

inally, as in Greek tragedy, for example, simultaneously an artist of intoxication and dreams.

The music of Apollo was Doric architecture expressed in sound, but only in intimate tones, characteristic of the cithara [a traditional stringed instrument]. The un-Apollonian character of Dionysian music keeps such an element of gentle caution at a distance, and with that turns music generally into emotionally disturbing tonal power, a unified stream of melody, and the totally incomparable world of harmony.

The act of vacuuming is immersive in ascetic solitude.  The ascetic restraint point is driven even further with the simplicity of Mahoney’s spare use of traditional materials of charcoal and gesso.  But before we pat ourselves on the god of light and life giving mediocrity’s back,  we must first address the other half to Nietzsche’s Tragic genesis,