IRENE CAESAR'S ESSAY "WE ARE GODS" FOR HER JUBILEE SOLO SHOW AT SUDLAB, NAPLES, ITALY, MARCH, 2014
Irene Caesar in co-authorhsip with Alexander Melamid, "Alexander Melamid: Art for Rectal Use Only," 2011
WE ARE GODS
IRENE CAESAR'S ESSAY ON HER “ALEXANDER MELAMID: ART FOR RECTAL USE ONLY” FOR HER JUBILEE SOLO SHOW AT SUDLAB, NAPLES, ITALY, OCTOBER, 2013
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).
“I [God] said, you are gods and all of you sons of the Most High” (Psalm 82:6).
“Jesus answered them [Pharisees], ‘Is it not written in your law [Psalm 82], “I said, ‘You are gods’”?” (John 10:34-36).
“Precious and very great promises have been granted to us, that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature [θείας κoινωνoί φύσεως]” (2 Peter 1:4).
My portrait of Alexander Melamid "Art for Rectal Use Only" was done in co-authorship with Alex at his solo show “Art Healing Ministry” in SoHo in July 2011. The show sarcastically derided post-modernism for its lack of meaning and indifference to human suffering. The objective of the show was to oppose “bad” inhumane art to “good” humane art, which had power to heal human body and soul. For Melamid, “the good art” was pre-modernist and early modernist art. The space of the show was an “art pharmacy,” where public was offered to buy pieces of art to cure diseases, and a shaman’s clinic, where Alex Melamid was seeing “patients”, and giving them “art treatments”. He sold insoles with a portrait of Van Gogh for arthritis; water charged with Botticelli; and empty vials to charge pills with a piece of art reproduced on the vial. He offered skin treatments via projecting an art piece onto “patient’s” skin.
Melamid utilized even “bad art” for the sake of healing people. For his show, Alex purchased reproductions of Jackson Pollock, and decorated them with his inscription that Pollock's paintings help in the case of diarrhea, hinting that Pollok’s artworks remind of drippings caused by diarrhea. In the center of his “Art Healing Ministry,” in a glass case, Alex exhibited a large enema, connected to a cassette with a film. The enema had an inscription “For Rectal Use Only.” My portrait of Melamid depicts how he holds this enema with his left hand. With his right hand, Melamid holds its glass case, which I asked him to put on his head. The glass case looks like a helmet of an astronaut, or as a nimbus / halo (ἅλως) on a Byzantine icon.
Melamid is known to proclaim himself a God. Once I had lunch with Arthur Danto at his home. And he told me that he refused to write an essay about Melamid, because Melamid proclaimed himself a God. Before Melamid, Allen Ginsberg proclaimed himself a God. One of my professors at the graduate school described to me how in the 1960s, at the anti-Vietnam-War demonstration, Allen Ginsberg ran into him, and shouted into his ear, "I am a God. But do not worry, you are too!" After this incident with Danto, careful Melamid did not call himself a God at his show “Art Healing Ministry.” He was now only an Art Priest.
My portrait of Melamid radicalized the idea of the show by actually returning to Melamid’s earlier idea that he is a God. Like Melamid, and Grinberg, I also believe that I am a God. I support Melamid’s idea that any man is free to become an artist and heal people with art. But I do not support his idea of turning a sacred place into a supermarket. The allusion to the “sacred” supermarket, which it was impossible to shake off at his show, made me question Melamid’s art itself on whether he was truly compassionate to human suffering during his long art career, or whether he just remained at the level of conceptual derision. The portrait is ambivalent. It is absurd, for I applied to Melamid himself his own verification by derision. But it is compassionate, for I took time and effort to see Melamid as close as one sees one’s family member, and to see him as he is: an aging sickly man in needs of compassion so much that he despairs to go against the authority of Pollack on the charge of inhumanity. I brought Melamid’s pain out. When we were shooting the portrait, I asked Melamid to squeeze the enema really hard for every shot, so that he felt pain in his hand. This pain was reflected in his face.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” (John 14:12).
"The Word was made man in order that we might be made gods" (St Athanasius The Great / the Confessor / the Apostolic of Alexandria, “On the Incarnation of the Word of God”, Contra Arianos I, 16 (PG 26, col. 45A); III, 40 (409A); Epist.I ad Serap. 23 (585Β); 24 (585C); Vit. Ant. 74 (945C); Epist. ad Adelph.. 4 (1077A): Cf. A.L.).
“You have inherited the kingdom of God” (Hebrews 1:4).
“The fullness of him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:20-23).
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God…” (I John 3:2).
“That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).
“Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Galatians 4:7).
“Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out And Jesus said unto them: Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:14-21).
”If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).
“Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the Day of Judgment. For as He is, so are we, in this world” (John 4:17).
July 10, 2013