D.L.: I've heard that you came to surrealism through Bunuel, Deren, and Nadja. Are there other sources/inspirations you'd like to add?
G.L.: My first source of inspiration is the natural world; animals, particularly foxes, opossums, raccoons, birds and insects, cats; I owe the greatest debt to them because they've shown me so much; a certain keenness of perception, an ability to act spontaneously and appropriately to a given situation, an ability to remain hidden for personal protection. There is a great deal to be learned from studying other animals; Lao Tzu would say they are in perfect harmony.
As a child, I read the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and Lewis Carroll. I continue to read them to this day. Jack Zipes compiled a collection of Little Red Riding Hood stories called The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood with an excellent introduction tracing the history of the story. This book was an important source for the Red Riding Hood painting [What Path Are You Taking, The Path of Needles or the Path of Pins?] along with some of Zipes' other books that explore the subversive qualities of fairy tales. Angela Carter's work, particularly her collection of fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber, has been a great inspiration. In the story, "The Company of Wolves", all of the European anxiety toward sexuality, female curiosity, and the voraciousness of nature expressed in the traditional Red Riding Hood tale is turned on its head. The story becomes an animal bridegroom tale as Red Riding Hood becomes wolf-like and lies peacefully "between the paws of the tender wolf." The animal bridegroom tale is more common in the folklore of indigenous cultures, for example, it occurs frequently in Inuit folktales; there is no boundary between humans and other animals. In the Lakota language there is no separate word for animal; there are two-legged persons and four-legged persons.
Gershom Scholem's books, Kabbalah, and Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, were important sources for another subversive, mythic persona, Lilith. I would also mention W. Y. Evans-Wentz's The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.
Among poets, I would include Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Andre Breton, Robert Desnos, Philip Lamantia, and Julio Cortazar. Among writers, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser, Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter, and Shirley Jackson (especially, We Have Always Lived in the Castle). There is a Scottish writer that I love named Helen Adam, who wrote traditional Scottish ballads and short stories, full of strangeness, bizarre twists, and very black humor. Among painters I would mention Giovanni di Paolo, a fifteenth century Sienese painter, Hieronymous Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Piero di Cosimo, many Gothic and Indian painters, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Frida Kahlo, Julia Thecla, Paula Rego, Leonor Fini, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst,Victor Brauner, and Morris Hirschfield. There are many others.
As I said previously, seeing Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou and Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon was a powerful experience for me. I was about eighteen years old and a student at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. A literature teacher showed us the films in class. I had never seen anything like them before and I found them unnerving and very exciting. The dream-like irrationality that is communicated so beautifully in both films influenced my own interest in exploring narrative through painting. I love all sorts of films including those by Francois Truffaut, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock, and Nelly Kaplan's films, Nea and A Very Curious Girl. I also love Jacques Tourneur's Cat People.
What Path are You Taking, the Path of Needles or the Path of Pins?
1988, oil on masonite, 16" x 20"
D.L.: Jack Zipes has an essay on Red Riding Hood as a male creation in another book that I know of called Little Red Riding Hood: a Casebook (Edited by Alan Dundes), and yes, I can definitely see "The Company of Wolves" in that painting. Carter's work is very strong, and your piece certainly responds to her work with a vocabulary of its own.
G.L.: Yes, I have read the Alan Dundes book as well. Both this book and the Jack Zipes book (Trials and Tribulations...) also discuss another version of the tale that provided the title for my painting in which the werewolf cryptically asks Red Riding Hood which path she will take, the path of needles or the path of pins. This version was recorded by Paul Delarue in Nievres, France around 1885 and is called "The Story of Grandmother." It is more chillingly grisly and sexual than most versions; after killing the grandmother, the wolf puts some of her flesh on the shelf along with a bottle of her blood, and has Red Riding Hood unwittingly eat and drink them when she arrives. The Angela Carter version seems to me a commentary on the European view of nature and the wolf in particular as "carnivore incarnate." I think my painting takes a different view of the wolf; he is more princely, deified almost, and fused with the forest. The entire image of the painting was inspired by a conversation Hal and I had about Little Red Riding Hood while walking through the woods in the Porcupine Mountains. The lushness, quality of light and profusion of foliage and lichens made it obvious why Red Riding Hood had to stray from the path.
D.L.: I was excited to hear you mention Cat People. I have a passion for 40s film noir & horror, and some of the scenes in Lewton/Tourneur's Cat People are indelible. Do you know their I Walked with a Zombie? Incredible...but Cat People actually relates quite closely to your comments above on the "European anxiety over female sexuality": as Irena's sexual desires get closer to the surface, her panther persona becomes more and more urgent. The film's dominant ideology is anthropocentric (with its talk of "atavism" and "regression", as if two-legged hairless animals are higher on the evolutionary scale), but is ambiguous enough to allow more "against-the-grain" readings--as a spectator, I'm thrilled to see Irena become a panther and maul people. Irena is cast as a "primitive" throwback, but I see her as a "return of the repressed" in some ways.
What I am finding so interesting in your work is a refusal to privilege human beings (as in Habitation), asking the viewer to imagine a "copernican" change in the world where life no longer revolves around the needs and demands of people exclusively, just as Copernicus asked folks to imagine a universe where the earth orbited the sun and not the other way around. Do you think that you are elevating the natural over the cultural, or subsuming the cultural so that we notice the natural.
G.L.: First I'd like to make a few more remarks about Cat People, which is an extraordinary film. The tension created by Irena struggling with her hidden self is tremendous; all of the social restraints, even her own sense of shame, aren't strong enough to contain it. There are also wonderful details in it that I remember; the close-up of the clawed "paw" of the bathtub that she is bathing in, or the footprints disappearing under the bush that change from the prints of a woman's high heels to a cat's paws. I Walked with a Zombie is also a beautifully made film. Tourneur had a sincere interest in the supernatural which is evident in both films. There is a psychological searching in the films and a struggle with, and an acknowledgement of, forces beyond the rational or socially acceptable.
In answer to your question regarding nature vs. culture, I believe that the natural must be elevated above the cultural. Life is the first priority, life being every individual being's most valued possession. Without nature, without life, there is no culture. Culture is part of every being's life. I don't feel that humans have a monopoly on culture, culture is socially transmitted behavior, and other animals have it as well. But, unfortunately, humans often behave as if any whim of theirs should take precedence over concern for another being, even that being's life. So, for example, having a lawn with no dandelions and no clover becomes more important than the lives of insects, birds, and other animals. This is an example of a strange strain of human culture, but a widespread one, a death culture sustained by social pressures to conform. There are, however, life-sustaining cultures, and we are fortunate enough to have the freedom to choose whether we want to be disciples of life or disciples of death. I try to use painting to serve nature, to communicate ideas about it, our relationship to it, its beauty and complexity. What attracts me to folklore and fairy tales is that these are examples of life-sustaining cultures, poetic ruminations on the relationships between human beings and the natural world that are mutable and receptive to reinterpretation and revision. When, for example, we look at the story of Red Riding Hood, there are many different versions, it has obviously been used to serve many different agendas. But, for me, even as a child, the warning not to stray from the path never stuck with me. What impressed me was a little girl in a forest alone, having a tremendous, magical adventure, a numinous experience. She is confronting a power in the forest, and realizing that there is a power within herself. We can take this tale now, and say, no, the woodcutter will not step in and kill the wolf, rather, Red Riding Hood will befriend the wolf, realize she and the wolf are of the same nature, and both will benefit from the alliance. Culture can be more than entertainment, it can be an invocation of a liberated, non-exploitative world.
D.L.: What are the sources/inspiration that you look to in order to ground your own notions of a "surrealist ecology?"
G.L.: I would say that John Muir's writings are particularly dear to my heart. Also, Thoreau's essay, "On Walking." More recently a collection of theoretical writing called Animals and Women, edited by Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan has been very important to me. I recently attended a series of interesting lectures at the University of Wisconsin, called Representing Animals, and was fortunate enough to hear both Karen J. Warren, an eco-feminist writer, and Jane Goodall speak. I agree with the eco-feminist position that there are important connections between the exploitation of women, people of color, the underclass, and children, and the exploitation of other animals and wilderness. In his first manifesto of surrealism, Breton said that, through the pursuit of what is imagined to be "worthwhile" the average person reduces the dream to "a mere parenthesis, as is the night." I would add that in the pursuit of the "worthwhile", that is shopping malls, suburban sprawl, and idle entertainment, other animals and wilderness have also been reduced to a parenthesis, even worse, to a commodity and spectacle to be gawked at, used, and disposed of. As I suggest in "Imagination and Wilderness", this myopic, consumer attitude toward the world, not only destroys wilderness and wildlife, but has had equally devastating effects on the physical health of the human race as well as on the health of human intelligence and imagination. We can't continue to separate ourselves from the rest of the world and expect to thrive and prosper.
D.L.: Actually, I originally was going to ask you about some of the things that Adams brings up in her intro to the collection, specifically her linkage of feminism and anti-racism with animal rights. What do you believe is an effective means for calling attention to these patterns of exploitation and captivity? Do you think that surrealism has a revolutionary potential for focusing attention in this direction? How?
G.L.: I think surrealism has focused attention in this direction and can continue to do so, in its own particular voice which has always been theoretical, poetic, and visionary. It is unique in that it explores possibilities of revolt in both our inner and outer worlds. For example, very diverse avenues of experience such as public action, poetry, the erotic, and the subconscious can be synthesized into more complex forms of subversion. This avoidance of simplistic solutions puts surrealism inherently at the fringes of public awareness, a position that is simultaneously limiting and liberating. But we should not be daunted by how much or how little weight we imagine our own voice carries. There are many others who have advocated for other species in very individual and remarkable ways. The woman in California, Julia "Butterfly" Hill, who lived in the redwood tree which she called "Luna" for two years to protest the cutting of old growth forests is a good example.
I also think of the book, Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell, that moved me so much as a child. I'm quite sure that this book was critical in forming some of my own feelings towards animals at a very early age. This "autobiography of a horse" was written over a hundred years ago and initiated laws to protect horses from cruel treatment and abuse, as well as influencing countless children throughout the years.
We can use the model of civil rights and feminism to see that it was not long ago that blacks and women were viewed as sub-human, as not possessing souls, so therefore, the idea that they should be given the same rights as white men was seen as a bizarre and extremist notion. These are extremely difficult victories to win and although women and blacks have come a long way in this country in the last hundred years, racism and sexism still run rampant in this culture and throughout the world. The additional problem for non-human animals is that they can't speak for themselves; they can only express their hatred for their cages and their confinement. Ultimately humans are the more powerful species, and non-human animals depend on us for help. This puts them at a terrible disadvantage, because we are an exceedingly arrogant, selfish, and myopic species.
Habitation, 1998, oil on masonite, 18" x 24"
D.L.: I look at 1987's The Path of Needles or the Path of Pins and think of illustrated alchemy texts of the early modern era (and Angela Carter as well!). Your entry in last year's Wisconsin Triennial [Habitation] reminded me of scores of "Tree of Life" diagrams I"ve seen in gnostic, kabbalistic, and alchemical treatises. Are you a student of hermetic "natural philosophy?" If so, can you say a few words on its appeal for you?
G.L.: Yes, I have been interested in hermetic philosophy for a long time, so it's very much ingrained in my psyche and how I view the world. I particularly like Marsilio Ficino's ideas of magically linking the properties of celestial beings or planetary influences with various herbs, stones, trees, and aromatics. It is a way of imaginatively ordering the universe and has a poetic logic to it. There is little doubt that aromatics, colors, sounds, and plants have specific effects on the psyche and consequently on the physical body. Chinese and Tibetan medicine has retained some of these theories of linking the imagination, the mind and the body. I am also intrigued with Giordano Bruno's memory theater, the writings of Paracelsus, and the alchemical allegories, which I find incredibly beautiful. The recurrent image of the hermaphroditic figure, connects to Breton's writings of the reconciliation of opposites, and Lao Tzu's idea that, "when male and female combine, all things achieve harmony."
The tree painting (Habitation) that was in the Wisconsin Triennial was directly inspired by a tree outside our house which has, since it died, become a haven for woodpeckers, squirrels, insects and all sorts of arboreal creatures. I wanted to show a world completely devoid of human beings, nothing left but a bit of their junk, which the animals are now happily using for their own pleasure.
D.L.: This leads me to a question about wilderness and civilization. As I understand it, Breton was looking for the "supreme point" where things are no longer held in opposition. Should civilization be "reconciled" with wilderness-- humans "reconciled" with animals--or should wilderness eclipse civilization again? How much of it is harmony, and how much of it is repatriation?
G.L.: Regarding Breton's statement about the reconciliation of opposites, we have to recognize that humans are animals, we are not opposites, and we are mutually dependent on each other. This is very difficult for humans, because we tend to see "the Other" everywhere. Humans apply this bigotry to other humans; crossing the line to non-humans is particularly difficult. For wilderness to eclipse civilization again, it would take a plague to wipe out a large portion of humanity, a prospect too horrific to wish for. There have been awkward attempts by ambitious human beings to fix perceived imbalances in the natural world, and these methods are invariably too simplistic in contrast to nature's infinite complexity. These attempts may be called "repatriation." Examples such as genetic engineering, the shooting and poisoning of animals that have been judged over-populated, and the use of herbicides on invasive plants species are questionable practices whose full consequences we cannot foresee. A better strategy for the human race is to do less. Have fewer children, build fewer houses and strip malls, maybe burn a few down. It's essential to think of the future of other animals, who need wild, uncultivated spaces. To think like this we have to have empathy, a vitally important branch of intelligence, and humility.
D.L.: It's remarkable to see how deeply students are affected by your "Imagination and Wilderness" essay; They return to it in discussions of Surrealism's anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal politics and are quite passionate about it. What have been some of the reactions to this marvelous piece?
G.L.: I'm pleased that the essay has prompted discussion. After I wrote it I received many positive comments from individuals who felt a strong connection to the piece. I appreciate your very specific and interesting questions, and if my comments have prompted additional questions in your mind, don't hesitate to contact me.
All images copyright Gina Litherland.