Daniel Maidman's Meiosis #1: Her Snail Familiar
by Claudia Avila
In the Symbol and Aesthetics Exploration Series, we venture beyond the initial delight of an artwork in an attempt to explore some of the possible meanings the artist’s choice of imagery can inspire in the imagination of the viewer. Each artist’s decision in technique and execution invites us into the work. It is where the artist’s intention, or the arrangement of internal and external percepts, meet the spectator’s contemplation. In this shared space we reunite with and discover meaning. This season, Symbol and Aesthetics highlights Daniel Maidman’s Meiosis #1: Her Snail Familiar.
It is under a selenic glow and waves of indigo sky when we first catch sight of them. In a graceful stride, the female protagonist moves within the immediate space of the foreground accompanied by her snail familiar. She is animated, aware, and her being radiates a receptive sensuality. In her proximity to us, the alluring corporality of her presence accentuates our anticipation of the body's forthcoming movements. But as we familiarize ourselves with her, she begins to appear as if moving swiftly and to be suspended in her grace simultaneously. In the end, we should perhaps concede that she exists in her own time. Though we have yet to meet her gaze she is completely aware of us. Perhaps she is suddenly compelled to survey her environment, and we are left to wonder what phenomenon has caught her attention. Did she accidentally happen upon us during one of her routine nocturnal travels? And does she gesture us not to betray her presence? To whom? In Maidman’s painting, ambiguity and suggestiveness, as an artistic device for engagement, is used to great effect in evoking personalized meaning in the viewer. Examples of the aesthetic value of ambiguity and suggestiveness in the history of art may be found in Japanese tanka poems or in the allegorical paintings of Vermeer, spurring the imagination on to create new experiences of meaning. In such works, multiplicities of meaning engendered in the mind of the viewer can co-exist with the artist’s original intent.
Her beauty is captivating but Maidman has counterbalanced this by leading our eye to the surrounding elements of the painting. Her right arm leads us back into space where we naturally follow the outline of the snail’s eye stalks and move into the swoop of the mollusc body behind her. The curve of her extended thigh moves through the figure out to the curvilinear lunar light above the trees. The diagonal of her left leg, in its upward thrust, directs our gaze to a finger pressed gently against her lips. We return to the question of whether this gesture communicates secrecy or something else. Looking for examples in Western art, this gesture can be identified as early as in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for child and in the depiction of the child god Harpocrates. In that usage, the gesture alludes to youth and innocence, referring to the common tendency among children to suck their thumb. The gesture was later interpreted by the ancient Greeks to mean a vow of silence within the context of their mystery cults. In a similar gesture, the association with secrecy and mystery is evoked as late as the nineteenth century in Le Sphinx Mystérieux by Charles Van der Stappen. Other instances displaying a gentle finger against lips express a need for quiet out of consideration for a nearby sleeping child, as in Annibale Carracci’s 'Il Silenzio. Though reminiscent of these predecessors, when we encounter it here in Maidman’s painting, it assumes another role. Her signaling gesture is not one of esoteric silence but rather of a summoning towards a gestational meaning; a meaning that is being made as we soften the noise of our mind, permitting our intuitive voice to wax into prominence. It becomes a culmination point within a process to which the the symbols of the spiral formation of the shell and phase of moon allude, i.e., cyclical progressions.
She reaches out with one hand to accept the proffered eye stalk of her familiar; this union begins the exchange between feeling through sight and sight through feeling. Perhaps the snail familiar symbolizes a level of supersensitivity which requires both the shelter provided by its shell and the protection of its female companion. There is an aura of vulnerability attached to the snail which isn’t present in the woman; though alluring in her receptivity, there is no weakness, she is unassailable. It might be possible to attribute this impression of vulnerability to the snail existing in ordinary time. As we observed earlier, the woman appears to exist in her own time, akin to what Mircea Eliade termed “mythical time”; unaffected by decay. She is a symbol of raw force which her snail familiar grounds and steadies. In its ability to transform organic material into other substances, the snail transforms what she transmits into the essential constituents needed for increasing the fertility of the sublunary world. The soil we glimpse beneath their feet is dark and rich, awaiting new cultivation.
Night cannot diminish the verdancy of the plants when they partake in the glow of the full moon, to which the lush trees in the painting would testify. Meiosis #1 ventures into the quintessence of fertility. However, fertility requires the transformative and concretizing abilities symbolized by the snail to help guide the manifestation of creative ideas. The tendrils of lunar light ripple out from dividing and gilded rings of nocturnal sky. We are experiencing the propagation of the creative idea into an independent entity which occurs by way of the serendipitous union between feminine strength, transformative capacity, and intuition. From this fluency of feeling creative ideas begin to take root in the sublunary world and flourish.
Meiosis #1: Her Snail Familiar is one painting in a comprehensive series which Daniel Maidman is preparing to unveil to the public. Until that time, Maidman has given us much to aesthetically appreciate, contemplate, and feel.
It is under a selenic glow and waves of indigo sky when we first catch sight of them. In a graceful stride, the female protagonist moves within the immediate space of the foreground accompanied by her snail familiar. She is animated, aware, and her being radiates a receptive sensuality. In her proximity to us, the alluring corporality of her presence accentuates our anticipation of the body's forthcoming movements. But as we familiarize ourselves with her, she begins to appear as if moving swiftly and to be suspended in her grace simultaneously. In the end, we should perhaps concede that she exists in her own time. Though we have yet to meet her gaze she is completely aware of us. Perhaps she is suddenly compelled to survey her environment, and we are left to wonder what phenomenon has caught her attention. Did she accidentally happen upon us during one of her routine nocturnal travels? And does she gesture us not to betray her presence? To whom? In Maidman’s painting, ambiguity and suggestiveness, as an artistic device for engagement, is used to great effect in evoking personalized meaning in the viewer. Examples of the aesthetic value of ambiguity and suggestiveness in the history of art may be found in Japanese tanka poems or in the allegorical paintings of Vermeer, spurring the imagination on to create new experiences of meaning. In such works, multiplicities of meaning engendered in the mind of the viewer can co-exist with the artist’s original intent.
Her beauty is captivating but Maidman has counterbalanced this by leading our eye to the surrounding elements of the painting. Her right arm leads us back into space where we naturally follow the outline of the snail’s eye stalks and move into the swoop of the mollusc body behind her. The curve of her extended thigh moves through the figure out to the curvilinear lunar light above the trees. The diagonal of her left leg, in its upward thrust, directs our gaze to a finger pressed gently against her lips. We return to the question of whether this gesture communicates secrecy or something else. Looking for examples in Western art, this gesture can be identified as early as in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for child and in the depiction of the child god Harpocrates. In that usage, the gesture alludes to youth and innocence, referring to the common tendency among children to suck their thumb. The gesture was later interpreted by the ancient Greeks to mean a vow of silence within the context of their mystery cults. In a similar gesture, the association with secrecy and mystery is evoked as late as the nineteenth century in Le Sphinx Mystérieux by Charles Van der Stappen. Other instances displaying a gentle finger against lips express a need for quiet out of consideration for a nearby sleeping child, as in Annibale Carracci’s 'Il Silenzio. Though reminiscent of these predecessors, when we encounter it here in Maidman’s painting, it assumes another role. Her signaling gesture is not one of esoteric silence but rather of a summoning towards a gestational meaning; a meaning that is being made as we soften the noise of our mind, permitting our intuitive voice to wax into prominence. It becomes a culmination point within a process to which the the symbols of the spiral formation of the shell and phase of moon allude, i.e., cyclical progressions.
She reaches out with one hand to accept the proffered eye stalk of her familiar; this union begins the exchange between feeling through sight and sight through feeling. Perhaps the snail familiar symbolizes a level of supersensitivity which requires both the shelter provided by its shell and the protection of its female companion. There is an aura of vulnerability attached to the snail which isn’t present in the woman; though alluring in her receptivity, there is no weakness, she is unassailable. It might be possible to attribute this impression of vulnerability to the snail existing in ordinary time. As we observed earlier, the woman appears to exist in her own time, akin to what Mircea Eliade termed “mythical time”; unaffected by decay. She is a symbol of raw force which her snail familiar grounds and steadies. In its ability to transform organic material into other substances, the snail transforms what she transmits into the essential constituents needed for increasing the fertility of the sublunary world. The soil we glimpse beneath their feet is dark and rich, awaiting new cultivation.
Night cannot diminish the verdancy of the plants when they partake in the glow of the full moon, to which the lush trees in the painting would testify. Meiosis #1 ventures into the quintessence of fertility. However, fertility requires the transformative and concretizing abilities symbolized by the snail to help guide the manifestation of creative ideas. The tendrils of lunar light ripple out from dividing and gilded rings of nocturnal sky. We are experiencing the propagation of the creative idea into an independent entity which occurs by way of the serendipitous union between feminine strength, transformative capacity, and intuition. From this fluency of feeling creative ideas begin to take root in the sublunary world and flourish.
Meiosis #1: Her Snail Familiar is one painting in a comprehensive series which Daniel Maidman is preparing to unveil to the public. Until that time, Maidman has given us much to aesthetically appreciate, contemplate, and feel.