JORGE MARTINEZ GARCIA - "Under the Volcano and Other Works"

On September 29, 2007, Craig Scott Gallery hosted a special kind of art exhibition opening that was intended to emphasize the creative connections possible in a cosmopolitan world of which Toronto is a microcosm. The exhibition opening was also a partner event during Toronto’s second Nuit Blanche (all-night, city-wide art celebration). Jorge Martínez’ “Under the Volcano and Other Works: Interpretaciones gráficas of the Literature of Malcolm Lowry” featured 29 new works, in progress since January 2006, that emerged from interpretive dialogues with, and drew inspiration from, all of the work of British/Canadian writer Malcolm Lowry.

Malcolm Lowry died in the summer of 1957, and, as such, the September 2007 event fell almost exactly on the 50th anniversary of his death. The year 2007 was also the 60th anniversary of the publication of Lowry’s best-known work, the masterpiece Under the Volcano. One hope for the exhibition was that it would assist in generating broader awareness and new consideration of the work and life of this writer. It was organized as a special event for the Latin American, and especially the sizeable Chilean and Mexican, communities in Toronto (Mexico because that is the setting for Lowry’s Under the Volcano), at the same time as celebrating Toronto as a global crossroads – as symbolically represented by a Chilean artist devoting two years to creating a body of work that interprets the writing of a British/Canadian author.

(Subsequently, works from the “Under the Volcano” show were part of two major 2009 celebrations on the centenary of Lowry’s 1909 birth in Liverpool, England. One event was a major scholarly conference at UBC and the second was a major multiple arts exhibition at Liverpool’s The Bluecoat gallery. Click HERE to go to the “Shows and Fairs” item detailing these two events.)

The present exhibition record includes the following sub-sections: (1) Brief biography of the artist and his connection to the work of Malcolm Lowry; (2) Further background on the impetus for the Under the Volcano exhibition; (3) The Centenary of Malcolm Lowry's Birth in 1909; (4) Catalogue Essay by James Gunn for 2007 "Under the Volcano and Other Works" Exhibition at Craig Scott Gallery; (5)text used for the above-mentioned UBC and Bluecoat events; and (6) July 2009 Essay (in Spanish) by Jorge Martínez on his print RUEDA. LEY. MÁQUINA. SISTEMA”.

1. Brief biography of the artist and his connection to the work of Malcolm Lowry

Neo-Baroque printmaker and painter, Jorge Martínez García, works from his home city of Valparaíso, Chile, where he is also Professor of Drawing and Painting at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Martínez was schooled as an artist in Ecuador from 1985 to 1991 where he also received his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador in Quito. Martínez has had 19 solo exhibitions in Chile, Ecuador, Germany, Argentina, and Canada and has participated in over 40 group shows around the world as well as numerous biennales and international cultural shows. His works are held by museums and major public collections in many countries, including Japan, Switzerland, England, the USA, Cuba, Brazil and France, as well in numerous private collections. The Bibliothèque nationale de France acquired five of his intaglio prints in 2005.

It was in Quito where Martínez first read Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Since that time, Martínez has read and re-read all of Lowry’s writings. Inspired by Lowry’s famous letter to his editor at Jonathan Cape, in which he opined there were at least five levels at which Under the Volcano could be read, Martínez’ artistic interactions with Lowry’s body of work have themselves been diverse and layered. Lowry has always been a point of reference for Martínez’ intaglio prints and paintings (even beyond those Martínez works that specifically interpret Lowry). For Martínez, Lowry has provided motivation for reflection on Latin American realities in terms of “our existence as culture and ‘cosmovision.’” Martínez believes that, along with B.Traven and D.H. Lawrence, Lowry is the best example of the outsider who is able to perceive other worlds with a universal sensibility that is at once perspicacious and profound.

In the works from the “Under the Volcano and Other Works” series, Martínez seeks to illuminate or, even more metaphorically, circumnavigate the “heraldic universe” (Lawrence Durrell) of Lowry, according to Martínez’ own life experience and his own existential reading of Lowry’s writings.

2. Further background on the impetus for the Under the Volcano exhibition

The idea for this exhibition – “Under the Volcano and Other Works” – was born in December 2005 when Craig Scott, director of the gallery, visited the artist in his studio in Valparaíso, Chile, to explore possible representation in North America. Both already knew that the gallery director and the artist shared an interest in the interaction of literature and the visual arts, with Martínez’ Cavafy series having already been completed.

At one point during the tour of the studio, Scott noticed a bookcase and, in particular, one shelf bowed with the weight of the books on it; on closer inspection, he saw that every one was an edition of a book by Malcolm Lowry. Lowry published short fiction and two novels during his own lifetime: his 20th Century classic novel, Under the Volcano (1947), which was written in a shack on the British Columbia coast; and Ultramarine (1933). After his death, a number of individuals collaborated over the years to pull together and edit various novel manuscripts left behind by Lowry, as well as compilations of poetry (edited by Earle Birney) and collections of his letters that in effect constitute important contributions to both travel literature and the memoir genre. Martínez has long been an avid reader and appreciator of Lowry, and must be one of a fairly select group of people who has read virtually all his work (with the vast majority of people knowing him only for Under the Volcano and perhaps also Ultramarine, with some also knowing he wrote poetry).

3. The Centenary of Malcolm Lowry's Birth in 1909

In 2009, approximately a dozen of the works from Martínez' "Under the Volcano and Other Works" Malcolm Lowry series are being displayed as part of a centenary art exhibition at The Bluecoat gallery/museum in Liverpool (Lowry's birthplace) from September to November, while a slideshow of all 29 works is part of the 2009 Malcolm Lowry Centenary Conference held at the University of British Columbia at the end of July in Vancouver.

4. Catalogue Essay by James Gunn for 2007 "Under the Volcano and Other Works" Exhibition at Craig Scott Gallery

The Art & Alchemy of Jorge Martínez García

by James Gunn*

The medium of printmaking can be considered a kind of alchemy in the figurative sense of the transmutation of the common (ink, resin, and other media on stone or metal or silk) into the precious (a work of art on paper). Various forms of printmaking, especially etching, involve a chemical process. After the altering of a metal plate with heat, needles, knives, and acid, layers of information are transferred from that template to a receptive paper surface. Alchemy was of course the practice of magicians – whether scientists (forerunners of modern chemists) wishing to accomplish the magical or charlatans wishing to make it seem that they had succeeded when they had not. Medieval alchemists maintained a special interest in the concept of transmutation, or the conversion of base metals into gold. Indeed, with the right combination of elements, they imagined that practically any substance on earth might be formed. Like the medieval alchemist, one aim of the contemporary printmaker is to use material transformations either to probe the nature of reality or produce a new reality, or both. For the most gifted artists, it is as if their art is the result of the marriage of science and of magic. Master printmaker Jorge Martínez García of Valparaíso, Chile, is just such an artist. A Martínez intaglio print emerges from a command performance from within an orchestra of etching and engraving techniques, fused, as with the great musicians, to a rare combination of feeling, vision, and harmony with the art form.

In his latest series of prints, Jorge Martínez García has selected writings by Malcolm Lowry as a source of inspiration, most notably the novel Under the Volcano(i) . In so doing, he has selected subject matter that resonates with his location as one of the great neo-Baroque (or, more particularly, New World Baroque) artists working today.

Under the Volcano is the story of British ex-Consul Geoffrey Firmin, a tortured alcoholic who is visited by his estranged wife and half-brother on November 2nd, 1938, the Day of the Dead. At one level a modern retelling of the Faust legend set in Mexico, Firmin looks for secret knowledge in a bottle of mescal, an allegorical substitute for soma, the elixir of the gods. The tragic dance between inebriated haze and insight born of mescal – as revealed in the novel by the stream of conscious lucidity it produces in Firmin – is a constant motif in the book, and fittingly appears in a number of the works Martínez has created for the “Under the Volcano and Other Works” exhibition at Craig Scott Gallery.

The entire novel is divided into twelve chapters, with each but the first representing an hour in the last day of the Consul. The circumstances of Chapter One occur one year later to the day, with this chapter serving as both the introduction and the epilogue. The twelve chapters also correspond to the twelve houses of the zodiac, which also manifests as the Ferris wheel located in the town of Quauhnahuac, under the volcano Popocatepetl, where Firmin lived. The first chapter ends with the “luminous wheel” revolving backwards, signalling the cyclical structure of the novel.

Malcolm Lowry endeavoured to recreate a 20th century Divine Comedy. The world and events in Under the Volcano represent Hell. It is a harrowing book, which demands that the reader surrender to its ritualistic language, its fragments of music from “daemonic orchestras,” swirling and hallucinatory conversations, and hints of a world at the brink of war. Mexico emerges as a “political microcosm.” (ii) According to Lowry in a preface to the novel, it is “the meeting place of many races…[,] the ideal setting for the struggle of a human being against the powers of darkness and light.”(iii) The perpetually drunken Consul becomes entangled in this scene of “political unrest, crowded with fascist secret police, communist martyrs and cloak and dagger melodrama.”(iv)

The Consul seeks solace from his painful past and the madness of his surroundings by distracting himself with arcane studies. In his pursuit of occult knowledge, Firmin walks the left-hand path to enlightenment, a dangerous path undertaken through acts of suffering, intoxication and communion with wicked spirits. He struggles in vain to complete his book on the “ultimate reality” including “chapters on the alchemists.” Firmin is a magician dabbling in the mystical teachings of the Cabbala (v). He constantly battles with his internal demons that drive him to drink. Under the Volcano is the story of the journey on which alcoholism leads him.

Lowry’s text is clearly related to Cabbalistic thought. Humans and their place in the universe are central to the text. What may be less immediately obvious to the casual reader is its connection to the Baroque. Recurring Baroque themes permeate the novel: mystical visions, the self-reflexive nature of consciousness, and the labyrinthine world. Furthermore, the novel’s Mexican settings and events draw the novel into the sphere of the New World Baroque. Sharing his thoughts on the Lowry series, Martínez notes that “it is very interesting what happens when one completely submerges oneself in a world like that of Malcolm Lowry and begins to settle on creative and visual ‘masters’ from that world.” Lowry’s own personal life folds into the Consul’s life, the real world collapsing into the world of fiction. Martínez’ life, in the 18 months in which his series has been feverishly underway, folds into Lowry’s, the world of literature collapsing into the world of art. “The folds of drapery are a kind of signature of the Baroque, considered a measure of technical virtuosity.” (vi)

Defined most straightforwardly, the occult is that which is hidden, whether from the eye or from the understanding. Artists conjure images from the internal world of their dreams and imaginations. Printmaking is perhaps singular as an art form in its relationship to the personal occult, in the ways in which form can gesture both to mental sources and to the process of their interpretation or revelation. Whether through acts of serendipity or through thoughtful planning, the printmaker can reveal hidden layers of images by the use of old plates. Examples of these acts are illustrated in Martínez’ earlier prints, such as Popol Vuh (also included in the exhibition for its thematic and formal connections to the Lowry works) and its predecessor, La Audiencia del Conquistador . These prints share more than just a parallel composition. La Audiencia del Conquistador is a ‘first state’ of a plate that was then worked on again to create a ‘second state’ new work called Popol Vuh. A man’s profile can be discerned beneath layers of delicate patterning. The spectre is the Conquistador, whose central ambition was to exalt himself and to dominate (for a variety of rationalized purposes). His arrival was prophesied in the Mayan sacred text, the Popol Vuh. He, like colonial structures resonating through time and manifesting themselves in present-day structures, is never too far below the surface.

Martínez explains that his recent series is not so much an attempt to illustrate the novel but more an interpretation of its themes, ambiance, and spirit. “In most cases, the work is not a question of ‘illustrations’ in the literal sense, but of ‘graphic interpretations,’ that is to say, of what Lowry’s work produces in my mind with the work as a stimulus or departure point.”

Take, for example, Martínez’ Wheel - Law - Machine – System . It depicts the wheel that symbolizes the zodiac as well as tying into the novel’s revolving Ferris wheel turning backwards to revisit the Consul’s cycle of suffering. Images of Eden and the scorpion are housed within the wheel. In an unmailed letter written to his wife Yvonne, Firmin pleads for her return, so that she may relieve him from his torment. But even as Firmin is granted this wish he squanders it. Despite Yvonne’s efforts to renew their love and help him complete his book, the Consul continually retreats to the comfort of the cantinas, sabotaging any hope for happiness. Yvonne fantasizes about retiring to a northern paradise with Firmin, yet he cannot escape the Hell of his own invention. His drunken refutation is a suicidal fall from Grace. The machinery of fate, the spinning wheel, is Firmin’s prison. Not wanting to be saved, the Consul, like the threatened scorpion, stings himself to death.

Spirits of the Mescal reveals the demonic inhabitants of Firmin’s mind. Martínez skilfully renders the grotesque, Bosch-like creatures that commune with the Consul in the infernal cantinas. Mescal is the drink connected with Firmin’s downfall. Intoxication leads to a derangement of his senses, resulting in unearthly visions. The torment brought on by these visions is the Consul’s sacrament for his failings as a lover to Yvonne and as a writer of worth.

At one time, the psychoactive properties of mescal were associated with the fly agaric mushroom,(vii) considered by some Shamanistic cultures to be an earthly symbol of the Axis Mundi. To ingest this hallucinogen is to be transported to the spirit realm. In the work Axis Mundi, Martínez interprets the Cabbala’s Tree of Life connecting Heaven and Earth. The Axis Mundi is the realm the magician crosses to obtain knowledge, but the journey is fraught. The Cabbalistic sphere of Qliphoth comes into existence with the abuse of magic. So it is that the Consul’s domain is this Qliphothian world of husks and demons, an inverse Tree of Life growing down towards Hell.

As demonstrated in his earlier works, Martínez employs the occult as both technique and substantive theme. With the writings of Lowry, he engages with the occult in its several substantive senses and does so in an act of transmutation of word into image. Lowry’s stream of consciousness technique merges alcoholic hallucinations with the symbolic language of the external world, and fellow alchemist Martínez masterfully translates Lowry’s esoteric text into fantastical layers of evocative imagery.

_________________________

ENDNOTES FOR GUNN ESSAY

* James Gunn is a graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Criticism and Curatorial Practice) programme of the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) in Toronto

(i) Lowry, Malcolm. Under the Volcano. New York: Harper Collins, 2007. First published in London by Jonathan Cape, 1947.

(ii) Markson, David. Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth Symbol Meaning (New York: Times Books, 1978) 14.

(iii) Lowry, Malcolm, “Preface to a Novel,” in Malcolm Lowry: The Man and His Work. Ed. George Woodcock (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2007) 5.

(iv) Epstein, Perle. The Private Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano and the Cabbala (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969) 4.

(v) The Cabbala is the mystical Judaic rabbinical tradition or theosophy emerging between the 7th and 18th centuries that primarily addresses the nature of God and the secret meaning of the Torah. In a secondary sense, the Cabbala references esoteric or occult knowledge aimed at revealing or exploring the deep structure both of the mind and of outer reality. Its spelling has many variations, including Qabbalah and Kabbalah.

(vi) Zamora, Lois Parkinson. The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006) 267.

(vii) This association between mescal and the fly agaric mushroom is an error as mescal is actually derived from the agave plant. Nor should mescal be confused with mescaline, the hallucinogenic alkaloid that occurs naturally in the peyote cactus and that has its own associations with mushrooms: peyote has often been referred to as the “sacred mushroom,’ probably as a result of the similar appearance of dried peyote tops and dried mushrooms.

(End of Gunn essay)

5. Text used for the 2009 UBC and Bluecoat Events on the Centenary of Malcolm Lowry's Birth in 1909

Neo-Baroque printmaker and painter Jorge Martínez García works from his home city of Valparaíso, Chile, where he is also Professor of Drawing and Painting at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Martínez was schooled as an artist in Ecuador from 1985 to 1991 where he also received his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador in Quito. Martínez has had 19 solo exhibitions in Chile, Ecuador, Germany, Argentina, and Canada and has participated in over 40 group shows around the world as well as numerous biennales and international cultural shows. His works are held by museums and major public collections in many countries, including Japan, Switzerland, England, the USA, Cuba, Brazil and France, as well in numerous private collections. The Bibliothèque nationale de France acquired five of his intaglio prints in 2005.

Jorge Martínez García is represented by Craig Scott Gallery, where his most recent solo show (Fall 2007) was "Under the Volcano and Other Works: Interpreting the Writings of Malcolm Lowry." In the works from the "Under the Volcano and Other Works" series, Martínez seeks to illuminate or, even more metaphorically, circumnavigate the "heraldic universe" (Lawrence Durrell) of Lowry, according to Martínez' own life experience and his own existential reading of Lowry's writings.

6. July 2009 Essay by Jorge Martínez on his print RUEDA. LEY. MÁQUINA. SISTEMA (essay in Spanish; translation in progress)

COMENTARIOS AL GRABADO RUEDA. LEY. MÁQUINA. SISTEMA

1.- En primer lugar, "mi opinión" sobre la obra, es casi como la de cualquier otro espectador, solo que un poco más informada, nada más, pues en el proceso de la obra van surgiendo modificaciones y definiciones que cambian el resultado, sin yo poder explicarlo todo. Siempre que inicio una obra tengo una idea previa, que con el proceso de trabajo se va definiendo poco a poco. Por lo tanto, uno sabe, más o menos, cómo va a empezar pero no cómo va a terminar. Es como un plan de batalla: antes es una cosa, después, otra muy distinta. En este sentido, la obra en cuestión, surgió de la idea de Lowry del significado simbólico de la "rueda", que aparece en Under the Volcano, en el momento en que el Cónsul se sube al carrusel o "rueda moscovita" en la feria (cuando se le caen las cosas que trae consigo y se desorienta, y los niños acuden en su ayuda y, milagrosamente, le devuelven todo lo que había dejado caer). Es la "rueda" de la vida, la rueda de la fortuna, a veces arriba, otras abajo. A partir de esta idea, como "forma", que aparece citada en la etiqueta de la botella de "mezcal", en el grabado, y como "símbolo", que abarca la idea directriz de toda la obra, imaginé las posibilidades visuales de una rueda, como una ruleta giratoria, por esto es que no tiene un arriba y un abajo fijos y determinados.

2.- El grabado se puede "leer" u "observar" por los cuatro lados; por cada uno de ellos el significado sufre ligeras pero significativas modificaciones: como "Rueda" alude a la posición dinámica de los casilleros del grabado, con su posibilidad de cambio, es la idea inicial del grabado; como "Ley" al carácter determinado y fatal del destino (un tema recurrente en Lowry), a la manera de los trágicos griegos; como "Máquina", a la capacidad que tiene la imagen visual de producir sucesos e interferir en la realidad, porque el grabado "funciona" como cábala; en fin, como "Sistema", porque articula los distintos símbolos del grabado - que son los de las distintas obras de Malcolm Lowry - en un todo coherente, que se comprende mejor cuando se ha leído la mayor parte de su obra.

3.- La organización del todo obedece a un "plan de composición" definido: la progresión, desde dentro hacia afuera, desde lo más abstracto y mínimo en el simbolismo, hasta lo más evidente y claro en las imágenes. El grabado crece desde la Cosmología "Mapuche" - los "hombres de la tierra" que habitan en Chile - que se basa en la representación simbólica del universo, expresado por los cuatro puntos cardinales, en el centro de la imagen, junto (superpuesto) a una representación visual de la constelación de "Eridanus", de significado central en la obra de Lowry y que, sintomáticamente, si no me equivoco (corrígeme si no estoy en lo correcto), puede observarse desde los dos hemisferios (este es un mensaje para el astrónomo...). En los radios centrales siguientes, la obra asume un carácter de abstracción geométrica, como de cristales que evolucionan hacia la zona media en la progresión de los radios. En esta zona intermedia, dibujada con tonos muy tenues, se desarrolla una especie de Calendario Maya, con formas que, progresivamente, se van ordenando en torno al centro y hacia el exterior. Luego viene un anillo geométrico que recuerda un tejido y que prepara, por la separación en segmentos diferentes, los cuatro ejes principales del grabado. A continuación, precisamente, surgen las cuadrículas ordenadas de acuerdo a cuatro espacios principales, acompañados a cada lado por una cuadrícula algo menor, conformando los 12 cuadrantes (el "12" es el número cabalístico de Lowry, ver la famosa carta a Jonathan Cape donde explica y defiende Under the Volcano). Por último, en el anillo exterior se sitúan los "textos" que iluminan (no ilustran necesariamente en forma literal) lo que se muestra en los cuadrantes. En síntesis: la imagen "progresa" desde lo más abstracto (lo mínimo y lo geométrico) hasta lo más evolucionado y cultural: el lenguaje escrito.

4.- Cada cuadrante con su título, conlleva múltiples asociaciones con la obra de Lowry. Son como notas o comentarios gráficos sobre sus historias; como "citas" ocultas o evidentes sobre su producción literaria o sobre su vida. Para mi, el "volcán" es el símbolo de la energía acumulada, como sentimientos, pasión y locura, para la tragedia o para la vida. En la imagen grabada no se trata de los volcanes mexicanos (Popocatépetl e Iztaccíhuatl), sino del "Tungurahua" en erupción, un volcán ecuatoriano que tiene para mi un significado especial: viví en Ecuador por más de una década, en las tierras de la serranía custodiadas por este volcán. Hasta hace poco tiempo - mientras trabajaba en la plancha - el volcán estaba en erupción. "Los comisarios" señala el lado más político de la estampa, vinculado al sentido explícito que ML asigna a esta forma de dominación, y de vida, en América Latina: el problema de la autoridad y el caos político y social, la corrupción del poder, la energía negativa, el lado oscuro del volcán. "Eva y Adán" (¿porqué siempre Adán primero?, ¿sólo porque fue el "primero"?), es el gran tema de ML: el problema de las relaciones de pareja; el encuentro de las "mitades" del ser, el encuentro con el amor, su falta, su crisis, etc. Los símbolos bíblicos tienen la virtud de que poseen una resonancia universal. Otro cuadrante principal es el "Escorpía" y/o "Escorpión". La contracción de estas dos palabras en ML es característica, a nivel superficial significa el aguijón ponzoñoso y la sospecha política, la paranoia que llevara a la muerte del Cónsul. En un sentido más profundo, es un animal totémico, simboliza la energía y la fuerza de la duda, con un carácter ambivalente, que puede llevar al suicidio y la auto inmolación (negativo), o, por el contrario, a la afirmación de una personalidad fuerte (positivo). Está, naturalmente, vinculado con el carácter "zodiacal" del grabado, con sus 12 casas. No está demás señalar que soy nacido bajo el signo "escorpión". Junto al escorpión (que en la imagen se acerca a un "sol"), se incendia "Eridanus", que en correspondencia con la Constelación del centro de la estampa, representa la "casa" de Lowry en la Columbia Británica, su "paraíso", encontrado y perdido; así como el carácter fatalista de Under the Volcano, pues en esa casa ML perdió uno de los manuscritos de la obra (junto al resto de su producción) en un voraz incendio. En October Ferry to Gabriola el tema cobra resonancias universales. Al otro lado del escorpión, se encuentra "Fungi". Este hongo "apareció" en el grabado de forma inexplicable. Para mi está vinculado a la idea de lo nocturno, de la fiebre, de lo onírico, de la "noche del alma" que implica el sufrimiento y la soledad, pero también la alucinación, la locura, la embriaguez por las drogas o el alcohol, etc. Frente al escorpión se encuentra el tercer cuadrante: el "Pulpo", que aparece como símbolo extraño en October Ferry to Gabriola, como un ser encerrado en un acuario. Yo lo pongo en un matraz alquímico, con su gran ojo de la conciencia abierto y con un sol - concha arriba al centro, presidiendo la escena. Es la "gran obra" de la alquimia que se cumple en el océano de la conciencia. No sé cómo decirlo de otra manera... A un costado se encuentra el "Zopilote", que para los mexicanos no es un símbolo negativo (el buitre se suele asociar con la muerte; podría ser un heraldo de la muerte), sino positivo, es un animal que para ML simboliza el poder de la naturaleza, su preeminencia sobre lo humano, es como un "mensajero de los dioses", pero no de muerte, sino de vida. Al otro lado del pulpo se encuentra el "Mezcal": la bebida que encierra todo el drama y la fatalidad en la obra de ML, es el cumplimiento del destino, como la energía destructiva de la vida en su evolución, por eso se llama, en la botella grabada, "Carrusel". Nuevamente se trata del carrusel del Cónsul. Es la rueda dentro de la rueda. Por último, el cuarto cuadrante es el árbol invertido de la Cábala, que se opone contrastadamente al Volcán, y cuyo nombre hermético "no debe pronunciarse" (por eso ha sido escrito y luego borrado de la plancha). Como "Máquina" "funciona", sin embargo, sin invertir, pues lo invertido es la plancha (cuando giramos el grabado), quedando el árbol en la posición habitual para el observador. El árbol de la Cábala, invertido o normal, posee un simbolismo poderoso y múltiple, que no es el caso desarrollar aquí (nos extenderíamos demasiado). Valga decir, sin embargo, que para ML era casi un sinónimo de la novela Under the Volcano. A un costado de este árbol, "Oaxaca" simboliza la concepción mexicana (latinoamericana) de la muerte, su triple carácter: fatal, terrible y festivo. Para ML esta ciudad era el símbolo mismo de la muerte a-la-manera-mexicana. La calavera, en el grabado, se presenta incorporada a una mariposa de noche, como el diseño de su camuflaje en las alas. Es otro símbolo de la noche, pero como algo vital y orgánico. Por terminar, al otro lado se encuentra "El Farolito", el famoso bar donde el Cónsul encontrará su muerte. Pero aquí, en el grabado, simboliza TODOS los bares, el inframundo de la bebida y la disipación. Para ML no todos los bares eran como "El Farolito", pero todos encerraban una ambivalencia, un peligro, en el hecho de exponerse a la bebida junto a otros seres humanos, que actúan en diferentes grados de evolución espiritual y dejan salir, por ello, un mundo de complejidad diversa y sintomática en estos espacios etílicos.

5.- Para concluir con esta larga exposición, queda por señalar la importancia simbólica de los títulos. Escritos en "positivo" o en "negativo" en la plancha, al estamparse, se invierten, creando un juego nuevo de lecturas y posibilidades simbólicas. ¿Porqué no coloqué todos los nombres en "negativo" para que se pudieran leer correctamente en la estampa? Pues porque algunos eran muy evidentes y, creo, cobran otro sentido al invertir su nombre. Es como una señal, un pequeño detalle de que, quizás, lo obvio no debe leerse sólo así... En fin, a veces me dejé llevar por la intuición, sin una razón lógica. Simplemente no me gustaba como habrían quedado. Demasiado obvios. Demasiado legibles.

Jorge Martínez García

July 2009