Aqui y Alla Episode 2

Dancers, five years later in 1985, is a painted photo that also has a theatrical flair. Paint is slathered on with what can only be called delicious brushstrokes. The two women most in our view are painted in pinks and blues and bracket the main figure in the center, defined by oranges and a touch of pink. Arms akimbo, shown only from the back, they are confident women facing perhaps a live audience, all together constituting a brilliant scene where color is the star.

Canoe, from 1989, is devoid of figures. A gorgeous naturescape featuring a canoe with a subtle aura in the water and what appear to be hills and a dark red sunset in the background. Elsa shows herself here to be a committed colorist, subtly repeating the blue of the canoe throughout the picture. It is yet another mood that she is painting, and compared to the two previous works, this one is more melancholy and more mysterious.

Red Chair Vigil (Standing Figure) a monotype from 1990 reveals a curious change in Elsa’s work. Taking on a mystical, almost Blakean ambience, the sole figure holds a flaming object, seems to have a halo, and appears to be surrounded by flames. We almost feel as if we see the inside of this nude figure as much as the outer person. Although ostensibly otherworldly, in the end Elsa brings us back to the domestic, making a point of painting in the corner the red chair that must have then been in their home, which now has its permanent home in our collection in the painting by Carlos titled Red Chair.

Blue Boy from the very next year is an intimate and immediate portrait. Hot colors swirl around the face of the subject. Is it Carlos? Is the blue a suggestion of the subject’s state of mind? The highly activated background with the unidentified forms that almost suggest enormous tear drops parenthesize the head, almost projecting danger.

Blue Mask, from 1992, takes us into an almost surreal state. A floating (again blue) mask that appears to be generalized and not an individual portrait floats calmly in a highly activated background, an almost electrified field. The disembodied blue form, almost swimming below the head, is countered by the yellow squiggles to its side and a base that barely stabilizes an extremely dynamic image.

Also from 1992, Spiritual Fisherman brings us back to the metaphysical, a state for which Elsa seems to have recurring affinities. The fisherman with his harpoon emerges from the waters, not with a fish, but with a halo effect. The sunset behind him is glorious but calm, and the waters, although dynamic, are not roiled. Seeming like a god, this fisherman is emotional in his tranquility, but also in his understated sense of foreboding.

The next year, 1993, Beach Fire continues and even amplifies the mood of Spiritual Fisherman. This is one of Elsa’s great marriages of her love for the human figure and the natural world, as well as her lifelong affair with the heavily loaded brush. Here we see a kind of hymn to darkness and light: the light of the fire (mesmerizing) and the light of the moon on the water. Once again we have the aura effect, this time mostly but not exclusively around the standing nude male figure. The man has what might be a broken aura, but it is probably the reflection of the firelight on his skin. Elsa’s love of mystery and theatricality is at its most glorious here.

The Kiss, created in 1996, is a hand- pulled linoleum print of two angels (haloes again) kissing. Although angels are technically boys, these angels are what we would now think of as gender fluid. Even though the image is only made with blue and white, it radiates light somehow and still falls within my evaluation of Elsa as a significant colorist. Perfectly united, these two figures eschew melancholy, emanating instead joy in love.

Carlos Soho, a painted photo, bears two dates in our inventorying system: 1980 and 1997. That is because the photo was taken by Elsa in 1980 during a trip to NYC, shot in a friend's apartment and enlarged and painted in 1997. Carlos, who early in his career spent important years in SoHo, is now shown in a studio setting. This is all urban all the time. No sense of nature, just a very loving memory by Elsa of her husband, perhaps begun before they were married and finished long after he had passed away, which possibly explains the extended engagement with the work. Even though this is Carlos in an interior scene, it is suffused with light, Elsa’s specialty. Furthermore, the two dates of this work possess their own ghostliness: the evanescent outlines around his body suggests a state of being and leaving, becoming and moving away. He turns away as he talks on the phone, really not there.

Mau y Que Aloha Tat-Back from the Hawaiian Homegirl Giclee Series is from 2004, a reference to Hawaii where Elsa now lives, and she and Carlos also lived together for a while. A photograph that honors the art of tattooing, it reveals the unending creativity of Elsa as she works with many media. Once again, she depicts a figure, apparently on the sand of a beach. It is a moody figure, self-absorbed, captured by Elsa in a moment of introspection.

Coffee Cup, Man in Hat from the next year, 1981 has an entirely different effect, but like the Red Chair an inanimate object – the coffee cup—gets pride of place. Seemingly a scene of a studio (Carlos’s?) a couple seems to be walking away from a spate of canvases of what is so often Carlos’s subject: the city. The coffee cup, entirely too large to be “just a cup” is destabilized, as is the rest of the scene. Two figures, a man in a hat and a woman walk away from the scene, but not, apparently, into anything any more stable. In the morass ahead of them are more canvases, but also a skull and another almost god-like figure. Could this be a kind of memento mori? A deliberation on the passing of all things?

California Theater, painted in 1982, was the theater that Carlos and Elsa could see from their Spring Street studio window on the other side of the block long studio, on Main Street. Carlos used theater scenes often in his work. It has a different tone from the previous works we are showing here. Truly an urban image, one sees a stable neoclassical theater with figures in attendance at what could be an opera or a play. The neon-lighted structure in front could be a subway stop or a restaurant. Almost looking like a Parisian post-Impressionist painting from the late nineteenth century, it has none of the unease of the previous works. But the color never stops! The purple animated background, the setting for this theater with its classical architecture, reminds that this is not a classic scene. And the glow around the other structure (the subway stop or restaurant) reminds us that this is Carlos Almaraz, the master of light from Los Angeles.

Just one year later, 1983, delivers what has become understood to be one of Carlos Almaraz’s most loved subjects, Echo Park at Night. In this little painting he gives us Echo Park as a place of perfect urban peace, devoid of the pandemonium often thought of as surrounding it. This is Echo Park as place of rest and recreation. It is a dream of Echo Park where nothing disturbs the beauty: no noise, no annoying human activities. Again, almost reminiscent of Post-Impressionist painting in Paris, but purely original at the same time, we are looking at the perfect blend of nature, but now in a very built Los Angeles environment. We see nothing of surrounding buildings, just the palm trees and their reflections in the green and pink waters of the lake. A sailboat or maybe two; a car suggesting people on an outing. Finally, the orange moon in the purple and blue starlit sky furthers the dreaminess of the moment.

Dancing Figures, painted the next year reminds us of the deep unease that was never eradicated in Carlos’s art. Three figures seem to be running out of a maelstrom. They remind me of Adam and Eve being expelled from a totally chaotic garden. There is not a stilled brushstroke in the painting, like an oil sketch by Peter Paul Rubens. Agitation and fear are what characterizes this important work. Trees seem to be uprooted; the sky is stormy and terrifying. All the while the paint is applied with a ferocity and gestural activity that, if it did mirror Carlos’s inner state, reveals him to have been at best unsettled and even fearful. Notably however, in conversation with Elsa, she said that she sees this as a joyful and romantic scene, while also acknowledging that everyone has a different perception of artworks.

1987, The Wanderer (a recurring iconic figure of Carlos’s), is yet another delightful urban scene. A man and a dog are striding energetically in a downpour in Los Angeles. The skyline in the background with twinkling lights makes the scene a pleasing one. At the same time there is a single house sitting in the greensward, possibly another park or a front lawn. This painting communicates the domesticity and a bit of tranquility that sometimes enters into Carlos’s works. One would have to be a Los Angeleno to understand that even as this man is getting soaked, a downpour in Los Angeles is a rare and life-giving event. The painting is affectionate and joyful.

Naked Jester, 1988, brings us a sense of theater. Masked and be-jewelled this beautifully painted muscular, handsome man is an object of fascination and mystery. Is he part of a performance? That would seem to be the case given the great swag of purple drapery to the right of the figure. Or is he an imaginary figure, a meditation of identity: who is that masked man? Although we will never know, this compelling figure painted a year before Carlos’s death pushes us into the realm of dream and perhaps, of inquiry.

The very year that Carlos died he painted City Street Scene, another scene of rain in Los Angeles with people covering their heads with their umbrellas. In this picture a handsome red boxy car gets center stage with a figure in front of it, seemingly taking his leave of it. Tall buildings bring us to think we are downtown. The rain is streaking down and feels cold as it puddles in the streets. Brush strokes bearing Carlos’s customary verve create a sense of movement in this stilled, presumably parked vehicle.

Another picture from the last year of Almaraz’s life has a truly horrifying effect. Named Greed from 1989 two dogs are facing each other in rage. They are surrounded by bones in a barren landscape. Is this what humanity comes to in the end: fighting over the dry bones that are left in the world after they have already been picked clean by others, possibly by human beings instead of dogs? Is this a latter-day vision of Ezekiel’s Dry Bones from the Bible? Is Carlos Almaraz asking us what have we done to ourselves to bring out our worst natures?

The penultimate painting in our episode, Lobo, from 1989 is again of a dog painted in the last year of Carlos’s life. This is, though, a single mangy dog, wild, without any sense of domestication. Once again we have Carlos’s most animated, passionate, driven brushstrokes. This painting reveals him to be one of the most accomplished painters of our time. This painting goes to the heart of what painting is as a revelation of the soul. How could this ferocious painting be an example of extreme beauty? Because it is about truth telling with all the aesthetic tools an artist could have at hand. It is about everything from draftsmanship to abstraction; about colors so saturated they are meaning unto themselves; about perfect composition. And, about a kind of agony that only the greatest artists could recognize and make us realize is ultimately a shared human condition.

Finally, we get to look at Echo Park at Night, also from 1989. This is not the pacific Echo Park at the beginning of our episode. This view of the park is ominous. A giant cat-like figure to the left is unsettling as it looms over the two male hatted figures in the foreground. The buildings in the background insert themselves in their unbalanced manner. The lamppost pours light but the light does not cast illumination. It almost feels like we are watching an earthquake, either an internal one, or one referring to the state of the city or even civilization.