Aqui y Alla Episode 1

Toledo’s “Self-Portrait” is unlike any self-portrait by any other artist that I know. Made of mica, a favorite medium of Toledo’s, cutouts were stitched together to fit the outlines of his feet, creating an autonomous, beautiful, if unsettling object. Indeed, upon reflection, “Self Portrait” acts as a trigger to wonder, a poetic reminder to all of us to keep moving, keep looking, keep being amazed by the road, the camino, where our feet take us.

Both these notebook covers are of sea life, the left one of fish on their sides, seemingly dead, and the image on the right of a circle of crabs. Fish and crabs are recurring images for Toledo, but crabs must have been of special fascination for Toledo, as we see them later in jewelry, metamorphosed into precious objects.

The dead fish on the left lying on a slab exhales three circles of the type that are in the inner circle of the crabs. They feel like a message, but a secret one. Number 6 is a composite, animal-like but upright. This creature, a product of the imagination lives in a world of his own.

With number 7 we turn to the skeletal-like creatures that fascinated Toledo all his life. In this case the two headed, eight-limbed thing is excreting the same circles we saw in the previous works. The circles seem to be suggesting a mysterious code, symbol or sign. Then, in a shift in number eight we see a beautiful stork-like animal, standing up like a person, playing with a fish.

This last grouping has three notebooks from left to right - a rabbit, a crocodile and a bull.This image of a crazed-seeming rabbit standing over something he has broken seems strangely coded and leads us to question if these images are celebratory or ominous while a crocodile-like creature, now dancing, invites us to his own celebration. And, number 10, the final creature in our collection is represented with crab-like qualities. It seems to be both woman and man at the same time. This section of the Francisco Toledo episode relates both his feverish imagination and his collaborative spirit, evidenced in these notebooks made while working in the Taller de Papel. The last three notebooks appear to be more collaborations with the workshop than by the Maestro exclusively: less articulated, less pungent. What do you think?

In the almost Bosch-ian image to the left we have frogs and an imaginary creature walking with canes, and also an image of a frog coming out of another frog’s rear. The right frog has a humanoid aspect, not at all unusual for Toledo.

In this print Toledo marries dogs and people. A dog family is playing together in a room. Goya’s relationship to Toledo is clear as Goya often mixed people and animals to make a point. Does Toledo have a political message as Goya would have? In the cases of both artists the interpretation is left to each viewer.

A frog is sitting at a pond. The background is kind of abstract or sketchy making it hard to determine.

Garza, a heron, seems to exist for its own beautiful form. The heron stands with his legs forming a triangle. An aura surrounds the bird lending it an otherworldly value. At the same time the bird looks back warily and the murky surroundings have an air of menace. Is the bird in danger? Is there more to this than meets the eye?

Frogs, or maybe lizards, are climbing or preparing to climb a ladder to nowhere. Surrounding the climbing reptilians are what look like a covey of ghosts, or maybe only abstract patterned shapes. Dozens of them cheek by jowl watch the progress of the living beings. Although the ground below is apparently solid, the atmosphere above the ladder is undefined. It is a universe of the unknown, probably a similar universe for animals and humans alike.

Is it a wasp caught in this fantastic imaginary flower, with leaves and tendrils of making wondrous patterns? The insect watches, but can it be that the center of this “flower” is a giant eye, one watching us as we attempt to grasp the meaning of the world around us? This is one of the most masterful prints made since Goya or even Rembrandt, rich in line and burr, complex in figure-ground relationships.

This image almost seems as if it is Mahatma Gandhi in conversation with a frog. The hybridity of the frog–woman and frog at the same time is connected to the Gandhi-like figure, the same size as the frog. They are in warm conversation.

The last print in this section of Animals and Humans seems to be comedic, not a mood we have seen thus far in this episode. Note especially the two men at the bottom left who although clearly human have bovine like aspects to their faces. They are laser-beam focused with unambiguous sight lines to the cows’ rear ends. Is this a quietly and perversely erotic image? Certainly, it is a suggestive and disturbing one.

The second in the series is the collage of crabs (Cangrejos), certainly now dead. The crabs seem to be on top of a grill but what is below and behind? Is it a water-scape dream? The clouds or sky spell doom for these definitively un-free, splayed and pinned crabs! Are they a metaphor for the human condition or just a glorious image, irresistible to the artist, made from trapped creatures?

A tiny piece of 5 1/2 by 8 inches is now more clearly a fish on a grill. A blank background removes any ambiguity about this. It is the end of the fish’s life, but, strangely, his beauty remains, is perhaps enhanced. The blue and copper colors of head, fins and body; the burn patterns on the net-now-grill suggest a lively visual counterpoint to what might have actually referred to a gastronomical moment.

This collage continues the mood of the previous work in that the two fish are dead but now seem to be decaying. They are pinned to the grill, placed on a quiescent brown, board-looking background.

The last in this series is oddly livelier than the previous fish pictures. In this case there are again two fish, one larger than the other. The smaller one is fairly static, but the larger one, even if he might be filleted, is wildly beautiful painted in purples, pinks, oranges, rust colors. Its fins have taken on an almost cutout quality and even though both fish are once again on a grill, the grill has become decorated and decorative. The background is speckled and celebratory. Somehow this fish series culminates in a joyous transformation of fish for art’s sake, rather than a contemplation of death or dinner.