Excerpts from the book “Aga Cela – Clowns”

Based on the Commedia dell’ Arte, the Clown theme was taken up by painters including famous artists like Antoine Watteau, James Ensor, Paul Cézanne, Bernard Buffet, and Picasso. Applying her firm grasp of human psychology, Aga Cela pays homage to the subject by masterfully revealing the prankster hidden in the depths of human nature.

Reflections of our Inner Selves

Clowns are reflections of our inner selves – although his spirit of initiative may vary, a jester lives in all of us. His red nose, white make-up and oversized shoes make him easy to spot, and children are his biggest fans. Invariably awkward and unlucky, he keeps stumbling over his own limbs, tumbling and falling, but eventually, he always gets up on his feet again. Failure is part of his nature and helps him make people laugh. As an eloquent pantomime, brilliant acrobat and juggler, he knows how to incorporate the audience into his act.

Without fail, this antihero enchants his spectators by holding a mirror in front of their faces and showing them that they, too, can accept their own failure, and laugh about themselves. Even in a sad situation, the clown manages to laugh, only to burst into tears moments later at the occurrence of something happy. According to Charlie Rivel, the clown plays a child that has forgotten to grow up. Auguste, White Face, Harlequin or Pierrot, his awkward shenanigans are a vital part of every circus program.

The text and the poems in this post are excerpts from the book “Aga Cela – Clowns“.

Music Suggestion

„Pierrot Lunaire“ by Arnold Schönberg

This music recommendation seeks to emphasize the innate connection between painting, poetry, and music. For a greater sense of harmony, the editor has also included two poems from Belgian poet Albert Giraud’s cycle “Pierrot Lunaire”. In 1912, Arnold Schoenberg set parts of it to music (“Pierrot Lunaire”, op. 21). As a character outside the settled world of the bourgeoisie, the clown was exactly the character he needed to inspire his new musical language.

The symbolist style of the fin de siècle makes the somnambulist prankster qualities appear almost dream-like and absurd. The melodrama is dedicated to the moon as an artistic impulse. With their fictitious character, the poems are recited by poetry performers as a blend of language and free atonal music. Masterfully translated by Otto Erich Hartleben, their wonderful poetry is unlocked by a web of meaning created through sound. Freeing it from fixed meter, he dissolved language in lyrical musicality.

Using this suggestive form of poetry can be seen as an attempt to teach readers a new way of reading, just like Arnold Schoenberg’s music tries to teach listeners a new way of listening. By suggesting things rather than spelling them out, Schoenberg’s masterpiece stirs up associations with the clown’s act. Schoenberg was one the most influential avantgarde composers of the 20th century. To this day, the liberating effect of his new musical language continues to influence artists across genres.

Chit-Chat at a Vernissage

Come on in!

Aga Cela was born in the German city of Heinsberg in 1959. Falling in love with the Dutch artist Leon Daemen, she started realizing exhibitions with him, which helped her settle on the artistic career she had anticipated since childhood. After getting married, she moved to the Netherlands. Her studio is located in the small city of Echt. As a self-taught artist, she does not feel tied to the restraints of academic painting and has developed a highly individual style.

Although she mostly creates oil paintings, she also gives a lot of space to experimental approaches in her work, continuously refining her technique, refusing to be restrained by any single genre. Abstract art is also part of her repertoire. Her preferred subject, however, are her fellow human beings, and portrait painting gives her an opportunity to explore their psychology and vulnerability. Her main focus is spontaneous facial expression.

Her familiarity with her models enables her to reveal striking features in her clown’s faces and discover the hidden comedian in each of them. The same is true for her self-portraits. The circus ring, music and dance exert an irresistible pull on Aga Cela – anything engaged in a state of aesthetic movement, she will capture, including in her masterful “live drawings”.

Just like Arnold Schoenberg

Clowns and the circus are a recurring subject in the arts. They are equally present in music: Through works like Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” and the “Circus Days and Nights” by Philip Glass, the clown has made his way into the world’s opera houses, inspiring Aga Cela, an artist with a central focus on portrait painting, to go on a profound creative journey. Schoenberg’s modernist composition mesmerizes us in the same way the clown’s performance allows us glimpses of a deeper truth. And just like we try in vain to make unequivocal sense out of the clown’s act, Albert Giraud’s poems only acquire a higher meaning through their unique synergy of words and tonality. Just like Arnold Schoenberg, Aga Cela makes no concessions to audience tastes but simply paints authentic portraits with a highly sensitive touch.

Supplique

O Pierrot ! Le ressort du rire,
Entre mes dents je l‘ai cassé :
Le clair décor s‘est effacé
Dans un mirage à la Shakespeare.

Au mât de mon triste navire
Un pavillon noir est hissé :
O Pierrot ! Le ressort du rire,
Entre mes dents je l‘ai cassé.

Quand me rendras-tu, porte-lyre,
Guérisseur de l‘esprit blessé
Neige adorable du passé,
Face de Lune, blanc messire,
O Pierrot ! Le ressort du rire ?

Sources: Please see the authors, poet and bibliography in the above link to the online book (imprint at the end of the book)!