caprocorn sister: war, plague, earthquake, 2020: a reading in seven lenses
Acrylic on canvas, 65 × 90 cm (25 ⅝ × 35 ⅜ in). Painting by Yiğit Özen.
At a Glance
In the middle of the lower half stands a dark green chest, its edges combed in lines, its lid closed; while everything around it is crooked, it is the one geometric unit. Three bodies are ranged around it and the title lists three catastrophes side by side: war, plague, earthquake. Once the three figures and three names are of equal number the pairing sets itself up. The tradition of personifying catastrophes is old; the mounted horsemen, the sisters holding the threads of fate. But none of the figures bears a distinguishing token, there is no sword or cleft to say which is which catastrophe. The arrangement of allegory is preserved, its dictionary emptied. The closed chest is the object at the centre of the narrative in which the calamities within it are loosed upon the world. One of the figures has placed its hand upon it, fingers spread; not the opening, but the touch just before opening has been chosen.
The faces distribute the roles. In place of the head of the middle figure is a wholly white, empty oval, the face of the right one erased the same way; once the gaze is annulled one cannot speak with them, no mercy can be asked. Only the face of the figure collapsed on the ground at lower left is complete: it has eyes, an open mouth, teeth, and on that face pain can be read. Two of them bringing, one receiving. The dark ground is not flat black but between navy and grey, filled from top to bottom with fine vertical hatching, denser at upper left and thinning toward the right. The skins are cold, steel blue and sea green, the bodies not quite breaking free of the darkness. Red is placed drop by drop in round masses like internal organs; its area is small but the one real warmth on the surface is there, tuning the painting's temperature single-handed. The acid-lemon line at the chest's edge is the cleanest light colour, not a light but a line in its own right.
The bodies are half-transparent and built by returning over them; red fill at the bottom, blue over it, green and white accents at the very top, the blue nowhere fully covering the red beneath, so the painting was not finished in a single sitting. While the faces are emptied the bellies are filled; on all three bodies a ring turns at the level of the navel, and this repetition binds the three to the same family. The feet of the two standing figures end in thick white moulds, the feet of the one on the ground are bare; those who could go are shod, the one who will stay is left bare. This distinction turns the catastrophe into a class X-ray. From thirty centimetres the figures vanish, and there remain thousands of fine lines ranged side by side, and the eye, instead of going from one figure to another, begins to count the marks.
Form and Composition
A box with upright edges, in the middle of the lower half, is the only geometric unit among all the curves and, because of its dark value, separates from the ground only by its edge lines. As the heads of the three figures trace a broken line rising from left to right, the one-to-two difference between the smallest and the largest sets up the tier of scale.
In the middle of the lower half stands a box with upright edges. Three of its faces are visible, its edges straight and sharp, with thin parallel hatchings on it. This box is the painting's only geometric unit; everything around it is curved. Its top edge is at the figures' knee level, its bottom edge a quarter of the way up from the bottom. Its width is about half the crop. As a mass it is heavy, but because its value is dark it separates from the ground with difficulty; only the light lines at its edges hold its boundary.
Three bodies are placed around the box. The middle one is the longest; its head almost touches the top edge and its feet end a third of the way up from the bottom. The one on the right is in a second rank, its head half a head below the middle one, and its feet lower, near the bottom edge. The one on the left is the smallest; its head a little below the half height of the painting and its body slumped onto the floor. If the three heads are joined, a broken line rising from left to right emerges. The tier of scale is set up with these three figures, and the difference between the smallest and the largest is about one to two.
The middle figure leans with its left arm on a thin vertical support. The support descends from top to bottom, beginning beneath the hand and vanishing behind the box. Its thickness is a finger. This vertical is the only straight force dividing the left half in two. The right arm of the middle figure stretches horizontally to the right and goes as far as the shoulder of the figure on the right; it is the only horizontal binding the two bodies. The arm's level is about a quarter of the way down from the top and cuts across the central region of the crop widthwise.
The figure on the right stands with its back turned. Its mass is almost the same thickness from top to bottom; its legs long, its feet turned forward and ending a hand's width short of the bottom edge. The figure on the left is on the floor, its body spreading horizontally and filling the lower left corner. Its legs stretch to the right, leaving a horizontal mass in the lower band.
The ground is covered from beginning to end with thin vertical scratches. The scratches descend from top to bottom, their intervals irregular, growing denser only in the upper left region. This texture continues uninterrupted behind the figures, stopping nowhere. The distinction between figure and ground weakens along the back line of the figure on the right; there the mass darkens and blends into the back. Between the left edge and the figure on the left a finger's gap remains. The interior of the masses is built from round patches, and these patches gather at belly level. All three bodies have a ring in the same place; the heights of the three rings differ but their diameters are close to one another. This repetition binds the three figures into the same family. In the upper band, on the other hand, the heads do not resemble each other: the face of the middle one is left empty, the face of the one on the right is turned to the edge, the face of the one on the left is detailed. The detail gathers in the smallest figure, and is least in the largest.
Colour and Light
Because the skin of the three figures is painted in steel blue and sea green it carries no warmth of skin, and because the bodies stay a few registers lighter than the navy of the ground their edges melt into the darkness. Since the cherry red masses placed in the chests like internal organs are the only real warmth on the surface, they set the temperature of the painting on their own.
There are thin vertical scratches in the ground and the darkness therefore does not stand flat. The area that looks like black is really a colour between navy and grey; the brush is combed from top to bottom, lighter strips left between the passes. Towards the upper right corner it slides a little to blue, towards the lower left corner to brown. In one or two places at the top pale grey lines pass through this darkness, the paint scraped away from there. The skin of the three figures is cool. Steel blue, sea green, leaden grey and, here and there, white. In none of them is there any warmth of skin; the arms and legs are only a register or two lighter than the blue of the ground. Because of this the bodies do not fully break away from the darkness, their edges melt. The legs of the figure in the centre are its lightest places, the white thickened at the knees.
The red is placed drop by drop within this cool. In the cavities of the chests, in the bellies, over one arm and on the shoulder of the figure on the right; each time in round masses that stand like internal organs. Its colour is between cherry and morello, saturated and opaque. Its total area is small, but because the only real warmth on the whole surface is there it sets the temperature of the painting on its own. The blue around the red has gone slightly purple where it touches it. The white is gathered in the head and the masks. The face of the large figure on the left is entirely white, thick and smooth; on the face of the figure on the right there is a smaller white patch. The same white repeats in the shoes. These are the lightest points of the surface and the difference between them and the darkness around them is very large; small though they are, they draw the eye constantly upwards.
The box in the centre is dark olive green. Along its edge a thin line has been drawn in an acid lemon colour; it is the most saturated light colour on the surface. It stands like an edge-glint, but it has nothing to do with light, because no other face of the box is lit and nothing is reflected in its surroundings. The colour is there on its own, as a line. On the hip of the figure on the right there is a broad ring where turquoise and green have mixed. Its colour is cleaner and lighter than all the other blues; where red gets into it it dirties and drops to olive. Around that ring the paint is laid thick, raised, and has spilled over the neighbouring areas. The same turquoise recurs at hip height on the figure in the centre as a smaller patch.
The face of the figure at the lower left has a palette apart from the others. On its forehead yellow, in its eyes orange, in its mouth blood red; its body, on the other hand, has stayed blue green. A difference of temperature has formed between the head and the body. The floor along the lower edge is a little browner. The darkness warms up there and leaves a patch verging on green beneath the knees of the figures; the paint is thin, the texture of the canvas comes through from within it.
Iconography, Myth and Title
When the title of war, plague and earthquake is distributed across the three figures, the tradition of personifying catastrophe is set up, but the faces being painted white removes the interlocutor and makes bargaining impossible. The hand touching the closed chest in the middle chooses not the opening but the moment of contact before the opening; the goat and the sister turn catastrophe into a bond that comes from the family.
Within the darkness there are three figures, and before them stands a dark green chest. The one in the middle is the tallest; leaning with one hand on a thin pole, with a white, empty area where its face should be. The one on the right is standing with its head turned back, and it too ends in a white surface. The one at the lower left has collapsed to the ground and is the only one with a face; its eyes painted, its mouth open, its teeth visible. The edges of the chest are marked with a yellow line, its top empty.
The title lists three catastrophes side by side: war, plague, earthquake. Since the three figures and three names are the same in number, the pairing sets itself up on its own. The tradition of personifying catastrophes is very old; the mounted horsemen, the sisters who hold the threads of fate, the three guests who come to the door. What is common to all of them is that catastrophe does not come alone. In these narratives the number three sets up a closing circle, and a fourth is not expected. Personification, for its part, gives rise to the hope that one can bargain with them, and that hope always comes to nothing. The trio here also stands close together; the middle one leans, the right one prepares to depart, the left one has come down to the ground.
The chest in the middle may be the lock of this scene. The closed box is the object at the centre of the narrative in which the plagues within it are loosed upon the world; before it is opened everything holds still, and after it is opened nothing can be put back. The box here appears closed, but one of the figures has placed its hand on top, its fingers spread across the surface. The moment of touching has been chosen; not the opening, but the contact just before the opening. The yellow line marks the edge of the lid, and that edge is the only lit place. The lid's being closed does not mean that turning back is possible; it means only that it has not happened yet.
The white faces take this trio out of being human. The erasure of the face is not the removal of identity but of the interlocutor; one cannot speak with them, cannot bargain. With one who has no face one cannot speak, from whom one cannot ask for mercy. The white surfaces have no lines at all, they stand as though left unpainted. Only the figure at the lower left has a face, and that face seems to be suffering. This too separates the roles: two of them are those who bring, one is the one who receives. Its having collapsed to the ground, its knees bent and its mouth left open, is the known posture of the party who meets catastrophe.
The sign of Capricorn in the title, for its part, adds a separate layer. The goat is one of the oldest of sacrificial animals; it is also the animal laden with sin and driven into the desert. Combined with the word sister, a bond of kinship is set up; the catastrophes are not strangers but of the family. The idea that one cannot escape a catastrophe that comes from one's own family stands at the coldest part of the narrative. The pole the middle figure leans on descends all the way to the ground and there is nothing at its tip; neither flag nor hook. The right figure's feet are marked in white, it seems to be walking, and part of its body enters behind the chest.
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
The face of the middle figure has been turned into an empty white patch, and the gaze of the one on the right is erased too; no one turns towards the only figure that keeps a face, who sits on the ground and shouts. The closed green chest set at the centre is like the unspoken thing turning into a solid object; while the faces are emptied, the bellies are filled with large rings.
The face of the figure in the middle has been turned into an empty white patch. No eyes, no mouth, only a bright oval where the head ought to be. It has propped its arm on a stick, and left its body to that support. The face of the figure on the right is erased in a similar way, its head turned away, only a white piece visible. The gaze of both standing beings has been cancelled. The question of who in the scene looks at whom is unanswered from the very first moment. The hand set on the stick lies loose, it does not grip. The difference between leaning and holding on has been erased there too.
The third figure in the lower left, on the other hand, carries its face. Its eyes are drawn, its mouth open, its teeth showing. It has knelt, sits on the ground, much lower than the others. It is the only being that speaks or shouts, and no one has turned towards it. Someone raising their voice within a family is sometimes met with exactly this; a sound comes out, no one hears, the scene goes on. We cannot hear what comes out of its mouth, but the mouth staying open says enough. Its hair descends from either side of its face to its shoulders. The colours in its face are livelier than the others too; it is the most worked head.
At the centre stands a dark green chest. Closed. We cannot see what is inside it, nor is there any sign that it might open. All the figures are arranged around it, touching it. The figure on the right leans against the chest, the middle one reaches its hand over it. There is a box at the centre of the painting and that box is closed; the real subject of the scene is perhaps inside it. That the unspoken thing should turn into such a solid object is an interesting solution. The corners of the chest are marked with a clear line; the only neat geometry in the room has gathered there.
The bodies are semi-transparent. The red and blue regions that ought to stay beneath the skin have come to the surface. On the belly of the figure on the right there is a large circle, with a dark dot in its middle. A similar ring turns in the belly region of the middle figure too. The most heavily loaded place of the bodies is around the navel. While the faces are emptied, the bellies are filled. When you cannot think something through, you try to digest it, perhaps it has to do with this. Where the ribs ought to be there are dark bands, as if stuck to the skin.
The shoes caught my attention. The feet of the two standing figures end in thick, white, heavy moulds. The feet of the one sitting on the ground, on the other hand, are bare and folded back. Those who might leave are shod, the one who will stay has been left bare. The legs of the figure on the ground are also folded to the side, not in an arrangement ready to rise. For it to leave there, someone must reach out to it, and no one reaches out. The darkness behind is hatched with vertical lines, closing like a wall. The lines descend from top to bottom without a break, no depth left behind. All three figures are leaning against that wall.
Society, Power and Technology
The three figures around the closed aid chest tell how what war, epidemic and earthquake have in common is not that they are natural but that they catch us unprepared; the earthquake kills not with the shaking but with the building permit. The difference between the one who has somewhere to go and the one who stays thirty months in a container shows that disaster is not a leveller but a clear class X-ray.
In the middle a large chest stands, its edges hatched in lines, its lid closed. Around it there are three figures. One has climbed onto the chest, leaning on an iron bar; one on the right stands, its back turned; one on the left has sunk to the ground, its face the only face that can be made out. Anyone who has seen the people who gather around the aid lorry knows it, everyone waits for when that box will open and no one looks at anyone else. Shame aside, need weighs heavier. The man who offered his neighbour tea a week ago may at that moment be jostling that same neighbour over a blanket; the fault is not in him, it is in the number of boxes.
In the title three disasters are lined up side by side. War, epidemic, earthquake. Even putting the three on the same line has become a habit with us. And yet what these three have in common is not that they are natural but that they catch us unprepared. The earthquake kills not with the shaking of the ground but with the building permit. The epidemic is measured not by the virus but by hospital capacity. To say these things is counted shameful at the moment of disaster, and six months after the disaster it no longer stays on the agenda. In that short interval in between something could have been done, nothing was done at all. There is this too: in the wake of a disaster the language of solidarity comes into play at once and that language is very useful, but at the same time it postpones the questions. Now is not the time, they say. The time never comes. That the wounds must be bound is true; but there must also be a day for asking where the wound was opened from.
The face of the figure on the ground is the most detailed place in the picture. Its mouth open, its eyes swollen, its neck stretched forward. The faces of the other two have been left blank. After a disaster only the face of the person who suffers is left behind; the institutions have no face, the names of those responsible are never mentioned. The camera always turns to the same side. The image of the man weeping in the rubble is broadcast in the evening, the image of the desk that gave permission for that building is never broadcast.
The figure on the right seems to be moving away from the scene, its foot turned outward. The one in the middle, meanwhile, does not rise from where it sits. The difference between the two is the difference between the one who has somewhere to go and the one who does not. The same tremor pulls down everyone's house, but some rent a flat in another city the next day, some stay in a container for thirty months. Disaster is not a leveller, on the contrary, it is the clearest class X-ray. Who falls where becomes clear by where they stood before they fell. The insured and the uninsured, the one with a title deed and the one in rented rooms, the one whose relatives are out of town and the one who has no one at all; these divisions were set up long before the disaster, the tremor merely makes them visible.
The whole surface is hatched with fine vertical lines, like rain. There is so little light it might as well be none. The chest's lid is still closed and the figure that has stepped onto it does not come down.
Art History and Comparison
In the allegorical series each figure carries a quality by means of its object; although the title says war, epidemic, earthquake, the figures have no distinguishing token, the sequence preserved and the lexicon emptied out. In the studio the head was left for last, and a white oval would remain on a half-finished canvas; the two blank faces here come from the turn not having arrived, in a hand that works without a sketch.
The figure in the middle has rested its elbow on a thin railing, and in place of its head a dead-white oval stands. The one on the right is also standing, its face too reduced to a white patch. On the left the third has sunk to the ground; only its face is completed, it has eyes, a nose, an open mouth and teeth. In the middle a dark green chest, behind a dark surface combed from top to bottom.
The tradition of lining up three figures side by side and loading each with a concept is very old. From the Three Graces to the Fates, the rule of this arrangement is clear: each figure represents a quality, and the object in its hand or its stance makes it recognisable. The title here says war, epidemic and earthquake, that is, it counts three catastrophes. But none of the figures has a distinguishing token. There is no sword, no wound, no fissure to say which is which catastrophe. The sequence of the allegory has been preserved, its lexicon emptied out. Moreover, the three figures do not even resemble one another; one is standing, one half-turned, one on the ground. The equal height and shared rhythm of the Fates have not been sought here.
To depict catastrophes by enumerating them was a work of witness in Goya's war prints; there the event itself is shown, the corpses, the executions, the scenes of famine are set out in sequence. In this canvas there is no event, only the perpetrators or the witnesses; all three stand around a chest, doing nothing. The hatching marks in the background recall the darkening technique of the print tradition, a ground filled in line by line. It stands like an engraving made with paint. In printmaking hatching is for adjusting the light, whereas here the darkness is already dark from the start; the hatching does not darken anything, it only gives the surface a texture.
The matter of leaving the face blank has a history of its own too. In classical studio practice, on canvases at the sketch stage the body was built up and the head left for last; in unfinished portraits that white oval always stands in the same place. Here the faces of two figures carry exactly such an unfinishedness. That the third one's face is detailed strengthens this impression; within the same painting one has been finished, two left off. For a hand working without a sketch and without planning, this may be not a choice but the turn not having come round to that place.
In the series' 2020 group this work is one of the examples in which the naked human figure is preserved the longest. While in the other canvases of the same year the bodies split into bubbles and slide towards the animal, here legs remain legs, arms remain arms; only at the level of the navel do rings appear. The white, shapeless things put on the feet resemble neither a shoe nor a claw. On the chest in the middle a hand rests, the arm of the figure on the right having reached that far and stopped there.
Material, Gesture and the Viewer's Experience
The dark back area is not laid on flat but filled with hundreds of fine vertical hatchings; the patience spent is not for a flat surface but to keep the darkness in movement. The figures are built by being returned to, and because the blue does not cover the red beneath it the two layers read at once and the work was not finished in a single sitting.
The dark back area is not laid on flat but filled top to bottom with fine vertical hatchings. Hundreds of lines, all from top to bottom, with less than half a centimetre between them. In the upper left corner these hatchings are densest; they thin out towards the right and a slightly lighter underlayer breathes from between them. He made these with a fine-tipped, rather stiff brush or an almost empty tool. A patient work, but he spent the patience not to obtain a flat surface but to keep the darkness in movement.
The figures, unlike most of the other works in this series, are built by being returned to. Inside the bodies I count at least three coats. At the very bottom there is a reddish filling, over it a blue layer, and at the very top light green and white highlights. The blue nowhere fully covers the red beneath it; at the hips, on the belly, on the shoulders the red strikes up and the two layers read at once. This can only happen if a transparent layer is passed over the lower one after it has dried. That is, this picture was not finished in a single sitting.
The white heads, on the other hand, are of a single move. Each is placed with a single pressing of a loaded brush, its edges standing without seeping into the dark tone around them, and their surfaces smooth, with no mark of a second pass over them. Thick, covering, matt. Coming to the masses of hair beside them the tempo drops again; there are thin and long pulls there, each strand separate. The small yellow, green and red touches on the face of the left figure are of the same fineness; in patches a few millimetres across, placed side by side, not one over another.
The green box at the centre is made entirely with hatching. The lines filling its faces go in a different direction on each face, and the edge line of the box is marked with a bright yellowish green, in a single pull. That yellow line is the cleanest and fastest move in the picture; it does not tremble anywhere and did not lift the dark beneath it either. On the right face of the box a portion of the hatching is cut off halfway and not continued. Where the ground and the box meet, meanwhile, two hatchings have entered into each other and the border is completely lost there; the corner of the box is held only by that yellow line.
A cloth hung vertically, sixty-five wide. From afar, about two metres back, three bodies come out of the darkness and the distance between them reads. Come down to a metre and the layers inside the bodies separate out and it becomes visible that beneath the flesh stands another flesh. At thirty centimetres, meanwhile, all the figures vanish, leaving behind thousands of thin lines set side by side, and you notice that all of those lines stand in the same direction. At this third distance the time spent in front of the picture lengthens; instead of going from one figure to another the eye begins to count the marks on the surface one by one.
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