il sbagliato di rompipalle, 2019: a reading in seven lenses
Acrylic on canvas, 65 × 90 cm (25 ⅝ × 35 ⅜ in). Painting by Yiğit Özen.
At a Glance
A single neck carries two heads at once; the left one draws near a skull with its teeth ranged in rows while the right one is round, its eyes closed, absent. One dead, one asleep; the shared body binds the two to the same punishment. In the Janus tradition the two faces divide time, one looking to the past, one to the future. Here it is not the direction of gaze but the difference of state that comes to the fore, the two faces standing unaware of each other. The rompipalle of the Italian title describes a troublesome person, and with the word error added before it who is guilty stays unclear. In an institution this epithet is most often stuck not on the one who does wrong but on the one who says what is wrong; the matter of objection is shifted onto personality, and what is discussed is no longer the thing said but the temperament of the one who said it. To watch what befalls the one who raises a voice is a free lesson given to everyone else.
The colour carries this tension. Purple and yellow ceaselessly change places over the body; because they are at opposite ends of the wheel, wherever they touch they mix wet on wet and fall to an olive brown. The ground is green from end to end, laid on broad and irregular, and because no shadow descends beneath the figure the body stays hung in the air. There is no direction of light, but the yellow going forward and the purple back rounds the breasts without shadow. A small face set at the centre of the chest, with a single large open eye, looks more alive than the eyes of the two heads left under the paint. The place the infant first looks and the place it first feeds overlap here; this eye seated on the chest also recalls the depiction of the headless peoples on medieval maps, and moreover it stands as an extra organ when the figure already has two heads. The right breast is an empty hollow.
At the left edge a thin yellow strip hangs, not bound to the body, a tassel at its tip, the most fluid and cleanest place of the painting. It could be a whip or a dried plant; no one touches it, hung like a verdict awaiting execution on the wall. The crop cuts the mass on three sides, leaving an exit only at that left edge. Up close one sees the teeth are built of twenty short lines thrown side by side with a fine-tipped brush, the wing feathers pulled one by one. The body that stands proper from a metre and a half back scatters at half a metre where the borders mix, and one involuntarily draws back to take back what one has lost.
Form and Composition
A thin strip, a palm's width in from the edge, descends and, with the tassel at its tip, nails the composition from the left as the only vertical attached to no mass. While the interval of the two heads above is repeated exactly in the two large roundnesses of the central body, the crop compresses the mass on three sides and leaves an exit only to the left.
Along the left edge a thin, long strip descends, with a fringed tassel at its tip. Its width is a finger, its length more than half the painting. It stands a palm's width in from the edge and is attached to no mass. This vertical is the only unit on the left side that falls outside the main heap; it nails the composition from the left. Above it there is another small ring, about at eye level and detached from the strip.
In the upper band two heads side by side. The left one is lower and close to profile; inside it there is a long jaw series, short vertical units arrayed, and it gathers the painting's densest repetition there. The head on the right is higher and frontal; its lines round, its inner units few. The horizontal distance between the centres of the two heads is about a head's width, and the height difference half a head. The one on the right stands a finger's width short of the top edge, the left one further in. The gap between them is a narrow vertical corridor, and the ground seeps down through it.
In the central region there is a broad body. Two large roundnesses sit side by side, the right one higher and smaller. The distance between them is almost the same as the distance between the two heads; the arrangement above repeats below. The body widens downward from the shoulder and turns into flat forms in the lower central region. Its widest place is a third of the way up from the bottom, and there it almost touches the right edge.
The lower band is fringed throughout. Short, slanted strokes open out like a fan, making three separate clusters: small on the left, wide in the centre, wide again on the right. The tips of the clusters are cut off at the bottom edge. This texture sets up a contrast with the smooth roundnesses of the body; there is an order that is compact above and scattered below. On the right edge, moreover, a wing of the same fringed texture emerges, and the crop cuts it from the right.
The ground is filled with unidirectional brush marks. The marks are mostly vertical, and slanted in the upper right corner. Around the masses the ground has stayed lighter, like a halo. The contour is thick but intermittent; the outer line enters the mass in some places and mixes with the area outside. The distinction collapses most in the lower right corner. The signature is in the upper left, adjoining the edge; immediately below it there are two more marks, both of the same darkness. The crop compresses the mass on three sides. Above, the top of the head on the right is cut, on the right the wing is cut, below the fringes are cut. Only the left edge stays open, and there is a strip of void where the thin strip stands; its width is about two fingers. The painting thus leaves an exit towards the left, the other three directions closed. The vertical axis of the mass leans to the right from top to bottom; the mid-point between the heads and the mid-point of the body are not on the same vertical, with a hand's width of difference between them.
Colour and Light
Purple and yellow change places over the body, and because they touch directly at the opposite ends of the wheel without a buffer set between them, where they meet the paint sinks to olive brown. The darkness is built without black, by deepening the purple; and when the lemon-inclined cool kind of the yellow comes beside the mustard-verging dirty kind it makes it look muddy.
Purple and yellow are constantly changing places over the body. Where one shoulder is yellow the chest just beneath it turns to purple, and at the middle of the belly yellow comes out again. The two stand at the opposite ends of the colour wheel and here no buffer at all has been set between them; they are in direct contact. Where they touch, the paint has mixed while wet and dropped to olive brown. Those muddy tones beneath the hip and inside the hair stand like the residue of this meeting. The ground is green from end to end. A colour between emerald and grass, laid with a broad brush and irregularly; on the right it mixes with white and lightens, on the left it darkens and descends almost to bottle green. Within it there are light strips that look as though wiped, the paint lifted away from there. This green is the opposite of the pinks in the figure, and so the lilac and old rose in the chest region look a little more alive everywhere they touch the background.
The yellow is of two separate kinds. One is inclined towards lemon, cool and light; it is above the forehead, at the edge of the shoulder and in the vertical strip on the left. The other verges on mustard, dirty and earthy; it is found in the ring at the middle of the chest and in the down of the lower region. When the two come side by side the clean one makes the other look thoroughly muddy. The purple, too, is not a single register. In the hair and at the outer edge of the arm an aubergine reaching almost to black, in the chest region a light lilac, at the hip a mauve escaping towards pink. The darkest places of the surface are gathered in these dark purples; no black has been used, the darkness has been got by deepening the purple. The lightest point is the cream area on the right shoulder, where the paint is thick and opaque.
The long yellow strip at the left edge thins downwards and frays at its ends. Its colour is the same as the lemon yellow in the body, but no purple at all has come over it; and so the cleanest yellow on the surface is there. At its lower end there are thin wisps where white and green have mixed, the paint thinned there like water. The two faces at the top have come from the same palette, but their proportions differ. In the mask on the left pink and cream dominate, the teeth yellow, the eye socket brown and purple. In the face on the right the yellow has spread, the purple has stayed only along the eyebrow and the hairline, and green has got into the eyes. The tonal difference between the two makes the one on the left look cooler.
The light has no direction, but the colour makes a relief all the same. The yellow goes forward, the purple goes back; the breasts therefore stand round, though no shadow has been used. On the green ground there is no darkness falling beneath the figure, the body is as if suspended in the air. In the upper left corner there is a signature thrown in a dark colour over the green and a few numerals beneath it; the paint there has covered the ground, the green does not seep through from beneath at all.
Iconography, Myth and Title
One head of the two-headed being shows its dead teeth while the other, asleep, has closed its eyes; the wakefulness of the two-directional door god is divided here. The shared body makes complicity anatomical and says that punishment cannot be divided, and the instrument hanging at the edge untouched by any hand becomes a verdict waiting to be carried out.
In front of a green area two heads seem to come out of the same body. The one on the left resembles an animal's skull; its jaw open, its teeth lined up in rows, its eye-sockets deep and empty. The one on the right is closer to human; its eyes closed, its lips distinct, its facial features soft. The body below is shared; at chest level there are two round masses, beneath them a belly, and at the very bottom brown fibres resembling feathers or fur spread out. At the level of the neck the two merge into a single mass.
The motif of the two-headed being always carries a division in the tales. The best known is the door god who looks in two directions; one looks to the past, the other to the future. Here it is not the direction of the gaze but the difference of state that comes to the fore. One head is dead, the other asleep. The dead one shows its teeth, the sleeping one has closed its eyes. Neither speaks, but they do not speak for two different reasons. The two faces of the door god are awake at the same time; here one has closed. The living head being asleep also leaves no possibility for the dead head to speak.
The expression in the title is built with the folk idiom that describes the person who troubles others, with a word for error added before it. That is, there is a wrong at hand and the owner of that wrong is a troublemaker. When we look at the scene it is not clear who is responsible. Did the skull make the error, or the sleeping face? The shared body leaves this question unanswered, because both punishment and reward will be inscribed onto the same body. The idea of complicity has become anatomical here. The shared body carries onto the scene a very old rule that says punishment cannot be divided.
On the left edge there is an object hanging apart from the body. A long, yellowish strip comes down and fringes open at its tip. It stands like a whip, like the chain of a lamp, like a bunch of dried plants. Such objects hung at the edge are, in ceremonial scenes, most often instruments; used either to strike, to burn, or to drive away. Here it is in no one's hand, it waits on the wall. An instrument waiting on the wall is a verdict waiting to be carried out.
The furry area in the lower part makes it uncertain where the body ends. The human body turns into an animal downward, or it appears so because it is seated on a fur. The description of half human, half animal is the standard image of beings that have undergone punishment; the transformation is not completed, it stays half-finished, and the person is caught between two natures. A half-finished transformation leaves the person between two natures and makes them belong to neither. At the lower right a tail opening out like a fan emerges from among these fibres; its tips raised up and separating from the body. The green ground thickens around the figure and opens nowhere.
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
Of the two heads on the single body, one approaches a skull and rots while the other is soft and living; like a person knowing two things about themselves at the same time. While the small face settled in the middle of the left breast gathers the one who looks and the one who feeds into the same object, the extremities of the body slide towards a furred texture, towards the animal.
On a single body stand two heads. On the head to the left the teeth are exposed, one of the eye sockets has darkened, the flesh of the face as if drawn back; it approaches a skull. The one on the right, meanwhile, is softer, round, its eyes and mouth in place. Both rise from the same shoulders. Two separate states standing side by side within one body resembles a person knowing two things about themselves at the same time. One side living, the other behaving as if already dead. A yellow line has been drawn around the head on the left; it resembles a crown, and also an edge that has begun to rot. Between the two heads there is no gap, they are close enough to touch one another.
On the left side of the chest there is a small face. Settled right in the middle of the breast shape, its eyes and mouth can be made out. That is, within the body stands the face of another. The place a baby first looks and the place it is first fed are not separate, the two coincide; the form here has shown that coincidence just as it is. A face looking out from the middle of the chest gathers the one who looks and the one who feeds into a single object. The expression of that small face cannot be made out, its eyes are nothing but two dark patches. The right breast, meanwhile, is empty, with only a dark hollow inside it.
The lower part of the body is piled up. The belly is broad, the navel set as a small dot, the hips spread downward. It seems to be sitting but there is no surface beneath it. On the right the arms or legs turn into a furred, brown texture; the edges slide towards the animal. While the middle of the body stays human, its extremities have passed into something else. The change has begun from the furthest places. In the middle of the belly there is a dark dot, it may be the navel; it is the body's only fixed mark. While everything around it flows, it stays still.
On the left edge hangs something thin, yellow, drooping downward. At its end there are fringes. It could be a fish, it could be a dried plant, I am not sure. It stands right beside the body and no relation to the figure has been made. No one looks at it. There are objects hanging in a room that no one asks about; this is like such a thing. The fringes at its end are scattered downward, flung by a slight movement. That something no one touches should sway of its own accord looks strange.
The green area behind covers every side, its brush marks turning in circular movements. There is no ground line, the figure stands in the air. The two-headed body goes on remaining in this void without leaning anywhere. The toothed mouth on the left is open, the mouth on the right closed; both can be seen at the same time. How a body one of whose faces speaks while the other stays silent decides, I do not know.
Society, Power and Technology
The label of the person who gives you a headache is pinned on people for having said the thing that is wrong; once the subject of the objection slips from the institution to the personality, the matter becomes not what is said but the temperament of the one who says it. The mismatch between the shouting mouth and the calm body gives this away, and spending one person is reckoned the cheapest way of disciplining a hundred.
On the left edge there is a long thin thing hanging down, tassels at its end, a small ring at its top. It stands like a rope. Beside it two heads rise and the two do not look in the same direction. The one on the left has opened its mouth, its teeth lined up one by one, it is speaking or shouting. The one on the right is calm, its mouth closed, its eyes turned to the void. A single neck carries the two heads at once. The side that speaks and the side that stays silent are carried side by side.
In the Italian title there is a phrase that means the person who gives you a headache. Think about whom, in a workplace or an institution, this epithet gets stuck to. It is a name pinned on people not for having done something wrong but for having said the thing that is wrong. The person who asks a question in the meeting is declared difficult, the one who reminds is counted obsessive, the one who insists becomes uncooperative. And so the subject of the objection changes in an instant, the matter is no longer the institution but the personality, and the subject of the argument is no longer what is said but the temperament of the one who says it.
This method is very functional. To silence a person you do not have to tell him he is wrong, you only make those around him feel that dealing with him is tiring. The group handles the rest. No one wants to sit at the same table as that person, because whoever sits with him catches his epithet too. If a wrong lasts three years in a place, do not say that few people knew of that wrong; many knew of it, they had all merely looked to see who was making the trouble. Watching what happens to the one who speaks up is a free education for everyone else. Spending one person is the most economical way of disciplining a hundred, and there is no manager who does not know this.
The body sits below, its arms brought forward, its hands as if clasped in its lap. A soft stance, not aggressive. That is, the figure here is not a quarrelsome one. There is a mismatch between the open mouth of the head and the calm stance of the body, and to my mind the heart of the matter is there. A shouting mouth has been drawn, but no one discusses whether it has a reason to shout; everyone talks about the loudness of the voice. Criticism of tone works this way in any case, it is the most courteous method used for not discussing the content. A person can be declared quarrelsome even though he does not want to quarrel, all he need do is ask the right question at the wrong time.
The back surface is painted a single colour, nothing set on it. No table, no room, no other figure placed beside it. An image that tells better than this how the world around the person who takes the stigma narrows would be hard to find. First the meeting invitations thin out, then the flow of information is cut, and at last the person begins to move about his own institution like a guest. In the bottom right corner a piece opened out like a wing stands, and its tip has touched the edge of the surface.
Art History and Comparison
In depictions of Janus the two faces divide time between them; the two heads here, despite the shared body, carry no shared expression, one grinning, the other absent-minded, each unaware of the other. Whereas the chest-eye of medieval travel accounts carries knowledge, the eye here is an extra organ; the gaze's sliding down to the body quietly takes away the privilege of the face.
A skull baring its teeth on the left, and on the right a second face, rounder and calmer than it; both emerge from the same body. Below, at chest height, there are two large lumps, and an enormous eye has settled in the middle of one of them. The ends of the arms have feathered, and at the lower edge fans have opened that could be wings or a tail. A yellow strip hanging on the left, a tassel at its end, stands like a fishing line or a staff.
The two-headed being is generally a matter of time in the history of painting; in depictions of Janus one face looks to the past and one to the future, and there is a division of duty between the two. In the twentieth century Picasso, by joining the same head from two directions, turned the matter into a problem of seeing, gathering profile and front onto a single face. The two heads here do not divide time between them, nor are they two views of a single head. They are like two separate faces standing side by side, each unaware of the other; one grins, the other is absent-minded. Despite the shared body they have no shared expression. The gap between them is not filled in either; the necks do not join, and the two heads seem to have been placed in the same spot at different times.
The eye set in the chest, however, connects to a much older source. In medieval travel accounts and in the depictions of the monstrous races at the edges of maps there are headless people, their faces set into their chests. In those drawings the aim is to give knowledge, and the peoples thought to live in distant lands are described in earnest. The chest-eye here carries no knowledge, and moreover the figure already has two heads; that is, the eye is unnecessary, an extra organ. Excess here has become strangeness itself. What is more, the chest-eye looks more alive than the others; while the eyes of the two heads have stayed under the paint, this eye is large, open and surveying the outside. The gaze's sliding down to the body quietly takes away the privilege of the face.
The limbs ending in feathers also recall the hybrid birds of the bestiary tradition, the harpy or the siren. In those books each part of the hybrid is taken from a separate animal and the borrowing is evident; a wing is a wing, a claw is a claw. In this canvas nothing has been borrowed, the feathers stand as though they had grown of their own accord at the edge of the body. No boundary has been drawn to show where the flesh ends and where the feather begins. The hanging tasselled strip on the left is of the same uncertainty; whether it is a tail, a cord, or an object the figure holds, the painting does not seem inclined to say.
Among the series' 2019 canvases this work is one of the examples in which the body is most densely worked. While in some works of the same year the figure is left with a few strokes, here each lump has been painted separately, gone over, its edges darkened. It may be counted a herald of the following year's cell-built bodies, because here too the body is divided into units; the difference is that the units do not yet form an ordered cluster. Beneath the signature at the upper left a date has been noted, the numerals standing half-legible amid the paint.
Material, Gesture and the Viewer's Experience
Everywhere that fell to brown was born of the purple riding over the yellow while wet, and clean yellow and purple stayed only at the edge the brush did not press. While a broad muddying stands on one side, on the other the teeth and wing feathers are drawn one by one as needlework with a fine tip, two extreme tempos on the same surface.
Everywhere the purple passes over the yellow has fallen to brown. At the centre of the chest, beneath the belly, inside the wing on the right, the same thing repeats: the two paints met while wet and both lost their identity. To prevent this you must either wait or wash the brush; neither was done. At the edges of the soiled regions clean yellow and clean purple still stand, that is the mixing happened only along the line where the brush pressed. This tells me that the paint was heaped fast and in a single sitting.
The green ground looks as if it was laid on beneath the figure beforehand, not around it afterward. On the right edge there are broad horizontal drags; the brush there was pushed until the paint ran out and the white primer beneath came up line by line. In the upper left corner the same; a white channel passes through the green and was not closed. In some places on the ground fine stake-like scratches appear, as if the handle of the brush or a hard tip was pressed into the wet green and laid bare the coat beneath. These are marks not added with paint but subtracted from paint.
The long yellow stem on the left is the most fluid part of the picture. As it descended, five or six drops seeped from its edges, each stopping at a different length and mixing into the green beneath the yellow. The tips of the drops are not round but pointed; the paint began to dry as it descended. At the very bottom of the stem, meanwhile, the brush parted and the bristles left marks one by one, a tassel formed there.
The region where the teeth are came from an altogether different tool. Some twenty short vertical lines, their spacings almost equal, all flung with a fine-tipped brush and side by side, not one over another. The same fineness is in the wing feathers at the lower right too; there the dark purple curves are drawn one by one, yellow ground left between them, and none rides over another. The broad muddying on one side and the needlework on this side stand on the same surface. In the feathers near the lower edge the brush had almost dried; the marks there are broken and caught fast on the crests of the canvas weave.
An upright surface, ninety centimetres tall. From a metre and a half back, two heads and one body are set up. Come down to half a metre and that setup breaks down, because most of the borders become indistinct in the places where the paint mixed and it becomes unreadable where the body ends and the ground begins. For this reason the picture does not hold the viewer at one distance; on approaching, to take back what they lost, a person draws back involuntarily. Beneath the signature in the upper left corner there is a palm-sized white the green never reached; the primer shows itself there and reminds you how cold the surface beneath the picture is.
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