Martha Toral, meaning of life
Posté par ITgium le 30 avril 2009
A jùn mǎ 俊 马* tale
Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?
Pablo Picasso
In 2004, a friend of mine, Ms. Irma Yepiz, a prominent Mexican activist, introduced to me Martha Toral.
Being friends for years, at that time, Irma and Martha were traveling in France, up and down, a fiery duet, an extroverted girl, a shy girl.
- I am a woman, dreamer and daring, Martha began.
On her face, a clear gaze and a discrete smile that made everyone always feel comfortable.
Immediately, I tried to persuade her to make personal comments about her work.
- To be honest with you, that’s almost embarrassing to me.
Then a silence as if what she said was enough.
Both attracted and disconcerted, I looked towards her paintings rotating and turning among some of her best achievements.
Very sensitive to the joys and pains of the human existence, she depicts them in her paintings.
Above all, the women’s meaning and purpose of all life, that “person” that seems to me so mysterious, incomprehensible, unreachable.
How frustrating can it be to stay so close and so far from the women at the same time ?
For sure, it is my lifetime punishment !
Nature’s purity
In Martha’s painting, women appear without adornment, naked in all its purity to express the very essence of the world.
The idealized female figure is sublimated in symbolic compositions where she appears either in the intimacy of a room.
Her face snatches from a proud and intransigent existence, their defenseless nudity stripped to the quick, already exposed to the great wind of the unpredictable violence of the men.
That is the problem, since the beginning of time, men move in the turbid void of their own desires and dreams.
Sometimes, he asserts that he alone created the world.
He has given to the world his arrogance, his personal self-sufficiency, to make believe that everything depends on him.
The women’s revenge is to get back to the source of the world, since history began.
What a joy that must be, enjoying her nudeness like this, I asked myself being dramatically riddled of contradictions but never indifferent.
Earth’s colours and the treasures it contains.
In her paintings, Martha Toral brought so many strengths and qualities to the table: intelligence, passion and warmth.
During her outbursts of creative energy, she puts an unknown color onto the canvas, changing everything in terms of scale and size.
True to her pioneering spirit, she created at the end, the very end, an accomplished woman with an untapped potential that should take over the men deliquescent domination.
Thanks Martha to make me more humble, discreet, neutral.
* de François de la Chevalerie
De Gaulle and Led Zeppelin, my heroes !
Le récit de jùn mǎ (俊 马) et les dessins de Sà bīn (萨宾)
At ten years old, my heart had two loves.
Since then, both kept me closely intertwined.
Late sixties, during a Parade, General De Gaulle kissed me, providing me an exquisite kind of magic potion. Later on, some wonderful waves from a rock ‘n‘ roll band slid into my ears. A heartfelt ballad through the skies caught me.
De Gaulle and Led Zeppelin, my heroes, came into my life.
I loved their strength, their energy, and their commitment to shake things up a bit.
No matter how different they were, they looked so much alike. In their own ways, they were heckling the shadow of the past, disrupting entrenched structures, driving out tedious melodies.
Led Zeppelin, full of sharp colors, partially-clothed ; de Gaulle in his floating pants, overdressed. The two sides of the same world, imaginative and inflexible, both sailing toward the future.
They tangled so much in my life that I happened to assist at an official commemoration, the ears stuck to an mp3 where the hard drum hitting style of John Bonham answered back to the corns of the Republican Guard.
At a concert, behind the dazzling “Whole Lotta Love” emerged unexpectedly the Appeal of 18 June.
Together, they structured my life, my wellness.
But, as the years pass, a significant crack appeared on the wall of my certainties.
De Gaulle plummeted.
The oaths of fidelity, some bucolic tours to his Colombey grave, the rereading of his Memoirs were not enough any more to make his teachings live on my heart.
As a result of a never-ending list of betrayals and renunciations of the French politicians, my ties with de Gaulle were loosened. Mainly because those wrong notes were unrelated to the troublesome France today reality, the upswing in rightwing extremism, the leader’s lack of commitment to deal with the problems, the future.
As de Gaulle left me, the Britons stood always near me. Even if they didn’t play anymore, a bunch of artist sing their songs, keeping the emotion intact, respecting with fidelity the spirit of their creativeness.
As for instance, Immigrant song, the tale of the Vikings rowing west from Scandinavia in search of new lands as others did today from Africa. The tone is fair, still of actuality.
We were 20 millions seeking to purchase tickets to assist at the last Led Zeppelin concert in London in 2007. We were five thousand to attend a scenic commemoration of 18 June appeal in Paris in 2010. De Gaulle is dead, we have exhausted him ! I have to acknowledge this unbearable reality.
Hopefully, I have a pressing appointment.
When midnight comes, I will listen once more the Led Zeppelin album, “The Song Remains the Same”, this endlessly repetitive cycle !
De Gaulle et Led Zeppelin
De Francois de la Chevalerie,
A dix ans, j’avais deux amours. Longtemps ils me tinrent chaudement enlacés. Au hasard d’une parade, le Général m’avait embrassé. J’en fis ma potion magique. Quelque temps après, je me laissais envahir par une merveilleuse ballade dans les cieux entonnée par un groupe de rock anglais.
Mes héros, de Gaulle et Led Zeppelin, entraient dans ma vie.
J’aimais leur force, leur énergie, leur engagement par delà de tout. Chacun, à leur manière, chahutait les ombres du passé, de tièdes mélodies. Sous leurs airs si éloignés, leurs voix survolaient pareillement les ondes molles, les contingences, les combinaisons. Les Zeppelin, clinquant de couleurs, à demi vêtus ; de Gaulle dans ses pantalons flottants, trop habillé ; l’envers et l’endroit d’un monde imaginatif et exigeant cinglant vers l’avenir.
Je commençais alors mes journées, réveillé par la charge tonitruante de Black dog. Suivait le Général, sa voix. J’étais alors prêt au combat !
En milieu de journée, cherchant à nouveau souffle, je relisais les Mémoires de guerre sous les coups de rif de Jimmy Page. Aux abords de la nuit, je feuilletais les Mémoires d’espoir, la tête bercée par Stairway to Heaven.
Ils s’emmêlaient tellement l’un à l’autre qu’il m’arrivait de participer à une commémoration officielle les oreilles collées à un baladeur où la grosse caisse de John Bonham répondait aux cors de la garde Républicaine. Lors d’un concert, derrière l’époustouflant « Rock and Roll » surgissait étrangement le discours du 18 juin.
Ensemble, ils structuraient ma vie, mon bien être.
Les années filant, une lézarde trompait mes certitudes. De Gaulle décrochait. Les serments de fidélité, les excursions bucoliques à Colombey, les relectures des Mémoires ne suffisaient plus. Sous les coups de butoirs des opportunismes, des trahisons et des renoncements, le lien se relâchait. Des ombres glissaient dans le décor, un racisme ambiant, la pâle réalité de la France, si peu l’esprit de l’engagement, bientôt le manque d’autorité.
Nous étions 20 millions à guetter un billet pour le dernier concert des Led Zeppelin à Londres en 2007. Nous étions cinq mille à assister à un éloge scénique le 18 juin 2010 à Paris.
Le Général est bien mort, nous l’avons épuisé. Led Zeppelin, je n’en ai pas fait mon deuil.
D’ailleurs ce soir, je me laisserais une nouvelle fois surprendre par « The Song Remains the Same”, l’éternel recommencement.
Publié dans Martha Toral, Mexican and Chinese, Mexican in China, Rock et Politique : De Gaulle & Led Zeppelin | Pas de Commentaire »