I still don’t understand who I am: the first human or the last dog in space. - Yuri Gagarin
It was on November 3, 1957 - fifty years ago today that Laika took flight. Her ship circled the Earth 2,570 times, burning upon re-entering the atmosphere on April 14, 1958. She didn’t see the stars or the moon, as Sputnik 2 was not equipped with windows but she felt, if only briefly, what humanity had longed for so desperately.
Today, I want you to take a moment and think of her out there; stray mutt picked off the streets of Moscow, in her little capsule. Paving the way for us all.
The mystical paintings of Madeline von Foerster invoke names like Van Eyck, Brueghel, Bosch, Remedios Varo, Ernst Fuchs. It’s vibrant, multi-layered work, filled with Occult and Medieval symbolism and rendered in the painstaking egg tempera oil tradition of the Flemish Old Masters. Ageless, yet thematically timely, scholarly but always deeply personal, hers is simply some of the most moving work in the medium that I’ve seen from anyone of my generation.
I remember the first time I viewed the following self-portrait at a gallery showing in midtown NYC:
“Self Portrait (Trepanation)” 2005 by Madeline von Foerster
It’s a fairly large piece, 34″ x 42″ (not including the lavish frame, which she constructed and painted as well). If you’re familiar with the technique of egg tempera, closely examining a painting like this can be mind-boggling… all of those smoothly-placed, minuscule brush strokes, patiently layered, culminating in subjects that can only be described as having an unearthly inner glow. The enigmatic subject matter of trepanation thrilled me as well.
It was your typical overcrowded NYC gallery opening. Plenty of cheap wine and fabulously dressed people, all talking a little too loudly over one another. Then there was Madeline, standing off to one side, as gracious, elegant and mysterious as one of her paintings. Since that time, I’ve come to know her as one of those exceedingly rare examples of a person whose life reflects purely in their art.
Some of her recent work is currently up in a group show at the Strychnin Gallery in London. Take a peek at it and some other pieces behind the cut.
I can’t have been any older than 8 or 9 when my brain was permanently warped byThe Adventures of Mark Twain. My folks though they were treating me to fluffy kid’s fare. They were quite wrong. A full length feature directed by claymation innovator Will Vinton, the film follows the existensial journey of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher as crew members aboard the funky, Verne-inspired flying machine of a very suicidal Mark Twain.
It’s been well documented that Twain –who was born and died with the arrival of Halley’s Comet– was a deeply depressed, reclusive misanthrope in his later years. In the film, disgusted with the human condition, Twain is determined to hunt down the comet and crash into it. “I will continue on doing my duty, but when I get to the other side, I will use my considerable influence to have the human race drowned again, this time drowned good. No omissions. No ark.”
Worried about their own fate, the kids plot to hijack the ship. With the aid of an inter-dimensional portal aboard, they meet several characters from Twain’s various short stories, including Captain Stormfield, the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and The Mysterious Stranger (this last sequence has got to be one of the impressive displays of clay animation around, not to mention the creepiest):
We are approaching the 50 year anniversary of Laika’s flight!
Her story has always resonated with me. Still deciding how this should be celebrated and suggestions are welcome. Anything reminiscent of a furry party will be disregarded. I’m considering a Laika sanctification ceremony. In the meantime, a transcription from my personal journal follows.
If anyone deserves to have a religion devoted to them, it is you. An army of zealots and their children, whispering your name before bed, thinking of your sacrifice. An innocent, a martyr offered to science in the real world.
