On view: Marjorie Norman Schwarz (414 words)
- Rainey Knudson
- Oct 26
- 2 min read
I once saw a coffin made by an artist where the lid of the coffin was a vintage wooden door—a found object, dark wood, complete with an old-fashioned white porcelain knob. I loved its invitation to imagine the dead man, a remarkable man, opening it up and striding through, on to the next room. It was an amusing, poignant nod to the notion of life after death, however literally or metaphorically we may understand the idea.
Marjorie Norman Schwarz has created an astounding series of nine door-shaped paintings, all the exact same size. Each painting seems to open to some other place, another existence maybe, each an invitation to a journey. Human-scaled, the paintings are like metaphysical architecture, portals to dreamlike alternate realities.
The paintings are the result of patient, labor-intensive layering of thin, water-soluble oil paint. The result of this technique is a moiré effect, like the rippling interference patterns when striped fabrics are viewed as a digital photo. When you glance at one of her paintings, there is a disconcerting moment—one that persists—of perceptual instability. The paintings vibrate between flatness and depth, and there’s an uncertainty about what, indeed, you’re looking at.
This effect makes for shifting distances as the eye travels across the not-quite-abstract forms of dreamy landscapes, maybe figures, maybe…fruit? Each one does what all great paintings do: transcending being merely a flat object hanging on a wall and becoming a threshold that separates and connects at once.
The exhibition is titled Ode in Nine, and it is explained to partially reference the Norse god Odin, who hung from the cosmic World Tree for nine days and nine nights to gain wisdom. I think these nine door-shaped paintings depict new a kind of mythology, beyond words. The title also references Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which culminates in the famous Ode to Joy. Likewise, these paintings are resonantly, achingly joyful.
Our species is at an evolutionary turning-point; we sense it, this transition from what we have been for hundreds of millennia into something else. Change—like birth, like death—is frightening. We are frightened. But life itself is change. We grow, we move, we lose our people and gain new ones. Schwarz offers a symbolic way through with these paintings, like the artist who made the door-lidded coffin. We need not be afraid of passing through these portals. On to the next room.
