Margrét Jónsdóttir – Painting as Epitaph One of the most direct but yet subtle visual message in the history of painting can be found in the vanitas paintings during the Dutch golden age. What is fascinating about these propped still lives are the political and existential meanings produced by an interconnection of organic things and everyday objects. The vanitas paintings were a product of social and religious transition of a nation that had converted to Lutherian and Calvinist ways and therefor rejected the pictorial language of catholicism. Since art in catholic churches upheld the resurrection and eternal life (even Jesus suffering on the cross is never about death but rather his sacrifice so that man can have eternal life in Christ), Dutch artists needed to oppose such imagery, and the vanitas paintings served that purpose by telling us, with rotting fruits, shedding plants and barred skulls, that pleasures are futile and everything has an end. Another fascinating aspect of the Dutch vanitas paintings is the contradiction of creating Memento mori. Taking in images that indicate death and decay while enjoying the pictorial beauty and elaborate craft of the paintings is paradoxical. In that sense the vanitas paintings are ancestors to artworks like Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York, Yoko Ono's Cut Piece, Dieter Roth's rotting objects and any artwork that is its own epitaph or IN MEMORIAM. Icelandic artist Margrét Jónsdóttir has dedicated most of her art over the last 20 years to the theme of IN MEMORIAM. Her first exhibition bearing that title was held at The ASÍ Art Museum in Reykjavík in 2001. The exhibition was dedicated to her mother and uncle, who had recently passed on, and consisted mostly of paintings
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with egg tempera on paper mixed with organic material that in time would cause the surface of the paintings to mold and rot. The paintings had some resemblance to landscapes but not as representations. The relation was more in the handling of the material and structure of the surface. There was also a decorative or ornamental touch in the pictorial layout that was counterpunched with greyish dirt like colours and, in some cases, a small shape neatly placed on the surface depicting a small excrement that some person or other had relieved from his or her body. Three years later, for another exhibition titled IN MEMORIAM at Reykjanes Art Museum, Margrét went further into the ornamental phase of painting when she exhibited a series of works made with French wallpaper stencils on paper. The stencils formed a flower leaf pattern that is familiar in wall paper tradition, but the artist attacked the decorative features with a deep and aggressive red colour, executed in somewhat expressive manner that touched on abstract expressionism and artists such as Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and Perle Fine. In fact, the paintings functioned as sort of hybrids of ornamentalism and abstract expressionism. These paintings had obvious references to Dutch vanitas paintings due to their theme of futility and inevitability of death, but also because the flower wall paper relates to flower paintings. Flowers played an important role in the vanitas imagery. Painters such as Maria van Oosterwijk and Rachel Ruysch would have colourful flowers in the centre of their paintings, surrounded by darkened colours, representing the transience of life.
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IN MEMORIAM. Egg tempera on paper, 78x106 cm, 2002–2003. Photo: xxxxxx
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IN MEMORIAM. Egg Tempera and milk on paper, 78x106 cm, 2004–2007. Photo: xxxxx
From the series: SHIT. Watercolour on paper, 21x 28 cm, 2018–2019. Photo: xxxxx
Since her very successful exhibition at Reykjanes Art Museum Margrét has developed the use of French wall paper stencil even further, both in egg tempera and watercolour, and displayed several versions of her hybrid ornamental and abstract expressive style.
wiener shit, log shit, etc. The “shit” paintings exalt the values of vanitas paintings but take the imagery a step further by showing the remains of food that has passed through the body's stomach, broken down by bacteria and left to be dissolved on the ground.
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The same can be said about the shapes of excrement mentioned before. It became the base of her show Shit, icons and damned damn … at The Printmaking space in Reykjavík in 2012 where she displayed a series of watercolours of varied shit forms, such as wet shit, corn shit, akvarellen 3/21
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Shit is an abject, and like most abjection it is repellent to us. It reminds us of our own materiality and can disturb our identity as the abject looses its distinction between subject and object, or so explains Bulgarian philosopher Julia Kristeva in her influential book The Powers 25
of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. For instance, when we bleed, we do not identify ourselves with the blood. But we also do not differentiate the blood from us. So, according to Kristeva the abject is not “me”, not the “other” and not nothing either. The abject is basically everything that the body rejects, or comes out of the body and will dissolve or rot. Kristeva mentions that all holes of the body are channels for abjection, our nose, mouth, eyes, rectum and genitals, but none more than the vagina. In 2019 Margrét had a solo show at the exhibition space of The Association of Icelandic Visual Artists titled The Imagery of suffering. It consisted mostly of watercolours painted on rectangular and circular sheets of paper, placed in groups around the space, each showing a singular centred red flower. The group instalment of the paintings called to remembrance the wall paper series at Reykjanes Art Museum because of the flower pattern that formed between images. There was, however, no French stencil involved. Each flower was unique, a single red rose, seen from above and shaped like vaginas, or hybrids of a flower and vagina. There are, of course, structural similarities between a rose and a vagina. Margrét simply exaggerated them to give the image a metaphorical meaning. Some had stronger resemblance to a rose and others to vaginas, with the colour red hinting at menstrual blood. By bringing out the vaginal form in the fragility of a flower Margrét draws attention to the sensitivity of the vagina, while, at the same time, she points towards suffering. As for abjection the vagina serves as a channel for urine, menstrual blood and discharge fluids, not to mention all the stuff that follows when giving birth. The vagina goes through a lot as a lot goes through the vagina.
Margrét's vaginal roses have distinct relations to the Dutch vanitas paintings. Flowers in vanitas paintings are usually very ripe or past its full bloom. This means that the flower head is changing, the petals are separating and beginning to wither. That is also the state of Margrét's vaginal roses. It is the first visible stage of decay and therefor a ruthless reminder that everything has an end. Jón B. K. Ransu www......
IN MEMORIAM. Watercolour on paper, 152x122 cm, 2018. Photo: xxxxxx
From the series: The Imagery of Suffering. Watercolour on paper, 30x30 cm, 2018–2019. Photo: xxxxxx
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