MP Review:
Dave Alber, Myth & Medium: The Art of Dave Alber
reviewed by Maggie Macary
first published in "Daily Arrows", 23 January, 2006
reprinted by permission Doug Macary: mythopoetry wishes to thank the estate of Maggie Macary, Doug Macary, executor for granting permission to republish Dr. Macary's review.
Myth & Medium: The Art of Dave Alber
Mythic Eye Press
ISBN#1-4116-6126-5
Price: 24.99

Review Myth & Medium by Maggie Macary Ph.D.

It will come to no surprise of regular readers of this blog that I am most interested in the relationship between art and myth and specifically the intertwining of the two in a burst of creative energy that I call mythopoesis or myth-making. According to Harry Slochower, (Mythopoesis: Mythic Forms in Literary Classics, 1970 ) mythopoesis occurs when the literal meanings of old stories can no longer be tolerated by a culture. The culture is in a time of crisis, when faith in authoritative structures is failing. It is in these times that cultures (through individuals, poets, prophets, artists) recreate the ancient stories, transposing them with new symbolic meaning.

That new symbolic meaning is no meaning at all, or at least a meaning with loosened boundaries, allowing others to think, dream, paint the story onward. This is why myths do not die. Culture itself dies when it can no longer myth make. We can feel when a story dies. It is empty, without psychic resonance, without the energy that somehow puts us beyond the literalness of the story. It is bad movies, written to a formula and television shows stuck in a notion of reality.

But I have faith in the artist and poets during these times, faith that they continue to create new symbolic meanings out of old stories. I am always anxious to find the new artists who are really working on the experience of myth making, which I believe is a form of myth breaking. Break the story and find its still-living, gooey essence and new forms will arise.

In that regard, I was pleased to get a book from a former classmate of mine, Dave Alber. Alber’s book, Myth & Medium contains a combination of his written words and his graphic art. I was taken immediately by the title, Myth & Medium and began to play on his metaphors. The obvious idea is that medium is related to the painter’s art itself – the particular material used by the artist to compose a work. But as I played with the idea, I realized that Alber was working at a much deeper level here.

Medium also refers to a state between two extremes, and a “medium” is a person who communicates between two worlds. I anticipated finding within Alber’s work, that sense of liminality, betwixt and between two worlds. I was not surprised then when I read this introduction in which he writes about mythological communication:

Alber’s compositions are translucent to mythological themes. They are translucent because the participant is given a glimpse into the simultaneity of the present moment, the artistic vision, and the mythological theme underlying the work. This mythological communion is about breaking down the walls that separate artist from participant, participant from subject, subject from mythological themes, and mythological themes from participant. Mythological communion is about seeing into the nature of reality. It’s about recognizing everything around us as symbolic transmission of the eternal values of myth.

Alber’s work examines the idea of translucency in myth, the shining through of mythological themes in new forms for a new generation. It demonstrates the vibrancy of mythic life and the relationship between symbol and reality as we hold to a medium place of liminality.

The book contains several well-written essays on specific myths and in parallel images and themes underlying the particular myth. As an example, his essay on the titan Prometheus is illustrated with an etching, disassembled heroic figure entitled Heroic Potentiality. Alber explains his inspiration for the print as that of working with a heroic myth. The heroic, he gestures in the description of his process, is an experience of “infinite possibilities” and a “story without end.”

Several other essays are worth noting, especially the one on epic work. Alber’s essay reveals new ideas about the nature of mythos and logos, epic and history. He reveals both the mythos and logos of his own art when he writes:

Epic holds the tension of the very small with the very large, the temporal with the eternal, and the individual subjective life with the metaphysical powers that lie beneath the serpentine life of the fixed or fallen flesh. (27).

Using this definition, Alber’s work reveals the very small within the very large and the subjective within the metaphysical. Most impressive is Alber’s series of prints called Shiva’s feet in which the etching of dancing feet is juxtaposed over images ranging from a charred Russian Village during World War II to medieval cathedrals, to Albert Einstein. Shiva dances and dreams the birth and destruction of the world. Alber’s representations of the dance in this series convey the smallness, the individuality and subjectivity as well as the eternity of that dream.

Alber’s work is representative of a work grounded in the notion of myth-making itself. The personal and the interpersonal mix and mesh, to become something new, something that breaks the static desires of culture itself. The potency of the old story remains in all its universality and timelessness. But there is a break in the myth that creates something new, something that contains the energy of the old myth and reveals its new cultural resonance. A break allows a falling apart that will, as James Hillman writes in The Dream and the Underworld, “extend consciousness to embrace and contain its psychopathic potentials” (41).

The potentiality of this work, its own “infinite possibilities” is what impresses me here. And having said that, I wished for more from Alber here, more expansion of many of his ideas; more attention paid to specific images. I would love to see an entire book focused on his images of Shiva dancing and his ideas on what he calls “Tourist in the World’s Religions.” His recreation of eastern religious images is truly cross-cultural, opening up the possibilities of conversation between east and west. I also tremendous enjoyed his exploration of Greek myth, renewing their energy in his updated images, for our own times.

All in all, I’m excited by the promise of Dave Alber’s work, by the discussion of his methods, by the mediumship he shows in bridging the world between myth and art. I am excited that the idea of mythopoesis is alive and well in the world and that it shows no sign of death.