Táltos – How Hungarian Mythology Guides the Flow of Oil on Animal Skin

With the worldwide pandemic, social distancing has lead to social isolation around the world. Like millions of people, part of my isolation is to catch up with movies I never had the time to start watching or finishing them.

So, I watched the series Freud on Netflix. It is an Austrian-German production where symbolism and made-for-movie psychoanalysis are woven into an imaginary plot of Hungarian expatriates trying to harm Imperial Austria. I watched it because symbolism is the muse of every artist, no matter the expression medium.  Of course I was not expecting historical veracity of events in this production, nor serious psychoanalytic undertones.

Indeed, the central theme of the symbolism revolves around the concept of Táltos, from Hungarian mythology. Actually, more than a concept, Táltos is the name given to a clairvoyant, a shaman, or anyone believed to have powers of communication with spirits. As such, Táltos is neither nice nor evil as depicted in the movie; it is a person with extraordinary powers. And of course the Netflix movie has a very attractive Hungarian woman possessed by Táltos and orchestrating the coup by Hungarian expatriates against the Imperial Austrian monarchy.

What I liked about the mixing of symbolism and psychoanalysis is the episode about dissociation. In psychoanalysis, dissociation is explored in a “fragmented patient” who has dissociated self-states.  The key to existence of dissociation is self defense against hurt and trauma. However, with all the liberties taken in designing the plot of this movie, Fleur the Hungarian medium possessed by Táltos has dissociation to serve the nationalistic cause of the expatriates.

Ok, with all these caveats, I enjoyed the movie, which also gave me an idea for trying to express dissociation in my sculpture-painting mode using animal skin and fur.

I started with eyes. I wanted to create eyes that are both open and slightly closed at the same time. Just like during a trans experienced by a medium. Here are the starting lines of the open eyes.

Is it going to be a wolf? A fox? Or just a symbolic predator? I never start with a finite idea. I let the canvas and the moment show me the way.

I got the nose and the ears delineating the eyes, and tried the use of blue topaz stones:

It was time to have a 3-dimentional look in eyes painted and a 2-dimentional hare skin! I used cobalt blue to trace eyelids within the eyes themselves. Now if one looks slightly from a lower plane of view, the eyes seem half-shut.

Or half open.

I finished the imaginary predator with simple lines. Added squirrel whiskers, blue topaz stones, and two fluffy cottontail tails. These gave me the idea of evaporation which was a way to express dissociation from one self-state to another.

And to accentuate the contrast between these fragmented self-states, I gave my imaginary predator the identity of a pray, in the shape of a hare’s head.

There you have it – a Freudian dissociative state, in a fragmented person, with eyes in trans, all presented on hare skin! And to accentuate the travel of the self-state from one to the other, I painted a narrowing tunnel on the back board upon which the painted hare skin is placed. When looking at the framed picture, the 3-dimensional effect is there of the imaginary predator either going backwards into that dark tunnel, or coming out of it.

… When I framed and hung this masterpiece (!) in the hallway of my studio, I could not stop wondering how my modes of expression will evolve as a reflection of the pandemic ravaging the lives of people and the functioning of countries.

And I realized that slight temporary dissociation from the news of the pandemic, is for an artist a true self-defense mechanism to avoid hurt and harm.

April 4, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020