Tom Collins, writer & art critic for the Santa Fe Reporter
There is a kind of medieval surreality about the works of Monika Steinhoff, and in particular her recent series of egg tempera paintings, Journey of the Fool. While the imagery and settings are familiar -- the natural landscape, the angels, apes, and fish, even the rotunda of a Russian Orthodox church -- the ever-present red-capped female figure, nude or harlequin-robed, floats through scene after scene and reverberates beyond our conscious apprehension. The implied, dream-like narratives confound and subvert our all too human impulse to attach the deadening certainty of meaning.
From the attendant Fool of Shakespeare's King Lear, to Charlie Chaplin, to Steve Martin, it has always been the clown, the Fool who, while mocking the natural order, had paradoxically been the voice of Truth, Reason, Wisdom. Steinhoff's acrobatic, tightrope-walking Fool is among this company. Even the black-and-white-striped trees remind one of the Koshares -- the clowns -- of Pueblo Indian ceremony.
Recently, I stood with the artist in her house looking at an earlier painting from the Fool series. We were joined by one of her young daughters, a precocious outspoken young lady who, when we'd met earlier, looked at me skeptically and stuck out her tongue. (I like contrariness. Her mother was not pleased.) As we all stood before the painting, I couldn't resist quizzing her about it.
"Who's that?" I asked indicating a figure.
"That's my mommy," she said quite certainly.
"Who's that?" I asked, indicating a large, crucified gorilla.
She paused a perfect comedian's beat, and turned to me, deadpan. "That's my sister," she said, and skipped away.
In a world that is standing on its head, the wise testimony of the Fool, the Child, and the Artist turns it rightside up and back on its feet again.
From the attendant Fool of Shakespeare's King Lear, to Charlie Chaplin, to Steve Martin, it has always been the clown, the Fool who, while mocking the natural order, had paradoxically been the voice of Truth, Reason, Wisdom. Steinhoff's acrobatic, tightrope-walking Fool is among this company. Even the black-and-white-striped trees remind one of the Koshares -- the clowns -- of Pueblo Indian ceremony.
Recently, I stood with the artist in her house looking at an earlier painting from the Fool series. We were joined by one of her young daughters, a precocious outspoken young lady who, when we'd met earlier, looked at me skeptically and stuck out her tongue. (I like contrariness. Her mother was not pleased.) As we all stood before the painting, I couldn't resist quizzing her about it.
"Who's that?" I asked indicating a figure.
"That's my mommy," she said quite certainly.
"Who's that?" I asked, indicating a large, crucified gorilla.
She paused a perfect comedian's beat, and turned to me, deadpan. "That's my sister," she said, and skipped away.
In a world that is standing on its head, the wise testimony of the Fool, the Child, and the Artist turns it rightside up and back on its feet again.