Middle Gate

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    The exhibition project Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna is a collaboration between M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the cultural centre de Werft in Geel. Middle Gate II is the follow up to the exhibition Middle Gate, curated by Jan Hoet in Geel in 2013. The exhibition concept is closely tied to the legend of the holy Dymphna, saint of the possessed, the mentally ill and patroness against epilepsy and insanity. The legend of Dymphna shares a strong connection to the identity of Geel, "the charitable city".

    Jan Cox

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    (c)image:M HKA
    Studie voor de Maenaden, Boston, 1960
    Jan Cox
    Drawing , 785 x 573 mm
    charcoal on paper

    The myth of Orpheus plays a crucial role in Cox's oeuvre.  From 1953 up to the end of his painting life, it was to remain a constant source of inspiration.  In 1958-1959 he would devote an entire cycle of works to it.  He concludes this particular series of paintings on the Orphean theme in 1960 with a number of works around the Maenads, and of which this drawing is a preparatory sketch.

    “The Maenads”, Cox writes, “are women who come together in an orgiastic celebration that ends in hysteria and destruction.  Animals are ripped apart, and Orpheus - who accidentally finds himself in this enchanted wood - is befallen by the same fate.  His limbs are strewn and his head and lyre flow away down river.  The poet who could live no more is destroyed by elemental forces."

    In Study for the Maenads, Boston'(1960), also titled The Hands, the drama of Orpheus and Eurydice is not represented in detail, but rather via the loose, sketchy and linear drawing that obliges the viewer to all the more associate with the sorrow and the pain.  With this clear, constrained composition, the artist brings a personal and humane intensity of feeling to the surface. 

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