ARCANALOGUE: "Two Agents Ecstatically Converging On A Central Point..."

I caught the Mike Cockrill exhibition at Kent Gallery this weekend. The collection's sensuality is unmatched among anything else I saw in Chelsea (which means his site probably isn't safe for viewing at work, depending on your employer's regard for romantic scenes between nearly-nude pubescent waifs). The room was incredibly still and quiet, but the walls were so heavy with Americana-drenched scenes of sexual awakening that they practically radiated their own warmth.

So many of Cockrill's psychosexual portraits lend themself to a Lovers card that it was really hard to narrow it down to just one. In the painting above, Schoolyard Paradise, we see two agents ecstatically converging on a central point, a male and female united in bliss. Their enjoyment is not exactly sexual in nature (appropriate, since this card is not always a sexual or even romantic talisman) but the latent eroticism within the image is undeniable. We look at this innocent pairing and we see... potential.

In his book The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, Robert M. Place explains that the Lovers card hasn't always depicted the holy union of a male and a female. In the Marseilles decks we see another woman in the picture, with the young man forced to choose between them. He selects the woman crowned with laurels, signifying the victory of virtue over sensuality, and having triumphed thus he will go on to attain the cardinal virtues of Strength, Justice, and Temperance. In this way he really gets three dames for the price of one, as these three virtues each individually appear as powerful female entities.

It's fascinating that other version of the card is more universally known, because I find the Marseilles version to be a little more useful, in readings and personal meditations alike. When You draw the Lovers card, usually your brain can't help but try and figure out who the other person in the card is supposed to be. We can't help but project and ponder and fantasize. When the card is presented in terms of a rite of passage or the opportunity to make a personality-defining decision, however, the focus is suddenly back on the querent, right where it most likely belongs. Let the Lovers -- both the chooser and the chosen -- guide you toward an new understanding of your desire and your relationship with unknown entities, human or otherwise.

Cockrill's paintings offer a sort of middle path between the two versions. Some of his paintings, like True Love, observe the quiet Edenic bond between lover and beloved. Some have a strong sense of an Other, a rival presence that creates a different kind of tension between the scene's inhabitants. But either way, we end up measuring our own standards of beauty and sensuality -- perhaps uncomfortably -- against what we believe to be healthy or virtuous, regardless of whether we find the paintings absurd, erotic, profane, or all of the above.