THE VERTIGO OF EROS
ROBERTO MATTA, 1944
It almost looks like a galaxy. Gravity changing its mind, lights with no source, shapes half-forming and half-dissolving. Bodies that aren't quite bodies. The floor isn't a floor. Matta painted this in 1944 and called it The Vertigo of Eros. He was Chilean, trained as an architect, worked for Le Corbusier in Paris, then fell in with the Surrealists. When the war came, he got out and landed in New York. Later, he said the Surrealists arrived in America "like a Charlie Chaplin movie. We had arrived utterly lost." That's the painting. Lost, but not empty. Floating, but not peaceful. Everything is moving, blooming, collapsing, reaching for something. Matta had a name for spaces like this: inscapes. Inside-landscapes. Not the world in front of you. The weather inside your head. So you're not really looking at outer space here. You're looking at what space feels like from inside a person who doesn't know which way is up yet. And the title is doing a lot. Eros. Sure, love, desire, bodies, attraction. Sounds romantic. But the real word is vertigo. Desire as freefall. That dizzy second when something starts and your body knows before your brain does. Pollock used to come by Matta's studio. So did the others. Looking, borrowing, stealing a little oxygen. The thing that becomes American painting over the next decade runs right through this guy from Santiago. Most of the painting is falling. And if you've ever stood somewhere and suddenly had no idea which way was down, you don't need this one explained.