• horsesvisions > paintings — Birdland > Genesis

Alike, some of the words of the "Privilege (Set Me Free)" composition in the 1978 Easter album, that Patti Smith borrows to the Bible's Psalm 23 : "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down In green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul, He leadeth me through the path of righteousness for His name’s sake, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." Obviously, examples in that field abound : Wave (a song adressed to Pope John Paul II), Easter, Dancing Barefoot, Lo and Beholden, Jubilee, to name only a few ... Or Ain’t It Strange from the 1976 Radio Ethiopia album ("Do you go to the temple tonight? Oh no, I don't think so. Do you not go to the palace of answers with me Mary? Oh no, I don't think so"). Thus, Patti Smith confided to Rolling Stone Magazine in 2014 : " I left organized religion at 12 or 13, because I was brought up a Jehovah's Witness. I have a very strong biblical background. I studied the Bible quite a bit when I was young and continue to study it, independent of any religion, but I still study it". So, when Patti Smith improvised and recorded Birdland in 1975 in the New York studio "Electric Lady" (owing its name to the "Electric Ladyland" album by Jimmy Hendrix), she sounded like she was chanting the boy’s ascension to the black alien spaceship in heaven (that Peter Reich believed having seen) like if it was that of a Cosmic Christ : The son, the sign, the cross (Birdland). A metaphor which deeply marked the gestation of the Birdland's paintings as an epiphany.

The second reason that led me to structure this Birdland series around the Christic figure, is due to Wilhelm Reich's charismatic character.The symbolism of the father absent because dead appeared to me to be fundamental, Peter Reich and the character of Mitch Brenner each having lost their father precisely in times when our societies freed themselves from the Founding Father by proclaiming the death of God.
Thus I realized that The Birds (1963) were born in the heart of the triumphant Modern Era's Glorious Thirty, some ten years before the Oil Crisis born in the mid 70s rang the end of playtime break. This naive optimistic era of conquering rationality was symptomatic of a culture without God, inaugurated by Nietzsche among others and intoxicated by its many scientific advances which allowed Man to step on the Moon. An era that decreed in the euphoria of his omnipotence that it had no need of God, and therefore wondered about his death with the famous cover of Time Magazine in its edition of April 8th, 1966 : Is God dead ?.