Phoenix
New Times
December 22, 2005
Malice in Wonderland
Down the rabbit hole at Perihelion
By Leanne Potts
It's a pop culture tenet that Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis
Carroll, was a perv. Carroll, who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, was a shy, stuttering deacon
and lifelong bachelor with an interest in little girls that, to contemporary
eyes, appears very Michael Jackson. No one has ever proved for certain
that Carroll diddled children, but the circumstantial evidence is damning.
Maryland painter Eric Finzi explores Carroll's oddness in a series of
paintings on exhibit at Perihelion Arts. The images of Carroll and some
of his "child-friends," as Carroll called them, are based
on the writer's own photographs. Finzi's paintings are hazy, shadowy
concoctions where faces and hands are blurred and figures melt into
objects around them. It's reality as seen through the imagination, where
Carroll and his children must have spent most of their time. Or reality
as seen through a drug-induced glaze, which legend also attributes to
the man who dreamed up characters like a hookah-smoking caterpillar.
The shine of the epoxy resin Finzi uses to make the paintings heightens
this stoned, glassy-eyed feel.
Finzi's paintings are ambiguous, dreamy and a bit creepy, which is probably
an accurate portrayal of what Carroll himself was like. One image in
the show is overtly creepy. It's a painting of Alice Liddell, the prepubescent
girl who is said to have been the Alice of Carroll's Wonderland stories
and the love of his life. Finzi reduces her eyes and mouth to dark painted
gashes and her body to a ghostly white shape. The only part of the child
that isn't ethereal is the gaping, violent hole Finzi has cracked into
the epoxy resin where her private parts would be. Yow. Talk about rabbit
holes. It's a graphic depiction of what Carroll wanted to do with his
dear Alice -- or maybe even what he did do.
"Eric Finzi: Lewis Carroll"
Paintings about the children's author with a thing for little girls;
continues through January 2.
Perihelion Arts, 1500 Grand Avenue
Admission is free.
