WOMEN & WHEELS
A Few Thoughts, Ideas, and Commentary
by William John Meegan
[with additional clarification by Vita in blue text]
edited by Kathy Feig

     It is very interesting that the artist, Vita, has picked up on the idea that women found freedom with the wheel: the bicycle.  In setting out on a series of 12-paintings giving homage to women he has crossed over into that mystical world of abstractions, which only artists and poets can transcend.
     There are so many familiar motifs that Vita touches on that it would seem as if the aeons themselves have taken the project away from him in order to use his communiqué for its purpose rather than allowing him to express himself: his conscious efforts are surpassed by the very symbolism that he chooses to convey his ideas.  The spirit takes one where it wills to go not vice versa.  All symbols have messages given to them by the aeons long before the artist took up the paintbrush or the author his pen or even the sculptor his chisel.  It is for this very reason that the aeons can transubstantiate an artist’s canvas, or an author’s page, or a sculptor’s marble, for its mercurial communiqué.
     Woman represents space as in a container.  She brings forth life and invokes the idea of the renewal of life and life eternal, whereas, the man in his linear thought processes represents time: history and the annihilation of the race and life in general.  This is why man is a curator of religious lore rather than being a procreator of it.  Man is always claiming that the end of revelation has come and gone, whereas, woman rejects the mausoleums that are the museums of the world which preach such rhetorical nonsense, which Vita symbolically calls upon the major religions of the world to stand for.
     The use of the wheel is in every sense calling up images of mandala symbolism.  Vita’s bicycle wheel is definitely a female’s mandala.  [Not necessarily, he invention of the bicycle gave women the opportunity to move freely without the supervision of man. See Annie Cohen Kopchovsky/Annie Londonderry who, in 1894, went around the world on a bike.]   The two famous cultures that deal with sand-painting mandalas, Tibet Buddhism and the Navajo Indians speak volumes as to the true nature of this genre of symbolism.  The sand-painting mandala is made up of a rainbow of colors, which is a feminine symbol (note the hues of colors in female clothing as oppose to the solid color of men’s clothing) but most important to note is that such mandalas are made up of millions of pieces of sand.  Sand invokes the idea of time as in the ‘sands of time’.  Just as it takes a volume of words (constructed by their letters) to explain a picture, so to, is the mandala so explained.  Modern scholasticism would have us believe that the image (goddess) died with the invention of the alphabet.  On the contrary she is eternally with us in the esoteric structure of the sacred scriptures of the world.  Just as the human female has been relegated to insignificant in the man’s world, so to has the goddess been banished from the patriarchal religions.  Yet, spirituality can only be obtained through recognizing her preeminent position in all things spiritual, otherwise man is doomed to live out his existence in the hell fires and damnation of his own destructive rhetoric.
     Another thing that comes to mind is that woman represents the psyche as oppose to the masculine that represents materialism: the body, which encloses the psyche.  Vita’s basic point is that women find freedom with the wheel.  The feminine or matriarchal authority represents the cycle of seasons and all the motifs that deal with cyclic imagery in their makeup, whereas, the masculine represents the patriarchal authority or linear/straight line of existence (history).  He is a bull in a china shop.   Man is basically sightless with blinders on and demonstrates a tendency for tunnel vision.  The absence of the male from these 12-paintings speaks just as many volumes as the feminine presence. 
     Throughout the series the female is for the most part at a distance from the man’s world shown in the background: she is on the edge of civilization (as seen in ‘The Flat’, as if she prefers nature to the harshness of the concrete jungle.)  [In 'The Flat', the woman sarcastically emulates the praying posture of the Muslim male while fixing the flat, solving her own problems].  Ironically it is because of her that civilization exists.  In her self imposed exile, she is lost in the serenity of her thoughts.  It may well be that civilization may have come about to give the man something to do while the woman goes about populating and educating the world.  Joseph Campbell in his POWER OF MYTH series tells how the human family mimics the antics of the monkey.  While the female takes care of the children the male is out patrolling his territory.  And while it is not time to gather the food the males invent games to keep themselves occupied.  This same conduct is seen in many primitive native societies to the point of inventing deadly mock war games between tribes.
     The nudity is quite apt for such a series of paintings concerning the feminine principle. [The reason for nudity has other interpretations. It means that the woman is comfortable in her own skin and irreverent to religious icons. Furthermore, the nudity offers the opportunity to fool the viewer into believing that the compositions are set in the past when, in reality, it is the presence of ancient religious icons that confuse the morals of today’s society.]  The fact that she is riding, kneeling, standing, and sitting on the clothing materials rather than wearing them demonstrates it is her choice as if affronted by the apparel encasing and covering up who she is: just as the eternal youthful psyche is offended by the body’s aging.  It is a moral mandate from the masculine point of view ‘to cover up what he thinks is the woman’s virtue’.  This is precisely what the masculine does in the sacred scriptures of the world.  The masculine clothes the woman in words and storylines that are, for all intent and purpose, meaningless as to her sacred role in the scriptures.  Such mundane and historical text completely obliterates the feminine principle’s importance from existence; this is essentially why the human female is cast as a second-class citizen in the real world of mundane reality.  She is, after all, in a masculine materialistic world and completely out of her element: out of her natural environment.  Just as the moon obtains its glory from the sun, so too does woman obtain, in the material world, recognition through her man and even then the recognition is practically nonexistent.  These apparent inequalities in the masculine world, concerning the female gender, are no accidents of nature, they are a mirror image of what takes place in the mental spiritual realm.  What is above is below and vice versa.  When we say the man dominates on earth, then he must dominate in heaven is a false reading of Christ’s mandate of what is above is below.  Believe it: in heaven women have all the say – in hell the men do. 
     Nudity as symbolism in itself is not erotic, rather it is a representation of equality.  In fact this series of paintings is devoid of eroticism and the details to the female figure that would announce it.  A matriarchal idea of life seeks 50%/50% recognition with its male counterpart, whereas, the patriarchal authority eternally beating its chest seeks whatever it can dictate over 51%: preferably 100%.  For a man only feels equal to his woman in his own nudity, which he feels shame only after he has had his way with her: thus he feels the need to dress himself in order to regain his so-called moral superiority.  Throughout the series there is the overwhelming absence of the male figure other than the symbols that represent him. [There is Christ, lost on the cross, looking up toward the sky for his Father’s guidance].   The dead or sleeping religious buildings or mausoleums: Taj Mahal (grave for a dead princess), Saint Peter’s Basilica (crypt for dead saints), and the Dome of the Rock (a gutted building where archeologists dig for a long dead religion and a past that is better off being forgotten), and the destroyed Buddha figure, are all appropriately in the background: a graveyard of tombstones denoting past spiritual glories: bygone histories. 
     The viewer is forced to wonder where the masculine principle is.  Often the male is spent after he is sated and sleeps the moment away.  Yet, it is in those moments in the aftermath of love that he should be wide-awake utilizing that creative mental energy released into the world in order to revitalize his own spiritual source but he would rather let it dissipate into the material ether rather then to understand what he had wrought.  If the human race only understood the spiritual mental energies and creative byproduct that is generated in the afterglow of love, such energies would invigorate the world.  But the man would rather imitate his waking hours by sleeping the moment away.  This is why the woman is alone in this series of paintings.  The male once spent has no further need for his woman and he in turn is as useless as he is at any other time of the day.