“In order to find magic you have to believe in it,”says Pascale Montandon-Jodorowsky, the other half of Alejandro Jodorowsky. “Magic is all around us. You need to open yourself to that.” 

Magic. Of course. This isn’t really about art. This is about magic. The magic of pascALEjandro.

Who are they? Friends? Collaborators? Lovers that met later on in life? A vision of hope?

It’s a love story as fascinating as any of their paintings. If you can believe it, for a moment, Alejandro is just a day younger than Pascale’s father, which was enough for the father to allow his daughter’s hand to be relinquished in marriage. This is what great novels are written about. Truth vastly stranger than fiction. Truth apropos to every shred of film or drop of paint the two of them have shed in their art. They walk with hands touching, they speak with voices wrapped around one another.

“We are half a person. People, in general, are half a person. We are not a complete person,” says the legendary auteur, Alejandro, holding the hand of his beloved Pascale, “We are not everything, we are half, and we need that person to find the other half. Every human being needs to have a real love, and I don’t mean a romantic love, I mean a real love, and a real love is when the two hearts start to go together.”

Together to...create. Ultimately to create, whether that be a physical or a metaphysical child, which, the paintings we are here to behold at BLUM Gallery in Culver City are; children birthed by paint and mind and soul in communion.

“He puts his imagination, his psychedelic way of thinking, all he is, into the work,” says Pascale, “and then he gives me the drawings and he lets me be free to do what I want. It’s a complete game of trust and respect, and then when it appears it’s something like a miracle. It’s like a third person. I don’t think we would be able to do this alone, it’s an encounter between us that lives on.”

Alejandro nods, “We didn’t have children, but we did this, and maybe it’s more powerful in our case, because we give something to the world. This is our connection with each other, and the universe, and the mysterious, and love is at the center of it.”

But let’s step backward: who is Alejandro Jodorowsky? He seems like one of those myths that people have either heard of, and feel the story in the marrow of their bones, or they haven’t heard of at all, somehow the whole thing passed them by like wind through a window.

That being said, chronicling the career of a man like Jodorowsky in the midst of a thousand or so words feels almost insulting, but, here we are, not insulting but paying homage to the man and the myth. 

He is Chilean-born and belongs most closely to the Avant Garde movement of the 1970s. His work has obtained cult-status, evinced by the people that throng toward his body whilst in his presence, hoping to bask and glean some of the magical light that certainly emanates off of him. His career is one of persistence and never-ending seeking, with him playing somewhat of the mainstream exile.

You can see such an example of Jodorowsky’s in/out career in a documentary about his all but failed obsession with making the movie Dune (Jodorowsky’s Dune, directed by Frank Pavich) of which slipped through his hard-worn fingers and went to David Lynch, culminating in a historic filmic debacle. The films the Chilean auteur did make, however, will forever be lights of the medium of cinema, floating upon this river of surrealism and shamanism, notably the acid western El Topo (1970) and the deeply esoteric jaunt The Holy Mountain (1973).

Aside from his filmmaking, Jodorowsky is a writer and expert in the ways of the tarot. He has written numerous books, including the legendary comic book The Incal, illustrated by the iconic Jean Giraud, about a dystopian planet of galactic voyagers. From alchemy and psychedelic bents to morphing realities, Jodorowsky has created a universe that is uniquely his own.

Meanwhile, Pascale is 52 and Alejandro is 95, yet she is just as wise and perspicacious and is a singular creator in her own right. She speaks on time and what it means to be a human with this kind of heavy ease. What she says resonates and shakes the listener. Upon meeting the two of them it is no surprise that they are peas in the proverbial pod, peas sprouting magical wings, flying into their ether of art. For the work featured herein, Alejandro and Pascale teamed up to create subjects and color of a high form, a form that is there to tell a story of hope, positivity, and love.

Why does this feel so rare? This image of love. We ask the ether. A culture split in two, love seemingly found on the frayed edges of life. The fear of commitment leaking out of humanity’s pores. But not here, not here between these two beings, here we are reminded that humanity may still have a chance.

“I was describing him before I met him,” recounts Pascale, “I knew since I was a child I would meet someone like him. The perfect being for me, and when I saw him in Paris, I knew. And I have to confess I didn’t know who he was. But it seemed like everybody in the world was coming to have coffee and have him read them the tarot. When it was my turn he opened his eyes at me and it was like he saw an apparition, and he knew everything about me. It was so powerful, and I wanted to keep the link. I was doing an exhibition one month later, and I invited him, but he also invited me to his house, and he never does that, and when I walked inside I cried immediately.”

In fact, a tear now drips out of the eye of the observer, the eye of the listener. Witnessing the miraculous. Point zero. Wondering if the primordial ooze made love. Going back that far. Like nada. Like nada from El Topo. Like nada etched onto one of the paintings in the show that reflects your image back to you.

“Nada is a fullness at the same time,” Pascale says, “nada is not always nothing. What is interesting about relationships is that you get to learn about yourself. Because when you trust someone you can give everything, because you know the other will not take from you something you don’t want to give. It is a perpetual gift, like within this art.”

Speaking with these two affords different kinds of questions. Diverting from the obvious. God. Fate. Regret. The eternal questions hover around us. Pondering the mysteries.

“There is truth and belief,” says Alejandro, “No one human being can have truth, because we are animals still. But we can believe or not believe, and that is what you need to find in life. God is something superior to reality, it is totality, and similar to the universe we will never know exactly. We don’t know, but there is something superior to us. It’s like synchronicity. Like, I think of tigers, and then I look and I see a tiger. But it is impossible for a tiger to be there! I ask the tarot things I cannot answer.”

They speak like they paint.A symphony of heart and pigment. Each note working together. Uncorrupted by time. Uncorrupted by ego. This is clear. Clear as we talk. Time has lost gravity.

“The idea of God is to accept the mysterious,” Pascale chimes, the instrument of her beliefs being played confidently. “There is eternity. There is infinity. But with the human brain we can’t wrap around this idea. So explaining God is like explaining love. What is love? Why do you love someone? There is no reason there. How can you explain love? Of course you can find someone beautiful, intelligent, blah blah blah. But as for the fate of our love, I was convinced that we would happen. The only task, maybe, is accepting and living with the fear of losing the other, but at the same time it gives you the true meaning of the relationship, and to live in the eternal present.”

The eternal present made eternally rich by the art. Alejandro, is, of course, as illustrious an artist as you will ever find. His films stretching vast horizons of decades. The man is rich, like soul rich. You can tell. Have you ever witnessed one of those sages who has magic pouring out of their fingers? That. Now. Using his art as an effort to transform. Alejandro moves his hands up and down and begs the question: Is that what painting is?

Head shake. No. Anyone can move their hands up and down with a brush, but can anyone consciously give their soul to a higher cause? Maybe...but are they willing to?

“I’ve been a public artist for about 60 years, making money on it, all my life I have been an artist. It started to be a way for me to criticize the world, but I realized that’s not good for anything. And making a painting or a movie is the same, aside from a movie being more public, as opposed to a painting which is seen in one place. But it’s about what you do for humanity, and not only humanity. Not only humanity, but also for the animals. Because they need our help. Because we are eliminating all the animals, and they help the Earth. Every animal has a mission, and excuse me, but even the excrement is honey to the insect. But, really, movies are industrial movements. They are too expensive, they are not free like making a painting. You cannot heal society with movies, because movies are damned, they destroy the world without really giving anything. And they inherently end up being political, because money is political, the movies now are different.”

We trust you know what he means. Does a billion-dollar film feed the hungry? Does a billion-dollar film save the rainforest? No. Does a painting? Probably that doesn’t either. But the message is clear. If we’re not giving something back to whence we came what is the point? We can’t eat Rolexes. We can’t eat high-horsepower vehicles. We can’t, we can’t, we can’t. But what can we?

“The culture of what you believe is mysterious,” Pascale says finally, after a moment of consideration, “like when I talk about the certitude of meeting someone like Alejandro, it was not something I wanted, it was just there, and I’m convinced everyone has that perfect being for each other.”

So...love? How do we get the work to spring from love? Can we eat love? Is love edible? Is love enough sustenance to keep the brushes wet and the film spinning?

“Well, when you find the real person you don’t lose yourself, you are more yourself,” Pascale says, reverting back to what we all know, whether we want to admit it or not, the core answers sitting at the base of our spines. “In alchemy, it is said that the great work cannot be done without finding the great love.”

Pause. Noises around us. Birds. Humans. Insects. All of the things their paintings are made up of. Death and life commingling. “The color of the skin is different but the bones are the same,” says Alejandro, from somewhere inside his vocal chords.

“Every person has a perfume or no perfume.” “When we met, Alejandro was 76 years old, and that’s not a problem, because we are eternity,” says Pascale, from somewhere inside her vocal chords.

“76 feels really young,” says Alejandro, from somewhere, from somewhere, from somewhere. “I’m 95 now, 5 more years. It’s too much.”

From somewhere. From somewhere smiles appear. On both of their faces. Their hands running across each other’s hands. From somewhere. The truth is revealed. 

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Photographed by Abi Polinsky

Written by Augustus Britton