Pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo

 

SJ Fuerst: Crab (2025) [1]

Oil paint on stuffed PVC toy, mounted on oil painted board

 

And a crab one afternoon in a pool, / An old crab with barnacles on his back, 

Gripped the end of a stick which I held him. - T. S. Eliot [2]

 

 

I. 

 

I know that, as a rule, crabs are not as fascinating to artists as lobsters [3]; as evidenced, for example, by Salvador Dalí's surrealist telephone (1936) and Jeff Koons's stainless steel sculpture (2007-12). 

 

But when, as a child, I went to the seaside for the day, I enjoyed searching for the former on the beach and will always remember coming across a large crab living (or perhaps temporarily sheltering) inside an old paint can, with his thick shell, ten legs, and large pincer claws that he waved in warning when I tried to get hold of him. It was an encounter 200 million years in the making and it made a real impression on my young mind.   

 

And so, I have a fondness for crabs - even whilst conceding that lobsters have a philosophically richer (and more perverse) symbolic history. I was pleased, therefore, to see that SJ Fuerst has got a new work currently on display entitled 'Crab' (see image above) ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Executed in her usual fine style with contemporary materials, Fuerst's work has been inspired in part by the decapods frequently depicted in Roman frescos and mosaics; one thinks, for example, of Cupid, the winged god of love, riding on the back of a harnessed crab [4].

 

Whether Fuerst also had in mind Van Gogh's oil painting of two crabs, thought to have been made soon after his release from hospital in Arles in January 1889, I don't know [5]. 

 

However, judging by the title of the exhibition - The Rabbit Hole Collective #1 - I'm guessing she had a more literary point of reference; namely, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  (1865); readers may recall the old and young crabs that gather on the shore of the pool of tears [6].   

 

 

III.

 

Whatever crab one chooses to reflect upon - be it real, fictional, or a plastic inflatable - the Spanish approve. They even have a popular expression to explain to foreigners that a siesta is not merely an opportunity to idle the early afternoon away after lunch, but, rather, allows time to contemplate important philosophical questions and think about the immortality of the crab ...

 

This sounds humorous, but our poets recognise the importance of such metaphysical daydreaming: José Emilio Pacheco, for example - regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century - understood that the beauty of the crab lay in its ability to eternally return as ruler of the beach, despite the fact that crabs make up over twenty per cent of all marine crustaceans caught, farmed, and consumed worldwide by human beings, amounting to 1.5 million tonnes annually.

 

In the opening stanza of a short verse, Pacheco writes:

 

Y de inmortalidades sólo creo 

en la tuya, cangrejo amigo.  

      Te aplastan, 

te echan en agua hirviendo,  

      inundan tu casa. 

Pero la represión y la tortura 

de nada sirven, de nada. 

 

The English translation in Selected Poems (1987) is given as:

 

Of all the immortalities, I believe in

only yours, friend crab.

      People break into your body, 

plop you into boiling water, 

      flush you out of house and home. 

But torture and affliction 

Make no apparent end of you. [7]

 

Which is really just as well, for as the Spanish writer and philosopher Miguel Unamuno once said: If the crab should ever die in its entirety [i.e., become extinct], then we too will die for all eternity ... [8] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This is one of three works by SJ Fuerst currently being exhibited at il-Kamra ta‘ Fuq (Mqabba, Malta) as part of a show entitled The Rabbit Hole Collective #1, curated by Melanie Erixon. The exhibition runs from 25 April until 11 May, 2025. 

      For more details please click here, or visit artsweven.com. See also my post of 13 April 2025 on artistic and philosophical rabbit holes: click here.

 

[2] T. S. Eliot "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", in Collected Poems: 1909-1962 (Faber & Faber, 2002). To read online via the Poetry Foundation, click here.

 

[3] See the post entitled 'Lobster Variations (I - IV) (7 Feb 2021): click here. 

[4] This work, from Pompeii, is now housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples: click here. 

      Whether this playful image is intended to suggest love's triumph over power is debatable, but I rather suspect it is. That's irritating enough, but even more annoying is how the Ancient Greek god of primordial desire, Eros [ἔρως], is infantalised and reduced to being no more than a chubby little cherub; whilst the mighty figure of Carcinus [Καρκίνος] - the giant crab who inhabited the lagoon of Lerna and battled with Heracles at Hera's command - is tamed and turned into a pet on a leash. 

 

[5] Van Gogh was probably inspired by a woodcut by the Japanese artist Hokusai which featured in the May 1888 issue of Le Japon Artistique, sent to Vincent by his brother Theo in September of that year. Van Gogh's canvas, simply titled Two Crabs, can be found in the National Gallery (on loan from a private collector): click here for further details.

 

[6] See chapter 2 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). 

      Alice also encounters crabs in chapter 5 of Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and seems to be fond of them: 'I should so like to see a little crab to take home with me!' That's exactly how I felt as a seven year old on the beach at Southend.

 

[7] See José Emilio Pacheco, 'The immortality of the crab', in Selected Poems, ed. George McWhirter, various translators, (New Directions Publishing, 1987), p. 163. 

      Usefully, this is a bilingual edition, so one can check and modify (if need be) the English translation of the Spanish text (although I made no such modifications here, I have to admit I was very tempted to do so).     

 

[8] See Miguel de Unamuno, Inmortalidad del cangrejo [The immortality of the crab]. This poem - along with Pacheco's verse - can conveniently be found on the Wikipedia page devoted to the idea of thinking about the immortality of the crab: click here.   

For Tinks

Tinkerbell staring at me through the kitchen window 

(Feb 2025)

 

'The dead by the road, or on it, testify to the presence of man.'  [1]

 

 

I. 

 

One of my least favourite compound nouns in the English language is roadkill - an ugly word coined in the United States during the 1940s for an ugly phenomenon; namely, the unending slaughter of animals by cars and other motor vehicles and the negation also of any distinction between animals that meet their end in this sickening (and I would say sacrilegious) manner [2].   

 

 

II.

 

Essentially a non-phenomenon before the advent of motorised transport speeding along modern tarmacked roads built in the UK at the beginning of the 20th century [3], roadkill is something that first attracted the concern of naturalists in the 1920s. 

 

Since then, countless numbers of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates have died beneath the wheels (or been smashed on the windscreens) of road vehicles. 

 

We might also mention the fact that our road networks have massively altered the natural environment, often isolating wildlife populations and thus further decreasing their numbers, but, even without considering this, mortality resulting from roadkill alone significantly contributes to the population decline of many threatened species. 

 

Unfortunately, I suspect that the majority of drivers - insulated and indifferent inside their vehicles - simply don't give a shit; indeed, there is even evidence from studies that some drivers intentionally run over small animals, such as mice, frogs, or hedgehogs [4].        

 

And who knows, maybe even cats ... 

 

 

III.

 

Back in January 2023, Members of the House of Commons debated a petition signed by over 100,000 UK citizens calling upon Parliament to amend legislation so as to make it a legal requirement for a driver to stop and report an accident involving a cat (as they are already required to do in the case of a dog or a farm animal) [5]. 

 

As one Labour Member reminded the House, although dogs are the most popular pet in the UK, one in four households are home to at least one cat. Mine is one such household: home to a very handsome white and ginger male cat called Phoevos. And home also to a lively young female cat called Tinkerbell (or Tinks, for short) ... 

 

 

IV.

 

Technically, Tinks lived a few doors down with one of the neighbours, even if she spent a great deal of her time here during the last six months, observing everything that was going on and endlessly seeking affection (or food). Indeed, I have never known a friendlier (or greedier) little cat. And despite being half his size, she was soon chasing Phoevos from his favourite spots in the garden, so she could claim them as her own. 

 

And then, suddenly, she was no longer meowing at the door or sitting on the kitchen windowsill watching me do the washing up or prepare some lunch. And one instinctively knew that something must have happened to her ...

 

Sure enough, after a few days we learned from the neighbour that she'd been hit by a car and suffered severe injuries to her head and face, including a broken jaw, the loss of an eye, and possible brain damage. Luckily, someone - not the driver of the car who hit her - had stopped and taken her to the vet where she underwent emergency surgery. 

 

The prognosis isn't good, but she's being given a month to recover. If, at the end of that time, however, she's still unable to eat and her injuries haven't fully healed, then she'll be put down.   

 

 

V. 

 

Sadly, of course, this is not an uncommon occurrence. 

 

However, because there is still no legal requirement to report trafic collisions involving cats, nobody knows for sure know how many moggies are killed by vehicles on UK roads each year, although it's (conservatively) estimated to be around 230,000, which equates to 630 cats killed each and every day. 

 

So, what is to be done? Well, either we must change feline behaviour, or we must change driver behaviour. 

 

I suppose both are possible.

 

But when I think of poor Tinkerbell, I just want to scrap cars, rip up roads, and reduce the human population by a significant figure. 

 

To paraphrase D. H. Lawrence: 

 

How easily we might eliminate a few million humans and never miss them. Yet what a gap in the world, the missing feline face of Tinks the tabby cat, and the ting-a-ling-a-ling sound of her little blue bell when she came running. [6] 

 

Notes

 

[1] Timothy Findley, Journeyman: Travels of a Writer (Pebble Publications, 2003), p. 16. Findley goes on to suggest that when human beings stop killing animals without the slightest misgiving, they will then stop murdering one another. I serously doubt that, however. 

      I also suspect that we will never stop killing animals. For as the American anthropologist Jane Desmond concluded in a 2013 essay examining public indifference to animal suffering and their acceptance of roadkill, "animal lives have little value for most of the populations in the United States", particularly wild creatures which, unlike household pets for example, are unowned and lacking in monetary or emotional value. 

      See 'Requiem for Roadkill: Death and Denial on America's Roads', in Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions, ed. Helen Kopnina, and Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet (Routledge, 2013), pp. 46-58. The line quoted from is on p. 55.

 

[2] I have written about this topic before on TTA: see the post dated 4 October 2019: click here.

 

[3] The first roads designed specifically for cars were built in Nottingham in 1902; the same year that Welsh inventor Edgar Hooley gave the world the gift of tarmac. The first UK motorway, the Preston Bypass, opened in 1958; followed by the first city-to-city motorway, the M1, in 1959. 

 

[4] See E. Paul Ashley, Amanda Kosloski, and Scott A. Petrie, 'Incidence of Intentional Vehicle–Reptile Collisions', in Human Dimensions of Wildlife, Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2007), pp. 137-143. 

       The authors of this Canadian study found evidence that 2.7% of motorists would intentionally run over a lizard or snake, with some even speeding up to ensure they did so. The thing that surprises me is not that more male drivers were guilty of this than female, but that the figure is so low. Cruelty is one of the oldest pleasures of mankind, as Nietzsche liked to remind his readers; although today it is more often something practiced by the players of video games than celebrated at large public events.

 

[5] See 'Road Traffic Collisions Involving Cats', in Hansard, HC, Vol. 725 (debated on Monday 9 January 2023): click here. 

      Sadly, Rishi Sunak's government decided not to make a simple amendment to the legislation already in place under section 170 of the Road Traffic Act (1988) that covers horses, cattle, asses, mules, sheep, pigs, goats and dogs. It did, however, push through legislation requiring all cats in England to be microchipped before reaching twenty weeks of age. This new law came into effect on 10 June 2024. 

 

[6] I'm paraphrasing and extending the closing lines to Lawrence's poem 'Mountain Lion' in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Martin Secker, 1923), pp. 187-189. The poem can be read in the Project Gutenberg edition of this work (2019) by clicking here.    

 

Reflections on a Fat Sand Rat

Top: photo of a fat sand rat by fmeijerdd (2023) 

on deviantart.com 

Bottom: Joan Miró: Le Rat des Sables (1975) 

Aquatint in colours on Arches paper (96 x 138.8 cm) 

shaperomodern.com

 

 

I. 

 

Once, at a graduate seminar titled 'Non-Oedipal Models of Psychology', Maggie Nelson was asked to participate in a "quick get-to-know-you game involving totem animals" [1]; an exercise that triggered her identity phobia. 

Not quite knowing what to say as she didn't possess any such animal, Nelson nervously awaited her turn as they went around the room, and then just blurted out otter, for no real reason other than the fact that it was important at the time for her to feel "small, slick, quick, amphibious, dexterous, capable" [2]. 

 

Like Nelson, not identifying with any tribe, clan, or close-knit community, I don't have a totem animal either; nor even do I have a spirit animal looking over me as an individual [3]. However, if I were put on the spot and obliged, like Nelson, to suddenly come up with such, I think at this point in time (when I'm feeling a little overweight) I'd probably say the fat sand rat ...

 

 

II. 

 

The fat sand rat (Psammomys obesus) is a terrestrial mammal belonging to the gerbil subfamily that is mostly found in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. Despite their (rather unflattering) name, they are actually very fussy eaters in the wild, only consuming stems and leaves from plants that belong to the genus Amaranthus. It's when they are kept in captivity and fed the wrong diet that they become obese and rapidly develop diabetes-like symptoms [4].  

 

As well as foraging for food, sand rats like to explore, to sunbathe, and to sleep; so quite a pleasant life, although they are not the most social of animals, preferring to live alone in their burrows and only interacting with members of the opposite sex for breeding purposes in the autumn to early spring period (perhaps followed by a bit of grooming). As a rule, it's the females who initiate such activity, although once fucked they will quickly turn aggressive and see off their mates.  

 

Obviously, fat sand rats can't afford to be too relaxed; for they are preyed upon by birds, snakes, desert cats and weasals, so have to be vigilant at all times. When frightened, they squeak, stamp their feet and then scarper below ground.    

 

 

III.

 

Of course, my reason for chooing the fat sand rat as my totem animal doesn't only relate to the fact that - due to the Little Greek's endless baking and years of inactivity due to my Essex exile - I have piled on the pounds. I was also influenced by my new admiration for one of Miró's monumental prints currently on display (and sale) at one of my favourite galleries here in London (Shapero Modern) ... [5]

 

Entitled Le Rat des Sables and printed in 1975 (as a signed series of 50), this work doesn't actually depict a fantastical creature as we are informed in the catalogue. For the sand rat is not a mythical or fictional being that exists only in legends or folk tales. Rather, as indicated above, sand rats - whatever their somatotype - are very much living organisms or biological entities; the result of evolution rather than the human imaginary.

 

Having said that, perhaps having been transformed by Miró into a work of modern art, this particular sand rat with its bold fluid lines and bright red eye, might (at a stretch) be thought of as a type of alibrije; a term coined by Mexican artist Pedro Linares to refer to his brightly coloured zoomorphic sculptures made from papier-mâché [6].    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (Melville House UK, 2016), p. 139. 

[2] Ibid.

 

[3] Whilst most people today - if they use these terms at all - use them interchangeably, they do, technically, have distinct meanings; a totem animal belongs to a group of people and represents their shared identity or collective spirit; a spirit animal, on the other hand - sometimes called a power animal - is chosen by and called upon by an individual as a guide, or protector, or source of inspiration on their unique life journey.   

[4] Unfortunately for the sand rats, this has led to their use in research into obesity and diabetes. They are also used in tests related to sleep patterns and seasonal affective disorder due to the fact that, like humans, they are diurnal. And, because of their remarkably efficient kidneys - crucial for life in very hot and very dry environments - they are further studied by scientists who think any amount of cruelty to animals can be justified so long as their is some human benefit (be it medical or commercal in nature).   

[5] For a recent post on this exhibition - Joan Miró: Monumental Printmaking (6 Mar - 4 May 2025) - click here. Or to visit the Shapero gallery website directly, please click here.  

[6] This art form originated in Mexico City in the 1930s, when Pedro Linares began creating his surreal creatures after experiencing vivid hallucinations during an illness. His designs, which combined elements of various real animals, became widely known as alebrijes and inspired many other artists and artisans, quickly becoming a significant aspect of Mexican folk art that combined indigenous traditions with modern artistic ideas. 

      Whether Joan Miró was thinking of them when he created his sand rat is not something I am able to say for sure, but it's certainly possible; Frida Kahlo was a fan of Linares and his figures and Miró admired the latter, whom he met during an exhibition in Paris, in 1939. 

 

 

In Praise of the Chance Encounter of Objects and Bodies: Reflections on David Salle's Postmodern Pastoral

David Salle: Suspenders (2025) 

Oil, acrylic, Flashe and charcoal on archival UV print on linen 

(72 x 108 in)

 ropac.net

 

'I've always had a desire to scramble the visual world into a vortex, 

to kind of desolidify painted reality into something that has

 the fluidity and velocity of a great abstract painting.' - DS

 

 

I. 

 

The 1980s was a great time to be a young painter (or a yuppie of any variety). 

 

And whilst some of those who rose to fame in this decade didn't make it out alive - one thinks of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, for example - others are still going strong and producing interesting work 40 years on, even whilst they are no longer quite so young as they once were (who is?).  

 

Jeff Koons, born in 1955, would be one obvious example of an enfant terrible now turned silver fox; and David Salle, born three years earlier in 1952, is another. And it's Salle and his new solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) - Some Versions of Pastoral (10 April - 10 June 2025) - that I wish to speak of here ...    

 

 

II.

 

The exhibition borrows its title from a 1935 book by the English critic and poet William Empson;  one that is widely recognised as an extraordinary work of literary criticism and written in his charismatically informal style. 

 

Traditionally, the pastoral refers to works that depict an idealised version of rural life featuring shepherds, livestock, and idyllic landscapes. Artists didn't aim for a faithful representation, so much as the construction of an artificial reality designed to appeal to an urban audience rather than those who actually live in the countryside and work the land. 

 

The intent was to trigger a longing for a more tranquil existence rooted in nature and for simpler times, free from the complexities and stresses of modern life. 

 

But Salle is having none of that: his postmodern pastoral is less about bucolic myth and more about combining (what might appear to be random) images - some original and some appropriated from a wide range of sources including magazines, billboards, cartoons, and art history - in what he describes as a circuitous freefall that has neither beginning nor end, although these images of objects and bodies do dramatically converge on a plane of consisency [1].

 

The gallery's press release describes things perfectly:

 

"In these new paintings, the artist uses his own oeuvre - specifically, a group of paintings titled the Pastorals, executed in 1999 and 2000 - as raw material. Fed into a custom-made AI programme, the works are deliberately distorted to produce a variation on the pastoral scene. These freewheeling, sometimes bewildering images are then printed onto canvas to form the backdrops on which Salle paints. The result is a lyrical body of work that teems with new plasticity, and seems to respond to our viral visual world." [2]

 

Salle, I know, has his critics; some, for example, feel he leaves just a little too much unfinished in his work and that it's so fragmented that it lacks any coherent narrative or meaningful story (and thus, for these critics, any human import or purpose). One such critic (amusingly) wrote that Salle's indifference to such criticism "is the main if not the only critically interesting thing about his work" [3]. 

 

Others object to his use of AI to conceptualise and generate images reflective of his style and although Salle affirms his right as an artist to exploit any available technology, he acknowledges the concern that superintelligent machines may one day supersede human image-makers (and do so without a pang of conscience).   

 

Ultimately, for Salle, "'machine learning affords artists the means to reconfigure pictorial space with the malleability and plasticity of pure imagination'" [4]. 

 

In other words, AI is a tool with which he can "steer through sequences of objects, forms, styles and genres without self-identification or overattachment to meaning", in a carefree manner that "finds its precedent in the 20th century's avant-garde [...] whose automatic strategies [...] were attempts to liberate creativity from conscious thought as well as prescribed aesthetic, moral and political hierarchies" [5]. 

 

Beauty, for Salle - as for Comte de Lautréamont and, indeed, Man Ray and many of the Surrrealists - is born today from the chance encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella [6]:

 

  

Man Ray: Beau comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection 

d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie (1933)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In art, a plane of composition refers to the arrangement and organisation of various elements within a work to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing whole. But by a plane of consistency, Deleuze and Guattari refer to something that opposes this and which consists only in the "relations of speed and slowness between unformed elements"; there is no finality or unification. 

      A plane of consistency, therefore, doesn't aim to produce aesthetic pleasure, so much as open up a zone of indeterminacy and a continuum of intensity upon which new thoughts and feelings can unfold and interact without being constrained by pre-existing ideas and emotions. In sum: it's a kind of virtual realm of infinite possibilities. 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. 507. 

 

[2] Press release for David Salle Some Versions of Pastoral (10 April - 8 June 2025), Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, 37, Dover Street, London, W1. I presume the well-written text was by the Head of Press, Nini Sandhaus. 

 

[3] Arthur Danto, quoted in Bad Reviews, ed. Aleksandra Mir and Tim Griffin (Retrospective Press, 2022). 

      Readers might like to note that Salle is himself a highly respected writer and critic; see his collection of essays entitled How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking about Art (W. W. Norton, 2016).

[4] David Salle quoted in the press release for Some Versions of Pastoral ...

 

[5] Press release for David Salle Some Versions of Pastoral ...

 

[6] This is a famous line from the poetic novel Les Chants de Maldoror (1868-69) by Comte de Lautréamont; see Canto VI, Verse 3.

Egon Schiele's Portraits on Paper: Poignant, Provocative, or Pornographic?

Egon Schiele: Moa (1911) [1]

Gouache, watercolour and pencil on paper 

(48 x 31 cm)

omertiroche.com

 

'I do not deny that I have made drawings and watercolours of an erotic nature. 

But they are always works of art.' - ES

 

 

I. 

 

I have already shared my thoughts on Herr Schiele as grand Austrian pervert and as someone who didn't treat poor Wally Neuzil very kindly: click here and here respectively.  

 

But, having just returned from an exhibition at the Omer Tiroche Gallery featuring some of Schiele's portraits on paper produced during the period 1910-1918, I thought it might be a good time to say something additional on a figure whose work remains almost as startling now as when first shown.

 

As it says in the exhibition press release: 

 

"The featured works [...] showcase Schiele's remarkable ability to capture and explore the raw emotion and vulnerability of his subjects, pushing the boundaries of modern portraiture with unparalleled intensity and insight." [2] 

 

Whether we might describe these depictions of the human figure as poignant, however, is debatable. 

 

For personally, I think of poignancy as a fairly gentle (and often unintended) stirring of emotion that is very much an individual response; something usually triggered with but a pin prick of detail (Barthes refers to this as the punctum). 

 

Schiele's pictures are, in their unparalleled intensity, just a little too full-on and violently assault the viewer; almost one feels stabbed in the heart. That's not a criticism. It's simply to challenge the use of the term poignant to describe his depictions of the human figure; provocative and a little grotesque, certainly, even at times a little obscene, but poignant ... I think not (or at least: not to me). 

 

 

II. 

 

And by obscene, just to be clear, I refer to a transparent staging of desire; to the way that the above figure, named Moa (an Old Norse word for mother), is overwhelmingly present making it impossible to ever step back and view her with perspective or objectivity (the gaze has been eliminated).

 

In other words, just as there's no poignancy in Schiele's picture, there's no trace of seduction; the veil is rent, the curtain lifted, and everything is explicit and in your face or made shamelessly hypervisible, as Baudrillard would say [3]. 

 

It may be going too far to say that Schiele violates his (often very young) models, or that we as viewers are made complicit in a crime of some kind, but, there's definitely something illicit (and troubling) going on here; way beyond anything produced by his mentor Gustav Klimt.    

 

Does the fact that Schiele's work is obscene also make it pornographic? 

 

Possibly: the judge who sentenced him to jail for a month in 1912 for public immorality and had one of his works burnt certainly thought so; and the writer of the gallery press release also doesn't hesitate to say that his portraits were, at times, "bordering on the pornographic" [4].

 

But it's a word that is too closely tied to sexually explicit material and thus detracts from the philosophically more interesting concept of obscenity as briefly discussed above, so it's not one I would choose to use here.      

 

 

III. 

 

This small exhibition of 14 works is absolutely worth going to visit if you have the chance. It runs until 2 May at Omer Tiroche; a Mayfair gallery, founded in 2014, which specialises in art from the modern, post-War, and contemporary periods.  

 

And speaking of current London exhibitions well worth checking out ... click here for a post on Joan Miró: Monumental Printmaking at Shapero Modern (6 Mar - 4 May 2025). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Moa (1911), is one of a series of portraits Schiele painted of his friend and cabaret dancer, Moa Mandu. Interestingly, she was the only model he ever identified by name. Unfortunately, not much is is known about Moa, other than the fact she was originally from Bosnia, had large and very beautiful dark eyes. It is believed she was introduced to Schiele by fellow painter (and mime artist) Erwin Osen.

 

[2] From the press release for Egon Schiele: Portraits on Paper (14 Feb - 2 May 2025) at the Omer Tiroche Gallery, 21 Conduit St, London, W1. This text can be read in full on the gallery's website: click here. 

 

[3] My undersanding of what constitutes the obscene is informed by Baudrillard's thinking on this concept. For him, ob-scenity extends beyond the realm of sexuality, encompassing the visual field and the transparency of knowledge and he refers not only to that which usually takes place offstage, but to that which is also against-scene, undermining the conditions necessary for meaning to emerge, thus making it unthinkable.  

      See what Baudrillard writes on the obscene in Passwords, trans. Chris Turner (Verso, 2003), pp. 25-29. And see also the entry by Paul A. Taylor on the obscene in The Baudrillard Dictionary, ed. Richard G. Smith (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), which can be read online by clicking here.

 

[4] From the press release for Egon Schiele: Portraits on Paper ... click here.  

Joan Miró: Monumental Printmaking by An Artist Assassin

Joan Miró: Gargantua (1977) 

Etching and aquatint with carborundum on Arches wove paper 

159.5 x 120 cm

shaperomodern.com

 

 'I try to apply colours like words that shape poems, 

like notes that shape music.' - JM

 

 

I. 

 

I have to admit, I've never been a big fan of Joan Miró - even after all that time living in Barcelona, just down the road from the Parc de Joan Miró, where his magnificent 22-metre high sculpture Dona i Ocell (1983) proudly stands [1].  

 

However, when I heard that there was an exhibition of thirteen large prints by this Catalan artist at Shapero Modern (94, Bond St., London, W1), I knew I wanted to go take a look ... 

 

Because even though Miró is not one of my favourite artists, I do admire the fact that his work is so difficult to classify - some might even describe it as genre-defying - as he moves in a unique space opened up in between Surrealism, Expressionism, and Fauvism. 

 

I also love the fact that in numerous interviews Miró expressed contempt for conventional techniques, declaring himself to be un assassí who wished to eliminate the clichéd visual elements that typically characterise bourgeois painting.

 

So - to the gallery! 

 

 

II.

 

Obviously, I was there to look and not to buy: the lovely print above, signed in white crayon and numbered by the artist (25/50), is £85,000 and that's a bit more than I can afford, unfortunately, and even the more reasonably priced works are still more than I would seriously consider splashing out on. 

 

However, I like to imagine that even a pauper such as myself can appreciate and be touched by art; even if unable to purchase the works. 

 

And, to be honest, I'd rather just briefly glimpse a picture in passing than own it and feel compelled to stare at it in an attempt to get my money's worth of aesthetic pleasure; or attempt to incorporate the picture as an essential part of some fancy interior design; or live in the secret hope that it might one day be sold for at least twice the price paid for it (if not an extraordinary amount more).

 

There are, says D. H. Lawrence, very few people who "wouldn't love to have a perfectly fascinating work" hanging in their home, so that they could "go on looking at it" [2] - well, I'm one of this tiny minority: I love art, but have no desire for property (I even prefer a blank wall, despite Lawence suggesting this is merely a form of snobbism). 

 

 

III. 

 

Although Picasso pipped him by a year, Miró was 90 when he died in 1983 and that's a good age by any reckoning; six years older than Matisse when he passed away and two years older than Renoir. And the fact that he was still producing new work until the very end probably qualifies him as a monster of stamina. 

     

According to the exhibition's press release, in the final decade of his life, Miró "devoted himself primarily to the art of printmaking, producing some of the most dynamic and ground-breaking prints of his time" [3]. 

 

And we should be grateful for this; for all thirteen works here are fabulous and demonstrate that he was not only still experimenting in his later years, but had an "exceptional command of printmaking techniques" [4]. 

 

I was particularly fond of La Femme Arborescent (1974) and Le Rat des Sables (1975), but there wasn't one that didn't delight; mostly due to their vibrant colours, but also to their compositional power and the fact that Miró has the astonishing ability "to transform physical movement into a visual language, blending abstraction with subtle figurative suggestion to convey the pure vitality of dance" [5].  

 

 

IV. 

 

The exhibition is on until 4 May: I would encourage readers who view this post before that date and who may find themselves wandering round Mayfair at some point, to visit and enjoy (even if they can't afford to buy a print). 

 

For even a few moments spent in the presence of these paintings will, I promise, make happy [6].    

 

   

Notes

 

[1] I have explained my fondness for this work in a post published on 16 Feb 2013: click here. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pictures on the Wall', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 257. Note that Lawrence concedes, however, that most pictures, like flowers, quickly die and lose their freshness and should thence be immediately thrown away or burnt. 

 

[3-5] Press release / Overview: Joan Miró: Monumental Printmaking (6 Mar - 4 May 2025) at Shapero Modern, London, W1 - click here to read on the gallery website.    

 

[6] That's not something I can promise of the portraits on paper by Egon Schiele, currently shown at the nearby Omer Tiroche Gallery (21, Conduit St., London, W1), but these too are well worth seeing: click here for a post inspired by this exhibition. 

Cryptobiosis: All Hail the Rotifers!

Dead and alive: a rotifer having transformed into a tun or xerosome

 

An animal which revives after death confounds our most cherished ideas and becomes an object 

no less interesting to the naturalist than to the the philosopher. - Lazzaro Spallanzani

 

 

I. 

 

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: Being alive is only a very rare and unusual way of being dead [1]. 

 

And if I ever have enough money to establish my own thanatological research centre in Death Valley, then this will be the phrase engraved in stone above the entrance.  

 

No surprises then that a recent article by the freelance science writer Phil Jaekl on the Nautilus website should grab my interest ... [2]

 

 

II. 

 

Entitled 'The Animals That Exist Between Life and Death', it discussed those astonishing creatures who inhabit the unexplored microcosmos and are capable of entering a sort of zombified state that is neither one thing nor the other, much to the horror of those who like distinctions to be clear cut and permanent: either this, or that; dead or alive.

 

These animalcules, as they were originally known [3], are now referred to (less charmingly) as rotifers; a Neo-Latin term meaning wheel-bearer and which refers to the distinctive ciliated appendage called a corona that they possess around their mouths and use to assist with both feeding and movement.  

 

Found living in watery environments all over the world - from the great oceans to small puddles - rotifers have perfected a rather neat trick that they perform when their aqueous environment dries up; they contract into a survival structure known as a xerosome which enables them to endure harsh, dry conditions by entering a (metabolically inactive) state of anhydrobiosis.

 

And they can remain as tuns, as they're known, for a significantly extended period of time - we're talking many years here, not just a few days or weeks [4] - in the most extreme conditions, as they patiently await the chance to reanimate; just add water and hey presto! they'll be swimming around once more as if nothing had happened [5].

 

As Jaekl reminds us, this presents a philosophical paradox beyond the biological questions raised: "Were the animals technically dead? Were they, in tun form, actually still alive but dormant, like a mammal in hibernation? Or were they in some kind of liminal, in-between state?" [6]

 

As the underlying assumption is that organisms are either alive or dead, "the paradox lies in maintaining the possibility of such a binary proposition in the face of rotifers and other extremophiles that seem to occupy such a third state as they await reanimation" [7]. 

 

Jaekl continues: 

 

"Even as microbiologists have been working for centuries now to piece together how rotifers and several other animal species survive desiccation and other extreme conditions, philosophers are still grappling with the idea that life and death may not be the only states of being in which organisms can exist." [8]

 

 

II. 

 

It wasn't until the mid-twentieth century, thanks to the work of Russian-born British biologist David Keilin, that science really began to understand how rotifers and other extremophiles were able to survive desiccation via physiological dormancy or cryptobiosis, i.e., a state in which there are no visible signs of life and metabolic activity is undetectable [9].

 

And, in part, this relates to the fact that the appear to have incorporated DNA from yeast, fungi, and plants, so that around 10% of their genome isn't actually animal. In other words, not only do they curdle the alive/dead dichotomy, but they fuck with the animal/plant binary making them the scandal of evolution - just one more reason to love 'em! 

More: it seems that not only do rotifers not age whilst in a deadened state, they wake up younger! That's not something that even Sleeping Beauty managed to do. And reanimated rotifers also tend to live longer and be more reproductively active than those rotifers who never undergo desiccation; i.e., being dead for a while is actually beneficial [10].

 

  

Notes

 

[1] I am of course paraphrasing Nietzsche; see The Gay Science (III. 109) where he writes: "Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type." English trans. by Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1974), p. 168. 

 

[2] Philip Jaekl, 'The Animals That Exist Between Life and Death', Nautilus (16 April 2025): click here. This article comes with images by someone I so much wanted to be called Mr Hyde; unfortuatey, he's named Robert Berdan. 

      Readers interested in this post might also be interested in Jaekl's latest book; Out Cold: A Chilling Descent into the Macabre, Controversial, Lifesaving History of Hypothermia (Public Affairs, 2021).

 

[3] Animalcule - Latin for 'little animal' - is an archaic term for microscopic organisms coined by 17th-century Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to refer to the creatures he observed in rainwater.

 

[4] In June 2021, biologists reported the restoration of a class of rotifers found in freshwater habitats all over the world known as bdelloids (of which there are over 450 identified species), after they had been frozen for c. 24,000 years in the Siberian permafrost. 

      Of course, rotifers are not the only creatures who have mastered the art of being dead/alive; tardigrades, or so-called water bears, can survive not only desiccation but also radiation, extreme temperatures, and even the vacuum of outer space. Collectively, animals of this kind are known as extremophiles.   

 

[5] Just to be clear on this point: I'm not saying that rehydrated rotifers rejoin the world of the living completely unscathed:

      "During desiccation they undergo considerable chromosomal breakage. Some regions of their DNA are shattered. But when water returns, potentially after years, the organisms are still able to begin moving again within about five to 10 minutes. Within about half an hour, they will have restructured their DNA as it was. To achieve their apparent resurrection, rotifers rely heavily on advanced DNA repair mechanisms." - Philip Jaekl, 'The Animals That Exist Between Life and Death', op. cit.  

 

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

 

[8] Ibid.

 

[9] Should we view cryptobiosis as a unique state of being between life and death? I'm not sure and some theorists, such as Thomas Lemke, think it would be helpful to drop this term altogether as it "does not account sufficiently for the processual and relational dimensions of ametabolic life" and also implies the existence of some hidden or latent form of life. 

      Lemke prefers the related by different concept of limbiosis, i.e., suspended life which, in his view, better addresses the liminal state of biological organisation and emphasises the liminality of the neither-nor life and death. See his essay 'Conceptualising Suspended Life: From Latency to Liminality', in Theory, Culture and Society 40 (6): 69-86 (2023). The line quoted from above is found in the abstract to this essay. 

 

[10] Something that Jesus discovered; certainly in the reimagining of his death and resurrection by D. H. Lawence in his short novel The Escaped Cock (1929). 

An Epicormic Easter Sermon

 

'Go! Tell them the Cross is a Tree again, and they 

may eat the fruit if they can reach the branches.'

 

 

I. 

 

If you ask your local council why it is that they savagely pollard the remaining large trees each spring, they will tell you it's for a variety of reasons; mostly related to issues of public health and safety and the protection of property, although often they claim it's in order to protect the trees themselves from disease. 

 

But I think we all know that this is mostly to disguise the real agenda; namely, to discourage birds from nesting and, ultimately, to remove the trees altogether and thereby save the money that would otherwise be spent on their management. The potential hazard posed by large trees is massively exaggerated (I have lived in Essex for many years and have never yet been injured by a falling branch).  

  

II.

 

Let's back this up with some data, shall we ...

 

The London Borough of Havering, which happens to be my local authority - one which last year had to secure £54 million in central government support to avoid going bankrupt and who earlier this year accepted another £88 million bailout loan as their dire financial state worsened - has seen the biggest reduction in tree cover of any London borough in the last seven years (this according to a recent report for the GLA).       

 

In 2018, Havering had 25% tree coverage (above the London average); but by 2024 it had fallen to just 14% (below the London average). The fact that in December 2023 the Council accidently cut down 4,000 young trees at Harrow Lodge Park planted by volunteers - along with a number of more mature treees and five holly bushes - didn't help.   

 

Havering Council, however, claim they do not recognise the data in this report and say that there has been no net loss of trees in the last ten years on council land ... And maybe that's so; but the big loss, of course, is of trees that once stood on private land as more and more people cut them down in order to build on or simply pave over what were once gardens.

Thus, it's not simply the Council who are to blame for the degreening of Havering. A large number of residents - many of whom only arrived in the Borough in recent years - clearly do not value the local flora or fauna and concepts such as environmental degradation and protecting wildlife mean absolutely nothing to them. So long as they can have their extensions and driveways and outbuildings, they are happy.

 

 

III.

 

For me, pollarding might be viewed as a form of hate crime born of a peculiar fear of trees (dendrophobia). 

 

And if I could, I would have all maniacal dendrophobes and other ecocidal lunatics rounded up and exiled on Mars before they transform this world into a barren and inhospitable hellscape in which no birds do sing and no flowers blossom.   

 

But, as it's Easter, let's close on an epicormically positive note and express the hope that, one day, even the Cross will put forth new branches and bear surprisingly sweet fruit ... 

 

 

Taraxacum officinale resurrexit! (An Easter Story)

Spanish bluebells and a bright yellow dandelion growing 

by the roadside (Noak Hill, Easter 2025)

 

 

I went for a short Easter stroll before dinner - γιουβέτσι with lamb - and on the way I saw a woman on all fours with a bucket, frantically digging up every small wild flower that had dared encroach on her precious gravel driveway. 

 

She looked over as I passed and so I enquired if she was having fun:  

 

Not really, she replied. I 'ate weeding, but it 'as to be done!

 

What, even the dandelions? I asked. 

Especially the dandelions - look at 'em rising up!

 

And when I heard this, I smiled and remembered the paschal greeting, responding with mock enthusiasm:  

 

Truly, they have risen indeed!    

Notes on Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (Part 2: pp. 75-180)

Photo of Maggie Nelson by Jarrett Eakins (2013) 

alongside the cover of her book The Argonauts 

 (Graywolf Press, 2015)

 

 

Note: this post continues from part one (pp. 1-74) which can be accessed by clicking here.

 

 

I.

 

Performativity is a big part of being a writer, says Nelson, and I agree. 

 

But whereas she is keen to stress that this doesn't mean she isn't herself in her writing, or that her writing isn't somehow her - of course it's about me - I'm afraid that I do perform as a writer in a manner that might be branded "fraudulent or narcissistic or dangerous" [75] and which demonically dramatises the ways in which I am not myself, but always becoming-other. 

 

Of course, we should note that it's "easy to get juiced up about a concept like plurality or mutiplicity" [77], or becoming-other, and to use them so often that they become empty of any specificity; one doesn't wish to become like Freud, that is to say, intoxicated with "theoretical concepts that wilfully annihilate nuance" [85] or reality and fall into the white hole of idealism.

 

 

II.

 

Is homonormativity a "natural consequence of the decriminalization of homosexuality" [91]? I guess it probably is. 

 

And I can see how that might be a problem for outlaw fetishists like Bruce Benderson, who see homosexuality as an illicit "narrative of urban adventure" [91]; the chance to find pleasure via the breaking of laws. 

 

For once something is no longer "illicit, punishable, pathologized, or used as a lawful basis for raw discrimination or acts of violence, that phenomenon will no longer be abe to represent or deliver on subversion, the subcultural, the underground, the fringe in the same way" [91].

 

So where's the (transgressive) fun? 

 

This is why, Nelson informs us, "nihilist pervs like painter Francis Bacon have gone so far to say that they wish that the death penalty was still the punishment for homosexuality" [91] - which is, perhaps, just one more reason why you've gotta love Franny B. 

 

Even Nelson concedes: "In the face of such a narrative, it's a comedown to wade through the planet-killing trash of a Pride parade ..." [91]. However, as she then goes on to say, the binary of normative/transgressive becomes unsustainable at last.

 

 

III.

This line obviously makes smile: "Basking in the punk allure of 'no future' won't suffice ..." [95] Is Nelson advocating an ideal of hope here à la Shep Fairey? [a]

 

And this line also also caught my eye when flicking through The Argonauts: "I find it more embarrassing than enraging to read Baudrillard ..." [98] Well, honestly, there are passages in her book that I find more embarrassing than liberating. 

 

Again, this might be due to my own uneasiness around certain subjects, including what Nelson delights in calling ass-fucking, but I can't help feeling that she suffers from what Lawrence terms the "yellow disease of dirt-lust" [b], confusing the flow of sex with the excrementary functions.

 

"In the really healthy human being", writes Lawrence, "the distinction between the two is instant, our profoundest instincts are perhaps our instincts of opposition beween the two flows.

      But in the degraded human being the deep instincts have gone dead, and then the two flows become identical. [...] Then sex is dirt and dirt is sex, and sexual excitement becomes a playing with dirt ..." [c] 

 

This might explain why Ms Nelson is not interested in "a hermeneutics, or an erotics, or a metaphorics" [106] of her anus, but only interested in ass-fucking and the fact that "the human anus is one of the most innervated parts of the body" [106]. 

 

However, whilst recognising that "the anal cavity and the vagina canal lean on each other" [104], Nelson doesn't assert they are one and the same; what she suggests, rather, is that female sexuality is complex and diverse and not rooted in a single fixed location (and ultimately even Lady Chatterley takes it up the arse and discovers anal sex to be full of redemptive possibility [d]). 

 

IV.

I'm very sympathetic to Nelson's fear of assertion. 

 

Indeed, my writing, like hers, is riddled with "tics of uncertainty" [122]; words like perhaps and maybe, for example, as one attempts to "get out of 'totalizing' language; i.e., language that rides roughshod over specificity" [122] (although Barthes thinks it absurd to try and escape from language's inherently assertive nature by the use of such tics). 

 

V.

I'm also sympathetic to Nelson's (Deleuzian) view of herself as an empiricist; i.e., as a writer who aims to clarify rather than create per se, but who, in clarifying - and in dispelling myths of the eternal or universal - creates the conditions under which something new might be produced (see p. 128).  

  

 

VI.

 

How can deviant sexual activity and/or queerness "remain the marker of radicality" [137] in a pornified culture?  Precisely! 

 

Nelson sees the allure of "exchanging horniness for exhaustion" [138]; of turning to one's partner and asking: What are you doing after the orgy? [e] - but I doubt she'll ever dare whisper this in Harry's ear (even whilst recognising her right to fatigue).

 

 

VII.

 

Maggie may be embarrassed by Baudrillard, but she loves Barthes: particularly his book The Neutral (2007). 

 

And that makes me happy, because I love Barthes too and have recently published a post in gentle praise of this work [f] and of a concept which, "in the face of dogmatism, the menacing pressure to take sides, offers novel responses: to flee, to escape, to demur, to shift or refuse terms, to disengage, to turn away" [139-140].     

 

However, Nelson has also discovered that been born slippy like an otter isn't everything; that "studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure" [140]. 

 

Such as the pleasures of insisting and persisting, for example; and of making a commitment, sticking by what one has said previously, etc. I have to admit, however, that such pleasures continue to escape me and I shan't be singing 'Abide With Me' anytime soon.

 

   

Notes

 

[a] See the post of 6 Feb 2022 entitled 'The Rich Can Buy Soap' - click here. 

[b] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. Jaes T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 242.

 

[c] Ibid.

 

[d] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), chapter XVI. According to Lawrence, when Connie allows her lover to anally penetrate her she is made a different woman; one free of shame who discovers her ultimate nakedness.

 

[e] The phrase 'after the orgy' is from an essay of this title by the philosopher Nelson finds embarrassing - Baudrillard - and can be found in The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena, trans. James Benedict (Verso, 1993), pp. 3-13. 

      The orgy in question was "the moment when modernity exploded on us, the moment of liberation in every sphere [...] an orgy of the real, the rational, the sexual, of criticism as of anti-criticism, of development as a crisis of development" [3]. 

      For Baudrillard, now everything has been liberated, all we can do is "simulate the orgy, simulate liberation" [3], and accelerate in a void. 

 

[f] See the post pubished on 1 April 2025: click here.