On this Day ...

The Sex Pistols: Johnny Rotten, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones, and Paul Cook

Photo by John Gray (1975)

 

 

I. 

 

I know that English historians who specialise in the early modern period will be keen to inform everyone they meet that today is the 540th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth Field; i.e., the last major battle of the War of the Roses and the one in which Richard III bravely met his end (thereby bringing down the curtain on the Plantagenet dynasty and allowing the age of the Tudors to commence). 

 

And I know that English historians who prefer to get excited about the English Civil War will be reminding others that, on this day in 1642, Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham and effectively challenged the Parliamentarians to a fight (which, of course, did not end well for him and his fellow Royalists - losing not just his crown but his head seven years later). 

 

 

II. 

 

However, as a cultural critic more concerned with the art, fashion, and politics between 1870 and the present day, for me the most exciting event that happened on this date happened in 1975 at the Roebuck (354 King's Road) - namely, the first meeting between 19-year-old John Lydon and the other members of the band who were to become known as the Sex Pistols: Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock. 

 

As Paul Gorman notes, at the time Lydon "cut a remarkable figure visually [...] he had cropped and dyed his spiky fair hair [...] and wore distressed and customised clothing" [1], most notably a torn Pink Floyd T-shirt upon which he had scawled the words I HATE above the band's logo. 

 

Steve Jones - who christened Lydon 'Johnny Rotten' because of his green teeth - may have thought (rightly) that he was an arsehole, but he had also to admit Lydon had style, attitude, and intelligence. 

 

And Malcolm agreed: after Lydon auditioned to be the group's singer by miming to a self-chosen track by Alice Cooper that happened to be on the jukebox at SEX [2], McLaren instantly recognised the young man had star quality (the band members were not quite so convinced of this, but McLaren was insistent that they had found the perfect frontman - even if he couldn't sing). 

 

 

III. 

 

Nietzsche writes that he is the kind of philosopher who breaks history in two; that one day mankind will mark time before him and after him [3].   

 

Perhaps we might say the same of the Sex Pistols in relation to popular culture. 

 

Indeed, we might also say of the latter what Nietzsche further says of himself: one day, there will be associated with their name the recollection of something momentous; of a No-saying to everything that until they came along had been believed in as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, but which was dismissed in 1977 with but a single phrase: never mind the bollocks!  

 

They were, by far, the most terrible band there has ever been; but also the most necessary; anarcho-nihilists who knew joy in destruction and believed in the ruins. 

 

What a shame then, that, fifty years on, Jones, Cook, and Matlock are performing punk karaoke with Frank Carter fronting a kind of ersatz version of the Sex Pistols and Rotten ... Well, don't get me started on the abject figure he has become ... [4]   

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 278.  

 

[2] The track in question was 'I'm Eighteen', released as a single in November 1970, it also featured on the album Love It to Death (Warner Bros., 1971). To listen to the song on YouTube, click here.

 

[3] See Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Pengin books, 1979), 'Why I Am a Destiny' (8), p. 133.    

 

[4] I make my views clear on Rotten in a number of posts written over the last 12 years: click here, here, and here, for example. 

 

 

In Praise of Hobble Skirts and Bondage Suits

Jordan and Vivienne having a fag break outside Seditionaries in 1977 

wearing bondage suits as a fashionable young Edwardian 

in a hobble skirt time hops from 1911  

 

 

I. 

 

It's funny, but one of the paradoxical lessons of fashion is that restricting the movement of the body can liberate the wearer. We see this, for example, in the Edwardian era (1901-1910) and in the even briefer punk period ruled by McLaren and Westwood (1974-80); the former giving us the hobble skirt and the latter the bondage suit ... 

 

 

II.

 

The English word hobble probably has a Dutch-German etymology. 

 

But whatever its origin, it means the same thing: you're not going to walk evenly, quickly, or very comfortably once you've been hobbled. In other words, hobbling is a technique for the production of artificial awkwardness; one that causes the individual to shuffle, sway, and - if not careful - lose balance and stumble.          

 

The hobble skirt, which came with an outrageously narrow hem circumference of less than 36 inches, was very popular with those fashionable few in the know. The design was so extreme that some hobble skirts impeded a woman's stride to a mere six inches (i.e., about four times less than normal). 

 

Now, I know that some feminist fashion historians interpret this in a purely negative light. But it might be argued that the hobble skirt was a way in which newly emancipated women experimented with their own freedom (their own bodies, their own clothing) and mocked the Victorian idea that they were vulnerable and in need of male protection and assistance by pushing it to a ludicrous extreme. 

 

Ultimately, whatever the politics of the hobble skirt, what cannot be denied is that a tight hemline and high waistline produces a marvellous silhouette.      

 

 

III.

 

Some people believe the hobble skirt to have been inspired by the Japanese kimono; others credit Mrs Edith Ogilby Berg - one of best dressed women of the period - with inspiring its creation ... 

 

In 1908, Mrs Berg attended a Wright Brothers demonstration in France and asked for a ride, becoming the first American woman to fly as a passenger in an aeroplane (even if the flight only lasted a little over two minutes). 

 

Not wanting her skirt to be billow in the wind during the flight, she had quickly fastened a rope around the hem of her ankle-length skirt. And when, with the rope still in place, she tottered from the aircraft after landing a fashion designer in the crowd of spectators had a moment of inspiration - et voila! the hobble skirt (or la jupe entravée as he termed it) was conceived [1]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Predictably, the gentlemen of the press had a field day, the hobble skirt causing a mixture of outrage and merriment. Numerous editorials were written condemning them; sometimes on the grounds of health and safety and sometimes in the name of public decency and common sense. Hundreds of cartoons and comic postcards were also produced, mocking the women who wore them. 

 

But of course, these fashionable women didn't care; they loved the fact the hobble skirt brought them attention and knew long before Adam Ant that ridicule is nothing to be scared of [2]. And if you stumbled while wearing one and fell in the canal, or in front of a runaway horse, well ... C'est la vie! 

 

Scorning the actions of those women who made alterations to their skirts to allow for greater movement - adding subtle slits, hidden pleats, and buttons at the skirt's hem - the hardcore hobble devotees would sometimes even tie their legs together at the knee; a point which brings us nicely on to the bondage suit designed by Malcolm Mclaren and Vivienne Westwood over 65 years later and sold in their King's Road store Seditionaries.

 

 

V.

 

If obliged to choose just one outfit to epitomise the punk aesthetic, it would have to be the unisex bondage suit. 

 

The story goes that Malcolm had returned from a trip to the States with a pair of standard-issue green cotton army trousers which he instructed Vivienne to copy in shiny black sateen. McLaren then had the genius idea of a metal zip that went right up between the legs and, perhaps more crucially, a strap between the knees, restricting the wearer's movement and giving the trousers their name [3].   

 

After designing a matching jacket with straps, zips, snap fastenings, and D-rings [4], the couple had created one of the most iconic garments of punk style, which later came in tartan and with the addition of a detachable bum flap to give a primitive element to the outfit.

 

The tagline for Seditionaries was clothes for heroes - and that was exactly how the wearer would feel as they hobbled along going Nowhere in their bondage outfit; daring, defiant, and dandyish. They had, with their own irreverence, escaped the world of normality [5] - just like the hobble skirt wearing women had done all those decades earlier.        

 

 

 

Funny girl Fanny Brice in a hobble skirt (1910) and 

punk designer Vivienne Weswood in a bondage suit (1977)

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The French fashion designer may have been Paul Poiret; he it was who claimed credit for the hobble skirt (just as he did for wide-legged trousers in 1910), although it's not entirely clear whether the skirt was uniquely his creation. The fact is, skirts had been rapidly narrowing for several years already. 

      However, just as I'm happy to think of Mary Quant as the inventor of the miniskirt - even though that's not entirely true (again, the era-defining skirt of the 1960s was the result of a trend for rising hemlines and a wider cultural shift towards youthful informality and fun) - I'm happy also to think of Poiret as both the inventor of the hobble skirt and the man responsible for convincing women to throw away their corsets. As he never tired of boasting: I freed the bust, but shackled the legs!       

 

[2] Lyric by Adam Ant from the song 'Prince Charming', released as a single from the album of the same title by Adam and the Ants in 1981 (CBS Records): click here to play on YouTube. 

 

[3] To watch a short film on YouTube in which McLaren talks about making a pair of bondage trousers and dressing a generation who were bored, nihilistic, and in search of a new identity, please click here.    

 

[4] Paul Gorman informs us that the matching bondage top "was modelled on an oiled canvas jacket produced by the traditional British outwear brand Barbour". However, by the time McLaren and Westwood had finished transforming the piece with straps and whatnot, it "resembled a high fashion straightjacket". 

      Gorman also notes that the duo also designed a pair of bondage boots, "in canvas and soft leather", for those who wanted to complete the look. See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 318-319.  

 

[5] For my own experience of wearing bondage clothes inspired by McLaren and Westwood's original design, see the post published on 16 October 2015: click here. 

On the Politics of the Skirt and the Rise and Fall of Hemlines

Six young women model six classic skirt lengths 

ranging from micro-mini to maxi

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things that Roland Barthes doesn't like is women wearing trousers: and he's not alone in this; many men prefer to see women in skirts. But it depends on the woman. And it depends on the skirt or slacks in question ... 

 

For some skirts are very ugly, whilst some trousers - such as a classic cut pair of Capri pants as worn by Grace Kelly - are very beautiful. 

 

Indeed, some women look so sexy and stylish in trousers that this is how they are best remembered within the cultural imagination; Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn are very obvious examples - and who can deny that Sydney Sweeney has great jeans? [1]

 

Here, however, we're going to briefly comment on the rise and fall of hemlines during the last 125 years or so and say a bit about the politics of the skirt. 

 

 

II. 

 

According to the Cole Porter song, in olden days even a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking [2], but now, for better or for worse, most people prefer bare limbs to old hymns [3] and don't want dress codes to be enforced by the morality police (or even the fashion police).  

 

I don't know when exactly the sun set on the olden days, but we should probably mention the introduction of the rainy daisy skirt in the 1890s, which had a significantly raised hemline - as much as six inches off the ground - and would later influence the introduction of ever-shorter skirts in the 20th century [4] (although it should be noted that, up until 1914, most skirts still touched the ground, including the infamous hobble skirt that had its brief fashion moment in the Edwardian period).  

 

Before we continue, it's important to remember that there's no progress in the world of fashion; a short skirt is not an improvement nor an advance on a long one. And fashion is not even a striving after beauty. The logic of fashion - if we may call it such - isn't tied to aesthetic criteria, but to an obsessive desire for novelty, innovation, and constant change as a value in and of itself; there is no goal or ultimate look [5].

 

Thus, what we witness throughout the 20th century is hemlines going up and down like a whore's drawers: fashionable skirts were short in the Roaring Twenties (at or just below the knee, thereby allowing flappers [6] greater freedom of movement on the dance floor); long again in the more austere - but also more sophisticated - 1930s (typically reaching mid-calf) [7]; and shortest of all in the Swinging Sixties, when bright young things favoured the mini-skirt (6" above the knee), although some hippie chicks preferred to wear long flowing bohemian-style maxi skirts as the decade drifted toward and into the 1970s.  

 

 

III.

 

And today, in a post-Covid era; "skirt styles are more varied than ever, reflecting a world of interconnected cultures which can no longer be defined by a single  [...] narrative" [8]. 

 

In other words - and returning to the Cole Porter song - anything goes ...

 

Because of this, some commentators are suggesting that the asymmetric hemline is the defining style of the decade, "while others believe the rise in sheer and lace maxis is emblematic of our increasingly obfuscated society" [9].  

 

As we move into the second quarter of the 21st century perhaps the only thing that can be said for certain is that the skirt "is no longer simply rising or falling with GDP, but splintering and mirroring a world of fragmented economies, aesthetics and identities" [10].

 

In an age of chaos and diversity - when no one really knows what the fuck is going on and no single style dominates - we find skirts of every shape, length, and material appearing side by side on the catwalks and in highstreet stores.  

 

Now, of course, some think this a good thing; either a triumph of individualism and the freedom to wear whatever one wants; or of multiculturalism - the great ideal of the motley-spotted who pride themselves of the fact that they have embraced all peoples and value all customs, beliefs, and outfits equally.     

 

Others, however, of a more Nietzschean bent who don't wish to skirt around the issue, see in this barbarism of tastes and fashions a type of systematic anarchy and the destruction of genuine culture, which requires unity of style in all the expressions of a people - including hemlines.       

  

 

Notes

 

[1] I have written two posts on women in trousers; one discussing the case of Katharine Hepburn (9 May 2018) - click here - and one outlining a brief history of Capri pants (featuring Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn (10 May 2018): click here. 

      And for my tuppence ha'penny's worth on the case of Sydney Sweeney (31 July 2025), click here and/or here (the latter giving a Nietzschean take on the controversial American Eagle campaign featuring Miss Sweeney).  

 

[2] Cole Porter, 'Anything Goes', from his 1934 musical of the same title. Click here to play the version recorded by Sinatra for his 1956 album Songs for Swingin' Lovers (remastered in 1998).   

 

[3] This is an extremely anti-Lawrentian position. For Lawrence not only loved old hymns, but he hated bare arms and legs. 

      See the essay 'Hymns in a Man's Life' (Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 2004), in which Lawrence writes how the hymns he learned as a child have more value to him than the finest poetry. 

      And see 'A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover' (published as one volume with Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, Cambridge University Press, 1993) in which he writes disapprovingly of the half-naked women of the 1920s who think it very chic and a sign of their independence to expose their limbs in public, describing it as a form of cynical vulgarity. 

      Ironically, when in the Cole Porter song referred to above he writes of good authors who once knew better words, now only using four-letter words, he is very likely thinking of Lawrence and James Joyce.   

 

[4] A rainy daisy is a style of walking skirt originally designed in the United States for use on wet days and was usually just two or three inches off the ground. The origins of the name are uncertain, but it has been suggested that they were named after the flirtatious fictious figure of Daisy Miller, who features in the short novel of that name by Henry James (1879).  

 

[5] As Lars Svendsen notes: "Fashion does not have any telos, any final purpose, in the sense of striving for a state of perfection [...] The aim of fashion is rather to be potentially endless, that is it creates new forms and constellations ad infinitum." 

      See Fashion: A Philosophy, trans. John Irons (Reaktion Books, 2006), p. 29.

 

[6] For a post written in praise of the flappers (1 January 2016), please click here. 

 

[7] Interestingly, economist George Taylor noted in a 1929 book entitled Significant Post-War Changes in the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Industry, that following an increase in sales of fine silk stockings, skirts got shorter (and, presumably, as skirts got shorter, the demand for fashionable stockings increased still further).

      This contributed to a theory known as the hemline index which posited that the length of a skirt will rise when the economy is booming and fall when the stock market is in trouble - thus helping to explain why skirts were longer in the 1930s, for example.   

      Finally, it might be noted that whilst many economists at the end of the 20th century were sceptical about the so-called hemline index, in 2010, two academics at the Erasmus School of Economics (Marjolein van Baardwijk and Philip Hans Franses) examined data from fashion magazines against measures of GDP from 1921 to 2009 and they found that the hemline lengths were an accurate indicator of economic fluctuation, even if  changing trends in skirt length typically lag three years behind market shifts. 

 

[8-10] 'In History: The evolution of the skirt through the decades', TheIndustry.fashion (16 June 2025): click here. 

      This excellent short piece - which comes with some fantastic photos - also describes skirts in the decades I chose to skip (i.e., the 1980s - 2010s).  

 

 

Are We the Gods of Our Own Image? Notes on the Virtual Beauty Exhibition (Somerset House 2025) Part 2 (Sections V-VIII)

 

Qualeasha Wood: It's All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024) [a]

Arvida Byström: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022) [b] 

 

Photos taken by Maria Thanassa on her i-Phone at the 

Virtual Beauty exhibition (2025): somersethouse.org.uk

 

'We used to check our reflections in bathroom mirrors. Now, we check them in selfies ... on TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. 

A flick of the screen shows our face, but a little smoother, a little more symmetrical, with a glow. 

In this world, we don’t just see ourselves. We edit ourselves. We curate.' - Matthilde Friis

 

Part One of this post (sections I - IV) can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

V.

 

One of the curators of the Somerset House summer exhibition - Virtual Beauty (23 July - 28 September 2025) - Mathilde Friis, has written a short essay in which she argues that at the heart of the show is a political question; not whether "beauty is liberating or constraining, but how we use it, and who gets to decide" [c].

 

It's almost as if she substitutes the word beauty for another word; one beginning with 'p' that many of those exploring issues around visual culture, sexuality, gender and identity from a post-feminist and post-Foucauldian perspective still insist is the great clue to everything: power.   

 

The problem with this is it's easy to become entangled within a discursive network of power and easy to conceive of the latter in a rather old-fashioned (overly simplistic) manner that fails to recognise its simulated nature and its ultimate dissolution into a realm of seduction and signs without referents (as Baudrillard would say) [d]. 

 

Power is not an underlying structure; nor is it a thing that one can possess and wield. The minute you use the word power in all sincerity you have failed to grasp that it's a kind of convenient fiction and, whether you intend to or not, you reify power as a static entity or object that can be analysed. 

 

And so, if we are to become the playful "makers of our own image" [e], as Friis suggests, let it be in the name of something else other than power/knowledge (one is almost tempted to suggest impotence and forgetfulness).  

 

VI.

 

The strange thing with the Virtual Beauty exhibition is just how indebted to the past it felt at times: a sneaky reference to Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (1985) here; a little bit of Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth (1990) hinted at there. 

 

Matthilde Friis mentions both authors and both books in her essay. Admitting the limitations of cyberfeminism - techno-utopias tend to always bump against the limits of physical reality - she also wonders if the digital world really offers endless opportunities for reinvention and liberation, or just the same old bullshit repackaged and recycled; "are we escaping the beauty myth, or just rewriting its code?" [f].   

 

Probably the latter: 

 

"The internet didn't erase gender or racial boundaries. It replicated them. Platforms that promised liberation were embedded with old biases. While the medium was new, the pressures remained the same." [g]

 

Thus, whilst beauty in 2025 may no longer just be about makeup, fashion, and hairstyle - but also "pixels, data, and code" [h] - old standards and stereotypes persist and old concerns to do with sexual objectification, for example, or how beauty still plays upon certain racial characteristics, return to trouble us anew. 

 

And so we come to the two works I wish to briefly discuss here: firstly, Qualeasha Wood's It’s All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024); and, secondly, Arvida Byström's A Daughter Without A Mother (2022) ... 

 

 

VII.

 

Some readers might be wondering if, as a straight white cis male, I'm qualified - or even entitled - to comment on the work of black queer artist Qualeasha Wood. I understand the concern and admit that there's a racial and sexual history here which, as Mysia Anderson says, simply must be acknowledged and taken into account [i].   

 

Having said that, however, it would seem absurd to pretend I hadn't seen and didn't very much like Wood's contribution to the Virtual Beauty exhibition; a clever and amusing combination of traditional textile techniques and glitch aesthetics [j] that exposes (and critiques) how the femme body is shaped, commodified, and circulated online via popular social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. 

 

Her tapestry cleverly reclaims her own image and, fabricated as it is in woven jacquard (embroidered with glass seed beads), it constitutes a form of defiance to (and subversion of) the relentless digital age and its beloved glass screens.  

 

The medium is the message, as everyone used to say ... [k]

 

  

VIII. 

 

I will always have time for works which involve the use of dolls; some readers may recall my fascination with Amber Hawk Swanson's Amber Doll project (2007-10), for example, that I posted about back in 2013 and which the artist details on her website here. 

 

And so I was naturally drawn to the work of Arvida Byström, a young Swedish artist and photographer who, according to a recent press release, "travels in an aesthetic universe of disobedient bodies, fruits in lingerie, tulips and AI sex dolls" [l].

 

A Daughter Without A Mother (2022) is a mixed media installation that, on the one hand, critically examines how even AI can be used to replicate sexual stereotypes and thus collaborate in the pornification of the female body (and, indeed, the entire culture), whilst, on the other hand, inviting viewers to "contemplate the complexities of identity and intimacy" [m] associated with realistic looking sex dolls.     

 

I wouldn't say it's a great work: or even her best work. But it does return us to a question she has raised before concerning female fantasy figures who lack mothers and might best be described as the daughters of men (i.e., born of the pornographic imagination and styled according to male desires, values, and ideas; Eve, Aphrodite, Galatea, Maria ... et al). 

 

Another theme that Byström's work in the exhibition touches on is the question of why human beings have always dreamed of creating perfect copies of themselves whilst, at the same time, they possess a deep-rooted fear - automatonophobia - of replicants; be they dolls, cyborgs, or clones.     

      

Perhaps that's why, in the end, she seems to get such relief from having ripped off the head of poor Harmony ...

 

 

 

Arvida Byström:  

A Daughter Without a Mother (2022)

Notes

 

[a] Qualeasha Wood: It's All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024): woven jacquard, glass seed beads, and machine embroidery. The exhibition label informs us: 

      "Using webcam self-portraits, the artist reclaims visibility, challenging systems of control while highlighting the tension between self-expression and the pervasive influence of socia media and digital technologies." 

 

[b] Arvida Bystrom: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022): mixed media installation, including a short film (36 secs). The exhibition label informs us:  

      "Originally conceived as a performance piece [...] the work critically examines how AI is used to replicate beauty standards, perpetuating the sexualisation of the female body and contributing to its objectification."

 

[c] Matthilde Friis, 'From the Selfie to the Avatar: Beauty, Bias, and the Digital Self' (2025). This essay written to accompany the Virtual Beauty exhibition is available on the Someret House website: click here.   

 

[d] See Jean Baudrillard's Forget Foucault, trans. Mark Polizzotti (Semiotext(e), 2007).

      In 1976, Baudrillard sent an essay with the title Oublier Foucault to the magazine Critique (where the latter worked as an editor). Published the following year, it made Baudrillard a notorious figure within philosophical figures; for not only did he pretty much sum up Foucault's work (on power and sexuality) as a mythic discourse, but he also ridiculed the revolutionary politics of desire being peddled at that time by Deleuze and Guattari.  

       Forget Foucault ecourages readers to move beyond Foucault's cratology, rather than become trapped by its logic and thus prevented from thinking the complex dynamics of contemporary culture in a manner more appropriate to the times.      

 

[e-h] Matthilde Friis, as cited and linked to in note [c] above. 

 

[i] Just for the record, I've been thinking through questions to do with racial fetishism, sexual objectification, the visual representation of female bodies, etc., since 1991: my MA dissertation was on the position and portrayal of women in Nazi Art and Society; my initial PhD proposal was on the figure of the prostitute and the construction of illicit female sexual identity; and there are many posts published on Torpedo the Ark dealing with these and related topics from a perspective informed by my reading of feminist and queer theory (go to labels and find them for yourself).    

 

[j] For my discussion of glitch aesthetics, see the post entitled 'Glitch: the Art of Error and Imperfection' (28 June 2023): click here.  

 

[k] I'm sure I don't need to remind readers that this phrase - 'the medium is the message' - was coined by the communications theorist Marshall McLuhan to suggest that how the message is relayed matters more than the actual content; it's the medium - such as TV or the internet - that ultimately shapes our understanding of the world and ourselves, and how we interact with others, etc.

      See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (1964). The phrase 'the medium is the message' is found in chapter one and suplies the chapter title.    

 

[l] The press release was for an exhibition featuring Byström's work entitled Abyss (26 June - 26 July 2025) at Galerie Kandlhofer (Vienna, Austria): click here.  

 

[m] Quoted from the Virtual Beauty exhibition label describing Arvida Byström's: A Daughter Without a Mother (2022).  

 

Are We the Gods of Our Own Image? Notes on the Virtual Beauty Exhibition (Somerset House 2025): Part 1 (Sections I-IV)

 

 

Top: Ines Alpha: I'd rather be a cyborg (2024) 

Bottom: M.C. Abbott,  María Buey González, and Carl Olsson: Peak Face (2021)    

Images from the Virtual Beauty exhibition 

somersethouse.org.uk

 

'This exhibition highlights how questions of beauty are intrinsically linked to the screens and devices 

through which we view ourselves every day, and the altered, enhanced, 

or filtered identities we share via these devices.' 

 

 

I. 

 

Currently showing at Somerset House is a new exhibition curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado [a], Matthilde Friis [b], and Bunny Kinney [c]. 

 

Entitled Virtual Beauty and featuring work by over twenty artists working across sculpture, photography, installation, and video, it explores the impact of digital culture and technologies on traditional notions of beauty; in other words whereof aesthetics in an age of social media, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence [d]. 

 

Well, I say that, but it seems to me that most of the works are really more concerned with sexuality and subjectivity, self-image and identity, rather than with beauty per se (which is fair enough, I suppose, as it's virtually impossible to discuss the latter without also discussing these other topics). 

 

 

II. 

 

According to the press statement, a highlight of the show is a work entitled Omniprésence (1993) by the French multi-media artist ORLAN who has been interrogating ideas of beauty and how the body is stylised since before many of the other participants in the exhibition were even born; and perhaps no one has taken things as far as her. 

 

However, in an age when plastic surgery is now common and there are several reality TV programmes happy to portray in graphic detail what such cosmetic procedures involve (and how they can sometimes have very undesirable conequences), watching a 21 minute film of the above under the knife over thirty years ago is a bit boring after a couple of minutes. 

 

It's an ironic consequence of living in a world which artists such as ORLAN anticipated by pushing the boundaries between art and technology and questioning not only what it is to be beautiful but human, that their work - groundbreaking and transgressive at the time - now seems naive and passé.  

 

This, of course, is also an unfortunate consequence of getting old; one has seen and heard and read so much already about the urgent questions that this exhibition addresses.  

 

However, as I don't want to be negative or sound like a grumpy old man who thinks he knows it all, perhaps it's best if I constrain my remarks to the works that did excite my interest and make smile; works to do with cyborgs, sex dolls, representations of the black female body, and the philosophical question of faciality (i.e., several of my longtime obsessions).  

 

 

III. 

 

Firstly, I'd like to discuss a narrated video made as part of a collaborative research project entitled Peak Face (2021), by M. C. Abbott, María Buey González and Carl Olssen, which pondered whether we're entering a post-facial era where sapience is no longer tied to a thing that overcodes and organises not only the front of the human head, but the entire body - the entire planet! - if given the chance to do so [e].  

 

As a Deleuzian, I've long been fascinated by that very special mechanism known as the face. And the politics of faciality [f] - or enfacialisation as I think the evolutionary biologists like to say - continues to intrigue.

 

For it's a fascinating question, is it not, to ask what happens (and what comes next) if you uncouple sapience (i.e., the form of social intelligence that is definitional of modern humanity) from faces; will a posthuman future know nothing of physiognomy, or will artificially intelligent entities develop faces of their very own?   

 

In other words, could it be that faces are indispensable and that even cyborgs will remain trapped in the facial age; "or is our facialised world simply an accident of evolution" [3] [g], rather than the universal fate awaiting man, beast, and machine alike?   

 

In as much as art should challenge us to rethink ideas and reimagine the possibilities of self, then Peak Face is, arguably, the standout work of the exhibition. For it powerfully reminds viewers that whilst "it is indubitable that the face has proven to be an incredibly resilient platform in a variety of ecological contexts and has been a constant throughout a wide arc of speciation" [5], there is "no positive reason to believe that having a face is optimally adaptive on Earth in an absolute sense - and even if it was in the past, that would be no guarantee that it is now" [5].

 

Of course, given the ubiquitous character of the face, it may seem losing it or "even imagining an end to faciality is an impossibe exercise" [12]. And yet, says Olsson, peak face may be just around the corner; i.e., there may be a point "beyond which both self-representation and cephalisation decline as social processes discover alternative platforms" [13]. 

 

That doesn't necessarily spell the end of the face, but it would mark a major upheaval: after peak face, everything changes. And the irony is that "such a turning point may occur through the deployment of the very technologies that have driven the proliferation of selfies and other forms of facial representation" [13]. 

 

Olsson concludes: 

 

"The defacement of the world may be a chance to save ourselves from the constraints of the facial platform. Soon we might be able to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, earnestly, 'Do we really need this?'" [16]

 

 

IV.

 

And speaking of mirrors ... 

 

Probably the most fun exhibit - certainly for narcissists like me - was Ines Alpha's magic mirror which gives everyone the opportunity to become-cyborg (see image below) and experience the possibilities afforded by new technologies in constructing posthuman identities that are not tied to the constraints of biological reality and societal expectation.

 

If Alpha's virtual 3D makeup isnt quite as liberating (or as empowering) as she likes to believe and doesn't enable us to lose the face, at least it allows us to mask and mutate the latter in superficial ways and, importantly, her dreamlike vision of beauty isn't corrective or all about an ideal of perfection; "it’s speculative and full of opportunities for reinvention" [h]. 

 

It's a shame Virtual Beauty has been declared as not suitable for visitors under 15 years of age [i], as I think that this age group would not only have the most to learn, but probably have the most fun too - particularly with Alpha's mixed media installation.       

 

Selfie taken on 14 August 2025 with my i-Phone in Ines Alpha's magic mirror 

which formed part of her work entitled I'd rather be a cyborg (2024)  

 

Notes

 

[a] Gonzalo Herrero Delicado is a London-based independent curator, educator, editor, and architect concerned with the impact of climate change and digital technologies on the world and artistic practice.

 

[b] Matthilde Friis is a visual anthropologist and PhD candidate at Northumbria University. Her research and work explore issues around sexuality, feminism and gender. She curated the exhibition Working Girls! at Gallery 46 (London, E1), in 2024, which had obvious appeal for illicit lovers (and lovers of the illicit) everywhere.

 

[c] Bunny Kinney is a British-Canadian filmmaker, creative director, and consultant, who knows how to cast a critical theoretical eye on issues within contemporary culture such as youth identity, gender and sexality. He co-curated Charles Jeffrey: The Lore of Loverboy exhibition at Somerset House in 2024, which I discussed in a post published on 9 August 2024: click here. 

 

[d] For full details about the exhibition, which runs from 23 July until 28 September, at Somerset House, Strand, London WC2, visit the Somerset House website: click here. And to watch a short promotional film on YouTube featuring three of the artists discussed in this post (and from where I borrowed the title), click here. 

 

[e] The project was developed at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, as part of a three-year research and design initiative, The Terraforming (2020-22), directed by Benjamin H. Bratton and Nicolay Boyadjiev. Readers are encouraged to read Olsson's essay 'Peak Face' (2023) which is available on the Urbanomic website and can be downloaded as a pdf: click here. And to watch the Peak Face video on YouTube: click here. 

      It sounds a bit dramatic to say the face organises the entire body, but as Olsson writes: 

      "From their humble origins as mere front-ends, faces developed into composites [which ...] played an important role in organising and constraining the physiology of many animals, and [...] they have played this role continuously for a very, very long time. Nothing, it seems, escapes the face." [4]

      Some readers, loyal to the face, might be quick to ask So what? and point to the many evolutionary advantages faces bring, but as Olsson also reminds us, "while faces have undoubtedly enabled a new level of behavioural complexity and flexibility, they may also have imposed limitations on the acquisition of future traits" [4].

      As for the face organising the entire planet ... Olsson argues, rightly, I think, that the built environment "has not just been shaped to 'fit' the face but has been constructed in its image" [10] in an act of planetary-scale narcissism. 

 

[f] See, for example, the post on Torpedo the Ark published on 13 September 2013 - click here - in which I discuss the politics of the face. And for a much more recent post on probe-heads [têtes chercheuses] in relation to the sculptural work of Daniel Silver (published 18 December 2024), click here.

 

[g] Carl Olsson, 'Peak Face' - essay linked to in note [e]. Note that all following page numbers given in the post - and in note [e] - refer to the pdf that can be downloaded from the Urbanomic website.

 

[h] Matthilde Friis, Virtual Beauty exhibition essay - 'From the Selfie to the Avatar: Beauty, Bias, and the Digital Self' - available on the Somerset House website: click here.

 

[i] To be honest, I'm not sure if declaring an exhibition as unsuitable for under 15s prohibits them from entering or if it is merely a required notification. What if, for example, they are accompanied by an adult? I do seem to recall that when I was at the exhibition a woman entered with a child in a pushchair, but perhaps they were deeemed too young to be upset or corrupted by the art on display.        

 

Part two of this post (sections V - VIII) can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

And Hate Shall Set You Free

And Hate Shall Set You Free 

SA von Hell after William Blake (2025) [a]

 

  

I. 

 

"We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves." [b] 

 

That's a great line from Hazlitt: far more philosophically profound and liberating than the Christian idea of learning to love one's enemies and the Californian injunction to love the self.   

 

Love binds: but it's hate that shall set you free; free from the expectation of those who think they know you best and oblige you to remain the person you've always been; free from ideas and viewpoints that have become fixed and congeal into forms of doxa or harden still further into dogma; free from a model of self born of internalised cruelty that some think of as an essential soul and others discuss in terms of subjective identity.  

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, it's difficult breaking from old friends and family members (unless they die or conveniently move far away). Nevertheless, it can be liberating to both parties to encounter one another once more as strangers (an acquaintance of mine once told me that he never loved his wife more than after their estrangement and subsequent divorce).    

 

The fact is, times change and we change and whilst some old friendships can last a lifetime, other friendships become "cold, comfortless, and distasteful" [131] like a plate of cold meat served up over and over again and even if we would like to revive old feelings that's impossible: "The stomach turns against them." [131]  

 

 

III. 

 

Perhaps it's even more difficult breaking from the authors one has loved; even when fully aware that one rewards great teachers not with loyalty but infidelity and by reading them against themselves; giving them over, as Hazlitt says, to the dissecting-knife or opening them up to ridicule [c].  

 

And great books must also be laid aside at some point and allowed to gather dust [d] - even become a little worm-eaten and mouldy. For as Nietzsche writes somewhere or other, it says nothing against the greatness of a spirit - or, in this case, a book - that it contains a few worms; corruption is a sign of maturity or ripeness and doesn't diminish overall value [e].  

 

IV. 

 

"As to my old opinions, I am heartily sick of them. I have reason, for they have deceived me sadly." [135] 

 

Again, I know exactly what Hazlitt means: old ideas and old beliefs that I once subscribed to in all sincerity at the very least embarrass today; words I once used to identify myself - punk and pagan, for example - "are become to my ears a mockery and a dream" [135].  

 

A true philosopher, says Nietzsche, cannot belong to any church or party that requires members to have moral convictions or political principles; for a philosopher is someone who burrows their way into a body, through it, and out the other side and never holds on to even their own ideas for too long, for this would imply that one could know oneself well enough to trust one's own thoughts and that simply isn't the case:

 

"We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers [...] We remain strange to ourselves out of necessity, we do not understand ourselves, we must confusedly mistake who we are [...]" [f] 

 

Hazlitt appears to find this lack of self-knowledge good cause for self-contempt; "mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes [...] always disappointed where I placed most reliance [...] have I not reason to hate and to despise myself?" [136]

 

But then he adds an amusing final twist:  "Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough." [136]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The phrase hate shall set you free is obviously playing on the well-known biblical line: 'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free' (John 8:32 KJV). 

      Ever quick to point out the bleeding obvious and display it's moral colours, the Google AI assistant was keen to inform me that the phrase 'hate shall set you free' is neither a universally recognised nor an accepted statement and that the original saying is emphasising the liberating power of truth, not hate: 

      "While some may interpret it to mean that rejecting societal norms or expectations (through hate or defiance) can lead to liberation, it's crucial to understand that this interpretation is not a standard or positive one." 

      If I were Tracey Emin, I may have been tempted to write the phrase 'hate shall set you free' in the form of a neon sign, but - as I'm not Tracey Emin - I've simply added it the text to William Blake's 'Albion Rose', which can be found in A Large Book of Designs (1793-96). 

      I'm sure he wouldn't object; for Blake acknowledges the vital importance of hate as well as love within human existence by arguing that: "Without contraries there is no progression." See the Argument that opens The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93).       

 

[b] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am quoting from the text as it appears in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), p. 130, which was published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here. Future page references to Hazlitt's essay will be given directly in the text.

 

[c] Hazlitt is right to say that we are aided and abetted in this by the fact that sometimes our favourite writers suddenly become fashionable and subject to an outpouring of academic analysis: 

      "The popularity of the most successful writers operates to wean us from them, by the cant and fuss that is made about them, by hearing their names everlastingly repeated, and by the number of ignorant and indiscriminate admirers they draw after them." [133]

     

[d] Even Hazlitt has some reservations about this; surely, he says, "there are some works, that, like nature, can never grow old and that must always touch the imagination and passions alike!" 

      Or, at the very least, there are books that contain passages "that seem as if we might brood over them all our lives, and not exhaust the sentiments of love and admiration they excite" [133]. 

      Having said that, however, Hazlitt confesses that, for him at least, any passage - even the most beautiful or stirring - soon becomes vapid if we read or recite it too often (see p. 134).

 

[e] See Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Vol. 2, Part 1, Section 353, p. 292.

 

[f] Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 3.  

 

 

For a couple of other recent posts inspired by Hazlitt's essay 'On the Pleasure of Hating' - discussing topics including spiders, ghosts, and witches - please click here and/or here.  

 

 

On the Need to Fear Ghosts and Hate Witches

Be thou a witch or a spirit, thou com'st 

in such an enchanting form, that I will speak of thee. [1] 

 

 

According to William Hazlitt, if there's one thing men hate it's to be bored. And evil - in small, chaotic doses at least - does bring a little danger and a touch of horror into the world, i.e., an element of excitement to counter the tedium of everyday life: 

 

"How loth were we to give up our pious belief in ghosts and witches, because we liked to persecute the one, and frighten ourselves to death with the other!" [2] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 1, scene 4). 

 

[2] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am quoting from the text as it appears in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), p. 128, which was published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here.   

 

Readers may be interested in two sister posts inspired by Hazlitt's essay 'On the Pleasure of Hating': 

 

'There is a Spider Crawling' (12 August 2025): click here. 

 

'And Hate Shall Set You Free' (15 August 2025): click here. 

 

 

A Brief (Somewhat Belated) Note on the Online Safety Act and the Peter Kyle / Nigel Farage Spat

Peter Kyle MP / Nigel Farage MP

 

A lot of people are expressing concern about the Online Safety Act (2023); a new set of laws passed to protect children - and adults - from all kinds of online content deemed to be potentially harmful by Ofcom (an independent regulator, albeit one established by Parliament and which is overseen by the Culture Secretary).  

 

Some critics worry about how it might impact on free speech and privacy; others say that it will be largely ineffective at restricting access to content and so is doomed to failure.  

 

To be honest, it's not an issue that particularly excites my interest. However, the moment I hear supporters of the Act pleading with us to think of the children à la Helen Lovejoy [1] - thereby transforming an important and complex question into a simple moral issue in order to effectively shutdown debate - I immediately side with the critics.

 

What does interest, however, is the manner in which everything moral, orthodox and conformist - i.e., everything which was traditionally associated with conservatism - has passed yet again to the political left and that it's members of Keir Starmer's Labour Party who most vociferously support the Act and, indeed, wish to strengthen it still further. 

 

Reform UK, on the other hand - a party on the populist right of the British political spectrum - have pledged to repeal the Act if elected into government, prompting the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, to make the unpleasant and ludicrous accusation that Nigel Farage is on the side of those peddling hate as well as sexual predators like Jimmy Savile.

 

It's ironic that this remark should be made by the Rt Hon. Member for Hove and Portslade, as Kyle is someone who opposes all forms of hate speech and wants the online world to effectively become a virtual safe space; i.e., an inclusive, supportive, and secure environment ideal for monkeys who wish to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. 

 

Why is it that those on the virtue-signalling left are often the ones who spew some of the most vile and vicious invective? 

 

Might it be because they tie hate (disguised as love) to judgement rather than joy, unaware that by so doing they corrode and corrupt their own hearts and turn what begins as a desire for political correctness into a resentment-riddled ideology which "leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others" [2].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post published on 30 Jan 2016 in which I discuss this 'think of the children' ploy: click here. 

 

[2] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am quoting from the text as it appears in Volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), p. 130, which was published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here. 

 

 

There is a Spider Crawling ...

 

'Without spiders, flies would have no wings ...'

 

 

Hazlitt's essay opens with a lovely passage about a spider crawling along the floor towards him. Rather than crush the unwelcome intruder, he allows the creature to pass by in peace and, in fact, aids his escape into a darkened space. 

 

This is the mark of a man whose philosophy has taught him how to behave with restraint even when confronted by a creepy-crawly whom he instinctively hates the sight of. In other words, although the spirit of malevolence has been curbed to the extent that he doesn't commit a needlessly cruel act, he still feels negatively towards the eight-legged other:    

 

"We give up the external demonstration, the brute violence, but cannot part with the essence or principle of hostility. We do not tread upon the poor little animal in question (that seems barbarous and pitiful!) but we regard it with a sort of mystic horror and superstitious loathing." [127-28] [a]

 

Hazlitt suspects it will take "another hundred years of fine writing and hard thinking" [128] before he gets over his arachnophobia and learn how to regard spiders with something approaching love and kindness. 

 

However, he doesn't wish to be cured entirely of his ability to hate. For without having something to hate - if not spiders, then snakes; if not snakes, then other people - man's ability to act or even to think is seriously compromised and rather than resembling a fast-moving and sparkling stream, life becomes a stagnant pool. 

 

Moralists may not like the fact, but pure goodness soon grows insipid and man finds delight in his unruly passions. Indeed, it may even be the case, as Zarathustra says, that man needs 'what is most evil in him for what is best in him.' [b] 

 

So it is that there's a seceret affinity between love and hate and the human heart desires the latter as much as the former. And since love soon turns to indifference or disgust, says Hazlitt, perhaps "hatred alone is immortal" [128] amongst the passions; not only the longest lasting, but primary, due to the simple fact that there is always a "quantity of superfluous bile" [128]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] William Hazlitt, 'On the Pleasure of Hating', essay in The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, originally published anonymously in two volumes, in 1826. 

      I am using the text as it appears in volume 7 of The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), published as an eBook by Project Gutenberg in 2018: click here. All page numbers refer to this edition. 

 

[b] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,  'The Convalescent' (2). 

      Of course, before either Nietzsche or Hazlitt were writing, Blake had already recognised that evil was only another term for the active expenditure of energy and that the feeling that results from this is a form of eternal delight. See 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (1790).  

 

 

Readers may be interested in two sister posts inspired by Hazlitt's essay 'On the Pleasure of Hating':

 

'On the Need to Fear Ghosts and Hate Witches' (14 August 2025): click here.  

'And Hate Shall Set You Free' (15 August 2025): click here.