Reflections on 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I. 

 

The American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) is perhaps best remembered today for a (semi-autobiographical) short story written after she suffered a severe bout of postpartum psychosis and first published in 1892: The Yellow Wallpaper ... [1]

 

 

 

II. 

 

The (possibly unhinged and certainly unreliable) narrator is a married woman who keeps a journal. Her husband, John, is a doctor and "practical in the extreme". 

 

By this she means: 

 

"He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures."

 

Rightly or wrongly, she resents the fact that he will not believe she's physically unwell and blames him for thereby retarding her recovery. And, to be fair, I can see how this might be troubling. 

 

For it's bad enough when one's useless GP insists there's really nothing wrong. But when one's own spouse - who just happens to also be a physician of high standing - "assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression", that must be really maddening. 

 

And when one's own brother - also a highly respected doctor - concurs that one is simply exhibiting signs of a slight hysterical tendency ... Well, it would be enough to make anyone want to scream and tear at the wallpaper (whatever the colour or pattern). 

 

It's an unfortunate fact that doctors and others working in the healthcare professions, are often not what one might expect or hope for. And experience over recent years has taught me to be wary of accepting their diagnoses and prescribed treatments. 

 

And so I'm sympathetic to the narrator of Gilman's story; even if, as I say, she may be unreliable on occasion and a little too romantic and overly sensitive to queer vibrations for my tastes (sometimes, a draught is just a draught and you really do just need to close the window).  

 

And I do see that John is a patronising and paternalistic prick; I wouldn't want to be married to him, that's for sure.     

 

As for the wallpaper:

 

"I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. [...] The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others."

 

I know a lot of people dislike wallpaper: and I know a lot of people hate the colour yellow - although I'm not among their number and have, in fact, just painted my kitchen in a lemon zesty colour full of enough sunshine to make Van Gogh proud [2].  

 

Still, she has a point: one should be happy - or, at the very least, not unhappy - in one's domestic surroundings. 

 

And it's wrong of her husband to laugh at her about the wallpaper. Just as it's wrong not to appreciate that Wilde was perfectly serious when, lying in his wretchedly furnished Paris hotel room, he declared that he and his wallpaper were fighting a duel to the death: One or the other of us has to go.

 

The fact that Wilde died shortly afterwards proves that home furnishings can have a malevolent - even fatal - influence on our lives and that aesthetics deserves to be taken very seriously as a branch of philosophy. 

III.

 

Like the narrator, I also used to lie awake as a child and extract a mixture of terror and entertainment out of the objects of my little bedroom. She remembers how kindly the knobs of a big old bureau were, whilst I remember the scary faces and figures made of leaves that appeared in the curtains - and that returns us to the yellow wallpaper:  

"This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design." 

 

Despite this, the woman grows very fond of her room; in spite of the wallpaper, or perhaps - somewhat perversely - because of the wallpaper: "It dwells in my mind so!" She spends many hours trying to follow the pointless pattern:

 

"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit." 

 

She particularly dislikes it at night, when the moonlight shines on the undulating wallpaper and gives her the creeps: 

 

"The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move [...]" 

 

Her husband tells her to go back to sleep and not be silly. But she doesn't. Instead, she lies there in the darkness "trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately". 

 

If the colour of the paper is bad enough, it's the pattern - with its purely random design that seems to change depending on the light and time of day - that really tortures her mind:

 

"You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you." 

 

In the end, she decides the female figure she sees behind the pattern is a prisoner; trapped and desperate to escape. And she determines to learn her secret, even if she still can't stomach the yellowness of the wallpaper which makes her think "of all the yellow things I ever saw; not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things". 

 

Oh, and did I mention the paper's unique smell: 

 

"I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair." 

 

"Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad - at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house - to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell." 

 

 

IV.

 

And so, we approach the end of Gilman's remarkable tale ... and the narrator's further descent into madness. 

 

She decides, for example, that the pattern of the wallpaper really is moving; that the trapped woman is making it move as she crawls around and shakes the bars of her prison, desperate to break out. Unfortunately, "nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so".   

 

But, having said that: 

 

"I think that woman gets out in the daytime! [...] I’ve seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. [...] I see her [...] creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!" 

 

Finally, there's only one thing for it - she has to strip the paper off the walls: 

 

"As soon as it was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper." 

 

The next day, when alone in the house, she attempts to finish the job, keeping a rope close by just in case the woman gets out and requires restraining. But peeling off the paper isn't easy and she grows increasingly angry and frustrated. She also now totally identifies with the woman and believes that she too has emerged out of the wallpaper:   

 

"I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I don’t want to go outside. [...] For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

 

At this point, her husband John comes home and discovers her creeping around the room:

 

"'What is the matter?' he cried. 'For God's sake, what are you doing!' I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. 'I’ve got out at last,' said I [...] And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!'" 

 

In horror and despair, her husband collapses: 

 

"Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!" 

 

Is that final line a triumphant assertion of female agency and independence - or the confession of a lunatic? 

 

Maybe both: I don't know. 

 

But I do know Gilman's work fully deserves the multiple readings from many different perspectives that it has had over the last 130 years. H. P. Lovecraft was not wrong to recognise it as a classic tale which powerfully (and cleverly) delineates the madness which can overtake any one of us (whatever the colour of our wallpaper) [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I am reading (and quoting) from Gilman's tale as published in eBook form by Project Gutenberg in 1999. Click here to read free online.  

 

[2] See the post 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here. 

 

[3] See H. P. Lovecraft, 'Supernatural Horror in Literature', a 28,000 word essay published in The Recluse (1927): click here to read on the H. P. Lovecraft Archive. 

 

Thanks to Síomón Solomon for suggesting this post.

 

Will Absence Make My Heart Grow Fonder of Byung-Chul Han? (Part 1)

(Polity Press, 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

Although Daniel Steuer's English translation of Byung-Chul Han's book Absence was only published last year, the original German text appeared back in 2007 [a], and so we can rightly think of it as one of his early works; more philosophical and less political in tone as it explores the Western obsession with essence in contrast to the Eastern (and deeply foreign) notion of absence.    

 

As Han rightly says: "The concept of 'essence', which unites identity, duration and inwardness, dwelling, lingering and possessing, dominates occidental metaphysics." [1] From ancient Greeks like Plato to German idealists like Kant, essence is the key and be yourself the melody. What is outside and inessential can stay there and remain that way.

 

Even Heidegger, argues Han, "despite his best efforts at leaving metaphysical thinking behind [...] remained a philosopher of essence" [4]. In wanting to let things be he wants things to remain true to their own essence. Ultimately, Dasein both dwells and endures. It does not wander too far from itself (even if it explores the odd woodpath from time to time). 

 

But in Daoism, the wise man is without fixed abode and never stops wandering; evading all substantive determination and having no stable identity, he leaves no trail or name behind him. Daoist wandering may not be the same as Zen Buddhist non-dwelling, "but the negativity of absencing connects the two" [5]. 

 

Ultimately, the "fundamental topos of Far Eastern thinking is not being but the way [...] The way lacks the solidity of being and essence, which is what leads to the emergence of traces" [5]. Westerners talk about finding the way, but by that they really just mean finding themselves; the Eastern wanderer, however, becomes the way and doesn't hope to find anything (walking with neither intention nor direction). 

The Western philosopher wants his soul to blossom; the Eastern thinker, like the flower, doesn't have a soul (and remains nameless). They also remain rooted in the material world and care for the body; eating when hungry, sleeping when tired. Oh, and they also remain silent, still, and inactive.  

 

I have to admit, all of this appeals to me very much - and I say that as someone who has been hostile to (and dismissive of) Eastern thought in the past. It seems to me to that absence and emptiness and meaninglessness may very well lead "not to nihilism but to a heavenly joy [...] being without direction or trace" [13]. 

 

Kant - and those idiots who think happiness is all about being stuffed-full and satiated; all about having purpose and direction - wouldn't like this, but I do. Like Laozi, I'm happy to lead a life "without sense and goal, without teleology and narration, without transcendence and God" [14] - to be, as the Sex Pistols once sang, pretty vacant [b] and to find in this freedom, not spiritual deprivation [c]. 

 

 

II.

 

This is interesting: 

 

"Of course, postmodern thinkers also oppose ideas of substance and identity. [...] The negativity of these thinkers brings them closer to absencing and emptiness, but [...] Far Eastern thinking [...] is alien to them [...] The Far Eastern thinking of emptiness leaves deconstruction behind in order to achieve a special kind of reconstruction." [16]

 

This special kind of reconstruction is worldly immanence - "the 'this-is-how-it-is' of things" [16]. 

 

To be fair, I think Deleuze gets this when he transforms no-where into now/here. And when Derrida insists il n'y a pas de hors-texte - for isn't that similar to the Daoist notion that there is nothing above, beyond, or outside of the immanence of the world ...?

Anyway, the point is this: immanence is a crucial concept - as is "the painful charm of transience" [19] which allows for the development of an art and poetry of blandness, in which things fade out and blow away (again, this reminds me somewhat of Roland Barthes's theory of neutrality). 

 

 

III.

 

If essence is difference and a way of keeping things clear cut, then absencing is a form of indifference; one that un-bounds and makes indistinguishable. It's hard to see the outline of a white flower against a snow-covered backdrop (or a black cat in a coal cellar as others would say). 

 

The East is messy - things flow into each other: "Nothing imposes itself. Nothing demarcates itself from other things. Everything appears to retreat into an in-difference." [22-23]  The West, by contrast, likes strong boundaries and distinctions and closure.

 

Han continues:

"In-difference also fosters an intense side-by-side of what is different. It creates an optimal degree of cohesion with a minimal amount of organic, organized connection. Synthetic composition gives way to a syndetic continuum of closeness in which things do not come together as a unity." [23-24]

The cathedral is a space that is perfectly enclosed; even stained-glass windows are designed to keep the natural daylight out, which is why D. H. Lawrence preferred them in a state of ruin, exposed to the elements, etc. [d]

 

Han, however, seems to prefer a Buddhist temple that is "neither fully closed nor fully open" [26]. The spatiality of the latter "effects neither an inwardness nor a being-exposed" [26]. Doors of white rice paper are preferable to colourful stained-glass windows and standing light without direction is preferabe to a divine radiance from above that is intended to illuminate everything:

 

"The standing light, which has become fully indeterminate, in-different, does not emphasize the presence of things; it submerges them in absence." [27]    

 

It's almost as if white standing light brings a special type of darkness. You don't get that with modern glass architecture which marks the triumph of transparency. 

For Han, then, the Buddhist temple is preferable to the Christian cathedral; the Greek temple; and the shiny American skyscraper of glass and steel. It's not just a question of spatiality and light, but asymmetry; "an aesthetic principle of Zen Buddhism" [29] which "breaks up presence into absencing" [29].

 

I suppose some might say that it's all a question of how one sees things. And this brings us on to the question of eyes:

 

"According to Hegel's philosophical physiognomy, the eyes should be surrounded by the elevated bones so that 'the strengthened shadow in the orbits gives us of itself a feeling of depth and undistracted inner life'." [30]

 

But Eastern eyes, of course, are flat:

 

"Hegel would explain this in terms of a lack of inwardness, that is, an infantile spirit that has not yet awoken to subjective inwardness and therefore remains embedded in nature." [30]

 

But what does Hegel know about the beauty of the absencing gaze ...?

 

 

IV.

 

D. H. Lawrence thought there was nothing more bourgeois than the unfading flowers of heaven. But the Kantian lover of the beautiful would probably delight in such; their "imperishable splendour would most likely [...] make him happy" [33].

 

For sure, he'd not like it if they were revealed to be fake flowers - their artificiality depriving them of "their teleological, even theological, significance" [33] - but their everlasting nature would only intensify his love for them. Plato too dreamed of a divine form of beauty that "neither emerges nor vanishes, neither increases nor decreases" [33]. 

 

But for someone who views the word from a Far Eastern perspective, the most beautiful thing of all about a flower is its transience; the fact that it loses its petals without any hesitation and is content to disappear. For such a person, the bare stem or twig is as beautiful as a flowering plant or tree in full bloom. 

 

In other words: 

 

"In the sensibility of the Far East, neither the permanence [Ständigkeit] of being nor the stability [Beständigkeit] of essences is part of the beautiful. Things that persist, subsist or insist are neither beautiful nor noble. Beautiful is not what stands out or exceeds but what exercises self-restraint or retreats, not what is solid but what hovers. Beautiful are things that carry the traces of nothingness [...] not full presence but a 'there' that is coated with an absence [...]" [33-34]   

 

The Japanese call this wabi-sabi - the art of impermanence that "combines the unfinished, the imperfect, the transient, the fragile and the unassuming" [34]. Even your favourite Clarice Cliff milk jug is made more beautiful by a tiny crack or chip; and every silver bowl is improved when it loses its sheen and begins to darken [e].    

 

Han writes: 

 

"Satori (illumination) actually has nothing to do with shining or light. This is another point on which Eastern spirituality differs from occidental mysticism, with its metaphysics of light. Light multiplies presence. Buddhism, however, is a religion of absence." [35]

 

In the West, people almost want to be blinded by the light; a light either from some transcendent source or an inner light that emphasises the presence of things. Han - like Tanizaki - seems to admire the magic light of absence; a light that does not disturb or dispel the darkness; a friendly light. 

 

 

V. 

 

Finally, a few brief notes on (i) food, (ii) flower arranging, (iii) rock gardens, and (iv) theatre ...

 

(i) It's funny, but one of the complaints of English people is that Chinese food leaves them feeling empty inside five minutes after eating. Han provides a possible explanation: "Emptiness and absence also characterize the cuisine of the Far East." [39] Rice is the perfect example of this; lacking colour, lacking taste, offering no resistance (providing nothing to chew).

 

"Far Eastern cuisine appears empty also because it does not have a centre [...] The meals lack the centre or weight of a main dish and the closedness of a menu." [40]  

 

Further, in the West we like to cut food up with a knife and fork; in the East they assemble food with chopsticks.

 

(ii) The Japanese art of flower arranging is known as Ikebana - which means bringing flowers to life: 

 

"It is, however, an unusual kind of invigoration, because the flower is cut off from its root [...] The flower is invigorated by dealing it a mortal blow. [...] This raises it above the process of slow withering, its natural death. The flower is thereby removed from the difference between 'life' and 'death'. It shines with a special vitality, a flowering in-difference  [...] that has its source in the spirit of emptiness." [40-41]

 

The flower radiates with an unnatural (and transient) vitality; the shining of absence. 

 

(iii) If you have ever walked round a Japanese rock garden, you might have come away feeling a bit disappointed that there wasn't much to see. But that's the point; they are designed as gardens of absence and emptiness. 

 

However, despite their absence and emptiness, "they radiate", says Han, "an intense vitality" [41] and visitors must learn to appreciate the flow of the lines raked into the gravel and the darkness of the rocks. 

 

The Japanese rock garden is another method of paradoxical invigoration: "It invigorates nature by completely drying out its soul" [42] and placing it in a state of satori. 

 

(iv) Traditional Japanese puppet theatre (Bunraku) is also radically different to the world of Punch and Judy, showing that the latter is not the only way to do it. The Western puppet theatre animates characters via funny voices; in Bunraku it's all about the gesture and the puppets remain soulless figures.    

 

Similarly, Noh theatre is a theatre of absence: the costumes and masks worn by the living, human actors are designed to make them look like puppet figures. Even when an actor appears on stage without a mask, "the uncovered face is expressionless and empty" [44]. 

 

And the narrative composition of Noh theatre also adds to the sense of absence; its hard to tell what is real and what is dream - what is past and what is present - things appear only to then disappear once more (probably best not to worry too much about the plot in such cicumstances) [f].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The German edition was published as Abwesen: Zur Kultur und Philosophie des fernen Ostens (Merv Verlag, 2007). In this post, page numbers refer to the English edition (Polity Press, 2023).  

[b] 'Pretty Vacant' was the third single released by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here to watch the official video for the song (which was shown on Top of the Pops) and/or here to read my post written on the track and published on TTA on 30 July 2108.   

[c] Is this also Han's view? It's hard to know. For whilst here he writes that the world "has no narrative structure" and is therefore "resistant to the crisis of meaning" [14], sixteen years later he will publish a book entitled Die Krise der Narration (2023) in which he seems to argue strongly in favour of narratives that anchor us in being and subscribe to a form of Catholicism informed by Martin Heidegger. Anyway, readers who are interested can click here to access the first part of a three-part post on this recent text. 

[d] See the post 'Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargolyle ...' (16 April 2019) in which I discuss Lawrence's thoughts on religious architecture: click here.

[e] Han at this point refers us to Tanizaki's famous essay on Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows (1933). I have mentioned this work in several posts on Torpedo the Ark (click here, for example) and it partly formed the basis for a paper delivered at Treadwell's Bookshop in September 2023 on occultism in the age of transparency (an extract from which can be read by clicking here). 

 

[f] For the record: I find all theatre irritating and tedious; I do like the tranquility of a Japanese rock garden, but enjoy also the colourful chaos of an English wildflower meadow; and, if obliged to choose, I'd prefer to have steak and chips for dinner than a bowl of egg-fried rice. 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here.

 

 

Look Don't Touch (Notes on Art and Haptic Compulsion)

 Image credit: Raul Arboleda / AFP / Getty Images

 

 

I. 

 

Touching objects is surely a vital activity. But just as green grocers don't like you handling the fruit and veg, so gallery owners seem to have a real problem with people touching works of art on display. 

 

Obviously, there are practical reasons for this; dirt particles and perspiration on the hands can stain or, over time, cause serious damage to the surface of a sculpture, for example, which it might be difficult (or even impossible) to repair. Whilst porous materials, such as wood or stone, are particularly vulnerable, even works made of bronze or stainless steel, are not entirely immune to damage. 

 

Thus, in public art museums the world over there are signs reading do not touch, white boundary lines marked on the floor, and security guards lurking nearby to ensure people keep their distance. The curators want the public to engage with the art and be inspired by it, but they want them to do so with their eyes whilst keeping their filthy paws off. 

 

Oh, and just to be clear, kissing statues is also strictly forbidden and very much frowned upon.   

 

 

II. 

 

Practical concerns aside, there are clearly other issues at play here; aesthetics is founded upon an ideal of detachment and enforcement of the golden rule of look don't touch. Nietzsche, however, mocks this ability to gaze upon beauty apparently free of all desire as immaculate perception and suggests that objective contemplation is very often a disguised form of emasculated leering: click here for a post in which I discuss this. 

 

We see this aesthetic idealism expressed in Byung-Chul Han's 2015 work Die Errettung des Schönen (trans. rather prosaically in English as Saving Beauty (2018)), where he writes disapprovingly of Jeff Koons's sculptures on the grounds that their ultra-smooth surfaces not only reflect a social imperative lacking in all negativity, but cause "a 'haptic compulsion' to touch them, even the desire to suck them" [1].

 

Han writes: 

 

"It is the positivity of smoothness alone that causes the haptic compulsion. It invites the observer to take an attitude without distance, to touch. An aesthetic judgement, however, presupposes a contemplative distance. The art of the smooth abolishes such distance." [2]     

 

Like Hegel, Byung-Chul Han wants art to be meaningful and that requires visual appreciation. For sight, along with hearing, is a theoretical sense that allows us to interpret, judge, and reflect upon a work. Smelling, tasting, or touching an object might inform us of its material reality and sensible qualities, but won't enable us to make profound sense of it as an artwork. 

 

And like Roland Barthes, Byung-Chul Han believes the sense of touch to be "'the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight which is the most magical'" [3]. Why? Because whilst the latter preserves distance, the former negates it. To touch an object is to demystify it and make it available for enjoyment and consumption: "The sense of touch destroys the negativity of what is wholly other. It secularizes what it touches." [4]

 

For Han, Jeff Koons's seamless sculptures may embody "a perfect and optimized surface without depth and shallows" [5], but so do soap bubbles made of air and emptiness and as any West Ham fan will tell you, there's no real salvation to be found in blowing bubbles ...  

 

 

III.

 

The problem is, whilst I might agree with many aspects of Han's critique of smoothness, I'm a little more ambivalent on the subject than him (and I also like the work of Jeff Koons, as discussed in a recent post: click here).

 

Further, it seems to me that professor of museum studies, Fiona Candlin, is right to call for a radical rethinking of aesthetics as it has traditionally been conceived and to challenge the idea of art museums as sites of visual learning. In her 2010 study, Art, Museums and Touch, Candlin demonstrates that touch was - and remains - of crucial importance within the history, theory, practice, and appreciation of art, whilst, at the same time, contesting ideas of touch as an unmediated and uncomplex (i.e., primitive and inferior) mode of discovery [6].     

 

Having spent many years investigating why visitors to galleries and museums often can't help reaching out to (illicitly) touch exhibits, Candlin shows just how common this is. Whether those moonlike philosophers who wish us all to simply gaze upon life like it or not, the fact is many people want to physically touch objects they admire and don't like to think of art as something out of bounds and out of reach (nor do they wish to creep around a gallery speaking in hushed tones as if in a church surrounded by sacred relics).

 

Ultimately, perhaps this haptic compulsion is not a sign of an obsessive disorder, nor the mark of a philistine, but, rather a form of resistance to an overly visual (virtual) world. And perhaps sculptures today should be exhibited in darkened rooms where visitors in blindfolds are invited to feel their way around, physically interacting with objects and one another, groping their way into a future democracy; the democracy of touch [7].         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Byung-Chul Han, Saving Beauty, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 3.  

[2] Ibid.

[3] Roland Barthes writing in Mythologies, quoted by Byung-Chul Han in Saving Beauty, p. 4.

[4] Byung-Chul an, Saving Beauty, p.  4.

 

[5] Ibid. 

[6] See Fiona Candlin, Art, Museums and Touch, (Manchester University Press, 2010).  

 

[7] The democracy of touch is an idea found in D. H. Lawrence's late work. I have written several posts discussing the idea; click here, for example, or here. 

      Interestingly, however, Lawrence isn't always pro-touch; see for example what he says in Chapter X of Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922) about "hands exploiting the sensual body, in feeling, in fingering, and in masturbation". 

      As for aesthetics, whilst Lawrence doesn't feel the English are devoid of feeling for the plastic arts, he does believe them to be full of fear for the body and that this fear distorts their vision and instinctive-intuitive consciousness. Thus it is, says Lawrence, that even those intellectuals and critics who get an ecstatic thrill from looking at artworks are "only undergoing a cerebral excitation" and remain essentially unmoved and untouched. See 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 182-217. The line I quote from is on p. 190.    

 

   

Black is Not Beautiful: Black is Sublime (A Note on Race and Aesthetics)

 

Zanele Muholi Self-Portrait (2016) from the series 

Somnyama Ngonyama ('Hail The Dark Lioness')

The Cooper Gallery

 

 

I. 

 

Racism is often ugly and yet, interestingly, it is clearly related to the question of aesthetics and what constitutes the beautiful (and thus, by transcendental implication, the good and the true; a linkage that Nietzsche describes as philosophically shameful). 

 

I suppose we can trace this back to the Age of Enlightement, when, as Sander Gilman notes, the relation of blackness to questions of representation and perception was at the heart of the debate concerning artistic value and aesthetic judgement [1]. 

 

For whilst black was certainly not seen as beautiful by Kant and company, it was impossible to conceive of the latter without also formulating ideas about the former and so blackness came to serve as the ideal counterpoint not only to beauty, but morality and reason. 

 

In brief, race - and by extension racism - was at the heart of aesthetic theory in the modern period. Artists, philosophers, and scientists all wanted to know if there was an innate reason for the usually negative response to blackness, or whether this was acquired socially and culturally. 

 

Which is why a curious case concerning a 13-year-old boy with impaired vision became central to this debate ...

 

 

II. 

 

According to Gilman's account, after operating on the child and restoring his sight, Dr. William Cheselden was keen to observe and report on his young patient's response to colours (of which he previously had only a vague idea). 

 

Whilst the boy found all the bright colours pleasing - particularly red, which he thought the most beautiful - black made him feel distinctly uneasy, although eventually this feeling passed. However, when, some months later, he encountered a black woman for the first time, the child was, according to Cheselden, struck with great horror at the sight: Mama, look! It's a negro! I'm frightened!

 

Commenting on this case, Simon Gikandi writes:       

 

"The conclusion here was that since the boy had not seen a black woman before, and had certainly not acquired the ability to associate blackness with ugliness through his culture and instruction, his terror was immediate and intuitive. Located on the level of physiology, that is, the eyes' immediate association of blackness with values not acquired through social association, the Cheselden experiment would be used to counter Locke's view that the association between darkness and fear was acquired through association. In its overpowering negativity, blackness was accorded an immanent value." [2]

 

Of course, whether that's a legitimate conclusion to draw is, of course, debatable; though it's one that Edmund Burke was happy to reinforce. Referring directly to the Cheselden study in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Burke argued that terror was innately associated with darkness and that blackness instinctively triggered a feeling of horror independent of any learnt associations:

 

"Blackness terrifies us not simply because we have been taught to fear it, Burke claimed, but because the fear of darkness has a physiological source: it causes tension in the muscles of the eye and this, in turn, generates the terror; it is precisely because of its innate capacity to produce terror that blackness functions as the source of the sublime." [3] 

Again, whilst I'm not sure how valid Burke's claim is - particularly the physiological explanation in terms of eye-strain - it's certainly an interesting proposition to say the least; one which rationalises (and thus legitimises) white racism as a natural response and which posits dark bodies as frightening yet, at the same time, awe-inspiring.

 

We continue to see this played out within Western culture even now; not least of all within the pornographic imagination wherein blackness is both fetishised as desirable, but also portrayed as something powerfully threatening to white masculinity and the socio-sexual order. 

Notes

 

[1] Sander L. Gilman, 'The Figure of the Black in German Aesthetic Theory', Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4, (1975), pp. 373–391. To access on JSTOR, go to www.jstor.org/stable/2737769

 

[2]  Simon Gikandi, 'Race and the Idea of the Aesthetic', Michigan Quarterley Review, Vol. XL, Issue 2, (Spring, 2001). To read online click here. 

      Locke's views on the nature of darkness etc. can be found expressed in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689-1691). 

[3] Ibid. 

D. H. Lawrence and the Arts: An Initial Reaction Written Under the Influence of Sour Grapes and Baudrillard

Edinburgh University Press, (2020)

 

 

This new collection of essays on D. H. Lawrence, edited by Catherine Brown and Susan Reid, probably didn't feature on many people's Christmas wish-list. 

 

But for those who feel obliged to keep up with recent developments in Lawrence scholarship, it's obviously required reading. Indeed, one feels duty-bound to break bread with the authors who have contributed to this Companion, even if the bread that is offered is, occasionally, just a bit stale round the edges and showing signs of mould.      

 

Why should that be? Why can't we have an entire loaf of freshly baked bread? 

 

Well, that's difficult when you commision all the usual suspects to write about art primarily in terms of aesthetics and discuss Lawrence's work with more references to philosophical and cultural trends rooted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, than to ways of thinking that have emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries [1]. 

 

So it is that whilst the editors of this volume clearly understand the need for a "re-evaluation of existing critical positions" [2], they at no time pause to consider if the very idea of art as a distinct sphere of activity in an era of transaesthetics [3] hasn't - like sex - become merely a nostalgic fantasy.

 

Art, in other words, has lost its specificity and is now indistinguishable from everyday life. It no longer represents anything - no longer means anything - and art no longer possesses the aesthetic power to transfigure or transcend the world; we have realised our own utopia and illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible [4]. 

 

And, unfortunately, not even D. H. Lawrence can save us ...

 

Notes

[1] You will find more references in the index to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts to Friedrich Schiller, for example, than to Jean Baudrillard. In fact, there are no references to the latter, despite his being one of the most important (and provocative) cultural theorists of the last forty years.

 

[2] Catherine Brown and Susan Reid, 'Introduction' to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts, ed. Catherine Brown and Susan Reid, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), p. 1.

 

[3] See Jean Baudrillard, 'Transaesthetics', in The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict, (Verso, 1993), pp. 14-19. Readers who are interested in this idea should also see also Baudrillard's The Conspiracy of Art, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Ames Hodges, (Semiotext(e), 2005).

 

[4] Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. Phil Beitchman, Paul Foss and Paul Patton, (Semiotext(e), 1983), p. 38.

 

 

On Painting Ceilings

Kazimir Malevich 
Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918) 
Oil on canvas (79.5 x 79.5 cm)

I.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is certainly an impressive piece of interior decorating and design, incorporating over 340 figures, both clothed and nude, allowing the artist to fully demonstrate his skill in creating a huge variety of poses for the human body (poses that have been much imitated ever since). 

Contrary to popular belief, Michelangelo painted in a standing position, not lying flat on his back, and endured great physical discomfort; eye strain, neck ache, muscle cramps, etc. Little wonder then that he bodged certain sections and that it was left unfinished. Nevertheless, according to Goethe, those who haven't seen this work for themselves can have no appreciable idea of what greatness a single man is capable.


II.

I was thinking of Michelangelo and his High Renaissance masterpiece whilst painting a ceiling in my mother's house over the weekend. Not that I drew inspiration from the Italian; that came rather from the avant-garde Russian artist Kazimir Malevich and his Suprematist composition of 1918 entitled White on White (shown above).  

For that's essentially what I was doing: painting white on white, inch after inch and one polystyrene foam tile after another, using Farrow and Ball's All White Estate emulsion; an expensive but soft and sympathetic paint which provides a chalky, very matt finish, with just a 2% sheen (which is more than enough lustre for any ceiling in my view).      

Whilst most people today probably prefer to use a roller and get the job done as quickly and as conveniently as possible, I like to take my time and prefer to use a small (12 mm) brush, ensuring that individual brush strokes and small imperfections remain evident; the thought of machine-perfect smoothness - or machine-smooth perfection - is anathema to my tastes. 

Having now completed the second coat, I have to confess that I prefer my ceiling in all its infinite and abstract whiteness to Michelangelo's, which - for me - is far too busy and show-offy. It's nice to dispense with illusions of depth and to also rid painting of representation and colour. The foam tiles - that were so popular at one time, but which are now deemed to be a fire hazard - provide a richly textured surface.      

Although I don't much care for his ideal fantasies of purity and spiritual transcendence, I share something of Malevich's exhilaration and know exactly what he means when he claims in his 1919 manifesto to have overcome the lining of the coloured sky and learnt how to swim in the freedom of the white abyss ...

Is Strong the New Pretty ... or the Old Ugly?

 

Photo by Kate T. Parker of her daughter, Ella, aged 9, 

on the night before competing in her first triathlon.

From Strong is the New Pretty series of images.

Promoting an all-American model of athletic motherhood in a manner reminiscent of Walt Whitman, photographer Kate T. Parker is extraordinarily proud of her muscles, her fertility, and the products of her womb. 

Although not a fan of her work, a recent series of images featuring her young daughters and their friends entitled Strong is the New Pretty, did catch my attention. Parker wishes to encourage every girl to be a leader and able to run a marathon; to discover their strengths and own their power. 

But whilst I can see the aesthetic appeal of fierce-looking girls with toothless smiles, scraped knees, and messy hair - i.e. girls who don't care too much about their appearance, their personal safety, or being well-behaved - there's no need to implicitly denigrate those more delicate children who prefer to be gentle, kind, and polite. Nor is there any reason to sneer at girls who like to giggle and wear colourful dresses or choose to spend their time quietly reading in their bedrooms, avoiding sports of all kinds.        

   

Being loud, competitive, and good at ball games is fine and might indeed teach you how to rule the field. But rather than make pretty in a new less feminine fashion, being empowered as Parker imagines it might just make ugly in the old macho-fascist manner.