A Tale of Two Toby Jugs

Fig. 1: Paul Gauguin: Jug Self-portrait (1889)

Fig. 2: Friar Tuck character jug made in England (mid-20thC)

 

I. 

 

The 19th-century French artist, Paul Guaguin, was an interesting and influential figure who produced some astonishing work in a number of mediums, including ceramic; first during the period 1886-1888 (a couple of months of which he spent living in Arles with his friend Vincent Van Gogh) and then again from 1893-1895 (after returning to Paris from his first trip to Tahiti).  

Whilst there are thought to be around sixty of Gauguin's ceramic pieces still surviving, the one that is perhaps best known is a self-portrait in the form of a jug made shortly after his famous bust-up with Van Gogh, in early 1889. 

 

Whilst being threatened with a razor and then having to deal with a madmen cutting off part of his left lughole would undoubtedly be unsettling, Gauguin also witnessed a second traumatic event a few days later; the beheading of a notorious Spanish murderer, Prado, in Paris [1].

 

These two things clearly influenced his macabre and grisly ceramic self-portrait, in which coloured glaze is used to suggest blood running down the side of his face and congealing at his neck. If one looks closely, one sees that an ear is missing. The closed eyes, meanwhile, suggest a death mask. 

 

It's a brilliant - if brutal - work, reproductions of which largely fail to convey both the brilliance and brutality.

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, I still wouldn't swap the Friar Tuck Toby jug [2], pictured above, which was one of my mother's most treasured possessions and which she kept in the cupboard by the gas meter for over seventy years.  

 

For despite the fact that this object used to frighten me as a small child and lacks the artistic, cultural and finacial value of Guauguin's piece, it means far more to me. Walter Benjamin insists that a mass manufactured object lacks aura - but that, I find, is simply not true. 

 

Or, even if it is true, I don't care; my mother's Friar Tuck Toby jug has a magical presence for me (as well as sentimental value, which certain intellectuals like to sneer at and find indecent, although Roland Barthes appreciated its importance).        

 

Notes

 

[1] Prado had murdered a prostitute. Gauguin - like Nietzsche - thought his sentence unjust and the execution profoundly disturbed him; not least because, according to his account, it was botched and it took two attempts to decapitate the prisoner. 

      Prado was executed on 28 December, 1888. Van Gogh, with whom Gauguin had discussed Prado's case, mutilated his ear on 23 December. Thus, it was anything but a merry Christmas that year for Gauguin. 

 

[2] I'm sure a collector or an expert in this area will tell me that what I have is not, in fact, a traditional Toby jug, but rather a character jug - the difference being that the latter only features the head and face and not the full body. Be that as it may, my mother always called her piece a Toby jug and I grew up referring to it as such and don't intend to stop calling it a Toby jug now.  

 

 

Nostalgie für das Ding

Dorothee Richter and Kim Novak as Gillian Holroyd in

Bell, Book and Candle (dir. Richard Quine, 1958)

 

 

According to Dorothee Richter, who - among other things - is a professor in contemporary curating at the University of Reading, nostalgia for the thing is always reactionary and, as such, makes her feel uncomfortable and unhappy [1]. 

Which is a shame. 

 

However, at the risk of adding to her discomfort and distress, I'm afraid that my fascination with das Ding - whether in the prose poems of Francis Ponge [2], the philosophical reflections of Martin Heidegger [3], or the psychoanalytic seminars of Jacques Lacan [4] - grows stronger by the year. 

 

Richter can't quite understand why there are thinkers - like Vilém Flusser [5] and Byung-Chul Han [6] - for whom the thing is still an alluring object, albeit one that is rapidly vanishing in this virtual age of Undinge: 

 

"Have we not been here before, and have we not, with good reason, rejected the auratic view of things? [...] Why is there this cyclically recurring nostalgia for the thing in its pure aspect?" [7], she asks.

 

And, yes, I suppose we have been here before. And perhaps there are good reasons to be suspicious of those who become too taken with the idea that things, including artworks and human beings, have a magical quality or essence. 

 

But, having said that, who wants to live in an entirely disenchanted world where everything has been dissolved and digitalised into quantifiable data to be processed by artificial intelligence? 

 

I don't. And, if I'm honest, it shocks me that anyone would.

 

When push comes to shove, I stand with the young witch I met recently at Treadwell's [8], who told me that when non-things beckon her to enter a virtual hell, she relies on the saving power of bell, book, and candle to summon her back to reality.           

 

Notes

 

[1] Dorothee Richter, '(Non-)Things or Why Nostalgia for the Thing is Always Reactionary', OnCurating,  Issue 45: click here. 

      This is a slightly modified version of an essay, trans. Judith Rosenthal, that was originally published under the title '(Un)Dinge, oder warum die Sehnsucht nach dem Ding immer reaktionär ist', in Interdisziplinäres Ausstellen, ed. Sabine Fauland, (Österreichischer Museumsbund, Vienna, 2016).

 

[2] Francis Ponge (1899 - 1988); French essayist and poet. Influenced by both surrealism and phenomenology, Ponge developed a unique style of writing in which he closely examined everyday objects. See Le Parti pris des choses (1942), a collection of 32 prose poems, translated into English by Beth Archer Brombert as Taking the Side of Things (1972) and as The Nature of Things by Lee Fahnestock (1995). 

 

[3] Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976); German philosopher. Considered to be among the most important and influential thinkers of the 20th-century.  In a series of post-War lectures delivered in Bremen, Heidegger discussed the question concerning modern technology and spoke about das Ding as a gathering place of the Fourfold. See Insight Into That Which Is, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell, (Indiana University Press, 2012).    

[4] Jacques Lacan (1901 - 1981); French psychoanalyst. Discussion of the thing constitutes one of the central themes of his work in 1959-60. He uses the French term la chose interchangeably with the German term das Ding. For Lacan, the latter refers to the thing in its dumb reality, entirely outside of language and the unconscious (thus ultimately impossible for man to ever fully imagine or describe). It remains, however, an object of desire to which we continually return; the unforgettable Other.   

 

[5] Vilém Flusser (1920 - 1991); Czech-born writer and theorist who lived for a long time in Brazil. Initially under the spell of Heidegger, Flusser developed his own take on the question of things and non-things; see Dinge und Undinge: Phänomenologische Skizzen (Hanser, 1993) and The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design, (Reaktion Books, 1999); a series of insightful essays (translated into English by Anthony Mathews) on things including wheels, carpets, pots, umbrellas, and tents. 

[6] Byung-Chul Han; South Korean-born philosopher and cultural theorist living in Germany. I have discussed (or referred to) many of his ideas and books on Torpedo the Ark. In a note to his recent work, Non-things, trans Daniel Steur, (Polity Press, 2022), Han writes: 

"There has been an increasing interest in things in cultural studies over the past few decades. This theoretical interest in things, however, does not mean that things are becoming more important in everyday life. On the contrary, the fact that they have become the explicit subject of theoretical reflection is a sign that they are disappearing. [...] Similarly, 'material culture' and the 'material turn' can be understood as reactions to the dematerialization and dereification of reality brought about by digitalization." [99-100]

I review and discuss this text in a two-part post published in June 2022: click here to go to part one.       

 

 [7] Dorothee Richter, op. cit. 

      By the thing in its pure aspect, I think Richter is referring to the thing as a thing-in-itself [Ding-an-sich] with its own unique presence in time and space. This latter is what Walter Benjamin termed its aura - dismissed by Richter as merely a bourgeois attempt to spiritualise the object and give it aesthetic value or abstract beauty outside and above any political history or meaning. For Richter, all such thinking is mythologizing and there are no objects outside of language; a tree, for example, is a concept, not a thing (in itself) - indeed, the entire universe is mind-dependent. As an object-oriented philosopher, I don't subscribe to this correlationism.  

[8] Treadwell's is a bookshop located at 33, Store Street, Bloomsbury, London, WC1. It specialises in esoteric titles and stocks various herbs and ceremonial oils used in occult practices and/or modern pagan witchcraft. It was opened in 2003 (originally in Covent Garden) by proprietor Christina Harrington. I have given over thirty papers at the store: click here for details. For further information visit: treadwells-london.com

 

 

Decorating the World with David Bromley

Anglo-Aussie artist David Bromley, who is best known for his images of youngsters that nostalgically recreate a memory (or fantasy) of a Boy's Own childhood and decorative female nudes painted in black outline with clever colour combinations that also make one long for the past, is certainly not without his critics.   

And no doubt some of the criticism is fair. But, in so far as this criticism relates to his production techniques and the manner in which he has successfully branded himself and his work ensuring mass commercial appeal, much of it seems laughably passé; this is, after all, not only a post-Warhol world, but an age in which Banksy, Hirst and Koons all operate as artist-celebrities.   

To suggest, as Peter Drew suggests, that by proliferating images on an industrial scale Bromley dilutes the meaning and substance of his work, is to return to hoary old notions of originality and artistic aura (the latter being a magical quality said to arise from a work's uniqueness and which cannot possibly be reproduced). 

I mean, I love Benjamin as much as the next man, but c'mon ... 1936 is a long time ago and the myth of presence - which this idea of aura clearly perpetuates - is something that Derrida has, one might have hoped, put to bed once and for all.     

And Drew's assertion that all great art is a form of self-expression, is also one that deserves to be met with scorn. The last thing I want to see revealed on a canvas is subjective slime; I really don't give a shit about the artist's feelings, or care about the condition of their immortal soul.

Ultimately, even if Bromley is simply in it for the money, then, that's his business and his choice. But I like his tots and tits - not to mention his use of flowers, birds and butterflies - and he has, after all, six kids to support.    

One suspects, however, that Bromley is actually a more interesting figure than this and I rather admire his attempt to take art outside of the usual gallery network and into a more public arena, weaving his images into the fabric of everyday life and contemporary culture. 


See: Peter Drew, 'Too Many Bromley's', post on peterdrewarts.blogspot.com (25 May 2010): click here.

bromleyandco.com