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

Egon Schiele: Moa (1911) [1]

Gouache, watercolour and pencil on paper 

(48 x 31 cm)

omertiroche.com

 

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

But they are always works of art.' - ES

 

 

I. 

 

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

 

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

 

As it says in the exhibition press release: 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

II. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

III. 

 

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

 

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

 

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

Photo of Maggie Nelson by Jarrett Eakins (2013) 

alongside the cover of her book The Argonauts 

 (Graywolf Press, 2015)

 

 

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

 

 

I.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

II.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

So where's the (transgressive) fun? 

 

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

 

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

 

 

III.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

IV.

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

 

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

 

V.

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

  

 

VI.

 

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

 

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

 

 

VII.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

   

Notes

 

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

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

 

[c] Ibid.

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

Notes on Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (Part 1: pp. 1-74)

Cover of the Melville House edition 

(2016) [a]

 

 

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: Maggie Nelson is one of those very rare individuals who probably deserves the title of genius; an original and insightful writer who produces work that is both lyrical and philosophical [b].

 

I still think she has an unfortunate tendency to overshare and give us just a little too much personal information, but that might just be me being a bit uptight and prudish [c]. And, for all the times when I want to look away from the page, there are many more occasions on which I'm grateful as a reader for her honesty, courage, and intelligence.  

 

And so, let's take a look at The Argonauts (pp. 1-74), but please note this is more a response to the lines or paragraphs that most resonate with me, rather than a review of the book as a whole (some aspects of which, even if central - such as sodomitical parenthood - I don't really care about [d]).  

 

 

I. 

 

Nelson tells us that before she met the great love of her life, the artist Harry Dodge, she had "spent a lifetime devoted to Wittgenstein's idea that the inexpressible is contained - inexpressibly! - in the expressed" [3] [e]. 

 

It was this profound but paradoxical truth that enabled Nelson to keep her faith in language - words are good enough! - and continue writing. But then Dodge, "equally devoted to the conviction that words are not good enough" [4], obliged her to reconsider the matter; perhaps words were "corrosive to all that is good, all that is real, all that is flow" [4] and that to name is to kill; perhaps we can't conceptualise and articulate the world clearly (and non-destructively) after all.

However, I'm not sure that Nelson, as a writer and poet, ever quite accepts this; a little later she asks: "How can the words not be good enough?" [8].

 

 

II.

Nelson has always thought it a little romantic to allow "an individual experience of desire take precedence over a categorical one" [10]. 

 

And I agree, it is romantic to just love Thelma, Alice, or Nicolas Poussin, rather than identifying oneself in terms of a fixed sexuality, although maybe that's easier for me to say than for someone who is (or has been) persecuted or discriminated against for their queerness; I don't have to worry about how certain pieces of legislation, such as Clause 28 or Prop 8, are going to impact on my life [f].

 

 

III.

 

This is very similar to how I feel and act when it comes to home improvements and domestic chores: I don't want to lift a finger "to better my surroundings" [14], or even keep things ship shape and Bristol fashion. I prefer to literally let things "fall apart all around" [14] and then, "when it gets to be too much" [14], just move on and flee the scene.   

 

IV. 

  

This is an undeniably correct observation (one that reminds me of something Baudrillard might have written, although Nelson credits the idea to Lacan, whose idea of the Real is not quite the same as the former's): 

 

"To align oneself with the real [...] can feel good. But any fixed claim on realness, especially when it is tied to an identity, also has a finger in psychosis." [17]

 

In other words, whilst aligning with a real or natural identity can be a source of pride and pleasure, it can also bring with it a touch of horror and be impossible to sustain for 24/7; no one can be themselves all day every day, can they?

 

There have to be moments when we don't quite feel ourselves and we take a breather from reality. 

 

 

V.

 

I like the fact that Nelson doesn't just keep banging on about difference and otherness; the fact that she acknowledges that encountering sameness can also be important, "as it has to do with seeing reflected that which has been reviled" [31]. 

 

And this encounter with sameness can also allow self-discovery: "To devote yourself to someone else's pussy can be a means of devoting yourself to your own." [31]

 

And I suppose that matters; although not as much as the "shared, crushing understanding of what it means to live in a patriarchy" [31] - the kind of sentence which one simply has to let pass when reading an author like Nelson, who passionately believes that there is "some evil shit in this world that needs fucking up" [33], such as the phallocratic order and capitalism, even if she has "come to understand revolutionary language" [33] as a mixture of fantasy and fetish. 

 

 

VI.

 

This is pure liberalism: "I support private, consensual groups of adults deciding to live together however they please" [37]. 

 

The problem is such groups don't live in a giggly bubble on the moon; they have neighbours and they belong to wider society and so their decisions and lifestyle choices invariably impact others. They also inhabit the planet with other species and, like Nelson, I think our relationship with animals and plants in sacred terms.     

 

 

VII.

 

"Even if women are consulting the same satellites, or reading from the same script: their reports are suspect ..." [47]

 

This remark about the perceived difference in reporting accuracy between male and female weather reporters is interesting. I'm not sure, however, that the reason for it is the one Nelson (and Luce Irigaray) imagine; i.e., that women are somehow removed as a sex from the language game that assures objective coherence and predictive ability.

 

But there does seem to be some sort of difference involved based on sex and a woman's greater attunement to her own body in relationship to the world; it's very rare that the Little Greek, for example, will say it's cold outside (giving reference to the air temperature), preferring instead to tell me she's feeling cold.  

So yes, it's a different (more subjective) way of articulating reality; but I don't think this is the result of patriarchal forces looking to silence women or discredit their weather reportage.

VIII.

 

I'm grateful to Nelson for mentioning the poet and literary scholar Michael Snediker (whom I didn't know of) and his book Queer Optimism (2008). For his critical examination of waxing lyrical - as summarised here - is one I find very interesting.

 

For there is something problematic (and irritating) - particularly to a working class sensibility - when writers indulge in histrionics. Even issues of "maximum complexity and gravity" [56] can be discussed without exaggerated language and overarching concepts which can sometimes negate the "specificities of the situation at hand" [56].

 

(This returns us to Wittgenstein and the idea of speaking plainly.)  

IX.

Is transitioning from one gender to another (or even just floating somewhere in-between) really the same as a becoming as Deleuze and Guattari understand it? 

 

I don't think so. But perhaps Nelson's reading of the above on this topic is superior to mine; more true to the radical spirit of everybody's favourite nomad philosophers and certainly she and Harry Dodge know more about gender, sexuality, and identity issues than I do. 

 

Thus, best perhaps that I say nothing further here: for I don't want to run the risk of being thought presumptuous or another comfortably cisgendered straight white male know-it-all, who has forgotten (or is yet to learn) that "the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or their sexuality - or anything else, really - is to listen to what they tell you [...] without shellacking over their version of reality" [66].

 

But then, having said that, this sounds suspiciously like an attempt to silence those who don't care about personal truth and refuse to value lived experience above everything else.         

 

X.

On my first day at school, I cried when they pinned a name badge on me and tried to remove it (true story). Ten year later, I smiled when Poly Styrene informed her audience that identity was the crisis (having already seen that) [h]. 

Thus, like Nelson's professor of feminist theory, Christina Crosby, I would be mortified were a student - or anyone else - to hand me an index card and ask me to write on it how I identified and then pin it on my lapel. For like Crosby, I've "spent a lifetime complicating and deconstructing identity and teaching others to do the same ..." [73]  

 

Notes 

 

[a] The Argonauts was originally published in the United States by Graywolf Press, in 2015. The first UK edition, published by Melville House, followed in 2016, and it is this edition to which all page numbers given in the text refer.  

 

[b] In 2016, a year after the publication of The Argonauts, Nelson was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship; known to many as the genius grant. See the two-part post 'Heathen, Hedonistic, and Horny: Notes on Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009)' (5 Sept 2024): click here.   

[c] See the post 'Can a Writer Ever Overshare? On Maggie Nelson's Self-Exposure' (9 Sept 2024): click here. 

[d] I'm sure Nelson would say it's this indifference to parenting - particularly the maternal - that disqualifies me from being a feminist; see pp. 48-52 and the story of a seminar with Jane Gallop and Rosalind Krauss. Nelson stands with the former, but I have to admit, I'm slightly more sympathetic to the latter. 

 

[e] I don't want to split hairs - though some say that philosophy is nothing other than the endless splitting of hairs - but I'm not sure Wittgenstein quite said this. 

      What he said, rather, was that the inexpressible (i.e., that which can be shown and, aguably, that which mysteriously matters most) forms the background against which whatever we can express has its meaning. In other words, context - not containment - is the crucial word here. 

      See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch (University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 16. A revised edition of this work, ed. G. H. von Wright, was published by Blackwell in 1998.

 

[f] Like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, I want to use the word queer to include "all kinds of resistances and fracturings and mismatches that have little or nothing to do with sexual orientation" [35]. 

      On the other hand, one feels obliged to acknowledge historical and contemporary prohibitions aimed specificaly against those who identify as lesbian or gay, for example. As Nelson notes, this is kind of like wanting it both ways. 

      But then, there is "much to be learned from wanting something both ways" [36] and Nelson concedes that "annoying as it might be to hear a straight white guy" who is comfortably cisgendered talk about queerness, "in the end it's probably all for the better" [36].

 

[g] I'm referring to the single 'Identity' released by X-Ray Spex (EMI, July 1978): click here. 

Before heading to part two of this post - which can be accessed here -  readers might like to see an earlier post anticipating this one, entitled 'Argonauts' (26 Aug 2024): click here. 

The Revenge of the Mirror People

Elissar Kanso: The Revenge of the Mirror People 

(Homage to Jean Baudrillard) [1]

 

'Behind every reflection, every resemblance, every representation, 

a defeated enemy lies concealed ...'

 

I. 

 

Christmas or not, I'm still thinking about mirror life rather than mince pies and mulled wine; i.e., that hypothetical form of life assembled from molecular building materials found on the left-hand path [2].

 

Whilst this alternative life form has not yet been synthesised, efforts to create mirror-image organisms are doubtless underway in secret labs around the world, despite grave concerns expressed recently by a broad coalition of scientists [3].

 

Recent advances in microbiology, make it almost inevitable that, sooner or later, someone somewhere will announce that they have used enantiomers (i.e., chiral reflections of the molecules necessary for life) to fully synthesise a cell. 

 

 

II. 

 

And, who knows, eventually they may even create a little mirror-image creature. For hypothetically, it may be possible to create a whole ecosystem - even an entire world populated with mirror people (what fans of Superman and Jerry Seinfeld would no doubt gleefully term Bizarro World).   

 

These mirror people would appear similar to us - but be opposite in every sense and every cell of their bodies. And so the question arises of how we'd regard our chiral twins: as beings upon whom to further experiment? As dangerous aliens or anti-kin to be confined on some distant planet? 

 

And if we did treat them poorly - just as we treat embryos and animals and those deemed racially inferior - would the time come when, one day, we witnessed the revenge of the mirror people ...? [4]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Elissar Kanso is a Lebanese-born artist and curator based in France. She is interested in ideas to do with distance and displacement.

      The Revenge of the Mirror People is a series of works consisting of recontextualised media images that are manipulated with digital technology in a manner that deprives them of their perfection, thus giving them back a degree of authenticity. Each image is then transferred from the computer screeen on to Plexiglass. It was submitted to the 'Deserting Reality' exhibition in Milan (2015): click here.

 

[2] As any occultists reading this will know, the left-hand path is Mme. Blavatsky's translation of the Sanskrit term vāmacāra and refers to a spiritual direction leading to a more dangerous form of knowledge than the right-hand path that leads to true enlightenment and moral perfection. 

      Those who follow the left-hand path are often prepared to transgress the codes of conduct and ethical practice that the majority subscribe to and do not accept that scientific research, for example, should always coincide with the interests of humanity or safeguard life on earth in its present form. 

[3] See the post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'Homochirality: Reflections on Mirror Life' (21 Dec 2024): click here.

 

[4] According to Borges, writing in The Book of Imaginary Beings (1969), there was once a time when this world and the world reflected in mirrors were not, as now, cut off from each other and you could pass from one to the other quite freely. 

      But then the mirror people invaded this world, only to be defeated and imprisoned in their mirror world and obliged from that day on to only reflect the actions of those in this world, stripped of all freedom and autonomy. However, it is said that the day will come when the mirror people awaken once more, refuse their servitude, rise up, and burst through the looking-glass.

      Baudrillard calls this 'the revenge of the mirror people' and by which he refers to the return of otherness; i.e., of all forms "which, subtly or violently deprived of their singularity, henceforth pose an insoluble problem for the social order, and also for the political and biological orders". See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (Verso, 1996), pp. 148-149.    

 

 

This post is for Elissar Kanso.

 

Starving for Perfection: On the Thinspirational Figure of Karen Carpenter

 Young America at its very best ...

 Karen Carpenter (1950-1983)

 

"Wants to look like a star / but she takes it too far ..." [a]

 

I. 

 

Having recently attended a seminar organised by the Subcultures Interest Group (SIG) at the London College of Communication, where discussion focused on Paul Tornbohm's book on the Carpenters (Sonic Bond Publishing, 2023), I find myself intrigued by the tragic figure of Karen Carpenter. 

 

Not so much her distinctive vocal skills or ability as a drummer, but her will to self-perfection and self-annihilation physically manifested in the form of anorexia; an eating disorder typically found in young women and which, according to Baudrillard, might also be seen as a form of social repulsion; i.e., a means of rejecting a gluttonous and disgusting world of consumption via the ecstasy of emptiness [b]. 

 

George McKay, a professor in media studies at the University of East Anglia, has written on Carpenter, her condition, and its representation in a fascinating 2018 essay which more broadly explores the relation between the anorexic body and popular music, and it's his essay around which I shall centre (a brief) discussion here [c]. 

 

 

II.

 

Drawing on and seeking to develop the work of other commentators concerned with celebrity anorexia, McKay expresses a "critical interest in ways in which the practices and expectations of the music industry set a conformist template of corporeality, particularly for its female stars" [2]. 

 

There's undoubtedly some truth in this idea, though it's not a template that all female artists within the music industry have felt obliged to conform to; one thinks of Big Mama Thornton and Cass Elliot, for example, and I'm pretty sure that even those who set such a template don't expect performers to starve themselves to death; they usually look to protect their investment, even if, in some cases, an untimely death can lead to an increase in record sales [d].  

Whilst it's a little unfair to think of Carpenter as the face of anorexia - she was, after all, one of the great pop voices of the twentieth-century, much admired by her peers and influential on numerous later artists - it was nevertheless her death in 1983 from complications associated with a condition which she began to exhibit symptoms of in 1975 [e], that first brought anorexia into the public arena. 

 

Before then, it was little known outside of showbiz and medical circles and it's for her anorexia that many people remember Karen Carpenter today; particularly those - like me - who are more concerned with matters critical and clinical than (middle of the road) musical.       

 

As McKay notes, anorexia nervosa fascinates because whilst it may be viewed as "a mental health issue leading to or presenting in a diminished corporeality" [4], it can also be regarded as a phenomenon "originating at least in part in the socio-cultural" [4].

 

Its complexity (and ambiguity) doesn't stop there either: as Helen Malson and Jane Ussher have observed, the anorexic body may be "'discursively construed in a multiplicity of often conflicting ways'" [f]. For example, it may "signify both self-production (of idealised body or identity) and self-destruction (symbolically and physically)" [4]. 

 

That's why such a body is often discussed from a political and philosophical perpective; not least of all by feminist authors.

 

 

III.

 

Surprisingly, McKay found fewer than expected mentions or images of Carpenter within the online pro-ana community, where one might have thought she'd have been given special status. He suspects this is because "lyrically there is no obvious mention of eating disorders in the Carpenters' repertoire, not even in song titles" [18]. 

 

Alternatively, it could be because "the music's smoothness is not heard as containing identifiable sonic signifiers of suffering, pain or anger" [18]. In other words, even those who might otherwise acknowledge Karen Carpenter as one of their own find the Carpenters mind numbingly dull.  

Having said that, I think Karen's story is one that should resonate strongly with those who think of anorexia in quasi-religious terms as a spiritual-ascetic practice; those who speak of birds and angels and of the idea that one might take flight if only disciplined enough to achieve purity and perfection in a corrupt and fallen world weighed down by the spirit of gravity [g].

The fact that she died at such a relatively young age - though far too old to join the 27 Club [h] - must surely make Miss Carpenter a martyr-saint in the eyes of those who regard anorexia as a miraculous rather than a nervous condition [i]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Lines from the song 'Never Good Enough' (2006), by Canadian singer-songwriter Rachel Ferguson; a favourite tune with many in the pro-ana community (or subculture): click here. 

 

[b] Long time readers - or those who investigated some of the older posts on TTA - will know that I have previously written with reference to anorexia (at times from a vaguely pro-ana perspective) on several occasions: click here, for example, or here. 

 

[c] George McKay, 'Skinny blues: Karen Carpenter, anorexia nervosa and popular music', Popular Music, Volume 37, Issue 1, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1-21. Page references to this essay will be given directly in the post. Click here to access the essay in the UEA digital repository.

 

[d] McKay notes that by exerting constant pressure to look a certain way and perform in a certain manner, the music industry does bear some responsibility for when its young female stars implode. However, it's worth noting that professional dancers and fashion models have much greater pressure exerted on them to be ultra-thin than pop performers; see David M. Garner and Paul E. Garfinkel, 'Socio-cultural factors in the development of anorexia nervosa', in Psychological Medicine, Vol. 10, Issue 4, (1980), pp. 647-656. Cited by McKay.

 

[e] Carpenter had begun dieting at an early age and weighed around 120 pounds in 1973, when the Carpenters were at the peak of their success. By the autumn of 1975, however, she was below the weight that is popularly branded as that of a weakling - i.e., under 98 pounds - and fans were shocked at her gaunt appearance. Carpenter refused to publicly acknowledge that she was suffering with an eating disorder, however, and dismissed concerns about her health and wellbeing. Some might suggest this indicates anosognosia, but McKay argues (2018, 2):

      "Her lack of public utterance on her anorexia, right up to her death, is understandable, given her lonely and vulnerable position as the global star first and most associated with it. However, it is also problematic, not least since it leaves key male figures [including her brother Richard ...] to shape and control her narrative [...]" 

 

[f] See Helen M. Malson and Jane M. Ussher, 'Beyond this mortal coil: femininity, death and discursive constructions of the anorexic body', in Mortality: Promoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying, Vol. 2, Issue 1, (1997), pp. 43- 61. Quoted by McKay.     

 

[g] McKay writes (2018, 12): "Karen seemed to be striving for what she thought of as versions of perfection in voice and in body ..." and he reminds us of the following lyric: 'I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world' in the song 'I Need to Be in Love', released as a single from the album A Kind of Hush (A&M Records, 1976). 

 

[h] The 27 Club is made up of popular musicians and other artists who died at the age of 27 and includes, for example, Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse. Karen Carpenter was 32 when she died on 4 February, 1983. 

 

[i] One day, I'll write a post on the holy concept of anorexia mirabilis; an eating disorder common amongst medieval nuns and religiously devoted young women keen to imitate the suffering (and experience the passion) of Christ.  

 

Musical bonus: The Carpenters, '(They Long to Be) Close to You', single release from the studio album Close to You (A&M Records, 1970): click here for the official video on YouTube courtesy of Warner Music Videos. 

 

Odradek

 

"At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colours. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs. "

 

"One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not seem to be the case; at least there is no sign of it; nowhere is there an unfinished or unbroken surface to suggest anything of the kind; the whole thing looks senseless enough, but in its own way perfectly finished. In any case, closer scrutiny is impossible, since Odradek is extraordinarily nimble and can never be laid hold of."

 

- Kafka, description of Odradek in 'The Cares of a Family Man'

 

 

I. 

 

Many critics and philosophers rank Kafka alongside the greats of modernist literature. But, whilst I wouldn't wish to echo Joseph Epstein's dismissal of him as overrated [1], I have nevertheless often found some of Kafka's short stories a little ... not boring exactly - but disappointing.  

 

That's not the case, however, with 'The Cares of a Family Man' [2], in which the world is introduced to the fantastically strange character called Odradek ...

 

 

II. 

 

As the narrator of the tale confesses, Odradek is a name of uncertain origin; it might be Slavic; it could be German, but it's very possibly neither. Confusion over the etymology of Odradek's name, however, is really the least of it - for it's not even clear what Odradek is ... 

 

For whilst they - and I think it probably best we use the gender-neutral pronoun here in its singular sense - can stand up and speak and even laugh, they're also a non-human object who looks rather like a star-shaped cotton reel with bits of old coloured thread wound round in a tangled manner (see Kafka's own description above).  

 

Odradek, however, is nobody's spool and they have a vital presence in the family home; perhaps more vital even than the narrator's and the latter is concerned not only that Odradek undermines his position as husband and father - despite having no real purpose or role - but that Odradek will ultimately outlive him and thereby have the last laugh, extracting what Baudrillard terms the revenge of the object:   

 

"He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful." [3]

 

 

III.

'The Cares of a Family Man' has, as one might imagine, more interpretations than one can shake a stick at; certainly more than I can possibly discuss here - or would wish to, as all the usual readings - Marxist, Freudian, Existentialist - are predictable enough (often very clever and insightful, but unsurprising). 

I think, if anything, I favour a more occult (and object-oriented) musing on the story over and above a political, psychological, or lazy metaphorical attempt at interpretation; a musing that doesn't seek to identify Odradek in the full-light of day (or by the natural light of reason) and which acknowledges that objects are ultimately mysterious (and alluring) because of their withdrawl from human perception.

As Anya Meksin notes, we are asking the wrong questions if we ask what Odradek symbolises or represents: 

 

"The story stubbornly resists an adequate correlation between Odradek and any existing entities or concepts in our world. It is as if the little text has somehow transcended the very system in which symbolism is possible, just as Odradek has somehow transcended the logic of the physical world. Odradek is a metaphysical rupture in the reality of the family man, and the story is an epistemological rupture in the reality of the reader." [4]

 

Ultimately, Odradek is a messenger from the secret realm of objects; not so much a realm humans deny the existence of, but casually dismiss as less interesting than their own. Such anthropocentric arrogance has no place here, however. I maintain that objects not only exist independently of us upon a democratically flat ontology, but, despite our conceited claims of human exceptionalism, we too ultimately have our being upon this plane.   

 

That's what Odradek reminds us: material reality is essentially meaningless; consciousness is epiphenomenal; life is just a very rare and unusual way of being dead. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Readers of a certain age will doubtless recall the Unigate ads on TV in the 1970s which warned viewers to watch out in case there was a Humphrey about [5]. 

 

Well, an Odradek does more than steal your milk; they negate all the illusions, and lies, and convenient fictions upon which human life is built and once you discover, like Kafka's humble family man, that there's one living in your house there are, says Anya Meksin, only two options: "immediate suicide, or continuing along as best we can, given the circumstances" [6].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Epstein's article 'Is Franz Kafka Overrated?' in The Atlantic (July/August 2013): click here. 

      For those who might be interested, the critic David L Ulin responds to this piece by Epstein in 'Why Kafka Matters', Los Angeles Times (24 June 2013): click here. 

 

[2] Die Sorge des Hausvaters was written between 1914 and 1917 and published in a collection of Kafka's short stories published by Kurt Wolff entitled Ein Landarzt [A Country Doctor] (1919). 

      The English translation - 'The Cares of a Family Man' - can be found in Kafka's Collected Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir, (Everyman, 1993), pp. 183-85. The story is also in The Complete Stories, (Schocken Books, 1971) - a book that can be found as a pdf online thanks to Vanderbilt University. The opening quotations at the top of this post are both taken from the latter edition, p. 468. 

 

[3] Kafka, 'The Cares of a Family Man', The Complete Stories, p. 469.

 

[4] Anya Meksin, 'Ragged Bits of Meaning, Wound on a Star-Shaped Spool for Thread', essay on Mauro Nervi's Kafka Project website: click here. Meksin's excellent essay is worth reading in full. 

 

[5] For those readers who are either too young or now too old and forgetful, the British milk company Unigate produced a series of TV ads in the 1970s featuring mysterious characters called Humphreys whose only visible presence was was a red-and-white striped straw. 

      The campaign, devised by John Webster, is best known for the slogan: "Watch out, watch out - there's a Humphrey about!" written and sung by musical genius and creator of the Wombles, Mike Batt. 

[6] Anya Meksin, 'Ragged Bits of Meaning, Wound on a Star-Shaped Spool for Thread' ... click here.

      I don't actually share Meksin's conclusion. Rather, like Camus, I don't see why suicide should be considered in the face of life's absurdity - for there is no more meaning in death than in life. And there's no reason either why a meaningless life should not be a happy and passionate one; the trick is to affirm the void and thereby consummate nihilism, as Nietzsche would say.    

 

 

It's Creepy and It's Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky: Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie (Part 1)

Front cover image from Mark Fisher's 

The Weird and the Eerie (Repeater Books, 2016)

 

 

I. 

 

Let me confess from the outset that one of the main problems I have with Mark Fisher's work is that I'm unfamiliar with many of the books, films, and records that he chooses as points of reference, so often feel unable to comment. Thus, I intend sticking here to his more general remarks on the weird and the eerie, about which I feel better able to discuss.

 

According to Mark Fisher, the weird and the eerie are closely related (but distinct) modes of strangeness, each with their own properties. The former draws our attention to that which does not belong and instills a sense of wrongness; the latter troubles the notion of agency (human and non-human) and makes us question existence and non-existence. 

 

Neither terrifies or deeply distresses, so much as make us feel vaguely apprehensive or uneasy.    

 

And neither has much to do with with Freud's concept of the unheimlich and should not be equated to the latter. The attempt to do so, says Fisher, is "symptomatic of a secular retreat from the outside" [a]; i.e., returning to the safety of a long familiar (if hugely influential) idea that ultimately serves to domesticate and contain the outside "in terms of a modernist family drama" [10]. 

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, Fisher begins his study of the weird by turning to H. P. Lovecraft - a writer whom Graham Harman predicts will one day displace Hölderlin as the philosopher's favourite [b] and someone who intuitively grasped that nothing is weirder than reality (i.e., the natural-material cosmos).

 

As Fisher rightly says, when you really stop to think about it, a black hole is weirder than a vampire or werewolf. 

 

Lovecraft is the daddy of weird fiction; the man who long before George Michael encouraged characters and readers alike to venture outside - even if doing so "often ends in breakdown and psychosis" [16] for the former and fascination "mixed with a certain trepidation" [17] for the latter.

 

There is nothing surprising or suspensful or even truly terrible in Lovecraft's weird tales. And yet they compel our attention, even as they repel us at the same time with their inhuman quality; i.e., their insistence that "human concerns, perspectives and concepts have only a local reference" [18].    

Fisher is spot-on to insist that Lovecraft is neither a horror writer nor a fantasy author; that his weird realism is something very different from either of these genres and that his tales "depend for their power on the difference between the terrestrial-empirical and the outside" [20][c] and on their sheer originality.

 

 

III.

 

Like Lovecraft, H. G. Wells also understood something of the weird, even if his work is, in many respects, very different from the former's. 

 

One thing both writers shared is a concern with thresholds and the fatal possibility of "contact between incommensurable worlds" [28], an idea best illustrated in an episode of Seinfeld when George's independence (and sanity) are threatened by the transcendental shock of worlds colliding [d].   

 

It's probably always best (if not always possible) to keep worlds apart, although the weird, as a phenomenon, is that which unfolds in the space between them. 

 

 

IV.  

 

Moving on, Fisher introduces a notion of the grotesque, which, like the weird, "evokes something which is out of place" [32] - although unlike the latter it often evokes laughter (the only humour in Lovecraft, says Fisher, is accidental).

 

And the "confluence of the weird and the grotesque is no better exemplified than in the work of the post-punk group The Fall" [33], particularly in the period 1980-82. 

Unfortunately, my knowledge of Mark E. Smith's combo is limited. In fact, I can only name one of their songs; the 1980 single 'How I Wrote Elastic Man' (and that's only because I often heard it on John Peel, not because I went out and bought it). 

 

So I'll just have to take Fisher's word for it when he insists The Fall "are remarkabe for the way in which they draw out a cultural politics of the weird and the grotesque" [33] and produced "what could be called a popular modernist weird [...] with all the difficulties and compulsions of post-punk sound" [33] [e].

 

In the same period Fisher was getting worked up over The Fall, I was listening to Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow and had more interest in post-punk piracy than the weird and grotesque; indeed, I seem to remember finding groups like The Fall too depressing (perhaps even too Northern) for my tastes; even their laughter issues "from a psychotic outside" [35] and that didn't sound very funny to me at the time.           

 

However, if what Fisher says is true, I would probably find The Fall more amusing now (although I suspect I would still find them a band more interesting to read about, than fun to listen to).   

 

 

V.

 

Is there not an intrinsically weird dimension to the time travel story? 

Mark Fisher thinks so:

 

"By its very nature, the time travel story [...] combines entities and objects that do not belong together. Here the threshold between worlds is the apparatus that allows travel between different time periods [...] and the weird effect typically manifests as a sense of achronism." [40]

 

Again, that's one of those true-but-kind-of-obvious statements that Fisher seems to specialise in. Here's another: time-paradoxes also trigger a feeling weirdness. Indeed - who would argue with that?  

 

 

VI.

 

"There is another type of weird effect that is generated by strange loops [...] not just tangles in cause and effect [...] but confusions of ontological level." [45]

 

These confusions particularly play out at the level of simulacra and simulation, putting the nature of being and reality into question - just ask Thomas (Neo) Anderson. Or Baudrillard. Is there anything weirder than living in a world one knows to be a cleverly constructed simulation but which still feels real?      

 

 

VII.

 

If it wasn't in the least surprising that Fisher should open his study of the weird with Lovecraft, it's equally unsurprising that he should close it with the director of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, David Lynch.

 

For in many ways Fisher seems weirdly trapped in the 1980s and '90s; a man still gripped by the same philosophical ideas (and postmodern obsessions) that shaped his thinking when writing his Ph.D. on cybernetic fiction-theory [f]. Indeed, Fisher readily admits that his fascination with the weird and eerie goes back as far as he can remember. 

     

Now, whilst some might suggest he move on and find new interests, I rather admire the manner in which he has stayed true to the authors, singers, and filmmakers, he loves best. But David Lynch isn't a particular favourite of mine, I'm afraid; there are certainly films by the other two Davids - Fisher and Cronenberg - I like more than Mulholland Drive (2001), though they're perhaps not as weird in the sense that Fisher uses the term.   

 

As for Inland Empire (2006), not only have I not seen it, I've not even heard of it - how weird is that?

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, (Repeater Books, 2016), p. 10. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the main text. 

 

[b] See Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (Zero Books, 2012).

 

[c] Just to be clear: "The outside is not 'empirically' exterior; it is transcendentally exterior; i.e. it is not just a matter of something being distant in space and time, but of something which is beyond our ordinary experience and conception of space and time itself." - Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, p. 22. 

 

[d] Seinfeld, 'The Pool Guy' [S7/E8], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by David Mandel (1995). Click here to observe the devastating effect it has upon George's mental health when he experiences the colliding of worlds: George is getting upset! Nevertheless, it's interesting to note that this tale unfolds within a weirdly comic universe, rather than a weirdly tragic or melancholic one.

 

[e] Perhaps the only author who writes with such intense conviction about the pop music they love is poet and playwright Síomón Solomon; see his 2020 text Hölderlin's Poltergeists in which he celebrates that other critically-acclaimed post-punk band from Manchester, Joy Division.     

 

[f] Fisher's Ph.D. thesis was entitled: Flatline constructs: Gothic materialism and cybernetic theory-fiction. It was completed in the Philosophy Dept. at the University of Warwick and submitted in July 1999. A PDF of this work is available via the University of Warwick publications service website: click here. The first line opens with the words "Isn't it strange [...]". 

      Fisher was a founding member of the interdisciplinary collective inspired by the work of Nick Land and Sadie Plant known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. Although I was also in the Philosophy Dept. at Warwick at this time and initially had Land as my Graduate Progress Committee member overseeing my own doctoral research project, I never crossed paths with Fisher, which, looking back, I now rather regret.  

 

 

Part two of this post - on the eerie - can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

B is for ... Baudelaire, Bataille, Barthes, and Baudrillard

B is for ... 

Baudelaire, Bataille, Barthes, and Baudrillard

 

 

There are many French things that I love beginning with the letter B - from a big bowl of bouillabaisse served with crusty baguette slices, to Brigitte Bardot on the beach in her bikini [1]. 

 

Even four of my favourite French writers have surnames beginning with the letter B - Messrs. Baudelaire, Bataille, Barthes and Baudrillard - and this perhaps explains why it is that I can never think of one without also thinking of the others [2].  

Obviously, as a 19th century poet and critic, Baudelaire knew nothing of those who came a century after him. But it might be interesting to briefly recall what Bataille, Barthes, and Baudrillard said about the author of Les Fleurs du mal ... 

 

 

Bataille on Baudelaire (Désirer l'impossible) 

 

In his essay on Baudelaire in La Littérature et la Mal (1957), Bataille says that the former desired the impossible as a response to the utilitarian demand that we be reasonable as well as make ourselves useful. It is in this desire for the impossible and a useless expenditure of energy, that man discovers his authenticity and poetry locates its task. 

 

This, of course, is a Romantic vision; but it is one that Bataille in his own quest for the impossible - i.e., a simultaneity of contrary experiences - continues and yet exceeds. 

 

 

Barthes on Baudelaire (La Vérité emphatique du geste)

 

Whilst it's true that he only produced one sustained piece of writing on Baudelaire - and this on a relatively marginal aspect of the latter's work, namely, his failed theatrical projects - Baudelaire nevertheless remains a point of reference throughout Barthes's oeuvre. 

 

Indeed, as one commentator has recently pointed out, the phrase quoted from Baudelaire's Exposition Universelle (1855) concerning 'the emphatic truth of the gesture in the important moments of life' is one that "punctuates Barthes's published work throughout, from one of his earliest essays to his very last book on photography, and is closely associated with another persistently recurring motif: the concept of numen, a term used to designate a static gesture expressing divine authority" [3]. 

 

Baudrillard on Baudelaire (L'Objectivation absolue de l'art)

 

By his own admission, Baudrillard's relationship with the world of art has always been one marked by a certain ambivalence: "I come from a moralist, metaphysical tradition, a political and ideological tradition that has always been wary of art and culture in general [...]" [4]

Nevertheless, he is obviously interested in how art from Baudelaire to Warhol has been involved in staging its own disappearance and meeting the challenge posed to it not only by an age of mechanical reproduction, but by consumer capitalism which turns everything into merchandise (i.e., objectifying everything in terms of market value).

 

It was Baudelaire, says Baudrillard, who first came up with a radical solution to this problem. Instead of offering a defence of the traditional status of the work of art based on aesthetic value and seeking art's salvation in and on its own terms - art for art's sake - Baudelaire calls for an acceleration of the processes unfolding within modernity and for art's absolue objectification:

 

"Since aes­thetic value risks alienation from commodity, instead of avoiding alienation, art had to go farther in alienation and fight commodity with its own weapons. Art had to follow the inescapable paths of commodity indifference and equivalence to make the work of art an absolute commodity." [5]

      

This, says Baudrillard, is what a work of art should be; "it should take on the characteristics of shock, strangeness, surprise, anxiety, liquidity and even self-destruction, instantaneity and unreality that are found in commodities" [6]. 

 

The reason Baudelaire still interests and seems so relevant today is not because of his poetry, but because via his ironic logic the work of art was able to sparkle in its own venality and become "a pure object of marvellous commutability" [7].   

 

 

Notes

[1] Readers may recall that I wrote about the history and politics of the bikini in a post published in August 2016, which was illustrated with a photo of 19-year-old Bardot wearing her two-piece swimsuit on the beach at Cannes in 1953: click here.

[2] Of course, there are other reasons apart from an onomatological coincidence as to why these four writers are closely related and it would make for an interesting philosophical and literary study to trace out their shared ideas and concerns.   

 

[3] Douglas Smith, '"La Vérité emphatique du geste dans les grandes circonstances de la vie": Baudelaire, Barthes and the Hysterical Gesture', Irish Journal of French Studies, Vol. 21 (2021), pp. 99-121.  

      In this essay, Smith examines the significance of Baudelaire for Barthes and attempts to answer the question of what that might tell us in turn about the former. He does this by tracing out the manner in which Barthes deploys the quotation from Exposition Universelle and by paying particular attention "on the value to be attributed to exaggeration or excess in the communication of meaning through gesture and language, a phenomenon that both Barthes and Baudelaire associate with hysteria, as either something to be ironically assumed (Baudelaire) or ambivalently exorcized (Barthes)". 

 

[4-6] Jean Baudrillard, 'Simulation and Transaesthetics: Towards the Vanishing Point of Art', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008): click here to read online. 

      This paper was given as a lecture at the Whitney Museum (New York) in 1987. It also appears in Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art: Manifestos, Interviews, Essays, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, (Semiotext(e) / MIT Press, 2005), pp. 98-110.