Reflections on Two Paintings by Malcolm McLaren

 

Two Paintings by Malcolm McLaren (1969):

Fig. 1: 14 Pink Figures On Moving Sea Of Green  

Fig. 2: I Will Be So Bad 

 (Photos: Barry Martin / Malcolm McLaren Estate) [1]

 

"I learnt all my politics and understanding of the world through the history of art."

 

 

I. 

 

Before revolutionising the worlds of fashion and music, a teenaged Malcolm McLaren had ambitions of becoming a painter and he spent many years as an art student in London, attending several different schools, beginning with St Martin's and ending with Goldsmiths, where, in 1969, at the end of his first year, he was required to show some work. 

 

Two of the canvases McLaren produced at this time, then aged 23, I find particularly intriguing ...

 

 

II. 

 

The first consists of fourteen pale pink figures against a chaotic-looking pale green background. The figures standing and holding hands in a circle look like a chain of paper cut-outs, whilst the figures lying on the ground look like corpses and, when questioned on the work, McLaren confirmed the latter's status as such to his tutor Barry Martin [2].

 

If, initially, it might be imagined that McLaren is critiquing bougeois liberalism's fatally mistaken belief that individuals can thrive and prosper when disconnected from wider society, such an interpretation is dramatically overturned when we learn that the standing figures are rejoicing in the death of the others. 

 

The picture, therefore, is more likely intended to illustrate how non-conforming individuals often fall victim to a moral majority who fear their otherness and resent their refusal to join hands.    

III.

 

The second canvas consists of a solitary and anonymous black figure against a background upon which the refrain I will be so bad is repeated (and inverted), as if McLaren is mocking the school teachers who once made him stand in the corner or write I will behave over and over on a blackboard when placed in detention. 

 

I don't, therefore, interpret the latter painting as a cry for help or an expression of the artist's alienation. It is, rather, a humorous act of revenge on those who tried to curtail his anarchic and irresponsible desire to cause trouble informed by the belief that it's better to be bad than good, because being good is boring [3].     

  

      

IV.

 

It's a shame that neither of these canvases survived, though I suppose we should be grateful that Barry Martin took and kept photographs of them [4]. 

 

I know a lot of people dislike McLaren and will, for this reason, dismiss or deride the two works shown here. However, whether they like to admit it or not - and as Martin recognised at the time - they're really rather fine ... [5]  

 

Notes

 

[1] Images via Paul Gorman's blog. To read his piece on McLaren's 1969 Goldsmith paintings click here.

 

[2] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 103. 

[3] According to McLaren, this was something his grandmother instilled into him from a very young age. See p. 23 of Gorman's biography, op.cit. 

[4] All McLaren's work from this period was destroyed (by his own hand), after he rejected the limitations imposed by traditional art forms, such as painting. Nevertheless, he maintained a life-long relationship with the visual arts and deserves to be considered a significant British artist.     

[5] Martin is quoted by Paul Gorman as saying "'Malcolm was a troublesome student but a talented painter who could have made a name for himself in the art world.'" See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 104.

 

Reflections on Alessandro Raho's New Portrait of Young Kim

Alessandro Raho: Young Kim (2022)

Oil on canavas (110 x 180 cm)

 alisonjacques.com

 

 

I.

 

Viewing Alessandro Raho's latest portrait of Young Kim at a recent event in London [1] and listening to what was said in a three-way conversation between the artist, the sitter, and the critic Michael Bracewell about the complex relationship between art, fashion, music and sex, one couldn't help but think of D. H. Lawrence's dismissive assessment of English painters; not so much devoid of genuine feeling for visual imagery, as full of fear of the body as a site of various forces, flows, and sicknesses. 

 

It is this fear, says Lawrence, which distorts their vision and suppresses their instinctive-intuitive consciousness.

 

Still, every cloud has a silver lining and this act of suppression did at least enable English artists of the 18th-century to become the best in the world at painting clothes. For painters such as Hogarth, Reynolds, and Gainsborough, it is clear that the coat matters more than the man. 

 

Lawrence writes:

"An old Reynolds colonel in a red uniform is much more a uniform than an individual, and as for Gainsborough, all one can say is: What a lovey dress and hat! What really expensive Italian silk! This painting of garments continued in vogue, till pictures like Sargent's seem to be nothing but yards and yards of satin from the most expensive shops, having some pretty head popped on at the top. The imagination is quite dead. The optical vision, a sort of flashy coloured photography of the eye, is rampant.

      In Titian, in Velasquez, in Rembrandt the people are there inside their clothes all right, and the clothes are imbued with the life of the individual, the gleam of the warm procreative body comes through all the time [...] But modern people are nothing inside their garments, and a head sticks out at the top and hands stick out of the sleeves, and it is a bore." [2]

 

 

II.

 

Alessandro Raho appears to follow in this tradition, as the above portrait of Young Kim illustrates. It is a beautiful rendition of a multicoloured mohair jumper by Kim Jones for the Louis Vuitton S/S 2017 menswear collection, but the woman inside the jumper seems to have simply faded away into the blank void of the background; just a head and neck sticking out of the top of the punk-style sweater and two tiny hands sticking out of the sleeves.     

 

But, having said that - and having seen the work up close and spoken with the artist - I can't help being impressed by it and by him. 

 

First of all, he didn't seem to me to be gripped with fear at all; nor simply following in the footsteps of those famous names who came before him and whom Lawrence dismissed. In fact, Raho seems to gently mock the laughably old-fashioned tradition of portraiture by refusing to dramatise or idealise the figures he paints [3] and by having them return our gaze with interest (so that we are objectified in the process of viewing). 

As for Lawrence's concerns about Kodak vision, well, it is true that Raho does work from photographs, but, interestingly, he employs his skill as a painter to somehow capture something that the camera lens cannot; something that might be termed (for want of another word) presence. 

 

Raho is not simply aiming for realism in his portraits, so much as longing nostalgically for the same thing Lawrence desired; i.e., to come into touch, even when he knows this is no longer an easy matter when we have all become digital images to one another within a virtual universe. 

 

Perhaps having intuitively reached a similar conclusion to Lawrence about portrait painting, Raho has decided to push the process that the latter describes to its limit. The picture of Young Kim is thus deceptively straightforward and innocuous; for it is, as Nietzsche would say, superficial out of profundity [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The event took place on Monday 28th November (7-11pm) at the bookstore-cum-library-cum arts venue Reference.Point (London, WC2). It was held to celebrate the launch of the trade edition of Young Kim's unique little red book A Year on Earth with Mr. Hell (2020). 

      A reading from the work was followed by a discussion with Michae Bracewell and Alessandro Raho in the presence of the latter's latest painting of Young Kim. There was also an informal screening of Malcolm McLaren's video project Shallow 1-21 (2009), although, sadly, no one seemed to pay much attention to this.   

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 193-94.

 

[3] This desire to make art which is both contemporary and commonplace is of course crucial to a realist aesthetic and, however else we might describe Raho's work, we can almost certainly say it's a form of realism - though what kind of realism is debatable.

 

[4] See section 4 of Nietzsche's 1886 Preface to The Gay Science, where he writes that in order to live in a Greek manner we must remain courageously at the surface of the skin, the fold of the dress; i.e., learn to adore appearance and trust in forms. 

      Cf. my interpretation of Raho's work with that of Michael Bracewell, who argues that the portraits are concerned with "emotional and psychological depth". See Bracewell's essay in The Art of Alessandro Raho (Lund Humphries, 2011). 

 

 

Banksy

Banksy: Girl with Balloon (London, 2002) 

 

(Note the chalked message on the wall; if that doesn't make you want to 

vomit, pop the balloon and shoot the artist, I don't know what would.)

 

 

I. 

 

There's a rather poignant moment in his interview with the Sex Pistols when Bill Grundy mourns the passing of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Brahms. Classical composers mocked by Rotten as wonderful people whom, as Steve Jones reminds us, are long since dead [1]. 

 

It's as if Grundy realises that his time too is over and that the world he knows and loves - in which the majority shared his values and musical preferences - is coming to an end. 

 

Strangely, I felt something similar when I recently discovered that Britain's favourite artwork (according to a poll of 2,000 people conducted in 2017) is Girl with Balloon (2002) by Banksy ... 

 

Turner, Constable, Blake and Bacon have all died and no longer turn anybody on it seems, apart from a few old farts, myself included, and it's just our tough shit if tastes have changed and people now want banal (because immediately accessible) images and naive political clichés - which, let's be honest, is mostly what Banksy trades in - instead of complex, challenging works.

 

 

II. 

 

Now, just to be clear, I've nothing against a former public school boy making millions from the art world with his (sometimes amusing) stencilled designs whilst posing as part cultural prankster, part urban guerilla. And if people want to regard him as a folk hero and put his prints on their walls, that's fine by me. 

 

But, having said that, I do tend to agree with Alexander Adams, who argues that when one compares Banksy with, for example, Jean-Michel Basquiat - "another artist who started in the streets and moved to art galleries" - we soon discover the former's limitations: 

 

"Basquiat's art is alive because we see the artist changing his mind, discovering, adapting and revising. We see the art as it is being made. While Basquiat's art is palpably alive, Banksy's is dead - it is simply the transcription of a witty pre-designed image in a novel placement. There is no ambiguity or doubt, no possibility of misinterpretation. There's no fire and no excitement." [2]

 

Ultimately, concludes Adams - himself an artist, as well as a critic and poet - "Basquiat's art is so much richer and more inventive than Banksy's, which by contrast seems painfully limited and shallow" [3].

 

I'm not sure I agree, however, that a century from now people will still be viewing Basquiat and will have forgotten Banksy. And, as regular readers of Torpedo the Ark might appreciate, I have a lot of problems with several of the terms used here:   

 

"Banksy lacks most of the characteristics of a serious artist: originality, complexity, universality, ambiguity, depth and insight into human nature and the world generally." [4]

 

Indeed, reading this almost makes me want to embrace Banksy and tell Adams to keep his opinions to himself. 

 

One also wonders if Adams isn't just a tad jealous of an artist who, like Damien Hirst, has achieved such astonishing fame and fortune (speaking personally, I know that I would love to wield even a fraction of Banksy's influence over the popular imagination and envy both his talent for graphic design and flair for self-promotion).   

 

But, then, just when I'm starting to feel a certain fondness and admiration for Banksy, I think again of the above image and its message of hope and realise that Adams is right to ultimately brand him nothing but a "cosy culture warrior and peddler of pedestrian homilies" [5].     

 

Notes

 

[1] Bill Grundy's infamous interview with the Sex Pistols on the Today programme took place on 1 December, 1976: click here to relive the moment on YouTube - one which is as significant and as memorable for those of the punk generation as the Kennedy assassination was for those who witnessed events in Dallas on 22 November, 1963.

 

[2] Alexander Adams, 'Banksy and the triumph of banality', essay in The Critic (Jan 2020): click here to read online. Adams is quoting here from an earlier article of his which appeared on the Spiked website comparing Banksy and Basquiat.   

 

[3-5] Ibid.