Lord, Open Thou My Lips ...

Andreea Anghel: 

Le Noir's Jesus Wound as a Vagina (2017)

saatchiart.com

 

I. Lord Jesus Crucified, I adore the Sacred Wound in thy most holy side ...

 

It's always amusing - and important - to be reminded that Christianity is not only a form of moral fanaticism but sexual perversion; that Jesus was not only full of his own righteousness (to the extent that he believed himself the Son of God), but gloried in his own suffering as a form of passion, only finding his consummation when nailed naked to a cross wearing a crown of thorns. 

 

The faithful to this day still delight in masochism and martydom and have a fetishistic fascination with the Five Holy Wounds left upon the body of their Lord [1]. Such loving devotion to the physical signs of cruelty inflicted upon the body of Christ - or what we might term stigmatophilia - has recently attracted the attention of scholars working within the area of queer studies and it's to their research that I turn here ...         

 

 

II. Domine labia mea aperies ut cunnum meum laude ut cantem

 

For those historians and theologians who choose to examine the life of Jesus through a queer lens, the question of his gender identity - and its representation in medieval art - is of significant interest. 

 

They are particularly fascinated by the gash in his side which undeniably appears to resemble a vulva, thus implying that the resurrected Christ - risen in his wholeness - possessed both male and female sex organs. This intersex (and gender-fluid) Christ figure radically challenges the more conventional ideas of him as purely male and, indeed, as a divine embodiment of the masculine ideal.                

 

In other words, long before J. G. Ballard and David Cronenberg fantasised about the new flesh and the flowering of wounds into sex organs that promised the possibility of perverse new pleasures, medieval Christians were opening their prayer books and touching and kissing images of Christ's wounds, to which they assigned miraculous properties.

 

Obviously, this was performed as an act of religious veneration. But to deny the kinky aspect would be absurd; believers were surely aware, for example, of the linguistic associations in Latin between the word for wound and the word for womb (vulna / vulva) and dismbodied wound images were often explicitly - not just symbolically - connected with the female sex organ from which blood seeps and new life is born [2]. 

 

  

III. Ostentatio Vulnerum

 

I'd like to close this post with another astonishing artwork ... Believed to be by Giovanni Antonio Galli and painted c. 1630,  it is usually known in English as Christ Displaying His Wounds, but could just as fittingly be called I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.

 

I think most people would agree that it's an obscene and profoundly disturbing work; for the Christ figure appears to not only invite us to inspect his wound - which he draws open for this purpose - but to touch it and penetrate it, just as he challenged his apostle Thomas to do (John 20: 19-29). 

 

Again, one can't help thinking of Crash [3], in which that nightmare angel of the expressways Vaughan assumes the Christ role and flaunts his injuries and scars to his disciple Ballard whilst unfolding his perverse teachings centred on the mysterious eroticism of wounds. 

 

Indeed, I think that just as Vaughan imagined the whole world ending in one apocalyptic car crash, Christ secretly desired the flagellation and crucifixion of all mankind ... But that's a post for another day ...  

  

 

Source of image: 

Wikimedia Commons

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Jesus received numerous injuries in the course of his Passion, but medieval piety liked to particularly focus upon the five wounds associated directly with his crucifixion, i.e., the nail wounds on his hands and feet, as well as the wound made by the lance which pierced his side. Many prayers from this period, as well as later poems, paintings, and pieces of music inspired by the Sacred Wounds of Christ, have been preserved. The Rosary also helped to remind the faithful of Christ's suffering; for whilst the fifty small beads refer to Mary, the five large beads represent the Five Wounds of Christ. 

 

[2] Some medieval artists carried this idea to its logical end point and showed a human body - either that of a baby or a fully-grown adult - being birthed from the side wound and cleansed in the life-giving blood of Christ. This body is often said to symbolise the Church. 

 

[3] J. G. Ballard, Crash, (Jonathan Cape, 1973). 

 

 

To read a related post to this one on stigmatophilia and sexual healing, click here. 

 

 

The Scar is the Eye of the Violet: On Stigmatophilia and Sexual Healing

Illustration attributed to Jean Le Noir from 

The Prayer Book of Bonne de Luxembourg (c. 1345)

showing Christ's side wound in detail

 

 

I. Long Live the New Flesh

 

In his beautiful erotico-blasphemous short novel The Escaped Cock [a], D. H. Lawrence has an almost fetishistic interest in the wounds and scars left on the body of the man who died, following his crucifixion and resurrection [b]. 

 

The climax of the tale sees the man stripping naked before a priestess of Isis and submitting to her touch, in order that he may be healed and released from past pain and old suffering:

"'Let me annoint you!' the woman said to him softly, 'let me annoint the scars! Show me, and let me annoint them!'

      He forgot his nakedness in the re-evoked old pain. He sat on the edge of the couch, and she poured a little ointment into the palm of his hand. And as she chafed his hand, it all came back, the nails, the holes, the cruelty, the unjust cruelty against him who had offered only kindness. The agony of injustice and cruelty came over him again, as in his death-hour. But she chafed the palm, murmuring: 'What was torn becomes a new flesh, what was a wound is full of fresh life, the scar is the eye of the violet.'" [157]

 

This is an astonishing piece of writing - particularly the last line, which is one that David Cronenberg would have been proud of. 

 

Next, the woman of Isis chafes the man's feet with oil and tender healing, before directing him towards her goddess: "And as he stood there dazed and naked as an unborn thing" [158], the woman stooped in order to examine the scar "in the soft flesh of the socket of his side" [158]; a scar which resembled  "an eye sore with endless weeping" [158]. 

 

It was from this deep wound just above his hip, that the man who died had lost his life ...

 

"The woman, silent now, but quivering, laid oil in her hand and put her palm over over the wound in his right side. He winced, and the wound absorbed his life again [...] And in the dark, wild pain and panic of consciousness rang only one cry: Oh, how can she take this death out of me? [...]

      In silence she softly, rhythmically chafed the scar with oil [...] while the vitals of the man howled in panic. But as she gradually gathered power [...] gradually warmth began to take the place of cold terror, and he felt: I am going to be flushed warm again, I am going to be whole!" [158] 

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"Having chafed all his lower body with oil, his belly, his buttocks, even the slain penis and the sad stones, having worked with her slow intensity of a priestess, so that the sound of his wounds grew dimmer and dimmer, suddenly she put her breast against the wound in his left side, and her arms round him, folding over the wound in his right side, and she pressed him to her, in a power of living warmth [...] And the wailing died out altogether, and there was stillness and darkness in his soul, unbroken dark stilless, wholeness." [159] 

 

At the same time, the man who died experiences a new sun dawning within the perfect inner darkness of his body. Not only that, but he feels the blaze of his manhood rise up. So he unfastens the woman's linen tunic and slips the garment down, exposing her white-gold breasts. Pulling her to him "with a passion of tenderness and consuming desire" [160], they fuck - not once but twice.

 

"Afterwards, with a dim wonder, she touched the great scars in his side with her finger-tips, and said:

      'But they no longer hurt?'

      'They are suns!' he said. 'They shine from your touch. They are my atonement with you.'" [160] 

 

 

II. The World Was Beginning to Flower into Wounds 

 

Of course, Lawrence isn't the only author to explore the eroticism of wounds as sites of perverse bliss and to imagine what Foucault would later term a new economy of bodies and their pleasures ... 

 

In his novel Crash J. G. Ballard provides the following tender (but disquieting) scene between the narrator of the tale - also named Ballard - and a severely crippled young woman, Gabrielle, in the back of her small, specially adapted car: 

 

"As I explored her body, feeling my way among the braces and straps of her underwear, the unfamiliar planes of her hips and legs steered me into unique culs-de-sac, strange declensions of skin and musculature. Each of her deformities became a potent metaphor for the excitements of a new violence. Her body, with its angular contours, its unexpected junctions of mucous membrane and hairline, detrusor muscle and erectile tissue, was a ripening anthology of perverse possibilities. [...] Our sexual acts were exploratory ordeals." [c] 

 

Ballard continues, in the uniquely erotico-clinical language that characterises the novel and which, almost impossible to paraphrase, can only be quoted at length:

 

"In the inner surface of her thigh the straps formed marked depressions, troughs of reddened skin hollowed out in the forms of buckles and clasps. As I unshackled the left leg brace and ran my fingers along the deep buckle groove, the corrugated skin felt hot and tender, more exciting than the membrane of a vagina. This depraved orifice, the imagination of a sexual organ still in the embryonic stages of its evolution, reminded me of the small wounds on my own body [...] I felt this depression on her thigh, the groove worn below her breast under her right armpit by the spinal brace, the red marking on the inside of her right upper arm - these were the templates for new genital organs, the moulds of sexual possibilities yet to be created [...] As she sat passively in my arms [...] I realised this bored and crippled young woman found that the nominal junction points of the sexual act - breast and penis, anus and vulva, nipple and clitoris - failed to provide any excitement for us."

 

"Gabrielle placed a drop of spit on my right nipple and stroked it mechanically, keeping up the small pretence of this nominal sexual link. In return, I stroked her pubis, feeling for the inert nub of her clitoris. [...] Gabrielle's hand moved across my chest. Her fingers found the small scars below my left collar bone [...] As she began to explore this circular crevice with her lips I for the first time felt my penis thickening. She took it from my trousers, then began to explore the other wound-scars on my chest and abdomen, running the tip of her tongue into each one. In turn, one by one, she endorsed each of these signatures [...]  As she stroked my penis I moved my hand from her pubis to the scars on her thighs, feeling the tender causeways driven through her flesh by the handbrake of the car in which she had crashed. My right arm held her shoulders, feeling the impress of the contoured leather, the meeting points of hemispherical and rectilinear geometries. I explored the scars on her thighs and arms, feeling for the wound areas under her left breast, as she in turn explored mine, deciphering together these codes of a sexuality made possible by our two car-crashes.

      My first orgasm, within the deep wound on her thigh, jolted my semen along this channel, irrigating its corrugated ditch. Holding the semen in her hand, she wiped it against the silver controls of the clutch treadle. 

      My mouth was fastened on the scar below her left breast, exploring its sickle-shaped trough. Gabrielle turned in her seat, revolving her body around me, so that I could explore the wounds of her right hip. For the first time I felt no trace of pity for this crippled woman, but celebrated with her the excitements of these abstract vents let into her body by sections of her own automobile. 

      During the next few days my orgasms took place within the scars below her breast and within her left armpit, in the wounds on her neck and shoulder, in these sexual apertures formed by fragmenting windshield louvres and dashboard dials in a high-speed impact, marrying through my own penis the car in which I had crashed and the car in which Gabrielle had met her near-death."

 

Like the man who died and the priestess of Isis, it might be argued that Ballard and Gabrielle were implicated with each other in sacred mysteries - albeit within an age shaped by technology - though whether inseminating wounds with sperm might trigger the evolution of new sex organs, is, I suspect, rather fanciful ...  

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Lawrence's The Escaped Cock was originally published by the Black Sun Press (Paris, 1929). I am referring to the version of the tale published in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 123-163.    

[b] I'm aware that this same fetishistic adoration of holy wounds was a significant aspect of medieval Christian worship (as the illustration to this post shows) and I also know that this has since become of great interest to those wishing to queer the gospels and feminise the body of Christ. I will develop this theme at length in a post to be published shortly entitled Lord, Open Thou My Lips ...

 

[c] J. G. Ballard, Crash, (Jonathan Cape, 1973). Unfortunately, I can't give page references as don't have my copy of the novel to hand. I'm relying here on a pdf made available on booksvooks.com: click here. All the material quoted is found in chapter 19. 

 

For an earlier post on Ballard's novel Crash, please click here.

 

    

Rabbit: On the Obscene Beyond and Other Abhorrent Mysteries

Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit 

Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit ...

 

 

One of the most astonishing and disturbing chapters in D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love (1920) is entitled Rabbit. 

 

And although there is a large lagomorph at the centre of the chapter, our main concern here is with what Lawrence terms the obscene beyond and the manner in which Gudrun and Gerald conduct their love affair in relation to this material reality which threatens to disrupt life as it is lived ideally beneath the Great Umbrella that mankind has erected between itself and the inhuman chaos of actuality which is neither Good, True, nor Beautiful.   

 

Gudrun is acting as art mistress to Gerald's young sister, Winifred, and it is decided they will draw the latter's pet rabbit, Bismarck. Gerald is hanging around watching - disconcerted by Gudrun's pale-yellow stockings, but in love with her all the same. He can't help admiring her body and imagining the silky softness of her flesh; "she was the all-desirable, the all-beautiful" [a] and he wanted only to give himself to her.

 

(Be careful what you wish for ...)

 

Bismarck, it turns out, is not only big, he's also strong - and he doesn't like to be handled:

 

"They unlocked the door of the hutch. Gudrun thrust in her arm and seized the great, lusty rabbit as it crouched still, she grasped its long ears. It set its four feet flat, and thrust back. There was a long scraping sound as it was hauled forward, and in another instant it was in mid-air, lunging wildly, its body flying like a spring coiled and released, as it lashed out, suspended from the ears. Gudrun held the black-and-white tempest at arms' length, averting her face. But the rabbit was magically strong, it was all she could do to keep her grasp. She almost lost her presence of mind." [240]

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"Gudrun stood for a moment astounded by the thunder-storm that had sprung into being in her grip. Then her colour came up, a heavy rage came over her like a cloud. She stood shaken as a house in a storm, and utterly overcome. Her heart was arrested with fury at the midlessness and the bestial stupidity of this struggle, her wrists were badly scored by the claws of the beast, a heavy cruelty welled up in her." [240]    

 

At this point Gerald steps forward to offer his assistance and, after a further struggle, the demonic bunny is eventually subdued. But this incident has brought him and Gudrun into a fateful relation of some kind and there was a mutual hellish recognition: "They were implicated with each other in abhorrent mysteries." [242]  

 

Ignoring his own scratches, Gerald is perversely fascinated by the deep red gash on the silken white arm of Gudrun: 

 

"It was as if he had knowledge of her in the long red rent of her forearm [...] The long, shallow red rip seemed torn across his own brain, tearing the surface of his ultimate consciousness, letting through the forever unconscious, unthinkable red ether of the beyond, the obscene beyond. [...] 

      There was a queer, faint, obscene smile over his face. She looked at him and saw him, and knew that he was initiate as she was initiate. [...]

      Slowly her face relaxed into a smile of obscene recognition." [242-43]  

 

These lines tell us something crucial about Gudrun and Gerald's relationship and indeed about the violent metaphysics of obscenity underlying Lawrence's thinking. 

 

He, Lawrence, obviously uses the term knowledge here in the biblical (i.e., carnal) sense, which implies that the gaping wound on Gudrun's arm has a sexual (as well as deathly) aspect, although Gerald doesn't merely equate it with her vagina, but sees within it a ripening anthology of perverse possibilities [b]. 

 

And Gudrun knows it: they both delight in recognition of this fact and that soul-destructive obscenity is at the heart of their passion.

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 239. Future references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the text. [b] 

 

This phrase - which I hope I recall correctly - is from J. G. Ballard's brilliant novel Crash (Jonathan Cape, 1973).    

 

 

Pablo Picasso is Back in Fashion

Moschino S/S 2020 Ready-to-Wear Collection

The American fashion designer Jeremy Scott has done many things in his time that have made me cringe and want to look away; and many that have made me sit up and take notice.

In the latter category, for example, one might place his debut show in 1997 based on Ballard's novel and Cronenberg's film Crash, as well as his sci-fi inspired A/W 2018 collection, featuring Gigi Hadid and friends looking fantastic in their neon wigs and fur-lined moon boots.

But I think his S/S 2020 ready-to-wear collection for Moschino - for whom Scott is creative director - is my favourite to date. Inspired by Picasso, it brilliantly reminds us of the permanent relationship between art and fashion and the crucial role played by the model acting as an intermediary between these two worlds.  

Of course, Scott's not the first fashionista to have been influenced by the great Spanish artist and to have incorporated his ideas into their work; Oscar de la Renta and Jean-Charles de Castelbajac are just two other designers we might name. And it's important to recall that Picasso himself was happy to get directly involved in the worlds of fashion and costume design; famously collaborating with the Ballets Russes on several productions (much to the horror of fellow Cubists) and, many years later, accepting a commision from Fuller Fabrics to produce patterns and designs for use as high quality prints on dresses.*

I've little doubt, therefore, that Picasso would have been delighted by Scott's sexy, stylish and often witty attempt to subvert the shapes of garments in the much the same way that he subverted reality (playing with notions of symmetry, experimenting with volume and proportion). 

Notes 

* The following year Fuller's Decorama Division introduced the Modern Masters print series for home furnishings. Aimed at a more exclusive market than the dress textiles - they were only available through approved decorators - Picasso again provided several designs, though was unhappy with the thought that these might be used on chairs, saying: 'People can lean on Picasso; but they can't sit on Picasso.' 

Readers interested in watching the Moschino Spring/Summer 2020 show can do so by clicking here.

Crash (Towards a New Economy of Bodies and their Pleasures)

Nadja Auermann by Helmut Newton

I understand, philosophically, the attraction for scar tissue, amputation, and prosthetic limbs and how some are aroused by the prospect of bone, flesh, and metal forming an intimate alliance in a cyborg future.

And I would lend my support to those who - either from necessity or boredom - dream of morbid new sexualities, in which perverse pleasures and mutilated forms of beauty become possible for the first time; pleasures and forms unknown and unimaginable to the able-bodied and regular-featured who have been preserved by fate into normalized good health and a fully functioning organism.

To speak of such will require a new type of language, combining the clinical, the poetic, and the pornographic. Ballard calls it the language of invisible eroticisms and attempts to articulate the first terms in his brilliant novel Crash. 

The beautiful thing about this work is that it helps us transcend feelings of disgust, shame, or guilt and move beyond a crippling identification of ourselves with genital sexuality. It anticipates the emergence of new erogenous zones all over the body and characterizes vaginal and anal coition as forms of nostalgia. 

Is it really so immoral or unnatural to to want to find a new use for old organs? I don't think so. And it's rather a sweet thought, is it not, that we might find an air vent as inviting as the warmest organic orifice?