Reflections on the Ghost of Vivienne Westwood

Walking down the King's Road, one encounters many ghosts but I was still rather taken aback by the spectral image of Vivienne Westwood rising up before me: 

 

 

Vivienne Westwood by Invader (2024)  

 

Known for his ceramic tile mosaics based on the pixelated art of early 8-bit video games, the French street artist Invader [1] has created a spooky posthumous portrait of the iconic British fashion designer wearing a version of the Destroy shirt created in collaboration with her partner Malcolm McLaren. 

 

Readers familiar with the photo taken at Seditionaries upon which the portrait is based, will note how an alien figure has replaced the swastika and inverted crucifix of the original design:

 

 

Vivienne Westwood by Norma Moriceau (1977)

 

 

On entering the tiny store based at 430 King's Road - forever preserved in its final incarnation as Worlds End - one can't help but remember the dead: not just Vivienne, but Malcolm, Jordan, Sid, Debbie Wilson, Tracie O'Keefe ... et al.  

 

And one can't help wondering if there are ways of being haunted by the past which are vital and allow for a critical nostalgia which troubles the present and enables us to live yesterday tomorrow. 

 

To paraphrase Heidegger, mayn't it be the case that only a ghost can save us now ...? [2]

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Invader is a pseudonymous French street artist whose work can be found in major cities in numerous countries around the world, often in culturally and/or historically significant sites, although Paris remains the primary location for his work. 

      Often deriving inspiration from the video games he loved to play when growing up in the 1970s and '80s - Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Super Mario, etc. - he often publishes books (and maps) to accompany his installations (or 'invasions' as he calls them). 

      As one might imagine, like Banksy his works have attracted the attention of wealthy collectors and have sometimes been stolen to order off of the walls upon which they were installed (something he has tried to counteract by selecting sites that are more difficult to reach and creating larger works with more delicate tiles that cannot be removed without damaging the piece). When legitimaely sold in galleries, his work can fetch six-figure sums. 

      Shepard Fairey, again as one might imagine, was an early admirer, writing: 

      "Invader's pop art may seem shallow, but by taking the risk of illegally re-contextualizing video game characters in an urban environment that provides more chaotic social interaction than a gamer's bedroom, he makes a statement about the desensitizing nature of video games and consumer culture. In a postmodern paradox, a game like Grand Theft Auto takes the danger of the streets and puts it in a safe video game, while Invader takes a safe video game icon and inserts it into the danger of the streets." See Shepard Fairy, 'Space Invader', Swindle magazine, No. 3, 2004.

 

[2] Heidegger's famous statement - Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten - appeared in a 1966 interview with Der Spiegel, published posthumously in 1976. It reflects his belief that modern humanity is trapped in a crisis that cannot be resolved through human agency alone. 

      Not that he was referring by his use of the term 'god' to a traditional religious deity or a personal savior, anymore than by my use of ther term 'ghost' I am referring to a sheet-wearing apparition or supernatural entity in the clichéd sense. Like Heidegger, I'm calling upon an event outside of human control that triggers a radical and transformative cultural shift that allows for a new revealing or mode of being; or, like Mark Fisher in his hauntological writings, I'm referring to a manifestation of a lost future or a potentiality that has not been actualised.  

      The interview with Heidegger, conducted by Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wolff, was translated by William J. Richardson and can be found in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. Thomas Sheehan (Transaction Publishers, 1981), pp. 45-67. Click here to read on the Internet Archive.  

      See Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Zero Books, 2022) - a work on which I published a three part post in November 2023: click here for part one on lost futures and here for part three on hauntology.   

 

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.   

 

The Rich Can Buy Soap: Why I Find Shepard Fairey's Hope Poster Problematic

Shepard Fairey in front of his portrait of Barack Obama before its installation 

at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. in 2009

Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

 

 

I. 

 

Someone has emailed:

 

'I was intrigued - and, if I'm honest, slightly irritated - by the fact that after praising Shepard Fairey's Hope poster as a work of art and defending his right to have transformed the original photo by Mannie Garcia on the grounds of fair use, you couldn't resist adding a line in a footnote to the effect that, actually, you didn't much care for the piece after all; branding it as an all-too-blatant example of political propaganda. Would you care to elaborate on this remark?' [1]

Well, although I hadn't planned on saying anything further about Fairey's work, I've decided to take this opportunity to do so, since I was asked in a such a sincere spirit of both intrigue and irritation ...

 

 

II. 

 

Just to be clear from the outset: I'm not suggesting that art should (or could) be pure in some manner or untainted by politics. And lots of great works are explicitly political; Picasso's Guernica (1937) would be an obvious example of such.

 

But I do feel a little uncomfortable when an artist produces a work that is endorsed by a presidential campaign team and which is, in effect, a piece of political advertising that doesn't only promote Barack Obama's candidacy, but attempts to fob us off with the untenable - and treacherous - ideal of hope.

 

One is reminded of something that D. H. Lawrence wrote about advertisements; no matter how clever, how beautiful, or how seductive their use of language and imagery, one can never quite forget they disguise a sharp hook with which to catch the consumer [2]. 

 

I'm not denying, therefore, that Fairey's Obama portrait is a genuine work of art that brings forth a number of powerful reactions, but I don't like feeling that I'm having my reactions pre-determined and manipulated - particularly when Fairey is doing so in a manner that suggests he is attempting to spiritualise politics and sell us not only his version of the American Dream, but inspire mankind with a promise of redemption.  

 

My main problem is not with the instantly iconic image of Barack Obama, heavily stylised by Fairey and displaying many features that belong to his distinctive aesthetic, it's with the slogan HOPE plastered across the bottom in capital letters [3]. 

 

As a pessimistic philosopher, I obviously have problems with this sentimental and morally optimistic ideal of hope. I never expect (nor particularly desire) positive outcomes; I certainly don't pray for such. 

 

Like Schopenhauer, I regard hope as a pernicious delusion or a folly of the heart that undermines the individual's appreciation of probability; like Nietzsche, I suspect the gods enjoy the spectacle of human suffering and so provide hope as a way of prolonging such (it is arguably, therefore, the most evil of all evils). 

I'm glad to see that, by 2015, Shepard Fairey was expressing his disappointment with President Obama and his administration, having lost a good deal of hope as evidence of increased military drone use and domestic surveillance came to light [4].

 

But one wonders just what Fairey - a self-confessed sex pistol - was thinking of back in 2008 by pledging his support of Obama so openly and promoting a theological virtue; had he forgotten the great slogan of punk: No Future ...? [5] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The writer is referring to a post of 4 Feb 2022 entitled 'Notes on Fair Use With Reference to the Case of Shepard Fairey and the Obama Hope Poster' - click here.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 238. I comment further on the poetry and politics of modern advertising with reference to this essay by Lawrence (as well as Roland Barthes's take on the subject in Mythologies) in a post that can be accessed by clicking here. 

[3] Originally, the poster featured the word progress, but the Obama campaign team expressed concerns about the connotations of this idea and advised that the key terms that they were promoting were hope and change.  

[4] See the interview with Fairey by Matt Patches in Esquire (May 28, 2015): click here. 

 

[5] No Future was the original title of 'God Save the Queen', by the Sex Pistols, and the phrase is repeated throughout the song. One might also remind Fairey of something that Sartre once said: 'Voting is not a political act. It's an act of resignation.' Thus one should never vote for anyone or anything, only against.   

Notes on Fair Use with Reference to the Case of Shepard Fairey and the Obama Hope Poster

Shepard Fairey: Portrait of Barack Obama / Hope Poster (2008)

Based on the photograph by Mannie Garcia / Associated Press (2006)

 

 

I. Fair Use

 

I am not an American, but I sometimes wish I were. For I admire many aspects of American culture and society, including the legal concept of fair use which permits (limited) use of copyrighted material without having to acquire permission from the copyright holder [1]. 

 

For whilst the interests of the latter should, I suppose, be taken into account, it's vital to balance such with the right of artists, for example, to creatively transform images and recontextualise ideas. Great artists, as Picasso said, have always stolen and made acquired objects uniquely their own (never borrowed or asked for permission) [2]. 

 

 

II. The Case of Shepard Fairey and His Obama Hope Portrait

 

Everyone knows the instantly iconic Barack Obama Hope poster produced by the American graphic artist Shepard Fairey, during the 2008 presidential campaign. But what I didn't know - until I watched the James Moll documentary Obey Giant (2017) on TV a few nights ago - was just how much trouble the work had caused him ...

 

For although the image - widely distributed as a poster, as well as in various other formats - was produced with the approval of the Obama campaign team, Fairey had not sought permission of the photographer Mannie Garcia who snapped the picture the work was based upon for the Associated Press (AP) [3]. 

 

Fairey had simply searched Google Images and taken what he thought best suited his needs, believing his actions to be legitimate under the fair use policy. However, when in January 2009 the original source photo was identified, the AP demanded compensation. And so began a legal nightmare, lasting several years.

 

It was Garcia's contention that he retained copyright to the photo according to his AP contract. And whilst he admired what Fairey had done with his photograph, he didn't 'condone people taking things, just because they can, off the internet'. 

    

Fairey, meanwhile, sought a declaratory judgement that his behavior qualified as fair use and argued that his conduct did not constitute improper appropriation because he had not taken any protected expression from Garcia's photo. 

 

However, after a judge urged a settlement, the two parties came to an out of court agreement (including undisclosed financial terms) in January 2011. Whilst neither party was obliged to surrender its interpretation of the law, in their press release the AP made it pretty clear who they thought had come out on top (and it wasn't the artist) [4].

 

For his part, Fairey maintained that he had never personally profited from sales of the image - a claim disputed by the AP - and put on record that whilst he continued to defend the right of artists to make fair use of photographic images, he respected the work of photographers such as Mannie Garcia.

 

 

III. 

 

My view is this: a photograph - no matter how skilled the photographer - is ultimately a mechanically produced image; whereas an artwork is a magically created image that transforms reality. That's why even the greatest modern photos pale into insignificance alongside paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux, for example.  

 

And so, with all due respect to Mannie Garcia, his photograph - as technically excellent as it is - would have been long forgotten about by now - just one lonely thumbnail amongst hundreds of thousands of other Obama pics that can be found online - were it not for what Fairey did with it [5]. 

 

In short: Fairey transformed a good photograph into a great work of art; one that will live in the cultural imagination for a very long time. That's why a version of the work is now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, alongside other famous portraits of presidents - and why Garcia's photograph isn't [6].

 

To be honest, I wish Fairey had not settled and had, instead, fought the case. For I think he had strong and valid fair use argument and that his heavily stylised image, bearing the hallmarks of his distinctive aesthetic, clearly transforms Garcia's photograph in such a way that it is no longer strictly speaking an accurate representation of Obama - something that the AP lawyers seemed blind to.    

 

The same AP lawyers who spoke of arrogance on the part of artists who cheerfully exploit the work of hardworking photograpers without permission or even a word of thanks, before then dismissing Fairey's Obama poster as little more than a form of digital paint by numbers.     

 

Which is a mildly funny, if outrageously stupid thing to say.  

 

Notes

 

[1] In the UK, we have a similar legal notion termed fair dealing. But fair dealing is more limited in scope than the US doctrine of fair use and the two ideas, if comparable, are certainly not synonymous; many exceptions to copyright in the US would be an infringement under UK law. 

      In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is fair, several factors are considered. These include: (i) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes; (ii) the nature of the copyrighted work; (iii) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (iv) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. 

      Finally, another key consideration in many fair use cases - including the one to be discussed here - is the extent to which the use is transformative. It is important to understand that facts and ideas are not protected by copyright - only their particular expression.  

      

[2] The irony, of course, is that Picasso probably heard this line elsewhere and is just paraphrasing. 

      (It sounds like the sort of thing Wilde might have said, but the Little Greek is keen to remind me of these lines by Eliot in an essay on Philip Massinger in The Sacred Wood (1920), p. 114: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.")

     

[3] Garcia took the (now famous) photograph - along with 250 other shots - on 27 April, 2006, at a media event held at the National Press Club in Washington, D. C., where the actor George Clooney was raising awareness of the war in Darfur, following a trip to Sudan. Clooney was joined by two United States senators; Sam Brownback and Barack Obama. 

     Whilst most of Garcia's photos taken that day were of Clooney (or featured Clooney and one or both of the senators), thirty-nine were just of the charismatic future President.  

      In taking these photos, Garcia obviously made creative choices; just as, afterwards, he reviewed them and made certain editorial decisions before finally submitting a small selection of pictures to the Associated Press. But they still remained press pics, not works of art. 

 

[4] In a press release, the AP announced: 

      "Mr. Fairey has agreed that he will not use another AP photo in his work without obtaining a license from the AP. The two sides have also agreed to work together going forward with the 'Hope' image and share the rights to make the posters and merchandise bearing the 'Hope' image and to collaborate on a series of images that Fairey will create based on AP photographs."

 

[5] Garcia's Obama photograph was published at least once by an AP member newspaper, but, it certainly didn't enter into the cultural imagination or win a Pulitzer Prize. 

      Again, let me be clear: I'm not trying to denigrate the work of photographers. I'm simply saying that, in this case, Fairey magically transforms a factual piece of photojournalism into something fundamentally different; by removing certain elements and adding others, he projects a realistic image into the mythic realm. The genius lies in the many small changes, just as the devil lies in the details. 

      (Having said that, I'm not particularly keen on Fairey's poster which is too much also a piece of blatant political propaganda.)   

 

[6] A fine art version of the poster made by Fairey was acquired in early 2009 by the National Portrait Gallery (part of the Smithsonian Institution) and housed in its permanent collection, alongside portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, and Richard M. Nixon by Norman Rockwell. 

 

Readers interested in the full facts of the case involving Shepard Fairey should see: William W. Fisher III, Frank Cost, Shepard Fairey, Meir Feder, Edwin Fountain, Geoffrey Stewart, and Marita Sturken, 'Reflections on the Hope Poster Case', Harvard Journal of Law and Technology,  Vol. 25, No. 2, (Spring 2012), pp. 243-338. This detailed text also provides an excellent analysis and many illustrations. Click here for an online pdf. 

To watch the trailer to Obey Giant: The Art and Dissent of Shepard Fairey, (dir. James Moll, 2017), click here.

 

For a follow up post to this one in which I discuss my problems with Fairey's Obama portrait, click here.