Heathen, Hedonistic, and Horny: Notes on Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009) - Part 1: Propositions 1-120

 Jonathan Cape (2017)

 

 

I. 

 

As long-time readers of Torpedo the Ark will know, whilst, as a nihilist, my default position is always paint it black, I do also have a philosophical fascination with a colour much loved by painters and poets and which Christian Dior identified as the only one which can possibly compete with black: blue. 

 

This includes, for example, the lyrical blue celebrated by Rilke and Trakl; the deep blue invented by Yves Klein; the blue of the Greater Day that D. H. Lawrence writes of; and my fascination with this colour extends to blue angels, blue boys, blue lenses, and blue lagoons.  

 

Thus, no surprise then that I should eventually get around to reading Maggie Nelson's wonderful little book Bluets ...

 

 

II. 

 

First published by Wave Books in 2009, Bluets consists of 240 numbered propositions arranged not so much randomly, but with what we might term considered whimsicality to create the illusion of logical precision and continuity à la Wittgenstein. Each proposition is either a sentence or a short paragraph; none exceeds two hundred words in length.

 

The book documents not only the author's bowerbird-like obsession with the colour blue, referencing many famous figures along the way associated with the colour, but also provides an insight into Nelson's understanding of love and mental health and examines what role - if any - beauty plays in times of heartache or depression.

 

In 2016, she won a MacArthur Fellowship - known to many as the genius grant - and, on the basis of this one book alone I think that Nelson is indeed 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.  

 

The title doesn't refer us simply to those small and delicate blue flowers belonging to the genus Houstonia, but also to a triptyque by the American abstract artist Joan Mitchell, Les Bluets (1973), which Nelson describes as perhaps her "favourite painting of all time" [a]

 

Here, I would like to provide a commentary on the book, picking up on some of the things that particularly resonate with me or pique my curiosity to know more. Hopefully, in the course of doing so I can demonstrate why the author and critic Hilton Als was spot on to praise Bluets as a "new kind of classicism" that, whilst queer in content, remains elegant in form [b].     

 

 

III.

5

 

Are we to understand that when, like Mallarmé, one replaces le ceil with l'Azur - "in an effort to rinse references to the sky of religious connotations" - one ceases to be a crypto-theologian and becomes a poet-philosopher? 

 

Is it true to say: whereof one can perceive blueness, thereof one cannot imagine God ...     

 

 

18

 

"A warm afternoon in early spring, New York City. We went to the Chelsea Hotel to fuck."

 

For a moment I thought I was reading Young Kim's A Year on Earth with Mr Hell (2020). 

 

But then I read the three sentences following: 

 

"Afterward, from the window of our room, I watched a blue tarp on a roof across the way flap in the wind. You slept, so it was my seceret. It was a smear of the quotidian, a bright blue flake amidst all the dank providence."  

And realised I wasn't.  

 

20 

 

"Fucking leaves everything as it is." 

 

This is a very un-Lawrentian sentence; perhaps the most un-Lawrentian sentence you could imagine. 

 

For Lawrence insists that, on the contrary, fucking is transformational of the individual - changing the very constitution of the blood - and that a politics of desire, founded upon the act of coition, has revolutionary potential. 

 

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence believes that the lover is richer and stronger than those who do not fuck; that lovers grow wings and possess new capabilities. And there arises, he says, a post-coital "craving for polarized communion with others" [c] - not just for cigarettes. 

 

 

26 / 31

 

Nelson says that she's heard that "a diminishment of color vision often accompanies depression" and I couldn't help wondering if that's true; if feeling blue ironically makes the world seem greyer ...?

 

Well, apparently, it is: depression lowers the production of dopamine and this can impair neurotransmitters in the retina, making the world appear less vibrant and colourful. 

 

But then Nelson reminds us of the case of Mr Sidney Bradford, who had his vision restored in his fifties (having lost his sight as a baby) and saw the world at last in full-colour:  he died of unhappiness due to disappointment soon afterwards [d].      

 

35

 

"Does the world look bluer from blue eyes?", asks Nelson, before concluding that's probably not the case. 

 

But, like her, I like to imagine it does.

 

 

56

 

When reminded of Saint Lucy - patron saint of the blind, who was tortured and put to death by the Romans in 304 CE - I can't help thinking of Simone, the teenage erotomaniac at the heart of Bataille's notorious short novel L'histoire de l'œil (1928). 

 

For whilst Lucy didn't - as far as I know - insert the eye of a murdered priest into her vagina, she is often depicted in "Gothic and Renaissance paintings holding a golden dish with her blue eyes staring weirdly out from it".   

 

Depending on what sources one refers to, Lucy's eyes were either gouged out by her captors, or she removed them herself in order to avoid male attention and prove her religious devotion. For as Nelson writes, there are numerous stories of women "blinding themselves in order to maintain their chastity" and to demonstrate their fidelity to God (i.e., the fact that they 'only have eyes' for Christ).   

 

 

62

 

Nelson's definition of puritanism: the exchanging of corporeal reality for ideal representation. Not something that appeals to her: 

 

"I have no interest in catching a glimpse of or offering you an unblemished ass or airbrushed cunt. I am interested in having three orifices stuffed full of thick, veiny cock in the most unforgiving of poses ..."  

 

Fair enough: but this is still an image conjured up with words, is it not? And as Merleau-Ponty pointed out: Words do not look like the things they designate [e].  

 

 

71 / 72 

 

Hard to find dignity in loneliness; easier to find it in solitude. A pair of propostions of such high truth value that we may for all intents and purposes declare them true.  

 

 

101

 

When Nelson's friends were asked "how much time they would grant between 'a blinding, bad time' and a life that has simply become a depressive waste", the consensus was "around seven years". 

 

I suspect - based on my own experience between April 2016 and February 2023 - that that's probably about right; that the seven year mark is the limit. Perhaps that's why when a person goes missing there is a presumption of death after seven years. 

 

(As for how long it takes to fully recover having reached one's limit, that's a question to which neither Nelson nor her friends provide an answer and I suspect it might take longer to retreat from the edge of the abyss than it does to get there.)

Notes

 

[a] Maggie Nelson, Bluets (Jonathan Cape, 2017), Prop. 145, p. 57. Note that I will henceforth only give proposition numbers (in bold) in the post.      

 

[b] Hilton Als, 'Immediate Family', The New Yorker (11 April, 2016): click here. 

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 135. 

      Later, in proposition 201, Nelson does acknowledge the truth of change, newness, and becoming-other: "I believe n the possibility - the inevitability, even - of a fresh self stepping into ever-fresh waters [...]" (p. 80).

[d] This is a real case, although Nelson is taking artistic license with her conclusion. For whilst Bradford did admit to finding the world visually disappointing following corneal grafts - and did die two years afterwards - he also had chronic health issues and no specific cause of death was entered on his death certificate. 

[e] Nelson quotes this line herself in proposition 70. It can be found in the essay 'Cézanne's Doubt', in Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, ed. Thomas Baldwyn (Routledge, 2003). 

 

This post continues in part two (selected propositions from 121-240): click here. 

Bad Penny

Penny Slinger: Exorcism: Inside Out

Richard Saltoun Gallery (London)

 

I. 

 

Sometimes, we need an artist to turn up like the proverbial bad penny in order to reintroduce a little magic, a little eroticism, and even a little horror into our otherwise safe, sexless, and disenchanted world. 

 

And so, step forward out of the shadows of the past Penny Slinger; a provocative London-born artist whose combination of surrealism and feminism into a queer gothic practice no longer shocks as it once did, but which nevertheless still excites, often amuses, and occasionally gives one the creeps. 

 

 

II. 

 

Her solo exhibition at the Richard Saltoun Gallery (London) - Exorcism: Inside Out - is composed of a number of photographic collages set against the backdrop of a spooky mansion house. The dark fairy tale elements remind one of Angela Carter, with a touch of Daphne du Maurier thrown in (all those birds and animal-headed people) [1]. 

 

We are informed that Slinger is attempting to integrate her own body into an archetypal landscape and  'engaging in a cultural exorcism that explores themes of fetishism and sexploitation from a feminist perspective'. 

 

And that's far enough, although, ideas of empowerment, self-actualisation, and sexual liberation now seem a little naive and old-fashioned and the art itself creaks with more clichés - or what her supporters would call timeless and universal symbols - than you can shake a broomstick at. 

 

Some might believe Slinger's images to be just as daring and challenging now as when they were first conceived, but, unfortunately, that's not the case. And, ultimately, what we are left with here are memories of exhilarating sixties radicalism inspired by Max Ernst; a sincere attempt to transform the outer world through inner dream and the politics of desire ... [2]

 

Notes

 

[1] The exhibition coincides with publication of Slinger's book An Exorcism: A Photo Romance (Fulgur Press, 2024); an extended version of her 1977 book An Exorcism, which has been withheld from UK publication for all these years after another work, Mountain Ecstasy (1978), was seized and destroyed by the British customs having been deemed to be pornographic.  

[2] For an alternative take on Slinger's exhibition, see Young Kim's review in A Rabbit's Foot (30 August 2024): click here.    

The Malcolm McLaren Estate Vs The Vivienne Foundation

 

 

I. 

 

Once upon a time, as everybody knows, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood were lovers, creative collaborators, and business partners. But then they fell out, went their separate ways, built solo careers, began to bore everyone, got old and died.   

 

 

II. 

 

The Malcolm McLaren Estate was established by his sole heir and executor - as well as his girlfriend and business partner for the last twelve years of his life - Young Kim. 

 

Its primary purpose seems to be to advance the idea that Malcolm was a visionary genius and pop cultural icon: "An artist in the most post-modern sense of the word, working in every conceivable artistic and intellectual medium ..."

 

 

III.

 

The Vivienne Foundation was launched as a not-for-profit organisation following her death in 2022 [1]. 

 

It exists not merely to honour, protect and continue the legacy of Westwood's creativity and activism, but in order to implement "Vivienne's plan to save the world" by halting climate change, stopping war, defending human rights, and protesting capitalism. 

 

IV.

 

Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, relations between the Malcolm McLaren Estate and The Vivienne Foundation are not exactly cordial. 

 

And this week, they have taken a significant turn for the worse following an article by Young Kim in which she reveals the truth about Vivienne's creative relationship with Malcolm and Westwood's unrelenting animosity towards the man who enabled her to become a celebrated fashion designer [2].

 

Kim's main complaint - and it's a serious charge, for which she has a good deal of evidence and justification - is that The Vivienne Foundation is continuing the process (started by Westwood) of revising cultural history and trying to erase McLaren's fashion legacy. 

 

Whether that justifies Kim's description of Westwood as uneducated and provincial, is debatable. 

 

And, to be fair, Westwood was a lot more than McLaren's assistant during their time together at 430, King's Road, although I absolutely believe it to be the case that the majority of ideas - certainly all the best ideas - were Malcolm's; not Vivienne's, not Bernie's, not Rotten's, but Malcolm's.   

 

Finally, Kim is also angry about the fact that many of the McLaren-Westwood designs sold as authenticated originals - with the Vivienne Foundation's blessing and support - are, she says, inferior copies, or fakes.

V.

 

Not surprisingly, Joe Corré - co-creator and director of The Vivienne Foundation - has defended his mother and responded to Young Kim's accusations. 

 

In a letter to Gill Linton [3], he claims, for example, that there "never was a 'McLaren Westwood' brand or label", which, if technically true, is more than a little disingenuous: the actual label designed (by McLaren) for the Seditionaries personal collection contains both their names (his first; then hers).

 

More astonishing, to me at least, is the fact that Corré would argue that his mother was in professional partnership with his father, McLaren, only for a "relatively short period" and that this (twelve-year) period is of minor significance compared to "the later parts of her creative career", when she produced items "of much greater interest and value".

 

Corré concludes his letter by saying that it is laughable that items sold from the McLaren-Westwood period - 1971-1983 - should first be authenticated by the Malcolm McLaren Estate: "Appraisal and authentication relies on the knowledge and credibility of experts. The McLaren Estate does not have anyone in this area and we certainly do not require their help." [4]

 

It is, as I say, all rather unfortunate ... And strangely depressing.   

 

It's also, essentially, a family feud; as evidenced by the fact that even Joe's daughter - the model and activist Cora Corré - is enlisted to defend the four pillars and help claim the moral high ground for her dear departed grandmother, whilst hardly stopping to give a tinker's toss for her equally dear, equally departed, but infinitely more interesting and amusing grandfather [5].

 

  

Notes

 

[1] I am reminded that The Vivienne Foundation was initially launched - by Westwood herself - as The Vivienne Westwood Foundation in 2018, but it's the Foundation's current existence, following Westwood's death in December 2022, that mostly interests me. Although a not-for-profit organisation, it should be noted that it is not a charity. 

 

[2] This article can be found in the Evening Standard (25 Aug 2023): click here to read online. Young Kim had originally written to Gill Linton (see note 2 below) claiming there were serious problems with the Westwood concession on Linton's Byronesque website.

 

[3] Gill Linton is the founder and Chief Executive of Byronesque, an online boutique selling contemporary vintage fashion, with whom The Vivienne Westwood Foundation work closely: click here. The letter Joe Corré sent to Linton in response to Young Kim's email to Linton - which the latter forwarded to Corré - can be read here on the Byronesque Instagram account. 

 

[4] In his letter to Linton, Joe Corré also takes an unnecessary (possibly libelous) pop at McLaren's esteemed biographer and the man who arguably knows more about the sound of fashion and the look of music than anyone else, Paul Gorman, much to the latter's understandable - slightly weary - outrage: click here.    

 

[5] In an interview on the Byronesque website entitled 'From Seditionaries to Saving the World', Cora Corré says of Westwood: "I feel incredibly privileged and lucky to have had her as a grandmother and a teacher. [...] In a way I feel her fight will always continue through me shedding light on issues and speaking up for people that don't have a voice." 

      Click here to read the interview in full (if you can stomach the virtue signalling, the self-righteous hypocrisy, and political naivety that the Westwood family and foundation seem to specialise in).  

Notes on Young Kim's 'A Year On Earth With Mr. Hell' (Part 2)

A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (Fashion Beast Editions, 2022) 

ft. Miss Young Kim and Mr. Richard Hell

 

 

To read part one of this post, which offers a series of opening remarks and notes on subjects including amorous gifts, dirty handkerchiefs, cunnilingus, and the politics of fashion, please click here. 

 

May I also remind readers that page numbers given below refer to the Fashionbeast edition of A Year on Earth With Mr Hell (2022). 

 

 

Random Notes on Young Kim's A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell (cont.)

  

On (In)Fidelity 

 

Miss Kim is irritated by Mr. Hell's feeling guilty about the fact that he is cheating on his girlfriend: "I think the truth is, as unconventional and wild as Richard is [...] he is hampered with a puritanical streak." [153] 

 

He is, she says, an absurd and puerile coward, ashamed of his own polyamorous nature. 

 

But is this the truth? Or could it not be that "the profound instinct of fidelity in a man" is "just a little deeper and more powerful than his instinct of faithless sexual promiscuity"? [j]

 

After all, even Lady Chatterley's lover ultimately desires the peace that comes of fucking [k] and recognises that his underlying passion is for constancy, not to endlessly chase skirt - particularly as, like Mr. Hell, he is no longer a young man [l]. 

 

"'What a misery to be [...] impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace'", writes Oliver Mellors [m]. And what a misery also to remain, in Kim's own words, a "hapless adolescent in trouble with too many women" [160]. 

 

No wonder that by the end of the book Mr. Hell is looking "sad and torn and guilty and weary" [223] and eventually tells Miss Kim that he can't continue the affair: "'I have to go. I feel terrible doing this to my girlfriend. Being two-faced. My head hurts.'" [223] 

 

 

On Lurking 

 

Like Mr. Hell, I too prefer to wait outside a bar or restaurant when meeting someone, rather than sit passively (and anxiously) inside; a practice that Miss Kim finds curious and bizarre, though explains it to herself by deciding that he must like to anticipate and observe the arrival of his date - "like a predator waiting for its prey" [44].

 

That's possible: but I think there's another reason why Mr. Hell likes to stay lurking in the shadows for as long as possible. For is there anything worse than to be seen looking lonely at a bar or table, waiting for someone who may or may not arrive; one feels not only exposed, but emasculated. 

 

Only a masochist would find pleasure in this; in their subordination and being kept in a state of suspense by another. 

 

 

On Name Dropping 

 

Whilst at the Knickerbocker Bar and Grill, Miss Kim and Mr. Hell both name drop like crazy in order to assert their own status and, presumably, find common cultural territory with one another by identifying shared acquaintances and inspirations: Picasso, Agnes Martin, Francis Picabia, René Clair, Ian Fleming, Ian McEwan, Allen Ginsberg, Karen Blixen, Carole Bouquet, Peter Beard, Russ Meyer, are all casually alluded to over oysters. 

 

I know this will infuriate some people, but I found it kind of funny, rather than a sign of snobbery or narcissism. And besides, isn't name dropping a function of basic human interaction; don't we all do it, to some extent - even those whose only connection to famous names is via a box of chocolate liqueurs. 

 

 

On Punk Anthems 

 

According to Miss Kim, Richard Hell's 'Blank Generation' is "the ultimate nihilistic punk anthem" [9] [n]. But that's debatable. And, in fact, I have already discussed this song (and found it wanting) in contrast to the far more provocative (if less poetic) 'Pretty Vacant', by the Sex Pistols: click here. 

 

 

On Sex 

 

Ultimately, Miss Kim comes to the conclusion that sex is sex [169] - i.e., a fixed and never-changing reality which in some way provides the great clue to being. But we can't let this metaphysical notion pass without comment ... 

 

Like Foucault, I tend to see sex as a complex type of agency formed by regimes of power unfolding within time and place, or history and culture, rather than as an ideal anchorage point supporting various manifestations of what we term sexuality. The belief that it somehow eludes and resists power and resides deep within us over and above the material reality of bodies and possessing its own intrinsic properties and laws, is simply a piece of modern romance. 

 

Of course, this isn't to deny that the convenient fiction of sex hasn't proved to be extremely useful; or that it will cease to function in the immediate future. It seems certain that sex will continue to be thought of as a great causal principle long after novelists and lovers have abandoned older ideas of the soul as mere superstition. 

 

For the fact is, a very great number of men and women - including Miss Kim and Mr. Hell - have made their very intelligibility dependent upon their sex and it provides them with their most precious forms of identity. Which is why they talk about and think about sex endlessly and desire to "have access to it, to discover it, to liberate it, to articulate it, to formulate it in truth" [o]. 

 

Despite the popular belief that there have been centuries of repressive silence and shame surrounding the subject, sex has in fact been the most obsessively talked about thing of all. What is peculiar about modern societies, suggests Foucault, is not that they kept sex locked away in darkness, "but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret" [p]. 

 

In other words, what really distinguishes the world we live in is a polymorphous and increasingly pornographic incitement to discourse about sex. Those who are genuinely interested in libidinal pleasures might do best not to vainly attempt to extract further confessions from a shadow, but show how sex is - and has always been - a purely speculative element within the historical process of human subjectification. 

 

In a postmodern future - that is to say, in a time after the orgy - people will be unable to fathom our sex mania. And they will smile, says Foucault, when they recall that there were once people such as Miss Kim and Mr. Hell who believed that in sex resided a truth "every bit as precious as the one they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought" [q]. 

 

 

On Sexism and Gender Difference

 

Miss Kim is annoyed when her steak arrives well done, having "clearly specified rare" [44]. Surprisingly, she interprets this as an act of overt sexism rather than incompetance or poor service: "Do they think only men like bloody steaks?" [44] 

 

However, she still expects and considers it normal that Mr. Hell pay for the meal. Why? Because Miss Kim believes in male gallantry and thinks it "only fair that the man pay for the experience [of dinner] when a woman spends a fortune maintaining her appearance" [89].

 

Woe betide any man who dares to go Dutch: 

 

"When the bill came, I put down my credit card before I went to the bathroom. I was curious to see what he'd do. It was a test. It wasn't a big tab, but I'd saw he split the check in two. That was the last nail in the coffin." [68] 

 

In fact, Miss Kim - who openly declares herself a non-feminist (even whilst complaining that, as a single woman, she is often shown little respect by men) - subscribes to many traditional ideas and stereotypes concerning gender and sexual difference: 

 

"A man thinks so differently from a woman" [79] ... 

 

"Men are wonderfully bestial" [106] ... 

 

"Men never grow up" [177] ... 

 

And - my personal favourite -  "Men are strange" [181].

 

Amusingly, however, by the end of the book Kim realises that she's not merely like a man in many respects, but, thanks to all the hardship she's lived through, has in fact "become a man" [230]. 

 

By which she means that at times of crisis or emotional stress she enjoys watching a lot of TV. 

 

 

On Smell 

 

"Smell is a surprisingly powerful sense - far more powerful than sight and touch" [110], says Miss Kim. And whilst unable to remember it, there is, she insists, a "scientific reason for this" [110].

 

That's probably true. But there's also an interesting pollyanalytic reason which D. H. Lawrence outlines in Fantasia: 

 

"The nostrils are the great gate from the wide atmosphere of heaven to the lungs. [...] But the nostrils have their other function of smell [...] delicate nerve-ends run direct from the lower centres, from the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion [...] There is the refined sensual intake when a scent is sweet. There is the sensual repudiation when a scent is unsavoury." [r] 

 

One recalls also something said by the narrator of Patrick Süskind's fabulous novel Perfume (1985): 

 

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally." [s] 

 

I smiled to see Young Kim not only informing her readers that she always wears the same perfume - "pomegranate, from Santa Maria Novella" [111] - but that her vaginal fluid has a "distinctively sweet smell" [211] - although I accept that some might find that a little too much information. 

 

 

On Spanking 

 

Miss Kim writes: 

 

"I stretched myself out over his lap, he slapped my ass hard, but not hard enough to truly hurt, several times, maybe four. The slaps were surprisingly loud, crackling through the air, which made me uncomfortable, in case anyone heard. Then, his fingers explored my pussy and my asshole for a bit before his hand came down harder several times more [...] What fun." [122] 

 

The English vice, as it is known - and which includes all varieties of corporal punishment (caning, flogging, spanking, etc.) - remains ever-popular within the world of lovers. As a form of sensual discipline it is an ascetic practice which has a restorative effect on the soul. 

 

That is to say, if carried out with genuine passion, then chastisement establishes a circuit of polarized communication and produces as powerful a flash of interchange between parties as an act of sexual intercourse. It should, therefore, be regarded as a natural form of coition which makes a violent readjustment in the flow between lovers, allowing, like a thunderstorm, for a fresh start and a new feeling. 

 

Ultimately, corporal punishment is a vital necessity because man does not live by love and kindness alone and human culture is inscribed and cut into the flesh. To paraphrase Lawrence: As long as men and women have bottoms, they must surely be spanked ...

 

 

Notes

 

[j] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 318.   

 

[k] I have written on this key idea in Lawrence's late work in a post entitled 'Chastity' (19 Dec 2021): click here. 

 

[l] Age is always a significant issue - certainly for 67-year-old Mr. Hell, concerned he'll not be able to sexually satisfy a much younger woman. But when Richard tells Young that it would best if she forgot him, as he was too old, she dismisses the idea. Later, however, she wonders why it is she doesn't meet younger people, closer to her own age, with whom to form romantic relations, concluding she belongs to the wrong generation (see p. 141).

      Finally, note how when Mr. Hell breaks up with Miss Kim and expresses guilt over his infidelity, he again reminds her of his age: "'Next month I'll be sixty-eight! And I'm doing all this?!'" [229]

[m] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, op. cit., p. 301.

 

[n] Later, Kim describes 'Blank Generation' as a "powerful piece of poetry, art, and emotion packed like dynamite into a catchy paean" [215]. Which is fair enough, but I still prefer 'Pretty Vacant'. 

 

[o] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998), p. 156. 

 

[p] Ibid., p. 35.

[q] Ibid., p. 159.

 

[r] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100. 

 

[s] Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, trans. John E. Woods, (Hamish Hamilton, 1986), p. 82. 

 

 

Notes on Young Kim's 'A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell' (Part 1)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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).