In Defence of Jeff Koons's Easyfun-Ethereal

Cover of the exhibition catalogue 

published by Harry N. Abrams (2001) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Clearly, Jeff Koons features as a very special kind of hate figure in the work of Byung-Chul Han. 

 

Not only does he have an intense dislike for the ultra-smoothness of Koons's sculptural works - including his stainless steel Rabbit (1986), which, for Han, reflects a social imperative lacking in all negativity [2] - but he doesn't much care for Koons's paintings either. 

 

Writing with reference to the Easyfun-Ethereal series in which a wide variety of things, including food items and human body parts, are assembled, Han says:

 

"His pictures mirror our society, which has become a department store. It is stuffed full of short-lived objects and advertisements. It has lost all otherness, all foreignness; thus it is no longer possible to marvel at anything. Jeff Koons's art, which merges seamessly with consumer culture, elevates consumerism to a figure of salvation." [3] 

 

Well, maybe: but then, on the other hand, it could be that Koons's work is actually a critique of consumerism, exposing the false hopes, empty dreams, and the banality of the mass produced goods that the latter trades in. 

 

If you don't want to buy that, then try this: maybe what Koons is attempting to do is give back to things their strangeness and inviting us to delight in the culture we inhabit - as is, and free from shame and snobbery. To assist in the overcoming of bad conscience - i.e., to allow people to take pleasure in the things they like without feeling guilty, or having to justify their tastes - would be a good thing, no?   

 

 

II. 

 

In the Easyfun-Ethereal series, Koons has cut and pasted (seemingly at random) pictues found in glossy magazines and old ads, as well as photographs of his own, creating digital collages that appear to be as chaotic as they are colourful. 

 

Although initially this work is performed on a computer using Photoshop softwear, the electronic images are then transformed into traditional oil on canvas paintings, with painstaking photo-realist attention to detail; Koons and his team of assistants spend months meticulously applying computer-calibrated colours by hand. 

 

The word traditional may seem an odd one to use with reference to Koons's paintings. But, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what his work is. Far from emerging out of nowhere, his paintings are rich in many elements that recall art history (and not just Pop art history). Unlike Han, I think there's much to marvel at in the windows of our great department stores - and much to marvel at in Koons's pictures too. 

 

His canvases don't merely mirror our society, they also - more importantly - speak of what Levi Bryant termed the democracy of objects, i.e., a flat ontological realm wherein objects of all sorts - from hot dogs, elephants, and rollercoasters, to lips, wigs, and bikini bottoms - equally exist without being reducible to other objects and can dynamically interact outside of any transcendent system of meaning [4].        

 

This, for me at least, gives Koons's work not only cultural and aesthetic interest, but philosophical import too. But readers can make up their own mind by visiting his website and viewing the twenty-four pictures - from Auto to Venus - that make up the Easyfun-Ethereal series: click here.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This catalogue was published on the occasion of an exhibition that ran from 27 Oct 2000 - 14 Jan 2001, featuring seven new works by Jeff Koons commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim (Berlin). Illustrated with full-colour reproductions, the catalogue also includes an interview with the artist by David Sylvester, as well as an essay by Robert Rosenblum analysing Koons's technique and imagery.

 

[2] See the post entitled 'On Smoothness' (5 Dec 2021): click here.  

 

[3] Byung-Chul Han, The Expulsion of the Other, trans. Wieland Hoban, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 59.  

[4] See: Levi R. Bryant, The Democracy of Objects, (Open Humanities Press, 2011). 

 

    

Love (A Post for Valentine's Day)

Love is the flower of life: it blossoms unexpectedly and without law

and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.

 

 

Although a self-declared priest of love, D. H. Lawrence was always ambivalent about the latter and quick to qualify his own remarks in praise of love. Thus, for example, he declares: "Love is the happiness of the world." But then immediately points out that "happiness is not the whole of fulfilment".

 

In the same essay, he writes: "Love is a coming together. But there can be no coming together without an equivalent going asunder." Indeed, according to Lawrence, "the coming together depends on the going apart; the systole depends on the diastole; the flow depends upon the ebb".

Thus it is that: "There can never be love universal and unbroken [...] The undisputed reign of love can never be."  

 

Which is one in the eye for Jesus and all the other love-idealists, including St. Valentine who was martyred on this day in 269, and whom lovebirds the world over commemorate by buying flowers, boxes of chocolates, heart-shaped balloons, etc. 

 

Lawrence's central message seems to be that love is a process, or journey, of some kind. But that it is fatal to push this process into a goal or mistakenly believe, like the much-loved Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, that it is better to travel than to arrive. 

 

This, says, Lawrence is the nihilistic belief of those who are "in love with love" and fail to understand that to arrive is "the supreme joy after all travelling". For in arriving, "one passes beyond love, or, rather, one encompasses love in a new transcendence". 

 

To insist on love as something that knows no consummation - an interminable journey stretching on to infinity like an endless straight road - is an abysmal thought; one which demonsrates a will to arrest the spring. 

In the novel Aaron's Rod (1922), Lawrence puts it this way:

 

"The aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof. Love is a process of the incomprehensible human soul: love also incomprehensible, but still only a process. The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and the body ultimately perish. The completion of the process of love is the arrival at a state of simple, pure self-possession, for man and woman. Only that. Which isn't exciting enough for us sensationalists. We prefer abysses and maudlin self-abandon and self-sacrifice, the degeneration into a sort of slime and merge.

      Perhaps, truly, the process of love is never accomplished. But it moves in great stages, and at the end of each stage a true goal, where the soul possesses itself in simple and generous singleness. Without this, love is a disease."

 

 

Note: Apart from the final passage from Aaron's Rod, which can be found on p. 166 of the Cambridge Edition (1988), ed. Mara Kalnins, all lines quoted are from Lawrence's essay 'Love', which was first published in the English Review in January 1918, but which can also be found in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 5-12.

 

 

On Transitioning

Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde 

(dir. Roy Ward Baker, 1971)

 

 

I always smile when I hear someone claim they were born in the wrong body ...

 

For it has to be one of the most ridiculous things that anyone can say; not only does it presuppose a metaphysical subject in a Cartesian manner, but it hints also at the transmigration of souls.    

 

However, so powerful has the so-called trans lobby become, that we're all obliged to sit up and take notice whenever a man claims that he is really a woman, or a woman claims she's really a man. 

 

That is to say, not only born in the wrong body, but trapped in the wrongly sexed body as well and thus in need of medical and surgical assistance in order to reassign their sex and ensure that their physical appearance and sexual characteristics resemble those associated with their identified gender. 

 

This is termed transitioning - a process that can take many months or even several years [1]. Indeed, some non-binary or genderqueer individuals may spend their whole life transitioning; continually redefining and re-interpreting who and what they are, without ever arriving at a fixed identity. 

 

Unfortunately, whilst this sounds like fun, turning a process into a goal or an end in itself, can also be dangerous. For according to Deleuze and Guattari, prolonging a process indefinitely is what produces the unfortunate figure of the false schizophrenic, who invariably ends up in a mental institution [2]. 

 

Like D. H. Lawrence, whom they quote, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the aim of any process is the consummation thereof: "The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish." [3]  

 

It's concerning that many who choose to experiment with gender identity and transitioning seem to fall into this trap of pushing a process into a goal, which might help explain why the rates for suicide, self-harm, and depression amongst the trans community in the UK make for grim reading [4].  

 

Ultimately, making a transition (or a becoming of any kind) involves crossing a threshold to the unknown. And if that promises a new life, or a completely different state of being, so too is it to flirt with death. 

 

In other words, there is a certain negativity inscribed within the process of transitioning. It's not simply fun and games; unlike gender bending, which involves dressing up and challenging norms and stereotypes by highlighting the performative character of gender and is usually free from any dysmorphia or concerns about which body one has been born into [5]. 

 

So, to those who are determined to transition, I would issue a gentle word of caution. But of course, who am I to advise anyone on anything; I'm not a trans individal, don't know any trans people, and my knowledge of this topic has mostly been shaped by my taste in films, pop music, and French philosophy ...    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It should be pointed out that transitioning cannot simply be conflated with sex reassignment surgery. Many individuals with gender dysphoria who choose to transition, don't go under the knife and think of transitioning in more holistic terms, involving mental and social factors and not just physical changes.

 

[2] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 5.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 166.

[4] According to the Stonewall website, 48% of trans people in Britain have attempted suicide at least once and 84% have thought about it; more than half (55%) have been clinically diagnosed with depression at some point.

[5] Note that I'm not dismissing the importance of gender bending. In fact, I think crossdressers, drag queens, and androgynous looking pop stars play a vital role in helping us to better understand issues around the cultural construction of gender identity. 

      I discuss this in chapter four of Philosophy on the Catwalk (2011), where I write in praise of those who playfully separate the signs of sex from biological being and refuse any destiny that rests upon anatomical fact; i.e., those who enact the Wildean teaching that the first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. 

      See also my short post from December 2012 entitled 'Life's a Drag': click here.

 

 

Amethyst: Brief Reflections on My Birthstone and Dionysian Philosophy

All things at the end of time become amethyst ...

 

Amethyst is a violet-coloured variety of quartz; i.e., a hard crystalline mineral made from silica (SiO2). It owes its beauty - as do most things - to its imperfections; namely, impurities of iron and the presence of other trace elements, including, if Remy Belleau is to be believed, a few drops of sacred wine [1].

 

It's also, according to astrologers, my birthstone. Which is somewhat awkward for a Dionysian philosopher, as the English name derives from the Hellenistic Greek term amethystos [αμέθυστος], meaning unintoxicated (a reference to the belief that wearing the semi-precious stone protected its owner from drunkenness). 

 

However, it's important to remember that even Nietzsche - the major disciple of Dionynsus in the modern world - doesn't approve of piss-heads, placing alcohol alongside Christian morality as one of the two great European narcotics and who, for the most part, drank only water, preferring as he did to keep both a clear-head and a cool-head (as I do).

 

Ultimately, whilst Nietzsche admired the transfiguring power of intoxication, he strongly recommended that all spiritual natures abstain from alcohol and he didn't sacrifice human reason in the name of a wild irrationalism. Throughout his writings, cognitive activity is itself conceived as a drive of some kind, or even a form of passion; the will to make an intrinsically chaotic world intelligible and thus a world we might inhabit with a degree of security. 

 

And, for Nietzsche, whilst not denying the ecstatic element of the Dionysian experience, the god speaks differently to him: he speaks of this world (as the only world); of love as an earthly reality and of the eternal delight of existence in all of its aspects (even the most terrible) [2].

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] In his poem L'Amethyste, ou les Amours de Bacchus et d'Amethyste, 16th-century French poet Remy Belleau invents a myth in which Bacchus - the Roman version of Dionysus - was pursuing a maiden named Amethyste, who refused his affections and called on Diana to safeguard her chastity. This the goddess did by transforming Amethyste into a pure white gemstone. Impressed by the girl's determination to remain chaste, Bacchus pours wine over her new mineral form as an offering, thereby staining the crystal purple.  

 

[2] In a note from 1888, for example, Nietzsche writes: 

 

"Philosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived it, is a voluntary quest for even the most detested and notorious sides of existence. [...] Such an experimental philosophy [...] wants [...] a Dionysian affirmation of the world as it is, without subtraction, exception, or selection - it wants the eternal circulation: the same things, the same logic and illogic of entanglements. The highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence - my formula for this is amor fati."

 

See The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1968), Book Four, Pt. II, §1041, p. 536. 

 

 

Rawdon Lilly: Notes Towards a Character Study

Adapted from the cover of Henry Miller's  

Notes on 'Aaron's Rod', ed. Seamus Cooney, 

(Black Sparrow Press, 1980)

 

 

I. 

 

"It is remarkable", writes D. H. Lawrence, "how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England." [a]

 

And I suppose we might number Rawdon Lilly amongst this queer set; Lilly being the character in Aaron's Rod (1922) who, like Rupert Birkin before him (in Women in Love) and Richard Somers after him (in Kangaroo), serves as a kind of avatar for the author, often expressing his philosophical views, although he is not the novel's protagonist and doesn't enter the story until chapter five when the action moves from Eastwood to London ...

 

 

II. 

 

Lilly is an artist of the literary variety who hangs around with posh bohemian types; dark and ugly of feature as well as (arguably) of character. He thinks he's terribly witty, but he's no Oscar Wilde; he thinks he's terribly clever, but he's no Nietzsche. A strange mix of sarcasm, snobbishness, and self-regard, it's no wonder he often provokes others to violence [b] and irritaes the hell out of Tanny, his blonde-haired, half-Norwegian wife.

That said, he seems to like Aaron Sisson, the flute playing ex-miner - and the latter seems to like him; they glance at one another "with a look of recognition" [61], which is always a good sign in Lawrence's world. Unlike the look of love, because love, says Lilly, is a vice. Like alcohol. Having met and been introduced (at the opera) - and having exchanged their look of recognition - Lilly invites Aaron to visit him and Tanny for lunch one day, at their house in Hampstead (an invitation that was never taken up, as far as I recall).     

 

Despite living in Hampstead - and also owning a "labourer's cottage in Hampshire" [73] - we are asked to accept that Rawdon and Tanny were poor [c]. Perhaps this adds to Lilly's self-image as a saviour. But it doesn't explain his (racist) dislike of the Japanese, whom he thinks demonic; a quality that one might have thought he'd find attractive, since he despises Christianity and moral humanism [d].

 

He also dislikes those who can't - or won't - stand upright on their own two feet; those, like Jim Bricknell, who stagger and stumble like a drunk; "or worse, like a man with locomotor ataxia" [81], as if lacking all power in their legs. According to Lilly, it's an obscene desire to be loved which makes the knees go all weak and rickety - that and a sloppy relaxation of will. 

 

For Deleuze, "the spinal column is nothing but a sword beneath the skin, slipped into the body of an innocent sleeper by an executioner" [e]. But for Lilly (as for Lawence), the backbone is crucial and should be stiffened from an early age, so that one can affirm oneself into singular being and kick one's way into the future [f].  

 

When Tanny goes off to visit her family in Norway, Lilly stays in London, on the grounds that it's "'better for married people to be separated sometimes'" [90] and that couples who are "'stuck together like two jujube lozenges'" [91] are hateful.

 

He takes a clean and pleasant room, with a piano, in Covent Garden; above the market place, looking down on the stalls and the carts, etc. Mostly he liked to watch the great draught-horses delivering produce: "Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so massive and fleshy, yet so cockney" [86]; an amusingly absurd description. 

But Lilly also has his eye on a "particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and perky behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewere to somewhere, under the arches beside the market" [86]. When reading Lawrence, one can pretty much take it as given that his leading male characters will be what we now term bi-curious (to say the least). 

 

So no big surprise to find that when he gets (a poorly) Aaron up to his room, he soon has the latter undressed and tucked up in bed: 

 

"Lilly pushed Aaron down in the bed, and covered him over. Then he thrust his hands under the bedclotes and felt his feet - still cold. He arranged the water bottle. Then he put another cover on the bed." [90] 

It's kind, of course, of Lilly to nurse the flu-ridden Aaron. But does a respiratory illness usually require an erotically-charged massage with oil - and we're not talking here of a quick chest rub with Vicks VapoRub:

"Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion, a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body - the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted." [96] 

 

Anyway, it seems to do the trick: "The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face" [96]. But afterwards Lilly wonders why he did it, worried that when Aaron is fully recovered and realises what was done to him it will result in another punch in the wind: "'This Aaron [...] I like him, and he ought to like me. [But] he'll be another Jim [...]'" [97] 

 

Poor Lilly! So full of resentment - including self-resentment. But he no sooner swears to stop caring for others and interfering in their lives, than he starts darning Aaron's black woollen socks, having washed them a few days previously.   

 

When Aaron recovers enough to sit up in bed and eat some toast with his tea, Lilly explains his thoughts on marriage - "'a self-conscious egoistic state'" [99] - and having children: '"I think of them as a burden.'" [99] He fears being suffocated "'either with a baby's napkin or a woman's petticoat'" [101] and dreams of men rediscovering their independent manhood and gathering his own soul "'in patience and in peace'" [104]. 

 

But this isn't some kind of Buddhist desire for an end to all desire: 

 

"'It's what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment. And it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion. It flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of them'" [105] 

 

In other words, it's what Oliver Mellors would term the peace that comes of fucking [g], or Nietzsche a warrior's peace. Whether Aaron understands this idea, is debatable: Lilly irritates him rather. But, having said that, he seems in no hurry to leave, even when well enough to do so: "They had been together alone for a fortnight only: but it was like a small eternity." [106]

 

Thus, the two men share the room in Covent Garden, bickering like Felix and Oscar in The Odd Couple [h] and drinking endless cups of tea. They have, we are told, "an almost uncanny understanding of one another - like brothers" [106], despite the mutual hostility. 

 

Lilly, of course, plays the traditionally feminine role: "He mashed the potatoes, he heated the plates, he warmed the red wine, he whisked eggs into the milk pudding, and served his visitor like a housemaid." [106] And when the food is ready, Lilly draws the curtains and dims the light so they can enjoy a rather romantic-sounding meal for two. Then he does the washing-up. 

 

Of course Lilly and Aaron part on rather bad terms: for the latter, the former is too demanding; he wants something of another man's soul, or so it seems to Aaron. Anyway, Lilly heads off; first to Malta, then to Italy (and out of the novel for several chapters). Eventually, Aaron follows, with no definite purpose but to join his rather peculiar friend ... 

 

 

III. 

 

The two men, Aaron and Lilly, Lilly and Aaron, finally reunite in Florence. 

 

Lilly doesn't seem particularly surprised to see Aaron again; or particularly fussed. For he's come to believe that there's a time to leave off loving and seeking friends; that each man has to learn how to possess himself in stillness and not care about anything or anyone. Essentially, decides Lilly, at his very core, he is alone: "'Eternally alone. And choosing to be alone. Not sentimental or lonely. Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one's nature one is alone.'" [246] 

 

He continues:

 

"'In so much as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, [...] I am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self-knowledge.'" [247]

 

Thus, for Lilly, even the heart beats alone in its own silence - and anti-idealism. For above all else, it's anti-idealism that defines Lilly (philosophically and politically):

"'The ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call goodness, charity, benevolence, public spiritedness, the ideal of sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity - all the lot - all the whole beehive of ideals - has all got the modern bee-disease, and gone putrid, stinking.'" [280-81]

His alternative is - after sufficient extermination - a "'healthy and energetic slavery'" [281] in which there is "'a real commital of the life-issue of inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being'" [281] and enforced with military power. At least that's what he tells his interlocutor. Until then admitting with a gay, whimsical smile that he would "'say the opposite with just as much fervour'" [282].

Finally, Lilly delivers that which he believes to be the real truth: "'I think every man is a sacred and holy individual, never to be violated." [282] Which is pretty close to Aleister Crowley's great teaching that: Every man and every woman is a star [i]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

So, in closing what then are we to make of Rawdon Lilly? 

 

Aaron comes to the following conclusion:

"He had started by thinking Lilly a peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing: then cruel and intolerant, allowing no man to have a soul of his own: then terribly arrogant, throwing a fellow aside like an old glove which is in holes at the finger-ends. And all the time, which was most beastly, seeing through one. All the time, freak and outsider as he was, Lilly knew. He knew, and his soul was against the whole world." [289]

 

Still, if forced to choose, Aaron decides he'd choose Lilly over the entire world; if he has to submit and give himself to anyone, then "he would rather give himself to the little, individual man" [290] than to the quicksands of woman or the stinking bog of society. 

 

Personally, I'm not so sure. For whilst I agree with Lilly that we should finish for ever with words like God, and Love, and Humanity and "'have a shot at a new mode'" [291], I don't think I'd fancy placing my life in his hands. Nor do I share his to thine own self be true credo, which is ultimately just another form of idealism. 

 

As for his insistence on the "'great dark power-urge'" [297], I'd take that a little more seriously if in comparing this to Nietzsche's concept of will to power he didn't misunderstand the latter so completely (equating it, for example, with consciousness). Lazy and erroneous thinking like this causes me to doubt much else that Lilly says. 

 

And, finally, I don't want to submit to the positive power-soul within some hero, thank you very much: I don't have any heroes, they're all useless, as Johnny Rotten once memorably said [j].   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 26. All future page references to this novel will be given directly in the text. 

 

[b] I'm thinking here of the scene in Chapter VIII, when Jim Bricknell gives Lilly a punch in the wind. To be fair, although it's arguable that Lilly provoked the assault - as Tanny believes - there's really no justification for Bricknell giving him "two or three hard blows with his fists, upon the front of the body" [82]. But there you go; those who claim to act in the name of Love - and so desperately want to be loved - are often the most vicious and violent people on earth.  

 

[c] Perhaps the Lilly's were only renting the house in Hampstead - or that it belonged to a friend who had kindly allowed them to live there rent free. Later, Lilly tells Aaron that he only has "'thirty-five pounds in all the world'" [103] and so is far from being a millionaire. (£35 in 1922 would be equivalent to around £1700 today). 

 

[d] And, indeed, Lilly does later praise the Japanese for their ability to be quiet and aloof and indifferent to love: '"They keep themselves taut in their own selves - there, at the bottom of the spine - the devil's own power they've got there.'" [81] Although, shortly after this he dismisses "'folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs and orientals altogether'" [97], a quality which makes them vermin in his eyes.

      Readers interested in knowing more about Lawrence's fascination with Japanese male bodies, are advised to see my post from June 2019 on the subject: click here. 

 

[e] Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith, (Continuum, 2003), p. 23. 

      Like many of his ideas and phrases, Deleuze is borrowing this from a writer of fiction; in this case, Franz Kafka. See: 'The Sword', in Diaries 1914-1923, ed. Max Brod, trans. Martin Greenberg with Hannah Arendt (Schocken Books, 1949), pp. 109-10. 

 

[f] Readers who are interested in this topic might like to see my post from April last year on encouraging a straight back: click here. Alternatively, see Lawrence writing in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922).  

[g] See the Grange Farm letter that Mellors writes to Connie at the end of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) for an explanation of this phrase. And see the post from December 2021 on the Lawrentian notion of chastity: click here.

[h] The Odd Couple is a 1968 comedy directed by Gene Saks and written by Neil Simon (based on his 1965 play of the same title), starring Jack Lemmon (as fastidious Felix Ungar) and Walter Matthau (as easy-going Oscar Madison), two divorced men who decide to live together, despite being extremely different characters.   

 

[i] See Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1909), 1:3 

 

[j] Rotten said this in an interview with Janet Street Porter for The London Weekend Show, a punk rock special broadcast on London Weekend Television on 28 November 1976 (i.e., three days before the notorious Bill Grundy incident). Click here to watch in full on YouTube. The remark quoted is at 8:13 - 8:16.       

 

 

Sweet Sixteen (In Memory of Sid Vicious and My Own Punk Youth)

John Beverley, aged 16, in his pre-punk days 

prior to becoming Sid Vicious, Sex Pistol.

Me, aged 16, in my post-punk days, but still sporting 

a Sid Vicious badge on the left lapel of my jacket.

 

 

I recently came across a rather touching photo of a young John Beverley on his way to a David Bowie concert at Earl's Court, in 1973 ... 

 

This was the infamous opening show of Bowie's Aladdin Sane UK tour on May 12th, two days after Beverley turned sixteen. Whether the latter took part in - or, indeed, incited - the violence that ensued amongst the 18,000 strong audience, I don't know. But it's possible this is where he first developed a taste for rock 'n' roll mayhem. 

 

Around this same time, Beverley was kicked out of his home by his heroin-addicted mother, so quit school and began squatting along with his friend John Lydon, the soon-to-be Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten, who gave him the punk-sounding nickname of Sid Vicious by which he is best remembered today.

 

The two friends - like many other youngsters at the time interested in music and fashion - started to cruise up and down the Kings Road and eventually found themselves hanging out at the small and unusual boutique owned and managed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, called SEX. 

 

When, in late-summer 1975, Rotten joined the Sex Pistols, Sid became their No. 1 fan and acted as an agent provocateur ensuring that every gig ended in an unpredictable bloody mess. He can be seen in photos taken at the Nashville Rooms in April 1976 on the night that the band physically attacked their audience.

 

Vicious is also credited with inventing the pogo, an aggressive form of anti-dance. In February '77, he replaced bass guitarist Glen Matlock in the Sex Pistols, even though he had no experience of playing the instrument. He would later (rather cruelly) be stylised by McLaren in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle as 'The Gimmick'. 

 

Tragically, post-Pistols, things did not turn out well for Sid - or his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen; he died, from a drug overdose, on 2 February, 1979, aged 21, whilst on bail and awaiting trial for the murder of the latter, who died from a single stab wound to her abdomen, aged 20, on October 12th of the previous year.  

 

II.  

 

I vividly recall the time when Sid died. For one thing, it was less than a fortnight away from my own sixteenth birthday, on February 13th ...

 

I remember, for example, going out on a cold, foggy night and stealing that day's headline poster for the Evening Standard outside my local newsagent's which read: Sid Vicious Dead (I still have it today somewhere). 

I remember also the next morning, at school, being met with snide remarks from those who knew I was a fan of the Sex Pistols: Your hero's dead - that kind of thing, nothing very imaginative. 

 

Actually, Sid was never really my hero: I was more devoted to Rotten, as the Public Image Ltd. t-shirt worn in the above photo taken in 1979 indicates. However, I do retain a certain affection for him which, sadly, is no longer the case when it comes to the latter, who recently turned sixty-six, but died many, many years ago ...     

Even Nice Guys Get Things Wrong

Russell Crowe as Healy and Margaret Qualley as Amelia 

in The Nice Guys (dir. Shane Black, 2016)

 

 

There are many things to like and admire about Shane Black's action-comedy The Nice Guys (2016), set in LA in 1977; the loving recreation of the period with its mixture of cheese and sleaze; the on-screen chemistry between Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling; 15-year-old Angourie Rice's sweet-but-sassy performance as Holly; and, of course, the fact that Margaret Qualley's character Amelia is barefoot throughout the film [1]. 

 

However, whilst the recreation of the period may have been loving, that doesn't mean it was strictly accurate and there are, in fact, a number of anachronisms throughout the movie. 

 

For example, the soundtrack includes numerous songs that were not released in 1977; nor, for that matter was Jaws 2 in the cinemas that year (it arrived on screens in the summer of '78). And if you called 911 in 1977, you would not have got through to the emergency services (unless living in Alabama) [2].  

 

Now, I have to admit, that if I hadn't had these things pointed out to me, I wouldn't have been any the wiser. But one thing I did notice was the punk memorabilia on Holly's bedroom wall ... 

 

I very much doubt a 13-year-old living in LA would have had a Never Mind the Bollocks poster, as the album of that name was only released on 11 November 1977 in the US and the Sex Pistols had not at that date ever played in America.

 

I also doubt Holly would have been a fan of Blondie, as the band was very little known outside of the New York punk scene in 1977 and only became widely popular following the release of 'Heart of Glass' in January 1979. 

 

But what I know to be impossible is for Holly to possess a poster featuring Pennie Smith's photo of Clash bassist Paul Simonon smashing his guitar on stage at the Palladium (NYC), as the picture - which famously features on the sleeve of London Calling - was taken on 20 September, 1979.

 

Do any of these things matter? 

 

Not really - though they might, I suppose, to film buffs who get excited by spotting anachronisms and continuity errors, or by cultural historians who take facts and dates very seriously. For me, they simply serve as nice reminders that one is watching a work of creative fiction (a fantasy) and that the past is never (and can never) be accurately recreated in memory or on film.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Quentin Tarantino - a director who knows a fine pair of female feet when he sees them - would later cast Margaret Qualley as Manson Family member Pussycat in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). In one scene, she stretches out her legs in the front seat of a car driven by Brad Pitt's character (Cliff Booth) and presses her bare feet against the windscreen (or windshield, as our American cousins like to say). 

      Apparently, Qualley was nervous about having to expose her toes on film once more; having trained as a ballet dancer in her youth, her feet had obviously been subject to a fair amount of abuse and she was self-conscious about the way they looked. Fortunately, Tarantino and Pitt persuaded her she had nothing to worry about and the scene was filmed with no regrets: click here.   

[2] Readers who are interested in further anachonisms can visit the IMDb page for The Nice Guys - click here - and then go to the section entitled Goofs. 

To watch the official final trailer for The Nice Guys (2016), 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.

On Self-Esteem and Self-Harm; Selfies and Self-Destruction

Keith Negley: Self-Harm (2019)

keithnegley.com

 

 

I. 

 

Self-harm is an interesting phenomenon: one that the German philosopher Byung-Chul Han relates to the terror of authenticity, i.e., a neoliberal imperative that "intensifies narcissistic self-reference".*

 

For Han, there is a healthy (non-pathological) form of self-love, but narcissism is distinct from it. For one thing, the narcissist is blind to the Other: "The narcissistic subject perceives the world only in shadings of itself" [21].     

 

And that's not good: not only does the world soon becomes boring when everything is the Same, but excessive narcissism has a profoundly damaging effect on the individual. Ultimately, we need other people to make us feel good about ourselves. 

 

For the Other is a gratifying authority. Without such a figure to love, praise, acknowledge and appreciate us, bang goes our self-esteem.

 

And that's not good either. For according to Han, lack of self-esteem underlies self-harm and the act - I almost wrote art - of cutting oneself with a knife, razor, or broken bottle "is not only a ritual of self-punishment for one's own feelings of inadequacy [...] but also a cry for love" [23] 

 

I'm not sure of that last claim, but let's hear the good professor out:

 

"The sense of emptiness is a basic symptom of depression and borderline personality disorder. Borderliners are often unable to feel themselves; only when they cut themselves do they feel anything. For the depressive performance subject, the self is a heavy burden. It is tired of itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outside itself, it becomes absorbed in itself, which paradoxically results in an emptying and erosion of the self. Isolated in its mental enclosure, trapped in itself, it loses any connection to the Other." [23-4]

 

If you deny negative thoughts and feelings any form of expression, they eventually come back to bite you. And yet, of course, the elimination of all negativity is "a hallmark of contemporary society" [24] which is designed to be a safe space, free from all forms of hate speech (in case someone is offended) and all types of conflict (in case someone gets hurt). 

 

But just as sometimes people need to express hateful ideas - not because that's what they really think, but so that they don't have to think such thoughts any longer - so too do they need a degree of conflict in their lives: "It is only from conflicts that stable relationships and identities ensue. A person grows and matures by working through conflict." [24] 

 

Deny people - particularly young people - the chance to express their anger and release their rage and it's little wonder they end up cutting their arms, for example. 

 

For such an act "quickly releases accumulated destructive tension" [24] - not to mention endorphins - so there's undoubtedly a pleasurable aspect involved (an aspect often overlooked or downplayed by those who are worried that by admitting such they might make self-harm seem attractive).     

   

I think where Byung-Chul Han gets more interesting, is when he attempts to relate self-harm first to the taking of selfies and then, perhaps more controversially, to the practice of suicide bombing ...

 

 

II.  

 

Some readers might recall that I wrote a post on selfies and the rise of the look generation way back in October 2013 [click here], in which I argued against those commentators who greet every development to do with technology, sex, and the play of images with moral hysteria. 

 

And I still have no wish to add my voice to those that suggest the selfie is evidence of either the empty narcissism of today's youth, or a sign that they have been pornified and suffer from low self-esteem - all of which puts me at odds with Byung-Chul Han, who writes:

 

"The addiction to selfies also has little to do with self-love. It is nothing other than the idle motion of the lonely subject. Faced with one's inner emptiness, one vainly attempts to produce oneself. The emptiness merely reproduces itself. Selfies are the self in empty forms; selfie addiction heightens the feeling of emptiness. It results not from self-love, but from narcissistic self-reference. Selfies are pretty, smooth surfaces of an empty, insecure self. To escape this torturous emptiness today, one reaches either for the razorblade or the smarthphone. Selfies are smooth surfaces that hide the empty self for a short while. But if one turns them over one discovers their other side, covered in wounds and bleeding. Wounds are the flipsides of selfies." [24-5]

      

Apart from not sharing Han's horror of the selfie, a further problem I have with this is that, as a sex pistol, I find inner emptiness aesthetically pleasing rather than torturous and vacancy simply isn't something I care about. 

 

Many young punks - including most famously Sid Vicious - engaged in self-harm as an act of provocation; they stuck safety pins through their lips and burnt their arms with cigarettes to outrage and signal their nonconformity, not because they wished to deal with negative emotions, communicate distress, or cry out for love. It also facilitated bonding with other like-minded individuals (i.e. enforced group identity).   

 

Anyhoo, returning to Han's text, he now asks a series of questions:

"Could suicide attacks be perverse attempts to feel oneself, to restore a destroyed self-esteem, to bomb or shoot away the burden of emptiness? Could one compare the psychology of terror to that of the selfie and self-harm, which also act against the empty ego? Might terrorists have the same psychological profile as the adolescents profile as the adolescents who harm themselves, who turn their aggression towards themselves?" [25]

 

I suppose they could; I suppose they might. But I don't think so. But, again, let's allow Han to speak for himself (starting with a dubious gender claim):

 

"Unlike girls, boys are known to direct their aggression outwards, against others. The suicide attack would then be a paradoxical act in which auto-aggression and aggression towards others, self-production and self-destruction, become one: a higher-order aggression that is simultaneously imagined as the ultimate selfie. The push of the button that sets off the bomb is like the push of the camera button. Terrorists inhabit the imaginary because reality [...] denies them any gratification. Thus they invoke God as an imaginary gratifying authority, and can also be sure that their photograph will be all over the media like a form of selfie directly after the deed. The terrorist is a narcissist with an explosive belt that makes those who wear it especially authentic." [25-6]  

 

Again, I find this problematic in parts, but that's an important last line that reminds one not only of the need to curb enthusiasm, but be wary also of those who pride themselves on their authenticity and the truthfulness of their values.   

 

  

* Byung-Chul Han, The Expulsion of the Other, trans. Wieland Hoban, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 19. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.