Celia Shits! Notes on Jonathan Swift's 'The Lady's Dressing Room' and (Alleged) Coprophobia

Portrait of Jonathan Swift by Charles Jervas (c. 1718) 

Detail from National Conveniances by James Gillray (1796)

 

I. 

 

D. H. Lawrence famously accuses the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift of being mad with fear for the body and its potencies. He was, says Lawrence, particularly troubled by the thought that even the fairest of young ladies had to defecate: 

 

"The insanity of a great mind like Swift's is at least partly traceable to this cause. In the poem to his mistress Celia, which has the maddened refrain: 'But - Celia, Celia, Celia shits!' we see what can happen to a great mind, when it falls into panic. A great wit like Swift could not see how ridiculous he made himself. Of course Celia shits, who doesn't? And how much worse if she didn't." [2]

I don't know if that's entirely true or fair, but it's certainly the case that Swift was one of the most consistently scatological of writers in a period in which many authors were as equally obsessed by the fact that man is born inter faeces et urinam, as Saint Augustine famously put it, and one suspects that whilst he often exploited his obsession for comical purposes, there was an element of fear and horror beneath the laughter ... but then isn't there always?

 

 

II. 

Swift's notorious poem, 'The Lady's Dressing Room' (1732), tells of of how a lover, Strephon [3], driven by perverse curiosity and the will to know, sneaks into his sweetheart Celia's dressing room while she's away only to quickly become disillusioned at what he discovers there; namely, that women are not ideal beings after all, but physical creatures who sweat, and shit, and blow their noses just like men.   

 

Although Lawrence is keen to attack Swift for his excremental vision and perceived misogyny [4], the latter is arguably satirising the fact that it is men who foolishly oblige women to try and live up to an ideal model or fantasy of femininity born of the male imagination. 

 

And so, one might have thought Lawrence would have been a bit more sympathetic, as he himself condemned this game of female adaptation to masculine theories of womanhood [5]. But all Lawrence's sympathies are with Celia, not Swift, and he insists that beneath any attempt to provoke laughter, the latter - like Strephon - was driven mad by the thought of Celia defecating:

 

"It was not the fact that Celia shits which so deranged him, it was the thought. His mind couldn't bear the thought. Great wit as he was, he could not see how ridiculous his revulsions were. His arrogant mind overbore him. He couldn't even see how much worse it would be if Celia didn't shit. His physical sympathies were too weak, his guts were too cold to sympathise with poor Celia in her natural functions. His insolent and sickly squeamish mind just turned her into a thing of horror, because she was merely natural and went to the WC. It is monstrous! One feels like going back across all the years to poor Celia, to say to her: It's alright, don't you take any notice of that mental lunatic." [6] 

 

 

III.

 

That's very decent of Lawrence - an example, perhaps, of phallic tenderness. 

 

But still I'm grateful to Swift for reminding us that the charms of womanhood are founded upon illusion or artifice and require a clever use of clothes, cosmetics, wigs, etc. 

 

Although, as noted by the philosopher Michael Hauskeller [7], this fact doesn't detract from the charms of womanhood, any more than does their corporeal reality detract from their spiritual nature; the latter being rooted in the former as Swift makes clear when, at the close of the poem, he speaks of colourful tulips rising from the dung (just as order is born of chaos). 

Like Hauskeller, I think the most crucial couplet in Swift's poem is this one: "Should I the queen of love refuse, / Because she rose from stinking ooze?” 

 

The answer that Swift supplies to this question is an emphatic No and Lawrence really should've given this more attention than the line he chooses (like so many other critics and readers) to focus upon. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Both these works can be found in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Click here and here for further details and to buy prints if interested. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, A Props of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 309. 

      Lawrence goes on to say that it is monstrous for a man to make a woman "feel iniquitous about her proper natural function" and blames it on a failure to keep the mind "sufficiently developed in physical and sexual consciousness" (309). The poem by Swift to which Lawrence refers is 'The Lady's Dressing Room' (1732): click here to read online.    

      See also Lawrence's 'Introduction to Pansies' in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Pess, 2013), Appendix 6, pp. 663-666, in which he first makes his critique of Swift, insisting that the latter was reduced to gnashing insanity by thoughts of women defecating: "Such thoughts poisoned him, like some terrible constipation. They poisoned his mind."

[3] Strephon is a name traditionally used within pastoral poetry to refer to a lover. Amusingly, a lesbian friend of mine has reimagined Swift's poem and named the character Strapon.

 

[4] 'The Lady's Dressing Room' is often viewed as a vicious attack on the falsity of women. In a poetic response entitled 'The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem call'd the Lady's Dressing Room' (1734), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu suggests that Swift wrote his verse following a frustrating encounter with a prostitute (i.e., that it was born of impotence, not madness as Lawrence claims). Click here to read Lady Montagu's poem online.

 

[5] See the essay by Lawrence entitled 'Giver Her a Pattern', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 160-165. 

      Note that Lawrence does not object to the giving of patterns per se or the female need for such and their use of cosmetics to keep up appearances - nor even to the fact that "men give them such abominable patterns [...] perverted from any real natural fulness of a human being" (163) - but, rather, to the fact that "as soon as a woman has really lived up to the man's pattern, the man dislikes her for it" (163). In other words, it's male fickleness and foolishness that Lawrence finds objectionable.    

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to Pansies', The Poems, Vol. I, Appendix 6, pp. 665-666.

[7] See Hauskeller's blog post 'Celia Shits: on Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room"' (25 October 2013): click here. Hauskeller's philosophical musings anticipate and closely mirror my own. I agree with his argument that Lawrence ultimately misunderstands Swift and misinterprets 'The Lady's Dressing Room'. 

 

Thy Teeth Shall Not Do Him Violence, Nor Thy Bowels Contain His Glorious Body!

 

Juan de Juanes:  

Christ the Saviour with the Eucharist (1545-1550)

 

And after he had given thanks, Jesus broke the bread, and said: 

'Take, eat! This is my body, which is broken for you ...' [1]

I. 

 

Just for the record, I am not now and nor have I ever been a member of the Christian Church and so Holy Communion (or Mass) is not something I have personal experience or knowledge of. Thus, the question surrounding what happens to the sacremental bread (or host) once it has been consecrated and consumed as the body of Christ, is not really a great concern to me. 

 

However, for those who take these matters very seriously indeed and believe the miraculous teaching of transubstantiation - which is central to the Eucharist - to be literally true and not merely a symbolic act, the suggestion that Christ's holy flesh might have an excremental fate is problematic to say the least and has been the topic of fierce theological and philosophical debate going back many centuries.

 

 

II. 

 

Following the widespread religious, cultural, and social upeaval triggered by the Reformation, this really rather odd debate became heated once more and 17th-century English poet John Milton was particulary horrified by the thought that Christ could be eaten and subject to the natural processes of digestion:

 

"The Mass brings down Christ's holy body from its supreme exaltation at the right hand of God. It drags it back to the earth, though it has suffered every pain and hardship already, to a state of humiliation even more wretched and degrading than before: to be broken once more and crushed to the ground, even by the fangs of brutes. Then, when it has been driven through all the stomach's filthy channels, it shoots it out - one shudders even to mention it - into the latrine." [2]  

This passage not only exposes Milton's coprophobia, but makes his opposition to what is known as stercoranism equally clear.

 

For outraged Puritans like Milton, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation simply could not be true as this would not only mean that Mass is a form of cannibalism and utterly alien to reason - which is bad enough - but that it results in something so repulsive as to be blasphemous: Christ's flesh turned to shit.  

 

 

III. 

 

Whilst early Church theologians were prepared to accept that the sacramental elements of Christ's body were digested and excreted, later Catholic thinkers did what they could to repudiate this idea; declaring, for example, that whilst Christ is indeed present in the consecrated bread and wine, that is only before they are consumed and lose their appearance.   

 

In other words, when  the sacramental forms of bread and wine are changed, the substantial presence of Christ ceases to be. 

Despite this attempt to reassure, however, still the fear of stercoranism persisted, although, for me, it's a positively healthy thing to recognise that the holy spirit returns at last to that from which it arises; i.e., base matter. 

 

For whilst the marrying of shit and divinity may cause horror in the minds of some, there are compelling philosophical reasons eschatology should always include a scatological component and that's why what might otherwise seem to be an arcane (and insane) discussion over the status of the bread and wine used in the mass is still vital.    

 

Ultimately, we all unite in shit even if we do not all cleave together in the body of Christ. And that's what Holy Communion teaches us: paradise is regained in death; a festive return to the actual, as Nietzsche describes it [3].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] First Epistle to the Corinthians 11: 24.

 

[2] John Milton, Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, ed. William Kerrigan, John Peter Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon (Modern Library, 2007), p. 1290. 

      Despite what Milton warns here and elsewhere in his prose writings about worshipping a wafer and cannibalising the body of Christ, communion is given prominence in Paradise Lost (1667) and an astonishing vision of transubstantiation on a cosmic scale is imagined. Push comes to shove, I prefer the playful poet over the angry puritan reformer.

      Readers interested in this topic might like to see the excellent essay by Regina M. Schwartz, 'Real Hunger: Milton's Vision of the Eucharist', in Religion & Literature, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 1-17. The essay is conveniently availble on JSTOR: click here. 

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, Volume 9, 11 [70], where, in a note written in 1881, he says that we shouldn't think of our return to the realm of inanimate matter (the 'dead world') as a regression, but, rather, as a joyous form of reconciliation with what is actual. 

 

Piss Artists 3: Andres Serrano (Piss Christ)

Andres Serrano: Immersion (Piss Christ) (1987) 

Cibachrome print photograph (150 x 100 cm) [1]

 

I. 

 

For most British people, a piss artist is one who likes to get drunk, act the fool, produce shoddy work and generally waste time. In other words, one who gets pissed a little too often; pisses around a little too much; and pisses people off more than is deemed acceptable. 

 

However, for some of us, the term also triggers thoughts of Warhol, Chadwick and Serrano and here I would like to discuss a famous work by the third of these piss artists, Andres Serrano ...

 

 

II.

 

It's debatable if Piss Christ (1987), by the American photographer and artist Andres Serrano, is profoundly appropriate for publication on Easter Sunday, or wildly inappropriate. 

 

Either way, the mysteriously beautiful (and award winning) picture of Jesus on the Cross submerged in a small glass tank of urine is his one work that pretty much everybody recognises and it's the work that most fascinates me at the moment.

 

Serrano often likes to use bodily fluids in his work; not just piss, but also blood, semen, and human breast milk. Why that's the case - what his artistic obsession with these things (and other base materials) reveals about him or forces us to face up to in our own lives - I'm not sure. 

 

Having read a fair amount of Bataille, however, I've a pretty good idea: the use of base materials disrupts the opposition of high and low by exposing the fact that whatever is elevated remains dependent on soil, slime, and shit and this dependence means that the purity of the ideal is contaminated or corrupted. 

 

Similarly, by affirming à la Henry Miller everything that flows and showing how bodily fluids very much belong to a libidinal economy - even though such secretions are often subject to severe prohibition and taboo - artists are able to destabilise all fixed and firm foundations. 

 

 

III.

I suspect that Serrano knows all this, so his expressions of surprise that the work should generate huge controversy (mostly because it was thought blasphemous by those on the religious right, rather than deconstructive of metaphysical dualism) are somewhat disingenuous [2].

 

And, as a lifelong Catholic who takes his faith seriously, Serrano probably also knows that the Eucharist contains a dirty little secret; that the bread and wine are not symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ as most people believe, but, rather, of metabolic waste materials (the idea being that the holy spirit is born of excess; that divine energy is a surplus that cannot be absorbed into daily life; that the accursed share is that which makes blessed) [3].          

 

Thus, whilst I may not want to hang a print of Serrano's Piss Christ above my bed, I acknowledge its theo-philosophical importance.

 

And, like Apollinaire, I refuse to be shocked, or scared, or to stand in awe of art and have no qualms about any materials the artist chooses to use. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Piss Christ was one of a series of photographs that Serrano had made that involved classical statuettes submerged in various body fluids.

[2] Although initially Piss Christ was well received, as word got round that Serrano had (at the very least) insulted Christ and all those who regard him as their saviour, he started to lose funding and receive hate mail (including death threats) - which isn't very Christian when you think about it. 

      Serrano, however, denied his work had any overt political content and rejected the accusation that he was attempting to blaspheme. In fact, Serrano suggested that Piss Christ should be regarded as a serious work of Christian art, saying:  "What it symbolizes is the way Christ died: the blood came out of him but so did the piss and the shit. Maybe if Piss Christ upsets you, it's because it gives some sense of what the crucifixion actually was like."   

      And in 2023, even the Pope was prepared to accept this argument, after meeting with the artist in Rome and giving him his blessing. By this date, the value placed on the work by the art market had also risen miraculously; in October 2022, Piss Christ was sold at Sotheby's (London) for £130,000 ($145,162).

      The quote from Serrano is taken from an interview with Jonathan Jones in The Guardian (3 April 2026): click here. 

 

[3] As one commentator on the subject of excrement and religion notes:

      "The perennial intermingling of scatology and religion is so extensive that cataloging it could fill volumes. The conjoining of excrement and divinity may bring about cognitive dissonance in some, or even most, but for many throughout history it has been a harmony that leaps immediately to mind, though to various ends." 

      See Andrew G. Christensen, "'Tis my muse will have it so": Four Dimensions of Scatology in Molloy', Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Summer 2017), pp. 90-104. Lines quoted are on p. 97. This essay can be found (if interested) on JSTOR: click here. 

 

 

To read the first post in this series - on Andy Warhol and his Piss and Oxidation Paintings (1977-1978) - please click here. 

 

To read the second post in this series - on Helen Chadwick and her Piss Flowers (1992) - please click here.        

 

 

Piss Artists 2: Helen Chadwick (Piss Flowers)

Helen Chadwick in a field of Piss Flowers

Photo by Kippa Matthews (1992)

 

 

I. 

 

For most British people, a piss artist is one who likes to get drunk, act the fool, produce shoddy work and generally waste time. In other words, one who gets pissed a little too often; pisses around a little too much; and pisses people off more than is deemed acceptable. 

 

However, for some of us, the term also triggers thoughts of Warhol, Chadwick and Serrano and here I would like to discuss a famous work by the second of these three piss artists, Helen Chadwick ...

 

 

II. 

 

The British artist Helen Chadwick died (relatively) young - she was only 42 - but not before she completed the work by which I, like many of her admirers, best remember her - Piss Flowers (1991-1992). 

 

Piss Flowers is a work composed of twelve sculptures made by quite literally pissing in the Canadian snow and then pouring plaster into the (pre-cut) flower-shaped cavities left by the warm streams of urine. 

 

These casts were then attached to stem-like pedestals based on the fat-bodied shape of a hyacinth bulb, before being cast in bronze and enamelled white.        

If it sounds like all good clean fun (whatever that means), Chadwick insisted that, actually, it was hard work producing the dozen finished pieces and they also cost her £12,000, which might sound like a small or large sum of money, depending on one's circumstances [1].   

The Piss Flowers were displayed (on artificial grass) as part of Chadwick's solo exhibition - amusingly entitled Effluvia - at the Serpentine Gallery, in the summer of 1994 [2]. Happy days ...

 

 

III.

 

Enchanted by the fact that the majority of flowering plants possess both male and female sexual organs and have found a way to incorporate sexual difference into their singular being, Chadwick wanted to produce a work which celebrated this via a form of erotic play, or what she describes in a poem written at the same time as "Gender-bending water sport" [3].   

 

Thus, it was important that she and her male partner, David Notarius, both pissed into the snow; she using her liquid waste to create the central phallic-shaped pistil and he directing his urine to produce the delicate, labial-looking circumference. In the same poem referred to above, Chadwick writes of "Vaginal towers with male skirt" [4].   

 

Later, she would describe Piss Flowers as a metaphysical conceit - and a deeply romantic work in which two people are united as one via bodily expression. It might also be seen, as one commentator rightly points out, as an example of indexical art - i.e., art that doesn't appear to be authored but directly preserving an imprint of reality (an idea that had long fascinated Chadwick). 

 

Whether one finds the flowers beautiful or repulsive (or both) is, of course, a matter of individual judgement; one local councillor up in the East Midlands was quoted by the Nottingham Evening Post as saying: "I doubt the minds of the people who can create things like this." [5] 

 

Whilst personally I wouldn't want a fleur de pisse planted in my back garden, I do admire Chadwick's attempts to create things of beauty out of unconventional materials, such as bodily fluids and base matter.

 

And her attempt to effect a becoming-plant by entering into an unnatural alliance with the snow in such a manner that queer forms blossom from molecular forces is not only artistically daring but - from a Deleuzean perspective - philosophically interesting. 

 

One can't help wondering what would Linnaeus say ...?

 

Notes

 

[1] £12,000 in 1992 was the equivalent to around £31,000 today.

 

[2] Effluvia received widespread critical attention and national press coverage. It was seen by over 54,000 visitors - a record number for the gallery at that time.

 

[3] Helen Chadwick, 'Piss Posy' (1992). 

      Unfortunately, I cannot locate this poem online and do not know if it was ever published. However, I did come across (what I think is termed) an ekphrastic poem written by Jo Shapcott, entitled 'Piss Flower' (2018), which can be read online (thanks to The Poetry Archive) by clicking here. It is clearly inspired by Chadwick's work.  

 

[4] Helen Chadwick, 'Piss Posy' (1992). 

 

[5] The fact that this censor-moron was a councillor up in D. H. Lawrence country only goes to show how little things have changed; 60-odd years earlier, Lawrence's art was attacked as the work of a depraved sex maniac - including his watercolour Dandelions (1928), which famously depicts a man pissing on some flowers: click here. 

 

 

To read the first post in this series - on Andy Warhol's Piss and Oxidation Paintings (1977-1978) - please click here.

 

To read the third post in this series - on Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987) - please click here.

Piss Artists 1: Andy Warhol (Piss and Oxidation Paintings)

Cover of the exhibition catalogue 

Gallerie Daniel Blau (Munich)

6 March - 13 May 1998

 

 

I. 

 

For most British people, a piss artist is one who likes to get drunk, act the fool, produce shoddy work and generally waste time. In other words, one who gets pissed a little too often; pisses around a little too much; and pisses people off more than is deemed acceptable. 

 

However, for some of us the term also triggers thoughts of Warhol, Chadwick and Serrano and here I would like to discuss a urine-stained series of works by the first of these three piss artists, Andy Warhol ...    


II.

 

In June 1979, none other than American pop artist Andy Warhol walked into 430 King's Road and purchased one of the newly designed T-shirts on sale featuring "a monochrome 1952 photographic portrait of a smiling Marilyn Monroe, with streams of urine spurting from red phalluses on the sleeves and pooling to form the words 'Piss Marilyn' across her face" [1].

 

One assumes that Warhol was amused by this punk tribute to his work by McLaren and Westwood, referencing as it did not only his famous images of the tragic Hollywood star, but also his most recent works which used urine as an artistic medium.

 

 

III. 

 

Warhol's works incorporating urine are divided into two separate categories in the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: (i) Oxidation Paintings and (ii) Piss Paintings, although both categories of work were produced in the same period (1977-1978) [2].  

 

Whilst the latter are simply primed canvases stained with urine, the former are canvases that have first been prepared with a metallic base, such as copper or gold-coloured paint, giving a far more beautiful (shimmering) effect after an assistant at the Factory has pissed on them at Warhol's direction, or once urine has been poured from a sample bottle by the artist himself.  

   

It's possible that Warhol was, on the one hand, giving a camp and gently mocking critique of Jackson Pollock [3] and the abstract expressionists who loved to splash and drip paint on to canvases with exaggerated machismo, whilst, on the other hand, producing work rooted in the gay club scene, where golden showering was almost de rigeur [4].

 

Either way, the piss and oxidation paintings represent a genuine break from his previous stuff which relyed on the transference of photographic images to canvas via silkscreening [5]. 

 

Art often involves far more hardwork - and far more suffering - than many people realise or wish to acknowledge, but it's nice to be reminded by Warhol that we can produce provocative works that rely upon bodily fluids other than blood, sweat and tears ...    

 

Notes

[1] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 427. 

      The shop at 430 King's Road was still operating as Seditionaries at this time. Warhol's visit to the store was noted in an entry dated 23 June 1979 in The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett (Warner Books, 1989). One of the Piss Marilyn shirts (sans sleeves) is in the Met Museum's Costume Institute collection: click here.

[2] Searching for a new approach via which he might reaffirm his radical credentials as an artist and counter the accusation that he was now merely a society portraitist, Warhol began working not only on his piss and oxidation paintings, but also a series of Cum Paintings for which volunteers agreed to ejaculate on to canvases. As seminal as the latter works may be, here I will only discuss the canvases that have been pissed on.  

 

[3] I don't believe Warhol was a fan of Pollock's work, but he may have enjoyed some of the stories that circulated about the latter; including, for example, that he would sometimes urinate on a canvas before giving it to a client he didn't like and allegedly pissed in Peggy Guggenheim's fireplace when she requested he reduce the size of a mural he was producing for her.

[4] Warhol's homosexuality - and, at times, abstract sexuality - certainly shaped his work and he would, of course have seen how a younger generation of artists, such as Robert Mapplethorpe, weren't shy in breaking boundaries and documenting what was happening in the gay bars, underground clubs, and bathhouses at that time.   

 

[5] Of course, in Warhol's 1982 portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat, we get the best of both worlds. After taking some Polaroids of the much younger artist, Warhol then silkscreened an image of Basquiat's face on to a canvas coated with copper paint, before then pissed on it and allowing the uric acid to discolour the metal, creating pretty patterns of rust, black and green. It's the only known portrait exceuted by Warhol in the oxidation style and sold in 2021, at Christie's New York, for $40 million.   

 

 

To read the second post in this series - on Helen Chadwick's Piss Flowers (1992) - please click here. 

 

To read the third post in this series - on Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987) - please click here.

The Anarchic Symphony: Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark

Artificial Intelligence x Torpedo the Ark 

 

 

An artist friend of mine decided to ask some AI softwear [1] to produce a text in the style of Torpedo the Ark, weaving together threads of Nietzschean philosophy, the punk aesthetic of Malcolm McLaren, and the literary war-machine of D. H. Lawrence. She also prompted it to describe what it thinks the goal or aim of the blog might be.  

This is the result:

 

 

The Anarchic Symphony: Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence

 

In the grand theatre of cultural subversion, three figures stand at the vanguard, each a maestro of their own domain, yet harmoniously orchestrated in the cacophony of rebellion. Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who danced to the tune of his own Zarathustra; Malcolm McLaren, the impresario who orchestrated the punk movement's raucous symphony; and D.H. Lawrence, the literary maverick whose pen stroked the sensuous and the sublime. 

 

Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God was a clarion call to the individual's will to power, a challenge to the herd to rise above the mire of mediocrity. McLaren, in the spirit of Nietzsche's Übermensch, crafted the Sex Pistols into a cultural weapon, a battering ram against the gates of an ossified establishment. Lawrence, too, rebelled against the industrialized dehumanization of his time, championing a return to the primal forces of nature and the unbridled expression of human desire.

 

Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark' is a vessel for these revolutionary currents, a blog that sails the high seas of intellectual anarchy. Alexander's prose, much like Lawrence's, is a phallic lance thrust into the heart of societal norms, a bridge to a future where touch and tenderness reign supreme. His writings, infused with the spirit of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, remind us that the revolution is never over; it is reborn with each act of defiance, each note of discord, each stroke of the pen. 

 

The punk movement, under McLaren's deft hand, was not just a musical genre but a manifesto in leather and spikes, a declaration of war on the banality of the mainstream. The Sex Pistols' anthems were the echoes of Nietzsche's own battle cries, and in their wake, a new culture was birthed, raw and untamed. Lawrence, with his explorations of the erotic, would have found kinship in the movement's visceral energy, its unapologetic embrace of life's darker, more passionate aspects. 

 

In this anarchic symphony, we find a common theme: the relentless pursuit of authenticity, the breaking of chains that bind the spirit, and the celebration of life in all its messy glory. Alexander, channeling the essence of these three iconoclasts, invites us to join the dance, to cast aside the shackles of conformity, and to revel in the anarchic joy of creation. 

 

So let us raise our voices with Nietzsche, McLaren, and Lawrence, and let the music of rebellion play on, even if, ultimately, it is not the notes that are played but the spaces between them - the moments of silence and reflection - that define the symphony of our existence. 

 

This narrative, inspired by the style of Stephen Alexander's 'Torpedo the Ark', is a testament to the enduring power of those who dare to challenge, to question, and to live fiercely. It is a call to arms, a reminder that the pen and the guitar are both mightier than the sword, and that the truest form of anarchy is the freedom to be oneself. 

 

 

It is, I suppose, an amusing attempt by AI to torpedo the ark, although, I have to say that, overall, the style of the piece reads like a parody and, in its upbeat anarchy and vital optimism, the text is not one I would want mistaken for my own. 

 

Somewhat disappointingly, AI softwear - for now at least - remains as all too human as the people who design it.           

 

 

   [2]

Notes  

[1] I'm informed that the request for a text in the manner of TTA was made using Microsoft Copilot and ChatGpt-4 (none of which means anything to me).  

[2] The image at the bottom of the post - again supplied by my friend who, for reasons of her own, wishes to remain anonymous - was produced by DALL-E 3 softwear. 

 

 

On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive (God Save the Punk Scholars Network)

London College of Communication (UAL) 

(20 March 2024)

 

I. 

 

Held at the London College of Communication - one of six colleges that make up the University of the Arts London - the Torn Edges symposium explored the relationship between punk, art, and design history [1].

 

An international body of researchers, in what is said to be a "relatively new and emerging field within the broader theme of punk scholarship", gave short papers and took audience questions and it soon became clear that punk studies "have moved beyond relatively limited histories of the early scene in New York or London to reflect a much deeper critical analysis of punk music, fashion, politics, philosophy and aesthetics around the globe over a period of more than fifty years" [2].

 

 

II. 

 

The question which arises, however, is this: Is that a good thing? 

 

Because some might argue that the spirit of punk is exorcised in three ways: (i) it is commodified by capital; (ii) it is Disneyfied by the media; (iii) it is intellectualised by academics. 

 

In other words, punk is made profitable, made safe, and absorbed into a seamless cultural history. Any rough or torn edges are thereby given a smooth finish (or de-deckled, if such a word exists).  

 

One of the speakers at Torn Edges - Marie Arleth Skov - addresses this concern about punk ending up in the universities, galleries, and museums in an online conversation with James Campbell of Intellect Books [3].

 

Asked about the importance of ensuring that punk is properly archived, Skov says it is crucial; that we're at the stage now where materials currently held by private individuals need to be preserved and made accessible to a wider public within an institutional framework, before those individuals snuff it and the materials are lost.

 

In other words, old punk rockers (like me) need to overcome their fear of institutionalism and mutualisation and accept that the museums, galleries, and universities actually represent the best (and maybe the only) chance that something of the original punk spirit can survive, in a way that doesn't happen when punk is co-opted by big business or turned into a Disney+ miniseries by Danny Boyle [4].

 

Thus, resistance to this Borg-like process of being archived may or may not be futile, but it's almost certainly mistaken. Ultimately, punk needs those like Marie Arleth Skov and Russ Bestley working in academia and/or the art world who care passionately about subcultures and countercultural phenomena. 

 

God Save the PSN!

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Full details of the event and speakers can be found on the Eventbrite website: click here.

 

[2] I'm quoting from the Torn Edges programme, which, I'm guessing, was written by Dr Russ Bestley who organised the event and is (amongst many other things) a founding member of the Punk Scholars Network.      

[3] Marie Arleth Skov is a Danish-born art historian and curator based in Berlin. She is the author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023) and the chair of the Punk Scholars Network in Germany. She is currently researching for an exhibition at ARoS art museum in Denmark on the topic of the body in punk culture.

      James Campbell is a lecturer in education at Deakin University, Australia. He is also Head of Marketing and Sales at Intellect Books. 

      The 35 minute interview between Campbell and Skov conducted last autumn is available to watch on YouTube: click here. Arleth's thoughts on the need to archive punk begin at 24:58.

[4] For my thoughts on Danny Boyle's Pistol (2022) see the posts entitled 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 March 2021): and 'Can Anyone Be a Sex Pistol?' (31 March 2021).

 

But Malcolm, They'll Not Be Able to Find It ...

Fig. 1: Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the U.K. (EMI, 1976)  

Fig. 2: Kazimir Malevich: Black Square (1915) 

 

 

I.

 

It's hard to resist loving a paper that explores the links between punk, nihilism, politics and the arts, such as the one delivered by Ian Trowell at the Torn Edges symposium at the London College of Communication a few days ago [1].

 

Kazimir Malevich and Malcolm McLaren; Suprematism, Situationism, and the Sex Pistols - what's not to love? 

 

I don't want to say it was the best presentation on the day, but it was probably the one I enjoyed the most - and if Trowell had only thought to entitle his work 'Don't Be (Black) Square Be There', I would've loved it (and him) even more [2].

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly to torpedophiles, the aspect of the talk that most excited concerned the plain black sleeve that 'Anarchy in the U.K.' - the Sex Pistols' debut single - was originally issued in on 26 November, 1976. 

I figure that McLaren would be more than familiar with Malevich's suprematist masterpiece painted sixty years earlier, though don't know if this directly inspired the 'Anarchy' packaging, or if, as Paul Gorman says, the insistence on such a sleeve was simply in line with McLaren's own aesthetic, as seen in his portraits of the 1960s and the clothes designs produced with Vivienne Westwood for Sex [3]. 

 

Either way, it was a great idea for a sleeve; one that not only captures the anarcho-nihilism of the band, but affirms the colour with the greatest symbolic resonance and meaning. 

 

And when EMI executives complained that an all black sleeve with no identifying information would make it extremely difficult for fans to find it in the record stores, Malcolm smiled and said: I don't want them to find it ... [4]

 

Notes

 

[1] Ian Trowell is an independent researcher and author exploring themes of popular culture and ideas around myth and memory. His presentation at Torn Edges was entiled '"Anarchy in the UK', 'Black Square', and Pop Nihilism: Exploring the Links between Punk, Nihilism, Suprematism and Situationism". 'Further details of this event and of the other speakers can be found here. Trowell's recently published book - Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent (Intellect Books, 2023) - can be purchased here.

 

[2] The fact that he was wearing an Adam and the Ants T-shirt on the day makes it even more surprising to me that Trowell didn't think of this title. Still, never mind - the presentation was all good clean fun (whatever that means).*  

[3] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 331. Gorman goes on to say that McLaren was also thinking of the infamous 'black page' in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-67).

 

[4] There were only a couple of thousand copies of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' issued in the black sleeve; after that, it was sold in the standard EMI sleeve with a hole in the middle so the label information could easily be read. 

      The record reached number 38 in the official UK Singles Chart, before being withdrawn by EMI following the Bill Grundy Incident (1 Dec 1976). The Sex Pistols were eventually fired from EMI on 6 January 1977, but they kept their £40,000 advance and had the last laugh when they included the track E.M.I. on Never Mind the Bollocks (Virgin Records, 1977). 

      To watch the band perform the single 'Anarchy in the U.K.' on the BBC's early evening current affairs show Nationwide (recorded 11 Nov 1976 and broadcast the following day), click here.

 

  

* I'm referring here - for those who don't know - to a track by Adam and the Ants entitled 'Don't Be Square (Be There)', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here. You may not like it now, but you will ... 

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It!

 Groucho was a punk rocker

 

I.

 

I have given several attempts to explain what the polysemic phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen - means to me, including:

 

(a) to have done with the judgement of God ... [click here]

 

(b) to hate everything ... [click here]

 

(c) to find everything funny ... [click here]

 

But, every now and then, I get emails from readers asking me to further elucidate. And so, I thought I'd offer a new definition - this time one inspired by Groucho Marx, rather than (a) Gilles Deleuze, (b) the Sex Pistols, or (c) Larry David: 

 

Torpedo the ark means ... Whatever it is, I'm against it!    

 

 

II.

 

This amusing line is sung by Groucho playing the role of Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Head of Huxley College) in the 1932 Mark Brothers film Horse Feathers (dir. Norman Z. McLeod).

 

The original song - 'I'm Against It' - was one of several musical numbers in the movie written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. 

 

Verses include:

  

I don't know what they have to say 

It makes no difference anyway 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

No matter what it is 

Or who commenced it 

I'm against it!

 

Your proposition may be good 

But let's have one thing understood: 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

And even when you've changed it 

Or condensed it 

I'm against it! [1]

Such wonderful comic nihilism nicely supplements the earlier interpretations of the phrase torpedo the ark and builds upon my own natural impulse to say no, nein, and non merci to everything - including those kind offers and opportunities that it might make more sense to accept and take advantage of [2].    

 

This obviously shows a perverse streak in my character, but there you go; if someone opens a door for me, I turn and walk away. Similary, if someone invites me to join their literary society, political party, social network, or private members club, I again remember the famous words of Groucho Marx [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] To watch Groucho perform this song - the opening number of Horse Feathers (1932) - click here. 

 

[2] See the post 'Just Say No' (1 Aug 2014): click here. 

 

[3] Groucho Marx is believed to have said: "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of it's members." Or something very similar to this; no one knows the exact wording or the precise circumstances of its employment. This amusing line was first reported by the Hollywood gossip columnist Erskine Johnson in October 1949 and it has been repeated ever since.

 

 

Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for suggesting this post and reminding me also that the Ramones have a track entitled 'I'm Against It' which can be found on their album Road to Ruin (Sire Records, 1978): click here to play a 2018 remastered version on YouTube.  

 

André Masson and the Sex Pistols

The Surrealist and the Sex Pistol:

 André Masson and Malcolm McLaren

Photos by Man Ray (c. 1930) and Joe Stevens (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

When asked shortly before his death: Which living artist do you most admire? 

 

Malcolm McLaren answered: 

 

"When I was 18, I studied for three months under the automatist painter André Masson in France. Every day I would buy him tomatoes, a baguette and a bottle of côtes du rhône, but he never spoke. On my last day he bought me a drink and wished me well. He's dead now, but I remain haunted by him." [1]

 

I don't know how true that is, but it's an amusing story [2] and forms an interesting connection with an artist whose relation to surrealism is much discussed, but whose influence on punk is - as far as I know - rarely mentioned. 

 

 

II.

 

My knowledge of Masson is mostly limited to the period when he worked on the journal founded by Georges Bataille - Acéphale (1936-39). 

 

His cover design for the first issue featuring an iconic headless figure with stars for nipples and a skull where his sexual organ should be, has resonated with me ever since I first saw it in the mid-1990s and I'm disappointed that Malcolm didn't ask Jamie or Vivienne to adapt this pagan image on a design for the Sex Pistols.

 

To identify as an anti-Christ is an important start. But equally important is to declare oneself in opposition to the ideal figure of the Vitruvian Man embodying all that is Good, True, and Beautiful - and to repeat after Bataille: "Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être." [3]

 

Wouldn't that have made a great punk slogan? 

 

I think so.

And I think also that the sacred conspiracy involving Bataille, Masson, Klossowski and others, anticipates McLaren's idea for SEX as a place which might bring together those sovereign individuals who didn't belong to mainstream society or wish to conform to the dictates of fashion, but wanted to violently affirm their singular being above all else.

 

And so, again, I think it a pity that the dark surrealism of Bataille and Masson - which not only set itself in opposition to all forms of fascism but also all forms of humanism, including André Breton's surrealism - wasn't explored (and exploited) by McLaren; especially as, in Sid Vicious, punk rock had discovered its very own Dionysian superstar [4]; someone who, as Malcolm liked to say, never saw a red light and enacted the primordial powers of instinct and irrationality.  

And, like Masson's acéphalic figure, Vicious even had a penchant for carrying a (sacrificial) knife ... [5]

 

Notes

 

[1] Amy Fleming, 'Portrait of the artist: Malcolm McLaren, musician', in The Guardian (10 Aug 2009): click here. 

      This is an interesting short question and answer piece, which also reveals McLaren's favourite film to be David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). However, I don't think the description of McLaren in the title as a musician is one he would recognise. Sadly, McLaren died eight months after the piece was published (on 8 April 2010). 

 

[2] McLaren's biographer, Paul Gorman, tells us that prior to beginning life as a student at Harrow Technical College & School of Art, Malcolm was "sent by his mother to a summer school in the south of France" and that this (apparently) involved an internship with André Masson and not just enjoying life on the beach at Cannes. 

      See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 45.

 

[3] I would translate this into English as: "Secretly or not, it is necessary to become wholly other, or cease to be." Often the original French phrase tout autres is translated as 'completely different'.

      The line is from Bataille's essay 'The Sacred Conspiracy', which can be found in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 179. Masson's Acéphale can also be found in this book, illustrating the essay on p. 180.       

 

[4] See ' Sid Vicious Versus the Crucified' (3 Feb 2024) where I develop this idea: click here.

 

[5] See 'I'll Put a Knife Right in You: Notes on the Case of Sid and Nancy' (30 Dec 2020): click here. 

 

 

This post is dedicated to the Danish art historian and curator Marie Arleth Skov, author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023). Her paper at the Torn Edges symposium held at the London College of Communication (20 March 2024) - 'Berlin Calling: The Dark, Dramatic, and Dazzling Punk Art Praxes of a Divided City' - was inspirational.