In the Village of the Dolls

Ayano Tsukimi with some of her creations

Nagoro, Japan (aka the Village of the Dolls)

 

 

The Japanese city of Nara might be the city of the deer [1], but the little village of Nagoro, located in the Iya valley on Shikoku, the smallest of the four main Japanese islands, is home to an ever-shrinking human population who have been replaced by life-sized dolls made of straw and dressed in old clothes [2] ... 

 

Positioned throughout the village, these effigies have made Nagoro a popular tourist destination, despite being in a remote mountainous region. 

 

Nagoro was never a big place; the villagers never numbered more than a few hundred at most. But now there are just a handful of human inhabitants [3] and over 350 dolls made by Ayano Tsukimi, who moved back to her birthplace from Osaka in 2002, to look after her elderly and recently widowed father.

 

When he died, Ayano made a doll in his likeness (and in memory of him), which she placed in a field near his home. Then she began to make dolls of other deceased family members and former residents, along with some that were born entirely of her imagination. 

 

Soon, other villagers copied her and, before long, there were more dolls than people; including a classroom full of child-sized dolls dressed in school uniforms; a group of dolls waiting at a bus stop for a bus that never arrives; worker-dolls pretending to dig up the road or repair phone lines; and a solitary doll fishing on a riverbank.     

 

Whilst some might find the idea of a doll village creepy in the extreme, others - particularly those with a fetish for dolls - will imagine it a kind of paradise (though I have to say, the dolls seem entirely devoid of erotic allure). 

 

Now in her 70s, one wonders if someone will eventually make a doll of Ms Tsukimi. 

 

And one also can't help thinking that as the population of Japan rapidly shrinks over the next thirty or forty years [4], they will either have to start producing significantly more children or radically rethink their attitude to immigration. 

 

Otherwise they are going to need to manufacture an awful lot more dolls ...

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post dated 10 December 2024: click here. 

 

[2] In Japanese these figures are called kakashi, which usually translates into English as scarecrow, although in this case they were made to combat loneliness and commemorate the dead, rather than deter birds.

 

[3] There are only about two dozen people left in Nagoro and there hasn't been a baby born there for over twenty years.

 

[4] Whilst Japan remains just outside the top ten of most populous countries on earth, it is estimated by the Japanese Health Ministry that the population will decrease from its current level of c. 126 million people to c. 86 million by the year 2060. There are already more than 10,000 ghost towns and deserted villages in Japan.  

 

Never Mind the Nara Deer, Here's the Harold Hill Herd

Young deer seen trotting past a parked car outside my house

(Harold Hill, Essex - 23 Nov, 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

As much as I might like to, I don't suppose I'll ever visit the Japanese city of Nara, where, for many centuries, sika deer have been regarded as sacred animals and natural treasures, protecting the city and and its inhabitants and bringing good fortune. 

Also known as spotted deer, these graceful and medium-sized herbivores are relatively tame and allowed to roam not just in Nara Park, but throughout the city [1]. Citizens, as well as tourists, feed them on specially formulated deer crackers (sika senbei) [2]. 

 

 

II.

 

Still, even without visiting Nara, I often encounter deer on a daily basis - right here on Harold Hill ... [3]

 

Thought to have been introduced to the area by the Neve family - who lived at the Manor Country House, long before the post-War housing estate was built on land they had previously owned - the Harold Hill & Noak Hill deer herd are one of five in the area that have been successfully breeding for many generations.  

 

Although some miserable cunts complain about the deer visiting their gardens and argue that they pose a health and safety risk as well as a nuisance, other residents are delighted that such majestic animals are freely roaming on greens and seen trotting through car parks, or around the local shops.  

 

There are, apparently, 25,000 people living in Harold Hill and only around 400 deer: surely the former can - and should - accommodate such a number (personally, I'd happily rewild large areas of the estate and introduce wolf packs to control the number of deer - and residents).  

 

 

Harold Hill Deer 

Photo by Maria Thanassa

 

   

Notes

 

[1] Nara's deer are given the David Attenborough treatment in a short clip on the BBC website: click here.

 

[2] These rice crackers may be delicious, but, unfortunately, they are not the healthiest option, lacking in fibre and other essential nutrients. Studies have found that many of the Nara deer - particularly those who make the park their home - are malnourished due to their preference for proceessed food rather than grass. 

 

[3] For a BBC News report dated 20 April, 2021 on the deer of Harold Hill, click here.

Cheirophilia: the Hands of Rachel Ashley

Philip Ashley inspecting the delicate white hands 

of his cousin Rachel by candlelight [a] 

 

'There are some women [...] who through no fault of their own impel disaster. 

Whatever they touch, somehow turns to tragedy.' - Nick Kendall [b]

 

 

I. 

 

Jean Baudrillard insists that the slender and lively hands of women are of greater symbolic and seductive beauty than their eyes or hidden sexual organs, and I suspect that Philip Ashley - the naive and inexperienced (possibly unreliable) narrator of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) - may very well agree with this assertion. 

 

For he certainly seems to be partial, shall we say, to the delicate white hands of his older, twice-widowed, half-Italian, very alluring cousin Rachel ... 

 

 

II.

 

From the first time he meets her, with, at that time, hate in his heart for the woman he believes responsible for the death of his beloved guardian, Ambrose, Philip notices her hands clasped in her lap: 

 

"I had never seen hands so small before on an adult person. They were very slender, very narrow, like the hands of someone in a portrait painted by an old master and left unfinished." [80]

 

When Rachel finishes drinking her tea and places her cup and saucer back on the tray, he is once again "aware of her hands, narrow and small and very white" [85], noticing also that she has "two rings, fine stones both of them, on her fingers" [85].

 

So, whilst I'm not saying Philip is a cheirophile or hand fetishist, it's certainly true that when talking to Rachel he finds it hard to retain eye contact and that his gaze does not wander from her face towards her breasts or feet, for example, but almost exclusively to her hands: 

 

"I shifted my gaze from her eyes down to her hands. They were clasped in front of her, small and very still. It was easier to speak somehow if I did not look directly at her, but at her hands." [99]

 

It's true also that he is fascinated by the manner in which the fingers on her right hand would touch and play with the ring on her left hand: "I watched them tighten upon it" [99] and then gradually relax their hold. 

 

No doubt Philip is hoping that Rachel will one day hold something of his own in her hands - and I don't mean his heart. At one point, whilst watching her hands, he imagines himself sitting naked in his chair before her; exposed and all his fantasies revealed unto her. 

 

His childhood friend Louise is not mistaken to say to him: "'How simple it must be for a woman of the world, like Mrs Ashley, to twist a young man like yourself around her finger'" [133].

 

III.

When not clasping her hands in front of her, or playing with her rings, or stroking the head of the dog, Rachel sometimes cups her chin in her hands or puts them to her face in a defensive gesture; at other times she gives Philip a hand to hold or kiss. And, like a true Italian, when she grows animated in conversation she gestures somewhat excessively with her hands.

 

It is sometime before Philip finally gets to hold her hands in his own, or to remove her gloves so as to passionately kiss her hands. But his joy in so doing doesn't last long. For after Rachel makes it perfectly clear that she has no intention of ever marrying him, Philip reflects how her hands lose their warmth and, when he does attempt to hold them, "the fingers struggled for release, and the rings scratched, cutting at my palm" [270].

 

During his prolonged period of illness, Philip is nursed by Rachel. But the feel of her hand upon his fevered brow and neck isn't soothing; it is, rather, hard and gripping like ice. When finally he begins to recover his senses and his strength, however, he is content to lie in bed holding her hand in silence:

 

"I ran my thumb along the pale blue veins that showed always on the back of hers, and turned the rings. I continued thus for quite a time, and did not talk." [289]

 

 

IV.

Finally, the questions that all readers must address arise: Are Rachel's the hands of a murderess? Does she stir ground laburnum seeds into his tisana? 

 

By the end of the book, Philip certainly has his suspicions and after noticing how Rachel stirs the tisana with a spoon in her left hand [c], he comes to the following fatal conclusion:

 

"I had held [her hand] many times, in love, before. Felt the small size of it, turned the rings upon the fingers, seen the blue veins upon the back, touched the small close-filed nails. Now, as it rested in my hand, I saw it, for the first time, put to another purpose. I saw it take the laburnum pods, in deft fashion, and empty out the seeds; then crush the seeds, and rub them in her palm. I remembered once I had told her that her hands were beautiful, and she had answered, with a laugh, that I was the first to tell her so." [321]

 

Finally, Rachel has the accident that kills her (one that Philip is complicit in, if not criminally responsible for). Climbing down to where she lay "amongst the timber and the stones" [335], he takes her hands in his for the last time and, despite being cold, he "went on holding her hands until she died" [335].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Screenshot from My Cousin Rachel (dir. Roger Michell, 2017), starring Rachel Weisz as Rachel Ashley and Sam Claflin as Philip Ashley. 

 

[b] This is the warning Philip's godfather, Nick Kendall, gives him on the eve of his 25th birthday, with reference to his beloved cousin Rachel. See Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 246. All future page references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] Whilst I'm sure most readers will accept that being left-handed is perfectly natural and not a sign of evil, the fact remains that left-handedness has long been associated with negative qualities and malevolent activity; the word sinister derives from the Latin word for left.

 

 

A Sprig of Holly: Notes on Gibbeting (with Reference to the Case of Tom Jenkyn)

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827): A Gibbet (detail) 

Undated watercolor and ink on paper (36 x 27.5 cm)

Yale Center for British Art

 

 

I've discussed the topic of capital punishment in a previous post and mentioned that I live close to a notorious junction known as Gallows Corner, where they used to hang men in the old days [a]. 

 

I believe it was also the preferred practice to leave the bodies of those executed hanging in chains or fastened into an iron frame. And so that the public display might be prolonged, bodies were sometimes coated in tar and left until almost completely decomposed, after which the bones would be scattered. 

 

Known as gibbeting, this common law punishment was designed as a piece of violent theatre and a final humiliation intended to provide an additional deterrence measure, just in case the threat of hanging wasn't enough to prevent the heinous crime of murder. 

 

An ancient practice, gibbeting wasn't enshrined within English law until the Murder Act of 1751; an act which also included the provision that execution would take place two days after sentencing, unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the condemned - and those who looked forward to seeing him swing - would have to wait until Monday morning [b].

 

The act also gave the judge passing sentence the power to turn the body of the condemned over to the medical profession for dissection and anatomical study, rather than hung in chains, which, I suppose, one might find a less shameful fate (although I suspect that, if given a choice, a hardened highwayman or pirate would reply like James Bond who when asked by a barman following a heavy loss at the poker table whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred says: Do I look like I give a damn? [c]  

 

 

II.

As a sensitive child, I was upset for days if I saw even a dead hedgehog by the roadside. 

 

So I'm fairly certain that the sight of a rotting human corpse on a gibbet might have been similarly distressing. Although, having said that, the reactions of children to scenes of horror can be complex - as Daphen du Maurier illustrates at the opening of her Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) ...

Reflecting on the time when, as a seven-year-old, he is taken by his much older cousin (and guardian), Ambrose, to view some poor wretch left hanging in chains where the four roads meet, Philip Ashley recalls:

"His face and body were blackened with tar for preservation. He hung there for five weeks before they cut him down, and it was the fourth week that I saw him. 

      He swung between earth and sky upon his gibbet, or, as my cousin Ambrose told me, betwixt heaven and hell. [...] Ambrose prodded at the body with his stick. I can see it now, moving with the wind like a weather-vane on a rusty pivot, a poor scarecrow of what had been a man. The rain had rotted his breeches, if not his body, and strips of worsted drooped from his swollen limbs like pulpy paper." [d]

 

Philip continues: 

 

"It was winter, and some passing joker had placed a sprig of holly in the torn vest for celebration. Somehow, at seven years old, that seemed to me the final outrage, but I said nothing." [1] [e]

Having walked round the gibbet so as to observe the horror from all sides, with Ambrose playfully poking and prodding the corpse with his stick, as if it were a funfair attraction provided for his amusement, Philip's cousin eventually attempts to put things into a philosophical context and provide a moral lesson:

 

"'There you are, Philip,' he said, 'it's what we all come to in the end. Some upon a battlefield, some in bed, others according to their destiny. There's no escape. You can't learn the lesson too young. But this is how a felon dies. A warning to you and me to lead the sober life.'" [2] 

Stopping short of condoning femicide, but cheerfully parading his sexism, Ambrose continues:

 

"'See what a moment of passion can bring upon a fellow [...] Here is Tom Jenkyn, honest and dull, except when he drank too much. It's true his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.'" [2] 

Philip is disturbed to discover the dead man's identity and to realise that, in fact, he knew him. He wished Ambrose had not named him:

"Up to that moment the body had been a dead thing, without identity. It would come into my dreams, lifeless and horrible, I knew that very well from the first instant I had set my eyes upon the gibbet. Now it would have connection with reality, and with the man with watery eyes who sold lobsters on the town quay." [2]

When asked by Ambrose what he thinks, Philip attempts to disguise the fact that he felt "sick at heart, and terrified" [2]. And so he answers in an amusing and remarkably precocious manner for a child: "'Tom had a brighter face when I last saw him. [...] Now he isn't fresh enough to become bait for his own lobsters.'" [2] [f]

However, despite such witty bravado, Philip's actual squeamishness causes him to vomit before leaving the scene at Four Turnings: "I felt better afterwards, though my teeth chattered and I was very cold." [3] 

 

Perhaps in anger, Philip throws a stone at the lifeless body of Tom Jenkyn; though, as he ran off in search of Ambrose who had walked ahead, he felt ashamed of his action. So much so, that, eighteen years later, he is planning to seek out poor Tom in the afterlife in order to apologise. 

 

Until then, however, he asks the ghost of Tom Jenkyn to disturb him no more: "Go back into your shadows, Tom, and leave me some measure of peace. That gibbet has long since gone [g] and you with it. I threw a stone at you in ignorance. Forgive me." [3]

 

I don't know about Tom, the lobster salesman and wife killer, but I suspect most readers will almost certainly forgive such a childish indiscretion. 

 

Though whether they will be equally forgiving of Philip's treatment of Rachel - and there is no proof that she was guilty of anything, as Philip finds no concrete evidence to show she had a hand in the death of Ambrose, or that she was slowly poisoning him - is debatable ... [h]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the post dated 20 March 2019: click here.

 

[b] The act of 1751 also stipulated that under no circumstances should the body of a murderer be afforded a decent burial. The act was formally repealed in 1834, by which date the use of gibbeting was very much out of favour with both the public and the authorities; the last two men to be gibbeted in England had been executed two years prior. The socio-cultural reason for this move away from such violent and spectacular forms of punishment in favour of more subtle - more humanitarian - techniques is famously examined by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975).

 

[c] I'm referring to a scene in Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell, 2006), starring Daniel Craig in his debut as James Bond. The joke, of course, is that usually Bond is very particular about how he likes his martini served (shaken, not stirred).  

 

[d] Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 1. Future page references to this edition will be given directly in the post.

      Interestingly, with adult hindsight, Philip has decided that Ambrose must have taken him to witness this horrific scene as a test of his character; "to see if I would  run away, or laugh, or cry" (p. 1). 

 

[e] It's arguable that the sprig of holly was not placed in mockery by some passing joker, but, rather, in a spirit of Christian charity and forgiveness; for holly is a sign of the eternal life that is promised to those who repent their sins and accept the love of Christ. 

 

[f] As a matter of fact, although lobsters are scavengers that feed on dead animals, live fish, small molluscs and other marine invertebrates, they are not known for eating human flesh.  

 

[g] Du Maurier doesn't reveal the year in which her novel unfolds, but if, as Philip informs us, the gibbet has long since gone and those accused of murder are now given a fair trial and, if subsequently convicted and sentenced to death, a decent burial, then it would certainly be set after 1834 (see note b above). 

      Roger Michell, the director and screenwriter of the 2017 cinematic adaptation of My Cousin Rachel starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin, situates his film "somewhere in the 1840s (between Austen and Dickens: between canals and railways)", as he writes in an introduction to the 2017 Virago edition of du Maurier's book (p. vii).  

[h] Du Maurier is a mistress of ambiguity who loves supplying her books with narrators whose defining characteristic is their unreliability. And so we can never know for certain who's guilty of what and who's the real victim. At one time, I would've found that irritating: Not any more, though.  

Reflections on Seeing a Magpie

Mick Robertson and Jenny Hanley on set

of the Thames TV show Magpie (c. 1977)

 

 

I. 

 

Whenever I see a magpie, I think of the ornithomantic nursery rhyme which offers a series of binary oppositions in which one term is more highly valued than the other.

Such metaphysical privileging - be it in the field of emotions, biology, or metallurgy - is politically unacceptable to those who reject all forms of hierarchy based upon violence and subordination, but it's also philosophically untenable for those who, like Nietzsche, recognise that joy and sorrow, for example, are related and grow together; that attempting to reduce the latter will also diminish the other.

 

Thus, for Nietzsche, whoever wants the happiness associated with two magpies, must affirm the grief and suffering associated with a single bird [1]. 

 

 

II.

 

But whenever I see a magpie, I also think of the children's TV show of this name that was broadcast on ITV from July 1968 until June 1980, providing a much hipper (and unscripted) alternative to Blue Peter over on the BBC - who wants Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves when you can have Jenny Hanley and Mick Robertson?  

Mick may have been a bit of a hippie and a Brian May lookalike, but he was younger and way cooler than Purves (in my eyes at least). 

 

And as for the English actress Jenny Hanley - who some readers may recall as the Irish Girl in the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), or as Sarah, in the classic Hammer horror Scars of Dracula (1970), or even as Magda, Lord Brett Sinclair's new valet in the final episode of The Persuaders! (1972) - well, she was almost too sexy for a twice-weekly tea-time kids programme and is remembered fondly by many male viewers of a certain age.     

 

Murgatroyd - the show's logo and mascot

 

Notes

 

[1] See The Gay Science I. 12 wherein Niezsche asks his readers to imagine pleasure and its opposite tied together in such a manner whoever desired to have as much happiness as possible must also accept a maximum of suffering. But note, Nietzsche is not arguing that suffering is in some manner justified or vindicated by happiness. Later, in Zarathustra, Nietzsche will absorb this idea into his concept of the eternal recurrence.  

 

For a related post to this one - 'One for Sorrow ...' (18 October, 2023) - please click here.  

 

A Tale of Two Polar Bears: Dominic Harris Contra Heide Hatry

 

Dominic Harris: Polar Bear from the series Arctic Souls (2023)

Code, electronics, LCD screen, sensors, aluminium 

65 (W) x 106 (H) x 12 (D) cm  

Heide Hatry photographed by J. C. Rice on the Great Lawn in 

 Central Park (NYC) making Snow Bears in the winter of 2020-21

 

 

I. 

 

Take two polar bears created by two very different artists: the first constructed in code by the London based British artist Dominic Harris; and the second made with snow by the New York based German artist Heide Hatry ... 

 

 

II. 

 

In a tryptich entitled Arctic Souls (2023), Harris seeks to remind viewers of the beauty (and vulnerability) of three of the Arctic's most iconic inhabitants; the polar bear, the Arctic fox, and the Arctic hare. Whether the portraits also capture each creature's essence is debatable (I would obviously say not). 

 

As Harris reveals on his website, despite looking strangely real and lifelike thanks to the level of intricate detail - not to mention the fact the animals respond to the movements of an approaching viewer - they are in fact high-fidelity digital constructions presented on an interactive screen. 

 

In other words, his work is the manifestation of the purest techno-idealism and ultimately tells us more about him than it does about the fascinating animal species he has chosen to depict, including the iconic carnivore shown here.  

 

 

III. 

 

Harris is an artist who uses the very latest technology to share with us his vision of the natural world, transforming the latter (and the creatures that inhabit it) into an imagined reality that the viewer can not only observe, but interact with and immerse themselves within. 

 

The effect is magical. But as much as there is beauty and playfulness in the computer-generated, artificially intelligent world Harris creates, there is also something disturbing; something a bit uncanny valley-ish. 

 

Harris is undoubtedly aware of this and maybe he wishes to exploit our unease in order to challenge perceptions of what constitutes reality and make us question what we want our relationship with the world to be. To what extent, for example, do we wish our daily experience to be mediated via technology? Do we want to see butterflies in the back garden, or on a giant screen? 

 

Maybe the answer is we want both: but what if we can't have both? 

 

What if in so seamlessly encoding the natural world and transforming everything into digital information we exterminate reality? This is what Baudrillard refers to as the perfect crime; i.e., the unconditional realisation of the world via the actualisation of all data [1]. 

 

 

IV.

 

Consider in contrast the Snow Bears made by Heide Hatry ... [2]

 

Whilst Harris and his team are operating in the warmth of his Notting Hill studio - designing, engineering, coding, and fabricating his diabolicaly clever artworks and installations - Ms Hatry has been scrambling around on hands and knees and freezing her tits off for the last couple of winters in snowy Central Park, making snow sculptures of polar bears.

 

Despite both Harris and Hatry issuing a similar call to preserve the natural environment that polar bears live in, I find her work more poignant and many native New Yorkers were also touched and grateful for her heroic efforts.  

 

I remember once Malcolm McLaren telling me that a man on a mountain top tapping two sticks together makes a much bigger sound that all the electronic music in the world. Similarly, we might say that someone daubing paint by hand on a cave wall produces a much truer representation of the world than all the digital photographs shared on Instagram; or a woman making Schneebären that will quickly melt to nothing (just like the Arctic sea ice) moves us more than someone using code and colours to create a virtual reality.           

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (Verso Books, 1996).

      In brief, Baudrillard argues that reality has been made to disappear and singular being exterminated via technological and social processes bent on replacing real things and real lives with a series of images and empty signs. For Baudrillard, this consitutes the most important event of modern history; one carried out before our very eyes and in which we have all - including artists - have been complicit, although, ironically, it is artists who also leave clues or traces of criminal imperfection behind them.

 

[2] Some readers might recall that I have written previously about Heide Hatry and her snow bears; see the post dated 16 February, 2021: click here.

 

 

For more information on Dominic Harris and his work visit: dominicharris.com - or click here if you wish to go straight to the page on Arctic Souls (2023). Harris is represented by the Halcyon Gallery (London): click here. 

 

For more information on Heide Hatry and her work visit: heidehatry.com 

 

 

Becoming-Robot With Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik: Robot (1990) 

Mixed metal with lightbulb 

55 x 12 cm

 shaperomodern.com 

 

I. 

 

Last week, as mentioned in a recent post [1], I paid a visit to the Shapero Gallery on Bond Street, in London's Mayfair, to see the Modern Muse exhibition, featuring works by various twentieth and twenty-first century artists. 

 

Prints by all the usual suspects were included - Picasso, Warhol, Hockney, and (groan) Banksy - but there were also works by artists with whom I'm rather less familiar, such as Nam June Paik, whose lightbulb-headed robot giving a friendly wave hello made me smile at least. 

 

For whilst traditionally a muse is conceived as an inspirational female figure, either mortal or divine, that seems a bit narrow and I think and we should open up the concept to include animals, plants, and even inanimate objects, including machines.

 

After all, we're not ancient Greeks. And surely, like Paik, we can all find inspiration even in a rusty robot assembled from wires and scrap metal. In other words, an automaton might serve as a muse just as easily as Venus rising from the waves - especially if, like Paik, you believe technology has become the body's new membrane of existence.  

 

 

II. 

 

Nam June Paik (1932-2006) was a South Korean artist who is often considered to be the founder of video art. He is also the man who coined the phrase electronic superhighway and foresaw several of the technological innovations (in communications and social media) that would shape the digital age.

 

Originally a classically trained musician, he was pals with John Cage (whom he met whilst studying in West Germany) and became part of the the international avant-garde network of artists and composers known as Fluxus. 

 

Paik moved to NYC in 1964 and it was there he began to experiment with a variety of media, incorporating TVs and video tape recorders into his work. 

 

His infaturation with (often radio-controlled) robots also began around this time, though it wasn't until 1988 that he unveiled the mighty Metrobot [2], followed in 1993 by a number of robot sculptures for the Venice Biennale [3] that emphasised how East and West were now connected via technology.  

 

And then, in 2014-15 a (posthumous) solo exhibition entited Becoming Robot was held in New York at the Asia Society Museum, exploring Paik's understanding of the relationship between technology and society and, more specifically, how technology will impact art, culture, and the human body in the future [4].

 

 

III. 

 

D. H. Lawrence would hate, loathe, and despise Paik's work. 

 

For Lawrence, the key to achieving what the Greeks termed εὐδαιμονία is "remaining inside your own skin, and living inside your own skin, and not pretending you're any bigger than you are" [5]. 

 

Thus, as a reader of Lawrence, I also have reservations when Paik talks about the inadequacy of skin and the need to encase the body in technology so as to better interface with reality. 

 

Interestingly, however, he qualifies his transhumanism by conceding that even the most advanced cyborg requires a strong human element in order to guarantee modesty and safeguard natural life. 

 

And what is modern man's most human aspect - lacking as he does a soul - other than his skin? 

 

What's more, far from being inadequate, the skin has never been so vital and so present within critical and cultural theory as today:

 

"The skin asserts itself  in the erotics of texture, tissue and tegument played out through the work of Roland Barthes; in the concern of Emmanuel Levinas with the exposed skin of the face, as the sign of essential ethical nudity before the other [...] the extraordinary elaborations of the play of bodily surfaces, volumes and membranes in Derrida's concepts of double invagination [...] the concept of the fold in the rethinking of subjective and philosophical depth in the work of Gilles Deleuze; the fascination with the intrigues of the surface in the work of Baudrillard; and the abiding presence of skin in the work of Jean-François Lyotard, from the arresting evocation of the opened out skin of the planar body at the beginning of his Libidinal Economy through to the Levinsian emphasis on the annunciatory powers of skin at moments through The Inhuman. Most strikingly of all [...] there has been the prominence of the skin in the meditations on place, shape and the 'mixed body' of Michel Serres. Across all this work, as ubiquitously in modern experience, the skin insists." [6]   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'You Don't Have to Be Yayoi Kusama to Make Pumpkin Art' (25 November 2024): click here. 

 

[2] Metrobot is an electronic public art sculpture designed by Nam June Paik. At the time of its unveiling in 1988, it was his first outdoor sculpture and his largest. Since 2014, it has stood in front of the Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. 

      The gold-painted aluminum sculpture is 27 feet in height and resembles a box-shaped humanoid robot. It's cartoon-style facial expression (and large red heart) are made from neon tubing behind clear plastic covers. On it's outstretched  left arm is an LED informing the viewer of such things as the time and temperature. On Metrobot's stomach is another display feature, showing full-colour videos. And, finally, a payphone is built into its left leg.

 

[3] La Biennale di Venezia is an international cultural exhibition first organised in 1895 and hosted annually in Venice, Italy, by the Biennale Foundation. It includes events featuring contemporary art, dance, architecture, cinema, and theatre (often in relation to political and social issues). 

 

[4] An eight minute video of the exhibition made by Heinrich Schmidt for Vernissage TV can be found on YouTube: those who are interested are invited to click here.

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 161.

 

[6] Steven Connor, The Book of Skin (Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 9-10. 

      Readers who are interested in the subject of the skin might like to see the post entitled 'Lose This Skin: Thoughts on Theodore Roethke's Epidermal Macabre' (7 August 2018): click here.  

You Don't Have to Be Yayoi Kusama to Make Pumpkin Art

1: Portrait of a Pumpkin

2: Sorry Cinderella - It Looks Like You're Gonna Be Walking Home  

Stephen Alexander (2024)

 

Last week, on a freezing cold day, I paid a visit to the Shapero Gallery on Bond Street, in London's Mayfair, to see the Modern Muse exhibition, featuring works by various twentieth and twenty-first century artists [1]. 

 

Prints by all the usual suspects were included - Picasso, Warhol, Hockney, and (groan) Banksy - but there were also works by artists with whom I'm rather less familiar, such as Yayoi Kusama, whose black and white pumpkin I particularly appreciated [2].

 

For whilst traditionally a muse is conceived as an inspirational female figure, either mortal or divine, that seems a bit narrow and I think and we should open up the concept to include animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. 

 

After all, we're not ancient Greeks. And there's really no need to personify and feminise those forces and desires that fire the human imagination. 

 

Surely, like Kusama, we can all find inspiration in a piece of winter squash and a rotting vegetable might serve as a muse just as easily as Venus rising from the waves, or the lovely face of Kate Moss. 

 

The genre distinction between portraiture and still life is, I think, essentially untenable. Leonardo da Vinci's Head of a Young Girl (1506-08) is really no different from the visual representation of a head of cabbage - perhaps that's what Claude Lalanne was trying to tell us all along [3].  

 

And so, with all this in mind, I thought I'd follow Kusama's lead and turn to the humble pumpkin as muse - the above pictures being the result. The first, is a simple portrait; whilst the second, a rather more violent and complex image, deals with themes of death, decay, and disappointment.          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For more information on the Shapero Gallery, please click here. For details of The Modern Muse exhibition in particular, click here.  

 

[2] The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama - now in her 96th year and still going strong - has had a lifelong fascination with pumpkins and has elevated everybody's favourite squash (and organic Halloween prop) to iconic status in her art. As one critic writes: 

      "Equally rooted in personal memories and universal themes, her pumpkins rival the recognisability of Warhol's Soup Cans. Whether capturing the essence of infinity with her intricate net patterns or playing with a kaleidoscope of colours, Kusama's Pumpkins offer a visual feast that resonates globally."

      See Essie King's article, '10 Facts About Yayoi Kusama's Pumpkins', on myartbroker.com (8 Dec 2023): click here. 

 

[3] In 1968, Lalanne produced an ambitious sculpture entitled L'Homme à la tête de chou, combining human and vegetable. Serge Gainsbourg famously purchased the piece and it inspired his 1976 concept album of the same title. Lalanne produced a second version of the work in 2005, which was donated (in lieu of inheritance tax) to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2021.

      Readers who are interested in knowing more on Lalanne, Gainsbourg, and the man with the cabbage head might like to see my post of 16 June 2023: click here. 

Just Do It: Notes on Incitement with Reference to the Case of Danvers Vs de Winter

Joan Fontaine as Mrs de Winter and Judith Anderson 

as Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

As a provocateur, I'm naturally interested in the concept of incitement, which is usually seen negatively and in contradistinction to the more seductive-sounding idea of enticement. 

 

Those with a background in the law will be quick to point out that to incite is, in legal terms, to actively encourage another person to commit a criminal act, whether or not that person carries such out. 

 

Interestingly, incitement now seems to be taken more seriously - to be seen as more sinful - than the deed itself [b]. In other words, it's as if thinking and communicating evil thoughts were more grievous than actually doing bad things. After all, sticks and stones may break our bones, but it's hurty words that cause emotional damage.

 

Such moral logic explains the current obsession with so-called hate speech and why some people are now investigated by the police for non-crime hate incidents when actual criminals are being let out of jail early or not being prosecuted at all. 

 

The rationale seems to be if the police intervene before a criminal act has taken place and actual harm caused, then that has to be a good thing. But if in practice that means curtailing free speech and locking people us for what they post online, that's highly debatable.

 

Having said that, speech is a type of action, of course, and I'm not denying that incitement can be malevolent and trolls who encourage others - particularly individuals in a vulnerable state - to serious self-harm or suicide probably deserve to have their speech curtailed (if not to be branked, indeed). 

And that includes Mrs Danvers, the head housekeeper at Manderley and a woman morbidly devoted to the memory of her adored mistress Rebecca ...

 

 

II. 

 

Arguably, the most disturbing scene in Daphne de Maurier's brilliant novel Rebecca comes in chapter eighteen on the morning after the costume ball, when Mrs de Winter decides to confront Mrs Danvers. 

 

At first, the former, having overcome her fear of the latter, has the advantage. But that soon changes, as the angry colour returns to the dead white face of Mrs Danvers and she begins to rant and rave like a mad woman; "her long fingers twisting and tearing the black stuff of her long dress" [c]. 

 

There's nothing Mrs de Winter can do but watch with fascinated horror; the sight of Mrs Danvers dry sobbing with mouth open making her shudder and feel physically ill. Growing increasingly insane, the latter advances towards the former, backing her towards the open window, and gripping her arm. 

 

"'It's you that ought to be lying there in the church crypt [...] It's you who ought to be dead [...]'", she hisses. [276]

 

The young Mrs de Winter recalls and narrates the scene of incitement for us:

 

"She pushed me  towards the open window. I could see the terrace below me grey and indistinct in the white wall of fog. 'Look down there,' she said. 'It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you jump? It wouldn't hurt, not to break your neck. It's a quick, kind way. It's not like drowning. Why don't you try it? Why don't you go?'

      The fog filled the open windows, damp and clammy, it stung my eyes, it clung to my nostrils. I held on to the window-sill with my hands.

      'Don't be afraid,' said Mrs Danvers. 'I won't push you. I won't stand by you. You can jump of your own accord. What's the use of your staying here at Manderley? You're not happy. Mr de Winter doesn't love you. There's not much for you to live for, is there? Why don't you jump now and have done with it? Then you won't be unhappy any more.'" [276]  

       

 

III,

 

That's certainly incitement to suicide; cleverly expressed as a series of rhetorical questions. Fortunately, however, Mrs de Winter doesn't jump (she's not so much saved by the bell as by a flare or rocket sent up by a ship in distress). 

 

And interestingly, not only does she not want to get the rozzers involved and wish to press legal charges against Mrs Danvers, she doesn't even ask her husband to sack her, having decided that the latter has lost her power over her: "Whatever she said or did now it could not matter to me or hurt me. I knew she was my enemy and I did not mind." [327] 

 

I'm not sure if that's Christian forgiveness born of a spirit of love, or if this refusal to take her enemy seriously and not only forgive but forget wrongs done to her is a sign of a more aristocratic nature [d]. Either way, it's admirable and I wish more people were like this in a world in which there is a growing tendency to criminalise conduct in the name of legal moralism. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] To watch this scene on YouTube, click here.

 

[b] Incitement falls into that category of crimes known as inchoate; i.e., ones that prepare the way for, further, or encourage a crime. Just as one can be convicted of conspiracy, so too can one be convicted of incitement (for example, using words and images to stir up hatred against others that may lead to violence against them). 

      In the UK, incitement was abolished as an offence under the common law of England in 2008, but was replaced with three new statutory offences of encouraging or assisting crime under the Serious Crime Act (2007).

 

[c] Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (Virago Press, 2003), p. 271. Future page references given in the post are to this edition of the novel. 

 

[d] In the first essay (§10) of his Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche writes that to be incapable of taking one's enemies seriously for very long is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to forget. 

 

 

Memories of Manderley 2: On Pyrexia and Obsessive Love Disorder

Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson) displays the see-through nature 

of Rebecca's nightdress to the new Mrs de Winter (Joan Fontaine) 

in Rebecca (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)  

 

 

I. 

 

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley ... [a], whereas, as a matter of fact, I had simply rewatched Hitchcock's Academy Award winning adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca on TV [b]. 

 

Anyway, it was enough to make me want to return to the original novel and offer not so much a commentary or critical review, but a series of reflections on those inhuman and sometimes monstrous aspects that particularly interest ...

 

 

II.

 

Love, our idealists might argue, is the least monstrous and most human of all things; a unique feature of our evolutionary history. Other creatures may experience empathy and sexual attraction, but there is little evidence of love in anything resembling the spiritual sense as we know it. 

 

But of course, as the second Mrs de Winter comes to recognise, love is also a kind of fever; something that causes us to act queerly; i.e., in a confused and frenzied, often violent manner behind the palm trees. Sometimes, it may even result in a crime of passion - just ask Maxim de Winter. 

 

Not that he likes to speak about about such things or recall past events: "All memories are bitter, and I prefer to ignore them." [42] But, despite claiming to have never loved Rebecca, it's obvious she was the one who got him hot under the collar and who, when she put her arms around him, gave him a fever that was so hard to bear (in the mornin' and all through the night) [c].

 

 

III. 

 

Rebecca: she was dead, of course, "and one must not have thoughts about the dead" [63]. 

 

And yet, how can one not say something about the ghostly Rebecca, with her enduring beauty and unforgettable smile ... So brilliant in every way! It would be impossible to cut her name out of this series of posts, no matter how sharp a pair of scissors one possessed. And the past - even if reduced to ash - can never just be blown away.

Rebecca is present by her absence throughout the novel and at the end of the book, her corpse itself manages to intrude back into world of the living, determining events and threatening to have an objects revenge upon Maxim de Winter.  

 

Je Reviens is not merely the name on a boat - or a French-speaking terminator's catchphrase - it's Rebecca's posthumous promise. 

 

But if she was the "most beautiful creature" [151] that Frank Crawley [d] ever saw in his life, one doubts Rebecca would still look so lovely after all those months beneath the waves (although I've heard it said that there's nothing more ravishing than a corpse) [e].

IV. 

And if one must speak of Rebecca, one must also speak of her devoted representative on earth: the malevolent Mrs Danvers; "someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great, hollow eyes gave her a skull's face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton's frame" [74].

It's often said that cold hands are a sign of a warm heart. But not in the case of Mrs Danvers; she was cold of heart as well as hand, and cold too of voice and manner. Her dark eyes "had no light, no flicker of sympathy" [81].

 

The only time she becomes animated is when she recalls the first Mrs de Winter - particularly of course if she happens to be (fetishistically) admiring her dead mistress's handmade underwear [f] or the delicate sheer nightdress, that was so soft and light to the touch [g].     

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This is the famous opening line of Daphne du Maurier's, bestselling 1938 gothic novel Rebecca, which tells the story of an unnamed young woman who (somewhat impetuously) marries a wealthy widower (Maxim de Winter) whom she meets on a trip to Monte Carlo. All seems to be going swimmingly until they return to his estate in Cornwall and she realises that both Maxim and his household at Manderley are haunted by the memory and ghostly presence of his late wife (Rebecca). 

      It's a fantastic novel which has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen. Here, I am reading the Virago Press edition of 2015 and all page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

 

[b] Rebecca (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starred Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the anonymous young woman who becomes his second wife. It was Hitchcock's first American project and was a critical and commercial success, nominated for eleven Oscars - more than any other film that year - it picked up two, including Best Picture. 

      Despite certain changes made to keep the censors happy, it was a fairly faithful adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel and she was happy with the result. To watch a 1940 trailer for the movie on YouTube, click here.

 

[c] I'm paraphrasing lines here from the song 'Fever', written by Otis Blackwell (under the name John Davenport) and Eddie Cooley. It was originally recorded by American R&B singer Little Willie John for his debut album - also entitled Fever (1956) - and released as a single in April of that year. However, Peggy Lee's 1958 version - with rewritten lyrics and a new arrangement - became the best known version (and her signature song): click here to play on YouTube. 

      Interestingly, the second Mrs de Winter also confesses to a "fever of fear" [135] - a stab of sickness in her heart; a sweat of uncertainty, whenever she worried about saying the wrong thing to her husband, or reflected on those things that disturbed her, such as spiderwebs, rat holes, and the clamour of the sea. This is not the kind of fever born of erotomania that Peggy Lee sings about, although lovers too might display similar signs and symptoms of hypersensitivity, neurosis, and abnormality. 

[d] Frank Crawley is the manager of the Manderley estate; loyal to Maxim and trusted by the second Mrs de Winter. 

 

[e] The corpse of a loved one, inasmuch as it has startling physical presence, unleashes mixed feelings; of fear, of repulsion, but also - as evidenced for example in Wuthering Heights (1847) - of desire. It both seizes and seduces and is in that (quite literal) sense ravishing. 

      Bataille explored this in his work, although the phrase - 'She made a ravishing corpse' - is one taken from a 1926 novel by Ronald Firbank; Concerning the Eccenticities of Cardinal Pirelli (see chapter VIII).   

 

[f] In contrast, the second Mrs de Winter's underclothes were, by her own admission, nothing special: "As long as they were clean and neat I had not thought the material or the existence of the lace mattered." [152]

 

[g] The full perviness of this is picturized in Hitchcock's film, despite the censors doing their best to ensure that Rebecca adhered to the Motion Picture Production Code that strictly enforced the morality of US films made between 1934 and 1968. 

      Joseph Breen may have been a censor-moron (and a vile antisemite), but he wasn't mistaken to recognise the queer nature of Danny's fascination with Rebecca's physical attributes and her clothing (particularly her see-through nightie), insisting that such obsessive love disorder be toned down in the final cut. 

      The astonishing (and disturbing) scene between the second Mrs de Winter (played by Joan Fontaine) and Mrs Danvers (played by Judith Anderson) in  Rebecca's bedroom can be watched on YouTube: click here.        

 

 

Those who wish to read part one of this post on natural chaos and Maxim de Winter's floraphilia, can do so by clicking here.