Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art with David Salle (Part 2)

 

Standing in front of David Salle's Vamp (2025) 

Oil, acrylic, Flashe and charcoal on archival UV print on linen (78 x 120 in) 

Photo by Maria Thanassa taken at Thaddaeus Ropac (London)

 

 

I.

 

Body art encompasses a wide range of works by a variety of artists, including Vito Acconci, whom Salle identifies as one of those artists who, certainly in his early years, wished to know everything and "scrutinized the very foundation of their responses" [102].

 

In theory, I should probably approve; but in practice I'm not a fan of corporeal expression and exploration. In part, this might be put down to a certain prudishness on my part.

 

Leaving that to one side, however, I'm also concerned that in their attempt to externalise libidinal forces and flows and to open up the secret places of the body, artists can end up exchanging "intense interiority" [a] for mere representation; becoming, as D. H. Lawrence says, masturbators in paint who rob the body not only of its beauty, but also of its "natural demonishness" [b], thereby rendering the flesh banal.      

 

Thus, unlike Salle, I don't find Acconci's obsession with his penis, for example - whether it's tied with a piece of string or dressed up in dolls' clothes - either amusing or radically transgressive: just flaccid. 

 

 

II.

 

In the late 1960s and early '70s it was believed that "anything can be art/ art can be anything" [107]. 

 

I think we know better now: know, for example, that kicking a freshly plucked chicken around before depositing the "grit-encrusted bird" [107] in a dumpster outside a branch of KFC, is certainly one way to make a statement about animal cruelty, factory faming, fast food, etc., but it doesn't necessarily qualify as an artwork (even if you document the process and give a nod to surrealism).

 

III.

 

This paragraph in a section on Julian Schnabel, caught my eye:

 

"Strange as it may seem now, words like 'subjectivity' and 'sensibility' were deemed uncool in the art world of the mid- to late '70s; the artist was seen as a kind of philosophical worker, visual arts division, who took pains to leave few fingerprints. During that period, it was considered heresy for an artist to insist on the primacy of his or her subjectivity." [124]

 

Salle continues in a manner that makes clear where his sympathies lie:

 

"This began to change when Julian, along with other artists of a similar age, emerged at the end of the decade and sounded a big Bronx cheer for the pieties and anemia of a generation drifting out to sea on a leaky raft of conceptual precepts." [124]

 

The thing is, whilst I'm perfectly happy for Schnabel to take a hammer to his mum's best china - and whilst I dislike the militant asceticism of those who refuse to allow even a touch of the personal to enter into their art - I still remain troubled by words drawn from the vocabulary of Romanticism.

  

 

IV.

 

"Painting is one of the few things in life for which youth holds no advantage." [129] 

 

I wonder if that's true: I seem to remember that a few years ago someone or other worked out that modern painters produced their greatest works in their early 40s; so not young, exactly, but not as old as Salle was (64) when he made this claim [c].

 

Still, I'm happy to concede that the "diminutions wrought by aging" can be (to some extent) "offset among painters by fearlessness, finely honed technique, and heightened resolve" [129]. 

And there are certainly many artists I can think of whose late work is still as vital (and as full of wonder) as that produced when they were young; Matisse was 83 when he created his famous cut-out The Snail (1953), a small reproductive print of which is above the desk at which I'm writing this post.   

 

And let's not forget that true monster of stamina - Picasso - whose final years were characterised by artistic freedom and a frenzied level of production; between 1968 and his death in the spring of 1973 (aged 91) he painted more than a hundred canvases and made an even larger number of engravings. 

 

It takes a long time to become young, as he once put it. 

 

 

V. 

 

Salle offers an intriguing perspective on the British-American artist Malcolm Morley (the man who gave the world superrealism):

 

"He doesn't paint life per se. Rather, he crafts scenes assembled from models, mostly of his own making, and the paintings that result from this convoluted process are like a loopy costume party: everyone is masked; true identities are withheld." [131]

 

This alone makes me want to take a look at his work; even at the risk that "looking at Morley can give you the sensation of being trapped in a painterly hall of mirrors" [131]. 

 

And this pretty much seals the deal: "Morley is mercurial and restless, experimental, literary, theoretical, and perverse" [135]. I must check him out, because such figures - unconventional to the core - are few and far between.

   

 

VI.

 

Sooner or later, the question concerning technology - and of art in the age of social media - was bound to raise its head:

 

"History bestows on every generation of artists a set of cultural imperatives that will be used to take its measure. [...] If the problem facing artists thirty years ago was how to stand in relation to popular ulture whilse retaining some sense of art's autonomy, artists coming to maturity in the age of social media [...] must express a point of view about the Internet and its ubiquity." [143]

 

Of course, as Salle acknowledges, artists have always had to engage with and adapt to new technologies; from innovations in paint to the invention of the camera. And, for the most part, they have "embraced the possibilities of new mediums, as well as changes in art's distribution that followed" [143].

 

No one, says Salle, wants to be "the guy standing  on the corner in 1910, shouting 'Get a horse!' at a passing motorcar" [143] [d], and thus young artists today "must confront, and figure out their relationship to, the endless flood and immateriality of digital imagery" [144].  

 

And the Swiss artist Urs Fischer is doing just that; he is, says Salle, "an interesting example of transition fluency" [144] - i.e., one who embraces technology whilst still retaining a relationship to pre-digital art history and practice; one who is "comfortably at home in the digital age" [146] whilst somehow managing to stand apart from it.

 

As with Malcolm Morley, Salles description of Fischer makes me keen to know more: 

 

"His expansive personality combines aspects of the engineer, camp counselor, social director, homespun philosopher, outsider artist, social critic, and activist provocateur. He is clearly ambitious vis-à-vis art history and carries himself with the swagger of someone [...] simultaneously irreverent and deeply serious [...]" [144]  

 

It might be objected that this is simply stringing together a number of attributes and doesn't actually tell us what matters about his work. But those who read on will find that Salle does in fact make it clear why we should value Fischers work, much of having been built on the digital detritus that social media produces every day:

 

"As a grown-up child of the digital age, he uses the computer as a primary drawing tool, and, like today's youth, what he sees of the world is what's pictured on the Web [...] But to the Web's undifferentiated sea of images, Fischer brings a kind of attention that is dense and purposeful; what he selects feels thought-out. What he's seeking is the hidden codes of similarity and difference that lie underneath the semipublic modes of depiction in contemporary Internet culture [...] Fischer's gleeful way of using images [...] starts to expand in the mind like a paper flower when it hits the water." [146]

 

In sum: "Fischer is the embodiment of Manny Farber's 'termite artist'" [148]; exposing foundations; believing in the ruins, making cash from chaos. 

 

And yet, Salle's initial doubts about Fischer resurface: his work can seem superficial (in a non-Greek manner); "just so much cultural detritus" [150] after all ...  

 

 

Urs Fischer: Horse/Bed (2013) 

Milled aluminum, galvanized steel, screws, bolts, two-component resin 

(218 x 263 x 111 cm.)

Photo by Stefan Altenburger

 

 

Notes

 

[a] David Salle, How to See (W. W. Norton, 2018), p. 101. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the text.   

 

[b] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 196. 

      Writing in this essay, Lawrence argues that the history of the modern era is founded upon the crucifixion of the body and the triumph of mental consciousness and that art, "humbly and honestly served the vile deed" [203]. The only modern painter he respects is Cézanne, who, he says, refused to masturbate in paint. And that is the secret of his greatness in an age when "the mind prostitutes the sensitive responsive body, and just forces the reactions" [209]. 

      It might be noted, finally that Acconci is best known for his (supposedly) ultra-radical early performance art, including Seedbed (15-29 January, 1972), in which he lay beneath a wooden floor built in the Sonnabend Gallery (NYC) and masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring his thoughts and fantasies into a microphone.   

 

[c] It was the Dutch economist Philip Hans Franses who worked this out after examining data on 221 famous painters who lived between 1800 and 2004. Of course, by greatest works, he meant their most valuable in financial terms (i.e., the works that have had the highest sales price). 

      See P. H. Franses, 'When Do Painters Make Their Best Work?', in Creativity Research Journal, Vol. 25, Issue, 4 (2013), pp. 457-462. 

 

[d] I don't know if Salle is thinking here of the British artist Robert Bevan (1865-1925), but, despite the transition from horse-drawn carriages to motorised vehicles picking up speed as cars gained in popularity by 1910, the latter was more than happy to be this guy standing on the corner vocally resisting progress. A keen horseman, Bevan continued to depict horses in his artwork and to bemoan the decline (and eventual demise) of the horse-drawn cab trade.

      Whilst Salle seems to think it absurd to reject technological advances - he has recently started using AI in his own work - he admits to reserving a degree of fondness "for artists who, curmudgeonlike, turn their backs on the latest advances" [143]. 

      As for what Bevan would make of Urs Fischer's Horse/Bed (2013) - pictured above - is anybody's guess.  

 

To read part one of this post, click here. 

 

To read part three of this post, click here.

 

To read notes on David Salle's Introduction to How to See (2016), click here. 

 

Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art with David Salle (Part 1)

Photo of David Salle by Robert Wright (2016)

 

 

I. 

 

I'm guessing many UK readers of a certain age will remember the 1982 Fun Boy Three hit (ft. Bananarama) 'It Aint What You Do (It's the Way That You Do It)' [a] - and this essentially sums up one of David Salle's main arguments about painting: never mind the content, concern yourself with the question of style:

 

"Subject matter - the what - can of course be a big deal. It's also easy to talk about. But more to the heart of the work, the thing that reveals its nature and quality, is the how, the specific inflection and touch that go into its making." [b]  

 

I obviously wouldn't use the same language as Mr Salle, but, basically, I agree that if you wish "to take a work's psychic temperature, look at its surface energy" [15]. For as Nietzsche says, the trick is to stop courageously at the skin and learn how to adore appearance; to become like those ancient Greeks who delighted in forms and colours and who were superficial out of profundity [c].

 

Art is the stylish representation of form; non-sentimental, ferociously intelligent; and full of a certain immediacy that "leaves one with a feeling of reality refreshed" [21].  

II. 

What makes a picture? 

For D. H. Lawence, it has something to do with purity of spirit and allowing the picture to come "clean out of instinct, intuition, and sheer physical action" [d]. 

 

I'm not sure, but I suspect Salle would agree with this, though he also mentions the importance of pictorial staging and "how forcefully a painting evokes the strangeness of the visual world" [23] [e]. 

Salle further says that it helps if the artist can draw with real confidence; with the arm, not just the wrist. Though that's not something that Lawrence worried about too much and he sneers at those early critics of Cézanne who believed being able to draw a cat accurately enough so it looks like a cat is the most crucial aspect of making pictures [f].    

 

 

III.

I like Salle's contention that: "A spirit of childish refusal runs through the center of the avant-garde impulse [...] No I won't use color; I won't make beautiful things; I won't entertain." [30]

 

Such negativity, when freed from resentment, becomes a kind of active and affirmative nihilism, and will always have a good deal of appeal not to those who subscribe to a utopian vision, as Salle suggests, but - on the contrary - to those who reject such idealism and realise that we are not locked into an established narrative, possessing as we do not only the power to say No, but the option of neutral indifference (thereby baffling the paradigm) [g].  

 

 

IV.

 

"For where there is imagery, a story - implicit or explicit - is not far behind." [44]

 

That sounds like an idea worth discussing - and doubtless it is one that has, in fact, already been discussed at great length. For Salle, it simply means that art can be representational without having to apologise and not only point to things in the world but include personal elements too.

 

The romantic in me would tend to agree; but the classical aspect of my nature makes me slightly wary of where this leads us; a touch of human warmth is one thing, but I do not want art that it is Allzumenschliches ...

 

 

V.

 

Salle contrasts talent and imagination: "Imagination fuels talent and funnels into it, but on its own lacks body" [57]. Talent is the ability to actually do something; it's not merely the possession of knowledge.

 

I suppose it's good if an artist has both - as well as the ability to combine them - although, if I had to choose, then I'd sooner have imagination than talent which, today, thanks to Simon Cowell, is today "easily confused with [...] a desire for attention" [57].

 

For Salle, Dana Schutz is an artist who has both - as well as a slightly perverse sense of humour. I'm not going to argue with that, but would just point out that she's not the first artist to paint people sneezing, yawning, or vomiting. 

 

For example, back in 1928 D. H. Lawrence produced an interesting watercolour entitled Yawning (although, admittedly, the central male and female figures appear to be stretching rather than yawning); the same year that he also produced Dandelions which showed a man pissing [h]. 

 

Both works illustrate how the body is always looking to exert itself and escape the overcoding of the organism and how simple acts, such as yawning, might be conceived as expressive of the intensive forces of bodily sensation. 

 

Whether there is as much fancy (to use Salle's word) in Lawrence's work as Schutz's, I suspect not.

 

 

VI.

 

Just as there still some idiots insisting punk's not dead, so there are those who pretend that pop art is just as vital now as it was back in the Swinging Sixties (a time that most weren't even there to witness). 

 

Salle is not afraid to disillusion such people; "those days aren't here anymore [...] and all the record auction prices paid in the world aren't going to bring them back" [71].  

 

Pop, like punk, is over and it's images must be erased because no longer true for us today. The liberation that it promised has come to be seen for what it is; "an emptying-out process of jumped-up consumer stimulation that left you with very little in the way of tangible values" [68].   

 

Worse: 

 

"By the '70s pop art started to look like an embrace of this new consumer-driven social order; it felt a touch corrupt and compromised, and integrated a little too easily into the middle-high strata of public taste." [68]

 

(This seems to be a pop - no pun intended - at Warhol, rather than at Salle's much admired pal Roy Lichtenstein.) 

 

 

VII.

 

I have to confess: most of the contemporary artists that Salle refers to are not names with which I'm familiar: Alex Katz, Amy Sillman, Christopher Wool, Robert Gober, et al. Indeed, one of the pleasures of reading this book is learning about previously unknown figures and discovering their works. 

 

Of course, there are a few names I do recognise: Jeff Koons, for example; an artist I've discussed (and often defended) in several posts on Torpedo the Ark over the years [i]. And so I was particularly interested to see what he says about the man who has "done more than anyone else to make middle-class American happiness a legitimate subject, as well as the guiding aesthetic principle of his art" [75].  

 

Salle has known Koons since 1979 and clearly admired him from the off:

 

"You could sense the hidden depths: his deep love for and identifcation with art, high art, which is, I think, the source of much that is good in his work. It's the reason he is better than those who would try to be like him. Art is everything to Koons; he has internalised its essence [...] and his art is a combination of all the great things he has ever seen." [75]

 

Putting aside the fact that art has no essence, that's a rather lovely thing to say (I wish my friends were as generous in their praise). 

 

For Salle, major artists are often "a combination of unlikely pairings" [76] and Koons's art "represents the conflation of the readymade with the dream of surrealism" [76]; which is a clever way of saying that Koons has more in common with Duchamp and Dalí than he does with Warhol (despite what most critics think) [j]. 

 

And yet, Salle says Koons is perhaps unique among artists of his acquaintance for rarely speaking about his art in a technical manner; "he uses a civic - rather than an aesthetics or even a critical - language [...] it's all about what it does for the people who look at it" [79]. 

 

Koons wants his audience to feel good about themselves; giving them something they can not only identify with but be proud of. Usually, that would be enough to make me hate any artist, but, for some reason, I've always liked him. Perhaps it's because he also "makes the thingyness of modern life, that is, the way we bond and identify with products-as-images, coherent; he takes the iconic or mythic and makes it local" [82-83]. 

 

Some people might dismiss this as only a minor achievment, but for me, it's an act of magic or alchemy, which Salle labels the poetry of transference. 

 

Like Salle, I also spent time in Bilbao and, as a floraphile, I was equally delighted to see Koons's Puppy standing in front of the Guggenheim: "I was so grateful for its being there; it was such a gift. I never tired of seeing it; I was just happy it existed." [83]       

   

Jeff Koons: Puppy (1992) 

Stainless steel, soil, and flowering plants 

(1240 x 1240 x 820 cm)

guggenheim-bilbao.eus

 

 

Notes

[a] Written by jazz musicians Sy Oliver and Trummy Young back in the day, it was first recorded in 1939 with Ella Fitzgerald on vocals and backed by Chick Webb and his orchestra: click here.

      The Fun Boy Three version with Bananarama was released as a single in January 1982 on Chrysalis Records and reached number 4 in the UK charts. It also appeared on FB3's eponymous debut album released in March of '82. Given a ska/new wave interpretation, it's catchy - if a bit irritating after a while (as most catchy songs are): click here to play.    

 

[b] David Salle, How to See (W. W. Norton, 2018), p. 15. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.

[c] Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1887), Preface, 4. 

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Pictures', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 228. 

 

[e] I very much like this idea; later, when discussing the work of the German artist Sigmar Polke, Salle speaks of the "deep pleasure that comes with seeing the familiar [- such as a pair of socks -] as something irrationally strange" [38].

 

[f] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles ... p. 205.

 

[g] For a post on the importance of saying No, click here. For a post in gentle praise of the Neutral, click here. 

[h] See D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, ed. with an Introduction by Keith Sagar (Chaucer Press, 2003), pp. 155 and 81. Yawning was one of the pictures seized in the police raid at the Warren Gallery in July 1929.   

[i] See for example the post entitled 'In Defence of Jeff Koons's Easyfun-Ethereal' (16 Feb 2022): click here. Readers who want to read other posts about Koons, or which refer to his work, should go to labels and click on his name (alternatively, they can just click here). 

[j] That's not to deny the importance and influence of Warhol and Koons is, says Salle, the only artist of his generation to be unfazed by Warhol's legacy and to have "the steely determination [...] to take life on Andy's terms" [78]. 

 

To read part 2 of this post, click here. 

 

To read part 3 of this post, click here.

 

And for an earlier post in which I discuss the Introduction to David Salle's How to See (2016), click here. 

Notes on David Salle's Introduction to How to See (2016)

(W. W. Norton, 2016) [a]

 

 

I. 

 

As I've been looking at and thinking about art quite a bit recently, it seemed a good idea to read David Salle's essay collection How to See (2016); a book that comes with more accolades than you can shake a wet paint brush at (which is not something I approve of) [b]. 

 

Salle sets out his aim (as is only proper) in the Introduction: 

"The idea for this book is to write about contemporary art in the language that artists use when they talk among themselves - a way of speaking that differs from journalism, which tends to focus on the context surrounding art, the market, the audience, etc., and also from academic criticism, which claims its legitimacy from the realm of theory." [1] 

Leaving aside the question as to whether one can separate different ways of speaking about art in such a clean and clear cut fashion - I don't think you can - I suppose I would be regarded as someone whose thinking has been shaped by the realm of theory, although I'm not an academic and nor do I seek legitimacy for the views expressed here. 

 

What's more, I'm not the kind of writer who is "concerned with the big picture" [1]. 

 

That is to say, I'm not one who likes to erect some form of grand narrative (or what Salle refers to as macronarratives). The theorists and philosophers that I enjoy reading display, at the very least, a certain incredulity toward such things and subscribe to what I think of (after Lawrence) as a gargoyle aesthetic [c].

 

Artists, according to Salle, are more concerned with determining what does and doesn't work; are more practical and focused on the details than theorists. But again, that's highly contestable; there's no one offering a more philosophical reading of art than Gilles Deleuze, but his philosophy incorporates an important pragmatic component. 

 

Deleuze constantly emphasises the practical and creatively productive aspects of a work - be it an artwork or a work of philosophy - and speaks of the interconnectedness of experience at a rhizomatic level (or what Salle calls a micro level and which, interestingly, he relates to Manny Farber's notion of termite art [d]). 

 

 

II.

I might be mistaken, but I get the distinct impression that Salle doesn't much care for theorists of any description. Nor for critical writing which, according to him, regards the artist as a kind of failed philosopher (philosophe manqué) and which "for the last forty years or so has been concerned primarily with the artist's intention, and how that illuminates the cultural concerns of the moment" [2]. 

 

Really, David? That's not been my experience of such writing ...

 

In fact, I would've thought artistic intentionality was the last thing that interested any critic worth their salt in the last sixty years; it's the viewer's role in constructing meaning that, if anything, is emphasised and the work is discussed as a discrete object with its own formal qualities existing within a historical and cultural context that is quite separate from the individual who is said to have authored it. 

 

I agree with Salle that "intentionality is overrated" [2] and that what matters more is how an artist actually holds their paintbrush and the delicate movements of the hand. But, to repeat, none of the (mostly French) philosophers and theorists that I know of would disagree with that. 

 

 

III.

 

Ultimately, I suspect that what really irritates Salle (ironically) is that philosopher-theorists are not interested in the intentions of the artist and are, in fact, sceptical even about the existence of a doer behind every deed; an actor behind every action; an artist behind every canvas. Salle sees an artwork as something made by someone (often one of his friends); philosopher-theorists regard this someone as a metaphysical fiction constructed after the fact.     

 

For Salle, it seems to be vital that we get to know the artist at some sort of essential level. 

 

Thus, he refers us to Gertrude Stein's idea that individuals (as individuals) possess some kind of bottom nature; "a quality that exists underneath other attributes and is of importance [...] because it will, to a large extent, determine how a person acts in the world" [6] and presumably, if artists, the kind of art they make. 

 

Well, I'm not sure I want to buy back into this idea which, let's be honest, is an attempt to smuggle the Romantic notion of genius into the conversation once more. 

 

Nor do I think it the duty of the critic to provide access to "a work's core of feeling and meaning" [8] and relate such to wider human experience in a language that is free from what Salle calls jargon, so that each viewer can develop a personal (and intuitive) relationship to an artwork. 

 

At the risk of being said to lack visual fluency [e], let's just say that I see things a little differently from Salle on the points raised here ...         

 

 

Notes

 

[a] All page numbers that follow in this post are references to the 2018 paperback edition. 

 

[b] I understand why publishers like to quote from positive reviews on both the back cover and at the front of their books, but it's a brazen sales ploy which I find more than a little troubling; such unanimity of opinion, devoid of all critical negativity, reminds one of life in a totalitarian regime where all dissent has been crushed and all information is strictly controlled. 

      If words of praise must be assembled about an author and their book, then at least allow a few insults to be mixed in; as the publishers of Sebastian Horsley's Dandy in the Underworld (Sceptre, 2008) wisely (and amusingly) allowed.

 

[c] See the post published on 16 April 2019 in which I discuss this gargoyle aesthetic, adapted from D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow (1915): click here. 

 

[d] Manny Farber (1917-2008) was an American painter, film critic, and writer. One of his most influential essays is 'White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art' (1962), in which he contrasts the bloated excesses of the former with the virtues of the latter (termite art is said to be spontaneous, subversive, and experimental; always eating its own boundaries; elephant art, on the other hand, is weighed down by convention and its own desire for grandeur). 

      The essay originally appeared in Film Culture, number 27 (Winter 1962–63). It can be downloaded as a pdf from the Museum of Contemporary Art (LA): click here. 

 

[e] According to Salle: "Many people who who write and talk about art have no particular visual fluency ..." [7] 

 

 

Readers who are interested in my take on a current exhibition of Salle's work here in London might like to see the post of 25 April 2025: click here. 

The first part of a three-part post on looking, talking, and thinking about art with David Salle, can be accessed by clicking here.

 

 

Pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo

 

SJ Fuerst: Crab (2025) [1]

Oil paint on stuffed PVC toy, mounted on oil painted board

 

And a crab one afternoon in a pool, / An old crab with barnacles on his back, 

Gripped the end of a stick which I held him. - T. S. Eliot [2]

 

 

I. 

 

I know that, as a rule, crabs are not as fascinating to artists as lobsters [3]; as evidenced, for example, by Salvador Dalí's surrealist telephone (1936) and Jeff Koons's stainless steel sculpture (2007-12). 

 

But when, as a child, I went to the seaside for the day, I enjoyed searching for the former on the beach and will always remember coming across a large crab living (or perhaps temporarily sheltering) inside an old paint can, with his thick shell, ten legs, and large pincer claws that he waved in warning when I tried to get hold of him. It was an encounter 200 million years in the making and it made a real impression on my young mind.   

 

And so, I have a fondness for crabs - even whilst conceding that lobsters have a philosophically richer (and more perverse) symbolic history. I was pleased, therefore, to see that SJ Fuerst has got a new work currently on display entitled 'Crab' (see image above) ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Executed in her usual fine style with contemporary materials, Fuerst's work has been inspired in part by the decapods frequently depicted in Roman frescos and mosaics; one thinks, for example, of Cupid, the winged god of love, riding on the back of a harnessed crab [4].

 

Whether Fuerst also had in mind Van Gogh's oil painting of two crabs, thought to have been made soon after his release from hospital in Arles in January 1889, I don't know [5]. 

 

However, judging by the title of the exhibition - The Rabbit Hole Collective #1 - I'm guessing she had a more literary point of reference; namely, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  (1865); readers may recall the old and young crabs that gather on the shore of the pool of tears [6].   

 

 

III.

 

Whatever crab one chooses to reflect upon - be it real, fictional, or a plastic inflatable - the Spanish approve. They even have a popular expression to explain to foreigners that a siesta is not merely an opportunity to idle the early afternoon away after lunch, but, rather, allows time to contemplate important philosophical questions and think about the immortality of the crab ...

 

This sounds humorous, but our poets recognise the importance of such metaphysical daydreaming: José Emilio Pacheco, for example - regarded as one of the major Mexican poets of the second half of the 20th century - understood that the beauty of the crab lay in its ability to eternally return as ruler of the beach, despite the fact that crabs make up over twenty per cent of all marine crustaceans caught, farmed, and consumed worldwide by human beings, amounting to 1.5 million tonnes annually.

 

In the opening stanza of a short verse, Pacheco writes:

 

Y de inmortalidades sólo creo 

en la tuya, cangrejo amigo.  

      Te aplastan, 

te echan en agua hirviendo,  

      inundan tu casa. 

Pero la represión y la tortura 

de nada sirven, de nada. 

 

The English translation in Selected Poems (1987) is given as:

 

Of all the immortalities, I believe in

only yours, friend crab.

      People break into your body, 

plop you into boiling water, 

      flush you out of house and home. 

But torture and affliction 

Make no apparent end of you. [7]

 

Which is really just as well, for as the Spanish writer and philosopher Miguel Unamuno once said: If the crab should ever die in its entirety [i.e., become extinct], then we too will die for all eternity ... [8] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This is one of three works by SJ Fuerst currently being exhibited at il-Kamra ta‘ Fuq (Mqabba, Malta) as part of a show entitled The Rabbit Hole Collective #1, curated by Melanie Erixon. The exhibition runs from 25 April until 11 May, 2025. 

      For more details please click here, or visit artsweven.com. See also my post of 13 April 2025 on artistic and philosophical rabbit holes: click here.

 

[2] T. S. Eliot "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", in Collected Poems: 1909-1962 (Faber & Faber, 2002). To read online via the Poetry Foundation, click here.

 

[3] See the post entitled 'Lobster Variations (I - IV) (7 Feb 2021): click here. 

[4] This work, from Pompeii, is now housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples: click here. 

      Whether this playful image is intended to suggest love's triumph over power is debatable, but I rather suspect it is. That's irritating enough, but even more annoying is how the Ancient Greek god of primordial desire, Eros [ἔρως], is infantalised and reduced to being no more than a chubby little cherub; whilst the mighty figure of Carcinus [Καρκίνος] - the giant crab who inhabited the lagoon of Lerna and battled with Heracles at Hera's command - is tamed and turned into a pet on a leash. 

 

[5] Van Gogh was probably inspired by a woodcut by the Japanese artist Hokusai which featured in the May 1888 issue of Le Japon Artistique, sent to Vincent by his brother Theo in September of that year. Van Gogh's canvas, simply titled Two Crabs, can be found in the National Gallery (on loan from a private collector): click here for further details.

 

[6] See chapter 2 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). 

      Alice also encounters crabs in chapter 5 of Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and seems to be fond of them: 'I should so like to see a little crab to take home with me!' That's exactly how I felt as a seven year old on the beach at Southend.

 

[7] See José Emilio Pacheco, 'The immortality of the crab', in Selected Poems, ed. George McWhirter, various translators, (New Directions Publishing, 1987), p. 163. 

      Usefully, this is a bilingual edition, so one can check and modify (if need be) the English translation of the Spanish text (although I made no such modifications here, I have to admit I was very tempted to do so).     

 

[8] See Miguel de Unamuno, Inmortalidad del cangrejo [The immortality of the crab]. This poem - along with Pacheco's verse - can conveniently be found on the Wikipedia page devoted to the idea of thinking about the immortality of the crab: click here.   

For Tinks

Tinkerbell staring at me through the kitchen window 

(Feb 2025)

 

'The dead by the road, or on it, testify to the presence of man.'  [1]

 

 

I. 

 

One of my least favourite compound nouns in the English language is roadkill - an ugly word coined in the United States during the 1940s for an ugly phenomenon; namely, the unending slaughter of animals by cars and other motor vehicles and the negation also of any distinction between animals that meet their end in this sickening (and I would say sacrilegious) manner [2].   

 

 

II.

 

Essentially a non-phenomenon before the advent of motorised transport speeding along modern tarmacked roads built in the UK at the beginning of the 20th century [3], roadkill is something that first attracted the concern of naturalists in the 1920s. 

 

Since then, countless numbers of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates have died beneath the wheels (or been smashed on the windscreens) of road vehicles. 

 

We might also mention the fact that our road networks have massively altered the natural environment, often isolating wildlife populations and thus further decreasing their numbers, but, even without considering this, mortality resulting from roadkill alone significantly contributes to the population decline of many threatened species. 

 

Unfortunately, I suspect that the majority of drivers - insulated and indifferent inside their vehicles - simply don't give a shit; indeed, there is even evidence from studies that some drivers intentionally run over small animals, such as mice, frogs, or hedgehogs [4].        

 

And who knows, maybe even cats ... 

 

 

III.

 

Back in January 2023, Members of the House of Commons debated a petition signed by over 100,000 UK citizens calling upon Parliament to amend legislation so as to make it a legal requirement for a driver to stop and report an accident involving a cat (as they are already required to do in the case of a dog or a farm animal) [5]. 

 

As one Labour Member reminded the House, although dogs are the most popular pet in the UK, one in four households are home to at least one cat. Mine is one such household: home to a very handsome white and ginger male cat called Phoevos. And home also to a lively young female cat called Tinkerbell (or Tinks, for short) ... 

 

 

IV.

 

Technically, Tinks lived a few doors down with one of the neighbours, even if she spent a great deal of her time here during the last six months, observing everything that was going on and endlessly seeking affection (or food). Indeed, I have never known a friendlier (or greedier) little cat. And despite being half his size, she was soon chasing Phoevos from his favourite spots in the garden, so she could claim them as her own. 

 

And then, suddenly, she was no longer meowing at the door or sitting on the kitchen windowsill watching me do the washing up or prepare some lunch. And one instinctively knew that something must have happened to her ...

 

Sure enough, after a few days we learned from the neighbour that she'd been hit by a car and suffered severe injuries to her head and face, including a broken jaw, the loss of an eye, and possible brain damage. Luckily, someone - not the driver of the car who hit her - had stopped and taken her to the vet where she underwent emergency surgery. 

 

The prognosis isn't good, but she's being given a month to recover. If, at the end of that time, however, she's still unable to eat and her injuries haven't fully healed, then she'll be put down.   

 

 

V. 

 

Sadly, of course, this is not an uncommon occurrence. 

 

However, because there is still no legal requirement to report trafic collisions involving cats, nobody knows for sure know how many moggies are killed by vehicles on UK roads each year, although it's (conservatively) estimated to be around 230,000, which equates to 630 cats killed each and every day. 

 

So, what is to be done? Well, either we must change feline behaviour, or we must change driver behaviour. 

 

I suppose both are possible.

 

But when I think of poor Tinkerbell, I just want to scrap cars, rip up roads, and reduce the human population by a significant figure. 

 

To paraphrase D. H. Lawrence: 

 

How easily we might eliminate a few million humans and never miss them. Yet what a gap in the world, the missing feline face of Tinks the tabby cat, and the ting-a-ling-a-ling sound of her little blue bell when she came running. [6] 

 

Notes

 

[1] Timothy Findley, Journeyman: Travels of a Writer (Pebble Publications, 2003), p. 16. Findley goes on to suggest that when human beings stop killing animals without the slightest misgiving, they will then stop murdering one another. I serously doubt that, however. 

      I also suspect that we will never stop killing animals. For as the American anthropologist Jane Desmond concluded in a 2013 essay examining public indifference to animal suffering and their acceptance of roadkill, "animal lives have little value for most of the populations in the United States", particularly wild creatures which, unlike household pets for example, are unowned and lacking in monetary or emotional value. 

      See 'Requiem for Roadkill: Death and Denial on America's Roads', in Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions, ed. Helen Kopnina, and Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet (Routledge, 2013), pp. 46-58. The line quoted from is on p. 55.

 

[2] I have written about this topic before on TTA: see the post dated 4 October 2019: click here.

 

[3] The first roads designed specifically for cars were built in Nottingham in 1902; the same year that Welsh inventor Edgar Hooley gave the world the gift of tarmac. The first UK motorway, the Preston Bypass, opened in 1958; followed by the first city-to-city motorway, the M1, in 1959. 

 

[4] See E. Paul Ashley, Amanda Kosloski, and Scott A. Petrie, 'Incidence of Intentional Vehicle–Reptile Collisions', in Human Dimensions of Wildlife, Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2007), pp. 137-143. 

       The authors of this Canadian study found evidence that 2.7% of motorists would intentionally run over a lizard or snake, with some even speeding up to ensure they did so. The thing that surprises me is not that more male drivers were guilty of this than female, but that the figure is so low. Cruelty is one of the oldest pleasures of mankind, as Nietzsche liked to remind his readers; although today it is more often something practiced by the players of video games than celebrated at large public events.

 

[5] See 'Road Traffic Collisions Involving Cats', in Hansard, HC, Vol. 725 (debated on Monday 9 January 2023): click here. 

      Sadly, Rishi Sunak's government decided not to make a simple amendment to the legislation already in place under section 170 of the Road Traffic Act (1988) that covers horses, cattle, asses, mules, sheep, pigs, goats and dogs. It did, however, push through legislation requiring all cats in England to be microchipped before reaching twenty weeks of age. This new law came into effect on 10 June 2024. 

 

[6] I'm paraphrasing and extending the closing lines to Lawrence's poem 'Mountain Lion' in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (Martin Secker, 1923), pp. 187-189. The poem can be read in the Project Gutenberg edition of this work (2019) by clicking here.    

 

Reflections on a Fat Sand Rat

Top: photo of a fat sand rat by fmeijerdd (2023) 

on deviantart.com 

Bottom: Joan Miró: Le Rat des Sables (1975) 

Aquatint in colours on Arches paper (96 x 138.8 cm) 

shaperomodern.com

 

 

I. 

 

Once, at a graduate seminar titled 'Non-Oedipal Models of Psychology', Maggie Nelson was asked to participate in a "quick get-to-know-you game involving totem animals" [1]; an exercise that triggered her identity phobia. 

Not quite knowing what to say as she didn't possess any such animal, Nelson nervously awaited her turn as they went around the room, and then just blurted out otter, for no real reason other than the fact that it was important at the time for her to feel "small, slick, quick, amphibious, dexterous, capable" [2]. 

 

Like Nelson, not identifying with any tribe, clan, or close-knit community, I don't have a totem animal either; nor even do I have a spirit animal looking over me as an individual [3]. However, if I were put on the spot and obliged, like Nelson, to suddenly come up with such, I think at this point in time (when I'm feeling a little overweight) I'd probably say the fat sand rat ...

 

 

II. 

 

The fat sand rat (Psammomys obesus) is a terrestrial mammal belonging to the gerbil subfamily that is mostly found in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. Despite their (rather unflattering) name, they are actually very fussy eaters in the wild, only consuming stems and leaves from plants that belong to the genus Amaranthus. It's when they are kept in captivity and fed the wrong diet that they become obese and rapidly develop diabetes-like symptoms [4].  

 

As well as foraging for food, sand rats like to explore, to sunbathe, and to sleep; so quite a pleasant life, although they are not the most social of animals, preferring to live alone in their burrows and only interacting with members of the opposite sex for breeding purposes in the autumn to early spring period (perhaps followed by a bit of grooming). As a rule, it's the females who initiate such activity, although once fucked they will quickly turn aggressive and see off their mates.  

 

Obviously, fat sand rats can't afford to be too relaxed; for they are preyed upon by birds, snakes, desert cats and weasals, so have to be vigilant at all times. When frightened, they squeak, stamp their feet and then scarper below ground.    

 

 

III.

 

Of course, my reason for chooing the fat sand rat as my totem animal doesn't only relate to the fact that - due to the Little Greek's endless baking and years of inactivity due to my Essex exile - I have piled on the pounds. I was also influenced by my new admiration for one of Miró's monumental prints currently on display (and sale) at one of my favourite galleries here in London (Shapero Modern) ... [5]

 

Entitled Le Rat des Sables and printed in 1975 (as a signed series of 50), this work doesn't actually depict a fantastical creature as we are informed in the catalogue. For the sand rat is not a mythical or fictional being that exists only in legends or folk tales. Rather, as indicated above, sand rats - whatever their somatotype - are very much living organisms or biological entities; the result of evolution rather than the human imaginary.

 

Having said that, perhaps having been transformed by Miró into a work of modern art, this particular sand rat with its bold fluid lines and bright red eye, might (at a stretch) be thought of as a type of alibrije; a term coined by Mexican artist Pedro Linares to refer to his brightly coloured zoomorphic sculptures made from papier-mâché [6].    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (Melville House UK, 2016), p. 139. 

[2] Ibid.

 

[3] Whilst most people today - if they use these terms at all - use them interchangeably, they do, technically, have distinct meanings; a totem animal belongs to a group of people and represents their shared identity or collective spirit; a spirit animal, on the other hand - sometimes called a power animal - is chosen by and called upon by an individual as a guide, or protector, or source of inspiration on their unique life journey.   

[4] Unfortunately for the sand rats, this has led to their use in research into obesity and diabetes. They are also used in tests related to sleep patterns and seasonal affective disorder due to the fact that, like humans, they are diurnal. And, because of their remarkably efficient kidneys - crucial for life in very hot and very dry environments - they are further studied by scientists who think any amount of cruelty to animals can be justified so long as their is some human benefit (be it medical or commercal in nature).   

[5] For a recent post on this exhibition - Joan Miró: Monumental Printmaking (6 Mar - 4 May 2025) - click here. Or to visit the Shapero gallery website directly, please click here.  

[6] This art form originated in Mexico City in the 1930s, when Pedro Linares began creating his surreal creatures after experiencing vivid hallucinations during an illness. His designs, which combined elements of various real animals, became widely known as alebrijes and inspired many other artists and artisans, quickly becoming a significant aspect of Mexican folk art that combined indigenous traditions with modern artistic ideas. 

      Whether Joan Miró was thinking of them when he created his sand rat is not something I am able to say for sure, but it's certainly possible; Frida Kahlo was a fan of Linares and his figures and Miró admired the latter, whom he met during an exhibition in Paris, in 1939. 

 

 

In Praise of the Chance Encounter of Objects and Bodies: Reflections on David Salle's Postmodern Pastoral

David Salle: Suspenders (2025) 

Oil, acrylic, Flashe and charcoal on archival UV print on linen 

(72 x 108 in)

 ropac.net

 

'I've always had a desire to scramble the visual world into a vortex, 

to kind of desolidify painted reality into something that has

 the fluidity and velocity of a great abstract painting.' - DS

 

 

I. 

 

The 1980s was a great time to be a young painter (or a yuppie of any variety). 

 

And whilst some of those who rose to fame in this decade didn't make it out alive - one thinks of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, for example - others are still going strong and producing interesting work 40 years on, even whilst they are no longer quite so young as they once were (who is?).  

 

Jeff Koons, born in 1955, would be one obvious example of an enfant terrible now turned silver fox; and David Salle, born three years earlier in 1952, is another. And it's Salle and his new solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) - Some Versions of Pastoral (10 April - 10 June 2025) - that I wish to speak of here ...    

 

 

II.

 

The exhibition borrows its title from a 1935 book by the English critic and poet William Empson;  one that is widely recognised as an extraordinary work of literary criticism and written in his charismatically informal style. 

 

Traditionally, the pastoral refers to works that depict an idealised version of rural life featuring shepherds, livestock, and idyllic landscapes. Artists didn't aim for a faithful representation, so much as the construction of an artificial reality designed to appeal to an urban audience rather than those who actually live in the countryside and work the land. 

 

The intent was to trigger a longing for a more tranquil existence rooted in nature and for simpler times, free from the complexities and stresses of modern life. 

 

But Salle is having none of that: his postmodern pastoral is less about bucolic myth and more about combining (what might appear to be random) images - some original and some appropriated from a wide range of sources including magazines, billboards, cartoons, and art history - in what he describes as a circuitous freefall that has neither beginning nor end, although these images of objects and bodies do dramatically converge on a plane of consisency [1].

 

The gallery's press release describes things perfectly:

 

"In these new paintings, the artist uses his own oeuvre - specifically, a group of paintings titled the Pastorals, executed in 1999 and 2000 - as raw material. Fed into a custom-made AI programme, the works are deliberately distorted to produce a variation on the pastoral scene. These freewheeling, sometimes bewildering images are then printed onto canvas to form the backdrops on which Salle paints. The result is a lyrical body of work that teems with new plasticity, and seems to respond to our viral visual world." [2]

 

Salle, I know, has his critics; some, for example, feel he leaves just a little too much unfinished in his work and that it's so fragmented that it lacks any coherent narrative or meaningful story (and thus, for these critics, any human import or purpose). One such critic (amusingly) wrote that Salle's indifference to such criticism "is the main if not the only critically interesting thing about his work" [3]. 

 

Others object to his use of AI to conceptualise and generate images reflective of his style and although Salle affirms his right as an artist to exploit any available technology, he acknowledges the concern that superintelligent machines may one day supersede human image-makers (and do so without a pang of conscience).   

 

Ultimately, for Salle, "'machine learning affords artists the means to reconfigure pictorial space with the malleability and plasticity of pure imagination'" [4]. 

 

In other words, AI is a tool with which he can "steer through sequences of objects, forms, styles and genres without self-identification or overattachment to meaning", in a carefree manner that "finds its precedent in the 20th century's avant-garde [...] whose automatic strategies [...] were attempts to liberate creativity from conscious thought as well as prescribed aesthetic, moral and political hierarchies" [5]. 

 

Beauty, for Salle - as for Comte de Lautréamont and, indeed, Man Ray and many of the Surrrealists - is born today from the chance encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella [6]:

 

  

Man Ray: Beau comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection 

d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie (1933)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In art, a plane of composition refers to the arrangement and organisation of various elements within a work to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing whole. But by a plane of consistency, Deleuze and Guattari refer to something that opposes this and which consists only in the "relations of speed and slowness between unformed elements"; there is no finality or unification. 

      A plane of consistency, therefore, doesn't aim to produce aesthetic pleasure, so much as open up a zone of indeterminacy and a continuum of intensity upon which new thoughts and feelings can unfold and interact without being constrained by pre-existing ideas and emotions. In sum: it's a kind of virtual realm of infinite possibilities. 

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. 507. 

 

[2] Press release for David Salle Some Versions of Pastoral (10 April - 8 June 2025), Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, 37, Dover Street, London, W1. I presume the well-written text was by the Head of Press, Nini Sandhaus. 

 

[3] Arthur Danto, quoted in Bad Reviews, ed. Aleksandra Mir and Tim Griffin (Retrospective Press, 2022). 

      Readers might like to note that Salle is himself a highly respected writer and critic; see his collection of essays entitled How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking about Art (W. W. Norton, 2016).

[4] David Salle quoted in the press release for Some Versions of Pastoral ...

 

[5] Press release for David Salle Some Versions of Pastoral ...

 

[6] This is a famous line from the poetic novel Les Chants de Maldoror (1868-69) by Comte de Lautréamont; see Canto VI, Verse 3.