Thoughts Inspired by Three Short Stories by Chōkōdō Shujin

(The Tripover, 2025) 

Note: all page numbers in this post refer to this edition.

 

 

I. 

 

Our friends at The Tripover have a new book out; a debut short story collection by Chōkōdō Shujin that opens in a cabbage field and ends on the volcanic island of Iowa Jima, but mostly unfolds in that non-space of the excluded middle; the space that is in between here and there, now and then, fantasy and reality; the realm of fuzzy logic, dark limpidity, and what Nietzsche terms dangerous knowledge where imagination and memory meet. 

 

A good place for any writer to explore - even at the risk of losing their way ...

 

 

II. 

 

The name Chōkōdō Shujin will, of course, ring a bonshō bell for those readers familiar with Japanese literature. For it was originally the pen name adopted by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa; a writer viewed by many as a master of the structured short story who, tragically, topped himself in 1927, aged 35, after both his mental and physical health began to markedly deteriorate, leaving behind him over 150 short stories, as well as a wife and three children. 

 

Now, the author of this collection of tales writes under this name; honouring his dead hero whilst, at the same time, attempting to find his own voice and literary style. I have to say, that's either a brave and confident or foolish and conceited thing to do; a bit like a young philosopher deciding to publish a book under the name Zarathustra and thereby inviting comparison with Nietzsche.

 

Still, who knows, maybe it pays to call attention to oneself in this manner, though whether he’ll be nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize [a] on the basis of this book remains to be seen ...

 

 

III.

 

Of the ten stories assembled here, there are three that most captured my interest and so, rather than write a review of the book as a whole, I'd like to make some brief remarks inspired by this trio of tales and the themes of agalmatophilia, sexsomnia, and suicide that reside at their dark heart [b].

 

Meguri 

 

As someone who has written often on the topic of agalmatophilia, I was naturally drawn to the longest story in Shujin's book entitled 'Meguri' - a term which, like many Japanese words, has multiple meanings depending on the kanji characters used. 

 

In the context of this tale, for example, it may refer to the circulation of souls contained within the statue; or it could refer to the manner in which the statue patrols the house at night, looking for love or seeking revenge.  

 

The proganonist, Sōtarō Takeshita, is haunted by the sculpted figure of a Chinese noblewoman with slender, finely carved wrists to which - as a cheirophile as well as a statue fetishist - he is particularly partial. 

 

Her beauty is a pale and perfect combination of coldness and cruelty and ever since falling and cutting his head on the statue as a young boy, Sōtarō has had a strange bond with her; one sealed with blood. At night, she often stands by his bedside, silent and motionless, disturbing his sleep, before returning to her place in the parlour at dawn. 

 

The author doesn't say that the young man masturbates as she stands looking down on him, but he does mention the motion of his trembling hands and I guess we can take this as rather coy way of suggesting such (the strange bond between them is thus sealed with semen as well as blood). 

 

As the servant Tatsuo says: "The master of this house has always been like a lover to her …" [36]

 

Unfortunately, the statue also has a propensity to kill - particularly intruders who break into the house. Following one such incident, the police are called and Detective Nishitani of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police almost immediately suspects strange goings on involving the statue. For whilst her face was very beautiful, there was the look of "malice in her piercing eyes" [26]. 

 

He interviews the young master of the house: 

 

"Nishitani's impression of Sōtarō was one of profound loneliness. Indeed, the young man seemed dead inside, as hollow as the statue, as if his soul had been stolen from his body." [30]

 

And, by the end of the story, that's precisely what has happened; Sōtarō's soul is stolen and imprisoned within the stone along with the lonely and tormented souls of many other poor wretches. 

 

That's probably not great; a bit like being in the sunken place that Chris finds himself in Jordan Peele's excellent psychological horror Get Out (2017). One is conscious, but robbed of agency and denied freedom of movement and the ability to communicate verbally with others.

 

Ultimately, the question of whether Sōtarō is dead, dreaming, mad, or perhaps suffering from locked-in syndrome (pseudocoma) isn't really answered, so I guess it doesn't really matter. Besides, human beings are remarkably resilient and can get used to almost any conditions: 

 

"Whether this was madness or death, it did not seem to be such a fearsome thing. It was far less unpleasant than his waking existence." [46]  

 

 

Nakajima Says

 

If ‘Meguri’ is a warning against the dangers of excessive masturbation - it leads to a loss of soul - then we might read 'Nakajima Says' as a warning not to daydream or meditate to the point at which one falls into a state of sexually violent somnambulism and one's thoughts begin to first fragment and then dissolve until "there is nothing left in mind, and only emptiness remains" [54]. 

 

This may be a desired goal for those who tie spiritual enlightenment to the overcoming of consciousness and moral agency, but I can’t personally see the attraction of sleepwalking along imaginary corridors or living in "an intense world of disconnection" [55]. No man is an island - even if his name is Nakajima.

 

Nor am I a fan of reaching a psycho-physiological state of numbness (hypoesthesia); building a BwO is an attempt to deliver man from his automatic reactions, it is not about becoming "free and empty" [59] of all feeling, gaiety, and dance so that one ends us belonging to that "dreary parade of sucked dry, catatonicized, vitrified, sewn-up bodies" described by Deleuze and Guattari [c]. 

 

However, I’m all for a little urban gardening; creating space for wild flowers and building a little pond for crabs and catfish to live. And if this is what Nakajima suggests we do, then that's great, although I’m extremely wary of the idea that this involves controlling the natural landscape and "requires an immersive contemplation of the ego" [58]. 

 

It turns out that Nakajima has a girlfriend - Sonoko - whose lovely name means child of the garden. She possesses, we are told, "the poise and mystery of a café waitress" [61] and no doubt her smile is ineffably sweet, her figure divinely slim [d]. 

 

But her beauty doesn't justify grabbing her hair and pulling her to the ground ... And Nakajima's sexual aggression, fuelled as much by Sonoko's silence as her appearance - "Why doesnt she scream or cry?" [61] - is as reprehensible as his desire to subdue nature and empty himself of all thought and feeling like a sleepwalking zombie.

 

Of course, it might be that Nakajima - if ever charged with rape or sexual assault - would offer a criminal defence based on a medical diagnosis of sexsomnia; a condition which can occur at the same time as other parasomnia activities and lead to an abnormally high level of sexual tension dangerously coupled with decreased inhibitions [e].  

Does living in a dream not only become a reality, but enable one to escape culpability ...?  

 

 

The Scent of Roses 

On the suicide of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 1927 

 

"No one could be surprised by Akutagawa's death [...] For two years, he had meticulously planned his voluntary death." [83] 

 

Indeed, the letter he left behind was so carefully crafted and revised, that it was more like a beautiful prose poem than a hastily scribbled suicide note stained with tears and full of errors. 

 

Akutagawa understood what it was to practice joy before death; i.e., to constantly imagine how best to construct a beautiful, stylish - some might even say chic - exit from this life and keep at hand the instruments that might facilitate such. 

 

In Akutagawa's case, this meant a small bottle of poison:

 

"Always the aesthete, he had no desire to throw himself in front of a train or from a roof. His vanity, too, was the reason for having decided against hanging, although he had attempted to do so on more than one occasion. Akutagawa was a strong swimmer, which precluded drowning; as his hands shook from the sleeping pills that he took even in the daytime, seppuku was not an option, despite his prowess as a martial artist." [87]

 

His wife, Fumi, appears to have understood her husband's desire for a voluntary death; her first words on discovering his body were to congratulate him:  "'I'm so happy for you, darling'" [84].

 

For to die at thirty-five ensured he would "always be remembered at the height of his beauty and talent" [85]. But it's not so easy dying at the right time; Zarathustra speaks of it as a difficult and rare art [f]. So well done Akutagawa, whose death was widely reported throughout the world and served as an inspiration to those who know their Nietzsche. 

 

What wasn't reported, however - and here comes the fictional twist in the tale - was that Akutagawa's close friend, the artist Ryūichi Ōana, could not bear the thought of never seeing his face again. And so, whilst standing alone by the casket, he found himself tempted to do something that even he considered monstrous; namely, remove the nails and open the rectangular pine box ....

 

"Ōana knew very well that the dead man in the casket would be quite unrecognisable after four days, when dry ice was in such short supply. There was no doubt in his mind that, if he were to see such a face, he would remember it with horror until the end of days. And yet he could not overcome the desire - no, the need - to see Akutagawa one last time." [89]

 

Shujin continues:

 

"With a strength beyond himself, he pried the lid from the casket, holding his handkerchief to his nose. Ōana was, indeed, startled. The face before him remained unchanged from the day he had painted the death mask, pale and at peace, his lips slightly parted, as though he had at last seen eternity and found himself in a state of grace." [89]

 

That's a nice way to close a story. 

 

And it reminds one of the famous case of Ellen West, who, like Akutagawa, also died after taking a lethal dose of poison, having spent her last hours reading, writing, and snacking. Her psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger, a pioneer in the field of existential psychology and much influenced by Heidegger, said after viewing the body of his patient:  'She looked as she had never looked in life - calm, happy, and peaceful.' 

Although whether a scent of roses pervaded her room, I cannot say ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The Akutagawa Prize is a Japanese literary award presented biannually to a promising young writer. It was established in 1935 by Kan Kikuchi, then-editor of Bungeishunjū magazine, in memory of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and is sponsored by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature.

 

[b] Let me say at the outset that this is not strictly speaking a faithful reading or critical assessment of the tales, so much as a perverse reimagining in line with my own interests rather than the intentions of the author Chōkōdō Shujin. Apologies to him -and his publishers - should they feel I've taken excessive liberties with the text and in any way detracted from the original stories.

 

[c] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans, Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1996), p. 150. 

[d] Regular readers of Torpedo the Ark will recall the recent post on the sexual politics of waitressing (12 March, 2025), in which I referenced a poem by Robert W. Service that includes the lines "Her smile ineffably is sweet / Divinely she is slim" - click here.   

 

[e] The number of alleged sex offenders claiming sexsomnia as a legal defence is rapidly growing; the argument is that a person who commits an act whilst asleep (i.e., not fully conscious - even if their eyes are are wide open) cannot be held criminally responsible for that act; that there has to be intent on their part and the act has to be voluntary, for a crime to have been committed. 

 

[f] See Nietzsche, 'Of Voluntary Death', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883). For Nietzsche, as the great comedian of the ascetic ideal, it is of course all about timing: 'Many die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: Die at the right time.' 

 

 

Click here for a sister post to this one based on another tale found in Nakajima Says and Other Stories (2025). 

Bye Bye Blackbird

Stephen Alexander: 

Bye Bye Blackbird (2025) [1]

 

'The blackbird cannot stop his song ... 

It takes place in him, even though all his race was yesterday destroyed.' [2]

 

 

Like many other birds once common in back gardens across the UK, the blackbird is now rarely seen or heard; populations in England, particularly in urban areas, have been in sharp decline during recent years, with some reports indicating a shocking 40% drop in numbers in London since 2018.

 

So I was particularly saddened to find the body of a young male blackbird lying dead by the roadside, with a deep wound ripped across his breast (hard to blame such an injury on the Usutu virus). 

 

Is there, you might ask, any point in reflecting upon the bloody remnants of a feathered creature lying exposed in this way; of taking a photograph of what Lawrence describes as the ragged horror of a bird claimed by death and passing into darkness? 

 

I think so: not because I wish to aestheticise the moment or fetishise violence and suffering. But because I think there is a connection between him and me and by memorialising this blackbird in the only way I know how (with words and images), perhaps it allows his song to echo for just a bit longer.     

 

Notes

 

[1] The artwork features a photo of a dead blackbird by the roadside superimposed on the cover of the sheet music for the song 'Bye Bye Blackbird', published in 1926 by Jerome H. Remick, written by composer Ray Henderson and lyricist Mort Dixon. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Whistling of Birds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 23.  

Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art with David Salle (Part 3)

David Salle working in his studio 

photographed by Frenel Morris (2023)

 

"Modern art has always hungered for philosophical, theoretical, and verbal expression. 

 However, the theoretical and the philosophical can be counterproductive 

if they constrain rather than liberate the imagination." - David Salle 

  

 

I.

 

If Malcolm Mclaren learnt one lesson from art school it was that it's better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success:

 

"'I realised that by understanding failure you were going to be able to improve your condition as an artist. Because you were not going to fear failure you were going to embrace it and, in doing so, maybe break the rules and by doing that, change the culture and, possibly by doing that, change life itself.'" [a]

 

And I think we can call Jack Goldstein a flamboyant failure; a cool good-looking cat, whom Salle never saw "without a leather jacket and a cigarette" [b]; the kind of artist "who thinks he has to be the prickliest cactus in the desert" [153].

 

In 2003, he committed suicide (aged 57): 

 

"The cliché would have it that gave all he had to his work, when it might be more accurate to say that apart from the work, there wasn't much in this life that he could claim as his own. [...] He was a man who had somehow failed to be 'made' by his experiences - he was only 'un-made' by them [...]" [155-156]

 

Of course, the posthumous part of his story is also familiar; "since his death, Jack has been lionized by a new generation of young artists who see in his rigid and strained sensibility a yearning for something clean and pure [...]" [156] [c].

 

In other words, he's what Nietzsche would call a posthumous individual ...

 

 

II.

 

Salle is clearly a fan of the young Frank Stella; an artist best known perhaps for his Black Paintings (1958-60), a series of twenty-four related works in a minimalist style that free painting from drawing:

 

"Stella instinctively understood something fundamental about painting: that it is made by covering a flat surface with paint [...] If a painting could be executed with a kind of internal integrity, the image - i.e., the meaning - would take care of itself." [165]

 

Some critics - and even some other artists - feared at the time that Stella's work marked the end of art. But, actually, it marked a fresh beginning; "after first stripping down painting to its essentials, the creator then populated the world with every manner of flora and fauna" [166].   

 

And, ironically, by the end of his career Stella has become, says Salle, merely a decorative painter; one who is actually closer to painters in the art nouveau tradition, than to Malevich; one whose late works "still occasionally command our attention, even awe, but more often than not leave us with a feeling of a lot of energy being expended to no particular end, of being more trouble than they're worth" [170] - ouch!

 

 

III.    

 

"Style reflects character" [172], says Salle. 

 

And if there's a single sentence which brings home just how he and I philosophically differ, this is it. For one thing, it presupposes an underlying character - some kind of essential moral quality that is straightforwardly reflected in our manner, our behaviour, and our appearance. 

 

I would say, on the contrary, that style - as a form of discipline and cruelty - shapes character and would refer to Nietzsche on this matter:

 

"To 'give style' to one's character - a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye." [d]

 

Style, in other words, is an art of existence involving not only a single taste, but what Foucault terms techniques of the self. That is to say, a set of voluntary actions by which individuals: 

 

"not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria" [e].  

 

 

IV.

 

Where Salle and I do agree, however, is on the question of appropriation - like him, I'm happy with such a practice; what is Torpedo the Ark if not a blog assembled largely of notes? 

 

Ultimately, like James Joyce - according to David Markson - I'm "'quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man'" [177]. If nothing else, as Salle says, at least this succeeds in irritating a lot of people and, besides, the act of choosing what one steals and appropriates can be "in and of itself, in the right hands" [177] an art. 

 

The greatest of appropriationists are alchemists: they transform materials. For they understand that by changing the context you create fresh meaning: "Even if you repaint, or reprint, something as close as possible to its model, you will end up making something new." [178]

 

When a critic says: 'They're someone else's ideas!' Simply reply: 'Yes, but they're mine too.'

 

 

V.     

 

This is something I also agree with and which strikes me as important:

 

"We're taught to think of modernism [...] as a story of progress and up-to-dateness, a developmental stream that seems logical, even inevitable. But some of the most interesting painting exists in the margins, apart from the official story. [...] It's a question of temperament and talent, and also of context, rather than linear progress." [189]

 

Sometimes, one needs to travel back into art history, into antiqity, into mythology, in order to project "an updated version of the past into the present" [189] and learn how to live yesterday tomorrow (as Malcolm would say). And whether we call this retrofuturism or neoclassicism it pretty much means the same thing. 

An artist, says, Salle, is ultimately "both himself and a distillation of everything relevant that preceded him" [191] [f].

 

VI.

 

Is contemporary art infantalised? 

 

Salle seems to say as much (although he doesn't use this word):
 

"In the world of contemporary art, the quantity of work that depicts, appeals to, references, critiques, or mimics childood has reached critical mass. For the first time, the international style is not a matter of form or invention but one of content. And that content is all wrapped up with regression. The art public becomes excited by the same things that babies like: bright, shiny things; simple, rounded forms; cartoons; and, always, animals. Brightly colored or shiny and highly reflective; or soft, squishy, furry, pliable - huggable." [200]

 

What's going on? 

 

Maybe, suggests Salle, it's compensatory for all the grown-up things that also define the age: "class war; government dysfunction; religious fundamentalism; the baking of the planet - take your pick, the list goes on" [199].

 

Maybe. 

 

Though I very much doubt that's how D. H. Lawrence would view things. I suspect, rather, that he'd rage against the infantalisation of art and see it as a profoundly perverse form of corruption or decadence. 

 

He'd also point to the curious fact that the perverted child artist is also an often gifted businessman, making a lot of money by turning the gallery space into a nursery and offering works that provide instant gratification and the promise of ice cream [g].  

 

 

VII.

 

Is it true, as Salle suggests, that "the qualities we admire in people [...] are often the same ones we feel in art that holds our attention" [211]?  

 

I mean, it's possible. But surely the most fascinating works of art possess (inhuman/daemonic) qualities that pass beyond admirable ...?      

 

 

VIII. 

 

Salle makes a distinction between pictorial art and presentational art; the first is all about self-expression; the latter is concerned with a set of cultural signifiers. 

 

Of course, nothing in art is simply one thing or the other. It may be convenient to provisionally posit such a binary dictinction, but there is no either/or. But, having done so, it's probably right to say that presentational art has triumphed over the last fifty years; a fact that makes Salle's heart sink. 

 

Why? 

 

Because, says Salle, we end up with art that is simply commentary and lacks emotional power. One might even say such art lacks presence or what used to be called aura:

 

"Baldly put, a work of art was said to emanate this aura as a result of the transference of energy from the artist to the work, an aesthetic variant of the law of thermodynamics." [230]

 

The problem is, that's not just baldly put, it's badly put. In fact, it's a misunderstanding of the term aura - certainly as used by Walter Benjamin, who, in a famous essay written in 1936 defined it as an artwork's unique presence in time and space [h]. 

 

In other words, aura results from cultural context and is not something invested in the work by the artist. Not for the first time, Salle is giving the latter too much credit; viewing the artist as a larger than life personality and the souce of mysterious energy; as one who is often unhampered by sanity but gifted with genius. 

 

I'm not by any means opposed to artworks that exist as actual objects crafted by hand and full of auratic authenticity. But, unable to produce such myself - and without the means to buy such - I'm perfectly content to think of art primarily as something presented on a screen or printed on the page of a book or magazine.

 

And even Salle admits that, at least since Picasso, "how well a work reproduces plays a significant role in its popularity; the most acclaimed artists from the '60s, for instance, look fabulous in reproduction" [234]. 

 

He continues:

 

"This isn't to suggest that those works didn't also have tremendous physical presence, but the fact remains most people  are primarily familiar with a work of art through a reproduction; those who have the good fortune of experiencing the painting firsthand are fewer in number, and those who have the luxury of actually living with it are very rare indeed." [234]

 

But still there are some works that look more compelling in a magazine or on a screen than sitting in a gallery space; this is what Salle terms art conceived as spectacle or as advertising; art that is ironically detached from its own form and exists happily as a pure image; art that is devoid of aura - but then, as Salle says: "It's a relief sometimes to let go of things that no longer serve." [239] [i]  

 

 

Anish Kapoor: Cloud Gate (2004-06) 

Polished stainless steel (10 x 20 x 12.8 m)

Millennium Park, Chicago, USA.

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 49. 

      In an address given to the New York Academy of Art in 2011, Salle says: "I think it's fair to say that failure is the last taboo in American culture. [...] It might just be my sensibility, but I've always been attracted to the idea of the noble failure; the attempt at something that was probably bound to fail at some point, but the contemplation of which is exciting nonetheless. But this archetype of the noble failure doesn't seem to have much currency anymore; in fact, it probably went out of fashion  about the same time that the alienated hero was given a pink slip." [249]

      McLaren wanted to destroy success; today, artists want to be popular and succeed in the market place. Salle seems okay with this; "sometimes the most poular art is also the best" [250] and if you're a genuine artist, money and fame won't greatly change what you do (nor the amount of time spent alone in the studio).         

[b] David Salle, How to See (W. W. Norton, 2016), p. 154. All further page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

 

[c] Later, writing of Mike Kelly - another artist who topped himself (in 2012, and also aged 57, like Goldstein) - Salle says that suicide can't be trumped in its finality and thus "makes the survivors seem small" [159].

 

[d] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1974), IV. 290, p. 232.

[e] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 10-11. 

[f] Later, in a piece on Francis Picabia, Salle writes that every generation wants to revisit and revise the past in some manner and that "letting the air out out of the story of linear progress" [197] was something that characterised the work of him and his contemporaries.

[g] According to Salle; the giant bean sculpture by Anish Kapoor - pictured above at the end of the this post - is a work that says, "'There will be ice cream'" [244]; one that is very large, very shiny, and, even though its hard and metallic to the touch, one that makes you "want to cuddle it" [199], or take a selfie standing in front, smiling.   

 

[h] Benjamin's essay, 'The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction', can be found in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (The Bodley Head, 2015), pp. 211-244. 

      See section II which opens with the lines: "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."  

 

[i] Salle goes on to add: "I have always found it a relief to let go of stuff that I only partly believe in. It makes me feel lighter, better." [239] I interpret this as saying the abandonment of ideals that weigh us down is a crucial aspect of overcoming the spirit of gravity.

 

To read part one of this post, click here.

 

To read part two of this post, click here. 

 

To read notes on David Salle's Introduction to How to See 92016), click here.  

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.