Why I Love Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863)

Édouard Manet: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) 
Oil on canvas, 208 x 264.5 cm

Manet's controversial picnic scene, known in English as Lunch on the Grass, might seem fairly innocuous to a modern viewer, despite the nudity of the central female figure and scantily-clad bather in the background - and despite the high regard in which it's held by art-loving members of the dogging and CMNF communities respectively.

But, back in the day, it sparked outrage in the art world, breaking with academic convention in style, in subject matter, and in the size of the canvas. It also provoked a huge public scandal; not only was there a woman in the nip besides two fully-clothed men, but they appeared to be fairly indifferent to the fact - more concerned with their own conversation and appearance, like a couple of queers. What's more, she, the brazen hussy, is gazing directly at the viewer, breaking the fourth wall with a coquettish smile that is as knowing as it is obscene.       

Surprisingly, for such a famous work, there's still a good deal we don't know for certain about the painting; including, for example, when Manet first began the canvas, how he originally got the idea and what sort of preparatory work he carried out. Having said that, we do know that the female nude was Victorine Meurent, a famous model and accomplished artist in her own right, whom Manet loved to paint (she it was who sat for another of his notorious canvases belonging to this period, Olympia).

And we do know that Manet was playfully reworking an Old Master's depiction of a Greek mythological scene. For the disposition of the main figures is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's celebrated engraving The Judgement of Paris (c. 1515), after a drawing by Raphael; an artist revered by the conservative members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, so Manet's très moderne take on this Renaissance treasure was bound to ruffle feathers. In fact, some members were said to be apoplectic, though others found the canvas simply laughable.

Émile Zola, however, thought it to be Manet's greatest work. So too did many other 19th and 20th century artists, including Picasso, who was so obsessed by Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe that he completed 27 paintings and 140 drawings inspired by it.

Punk impresario Malcolm McLaren also liked it so much that, when managing Bow Wow Wow, he commissioned the photographer Andy Earl to recreate the picture with members of the band, including 14-year-old Annabella Lwin taking on the Victorine Meurent role - much to the outrage of her mother, who called in Scotland Yard and had the image removed from the sleeve of the group's 1981 album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! 

Photo of Bow Wow Wow by Andy Earl 

49 x 38.5 cm colour print (1983) 

Given to the National Portrait Gallery by Andy Earl (1999) 

It's amusing to think that, almost 120 years after being rejected by the Salon, Lunch on the Grass could still upset the elderly authorities and those D. H. Lawrence terms censor-morons; i.e. individuals who attempt to circumscribe the pornographic imagination.

The Rape of Africa: David LaChapelle's Reimagining of Botticelli's Venus and Mars

Botticelli: Venus and Mars (c. 1483)

Tempera and oil on panel, 69 cm x 173 cm

Botticelli's Venus and Mars is an acknowledged masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, depicting the Roman goddess Venus and her divine lover, Mars, in a blissful post-coital scene.

The conventional interpretation is that she has left him powerless and exhausted; that her feminine charms have triumphed over masculine brute force and that in order to experience what D. H. Lawrence terms the peace of fucking, it's necessary for men to lay down their arms and make love, not war.

One might suggest, however, that what Botticelli playfully exposes is naked male conceit. Happy to lie back and sleep after doing the deed, Mars is as vainly content with his sexual prowess as with his virtues as a warrior. Venus, meanwhile, is left to look on unsatisfied and disappointed; for maybe when stripped of his weapons and his armour, Mars wasn't all she'd hoped him to be (the limpness of his right hand betraying all we need to know).

However we choose to read it, the painting is undoubtedly one of the jewels in the collection of The National Gallery, London, and I would encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to do so, should they be fortunate enough to have the opportunity. I would also encourage readers to view David LaChapelle's provocative reimagining of the work, entitled The Rape of Africa:

    

David LaChapelle: The Rape of Africa (2009)

Digital image ft. Naomi Campbell as Venus and Caleb Lane as Mars 

LaChapelle's picture, featuring Naomi Campbell in the role of a Black Venus (and rape victim), is a pomo-political allegory, which, like most of his work - both as a commercial fashion photographer and as a serious artist-cum-activist - is visually stunning, but lacking in subtlety for all its knowing sophistication and obsessive attention to detail.

As critics have noted, the work also leaves nothing to the imagination and is weighed down by its own aesthetic excess - crammed full as it is of various objects serving a crude symbolic function and a rich saturation of colours - and by its moral-political idealism. In the end, if you look at it for too long, you start to feel a tiny bit queasy; but it's only when you consider the latter that you seriously want to vomit.    

For this photo is not, alas, the visual equivalent of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. At best, it simply repeats the refrain made famous by Edwin Starr and attempts to foster white guilt over the three evils of racism, imperialism and colonialism. Viewers might also notice the large piece of earth digging machinery working away at a gold mine, reminding us of the environmental cost of consumer capitalism (aka Western greed).    

I understand LaChapelle's ambition to create a more substantial, more socially aware body of work beyond the frivolous worlds of pop, celebrity, and fashion - and I wish him every success. But, really, David, we can do without the political posturing, the crocodile tears and the shameless hypocrisy.

Ultimately, The Rape of Africa is another example of that sentimental compassion which Pascal Bruckner rightly identifies as an insidious form of contempt.    

Two Great Dancers in Two Unforgettable Pop Videos: Maddie Ziegler and Sergei Polunin

Maddie Ziegler performing in "Chandelier". 

Vocals by Sia. Written by Sia and Jesse Shatkin. From the album 1000 Forms of Fear (2014). 

Video dir. by Sia and Daniel Askill. Choreography by Ryan Heffington. 

A journalist writing for People magazine described Maddie Ziegler as a super-human child or graceful alien sent to Earth from Planet Talented to make us lesser beings look really stiff and clumsy in comparison. And, indeed, watching this eleven-year-old spin and scuttle around like the world's prettiest cockroach, or an insane fairy, in one of YouTube's most viewed videos, does make one feel not only inept and inferior, but very, very old.

We might, as Spinoza would say, still not know what a body can do; but we now have a much better idea, thanks to Maddie Ziegler, of what fabulous things some little bodies are capable of. Once seen, her mesmerizing performance is never forgotten - but never quite believed either (thus the compulsion to watch the video over and over). It's magical. It's grotesque. And it's genius.    

Meanwhile, in an atmospheric and erotically-charged video directed by the American photographer and filmmaker David LaChapelle, former Royal Ballet bad boy and principal dancer Sergei Polunin gives a stunning visual interpretation of Hozier’s powerful gay protest anthem, "Take Me to Church".

Sergei Polunin performing in "Take Me to Church". 

Vocals by Hozier. Written by Hozier. From the album Hozier (2014) 

Video dir. by David LaChapelle. Choreography by Jade Hale-Christofi. 

Set in a rather lovely white studio, amongst the trees and flooded with natural light, the twenty-five year-old Ukrainian shows off his muscles, his scars and his numerous tattoos; pirouetting, leaping and rolling around the stripped wooden floor, dressed in a pair of nude tights cut off above the knee. His passionate - if, sometimes slightly hackneyed performance - not only showcases his own genius and demons, but captures the angry brilliance of Hozier's song.

Lacking the bonkers exuberance of Maddie Ziegler that ultimately makes you want to laugh, Polunin has such immense beauty and eloquent control of his movements that it almost makes you want to cry.

Indeed, I would suggest that anyone who isn't moved by these two performances, these two songs, is probably dead ...

In Praise of the Naked Mole Rat

Photo of a naked mole-rat by Joel Sartore

National Geographic Photo Ark

Despite the fact that it is, in common parlance, fuck ugly - looking as it does like a wrinkled penis with short legs and large, protruding teeth - the virtually blind, shit-eating, naked mole-rat is a truly astonishing creature, possessing traits that enable it to survive in a harsh subterranean environment.

For one thing, the naked mole-rat is eusocial: in other words, it's achieved a highly organized level of society in which large numbers of individuals, often from different generations, share collective care of the young whilst otherwise observing a strict division of labour; some rats dig tunnels, some rats find food, some rats defend the colony from predators. It might not be a democratic model of society - in fact, it's all about patiently serving the reproductive queen - but as ants, bees and the Borg have also discovered, it's one that works.

The naked mole-rat is also the only mammalian thermoconformer: that is to say, it brings its own body temperature into line with its immediate surroundings, thus avoiding the need for internal heat regulation within a relatively narrow range. If, however, it shows meek compliance to the ambient temperature on the one hand, the naked mole-rat displays stoic indifference to pain on the other. For, thanks to the fact that its ill-fitting, pinky-yellowish skin lacks the important neurotransmitter known as substance P, the naked mole-rat is insensitive to stimuli that other animals would find irritating or acutely uncomfortable. You can dip them in acid, or rub their bare backs with a hot chili pepper and they'll not flinch.

Further - and it's this that really captures the interest of scientists concerned with the question of human mortality and disease - the naked mole-rat is remarkable for its longevity and resistance to cancer. For a rodent of its size (only a few inches in length and weighing just over an ounce), the naked mole-rat is extraordinarily long-lived - up to 30 years. Not only that, but it remains relatively healthy and sprightly even in old age; nothing seems to slow it down, muscle tissue and blood vessels all remaining in tip-top condition. Ironically, this seems partly due to their ability to dramatically reduce their metabolic and respiratory rates during hard times, thereby preventing damage from oxidative stress.

As for cancer, naked mole-rats laugh at the thought of developing tumours. Again, this can mostly be put down to fortunate genetics preventing uncontrolled cell proliferation. But in 2013, researchers also reported that naked mole-rats have an extremely high level of molecular hyaluronan - which is a good thing if you don't want cancer - and ribosomes that manufacture virtually error-free proteins.  

Finally - and perhaps most astonishingly - it has recently been discovered that naked mole-rats have the ability to use anaerobic glycolysis with fructose, rather than glucose, to live quite happily in oxygen-depleted environments; indeed, they can even survive without any oxygen whatsoever for almost twenty minutes - thus, effectively becoming-plant for short periods.

Mice can't do that; and men can't do it either. And until cross-species genetic engineering really gets underway, it'll remain another unique characteristic of the very wonderful naked mole-rat ...


Note: readers who are particularly interested in how 'Fructose-driven glycolysis supports anoxia resistance in the naked mole-rat', can find the research by Thomas J. Park et al published in the journal Science, Vol. 356, Issue 6335, (21 April 2017), pp. 307-11. 

Self-Enjoyment and Concern Part 2: The Aesthetico-Ethical Case For Masturbation

No wanker wanks twice

  

In his final book, Modes of Thought (1938), Whitehead argues that life implies immediate and absolute self-enjoyment. What I'd like to do here, is perversely interpret this theory of auto-affection and show how it might relate to the question of masturbation in a manner that allows us to conceive of wanking as a vital pleasure, rather than an unnatural vice; a pleasure which enables solosexuals to experience life directly by taking it in hand.

Further, Whitehead's philosophy enables us to think of pleasure as immanent to the act of masturbating; non-dependent upon the achievement of any goal or static result, including orgasm. A wank, as it were, unfolds entirely in and for itself, without conditions and without reference to any other living moment.          

So far of course, this merely reinforces the case that D. H. Lawrence and Rae Langton have against masturbation. But Whitehead goes further and affords us the opportunity to construct a novel defence of self-enjoyment; to argue that each occasion one jerks off is an activity of concern. Concern, that is to say - in feeling and in aim - with things and bodies that lie beyond it. This, insists Whitehead, is concern understood in the Quaker sense of that term.

Steven Shaviro - upon whose excellent reading of Whitehead I'm reliant here - provides a convenient explanation of this latter point:

"For the Quakers, concern implies a weight on the spirit. When something concerns me, I cannot ignore it or walk away from it. It presses on my being and compels me to respond. Concern, therefore, is an involuntary experience of being affected by others. It opens me, in spite of myself, to the outside. It compromises my autonomy, leading me toward something beyond myself." [14-5]

In other words - and contrary to what Lawrence and Langton believe - we masturbate from out of a concern with (and a desire for) others; it's a relational activity, even if the enjoyment is purely private and personal. Ultimately, masturbation is a way of reaching out and coming into touch with others and not just touching ourselves in an inappropriate manner.

Unfortunately, Lawrence and Langton confuse the fundamental difference between these two closely bound but contrasting conditions of self-enjoyment and concern; or, rather, they see the first but are blind to the latter. But as Shaviro points out, you can't have one without the other; for concern is itself a kind of enjoyment and both are "movements, or pulsations, of emotion" [16].    

Thus, whilst masturbation may not directly involve others, it always keeps them in mind. It's also, crucially, not an atemporal phenomenon; we may wank in the present, but we do so with fond memories of past experience and projected towards the hope and the promise of sexual contacts still to come. In other words, masturbation is "deeply involved with the antecedent occasions from which it has inherited and with the succeeding occasions to which it makes itself available" [15].

It's because we come in a way that unites and affirms our life not just in the living moment, but across time, that wanking is transformed from simple self-enjoyment into concern: "Conversely, concern or other-directedness is itself a necessary precondition for even the most intransitive self-enjoyment ..." [15]. For no wank is ideal, or ever entirely without object.

And, what's more, no masturbating subject ever experiences the same wank twice; each and every wank is selected from a boundless wealth of alternatives, thus ensuring that masturbation, as a philosophical practice, "has to do with the multiplicity and mutability of our ways of enjoyment, as these are manifested even in the course of what an essentialist thinker would regard as the 'same' situation" [18].

In sum - and to reiterate - the joy and the excitement felt by a happy masturbator, is always derived from the past and aimed at the future. As Whitehead says: "'It issues from, and it issues towards ...'" [16] someone, something, or somewhere else. But it's important to note that it doesn't really matter who, what or where; what matters is the activity of wanking itself as an event that explores modes of thought, styles of being, and contingent interactions.  

I don't know whether masturbation can be said to be beautiful - though it certainly belongs to any ars erotica worthy of the name. But it can, I think, be said to be ethical (if in a somewhat illicit sense) and, as such, part and parcel of a good life conceived as something physically embodied. Indeed, what Whitehead offers us, says Shaviro, is an "aestheticized account of ethics" [24] in contrast to any categorical imperative.

And what I've attempted here is to illustrate how such an ethic might result from masturbation - i.e. concern is the consequence of wanking, rather than the basis of its value or its moral justification; something which "cannot be separated from self-enjoyment, much less elevated above it" [25].

See: Steven Shaviro, The Universe of Things, (University of Minnesota Press, 2014). All lines quoted and all page numbers given above refer to the first chapter of this book: 'Self-Enjoyment and Concern'. 

To read part 1 of this post - The Moral Case Against Masturbation - click here. 

Self-Enjoyment and Concern Part 1: The Moral Case Against Masturbation

D. H. Lawrence and Rae Langton

According to D. H. Lawrence, the one thing that it seems impossible to escape from, once the habit is formed, is masturbation; a simple pleasure that he regards, for a number of reasons, as the most dangerous of all sexual vices. Chief among these reasons, for Lawrence, is the fact that masturbation is a form of fatal self-enclosure rather than just innocent self-enjoyment; a vicious circle of narcissism and nullity that causes the breaking of bonds between people formed via an exchange of mutual affection and results in a state of inertia, each man and woman trapped and isolated within the dirty little secret of themselves.      

Eighty years later and the feminist philosopher, Rae Langton, is still making much the same argument in her work on what she terms sexual solipsism; leading a liberal crusade not only against pornography and objectification, but against masturbation too, as a form of self-objectification, thereby betraying her Kantian roots. 

For Langton, committed masturbators, playing all alone with their sex toys, are not merely sad losers and reactive fantasists, they're unethical. And they're unethical because they show no genuine interest in - or concern for - others and their otherness. Happy to imaginatively explore their own bodies and their own desires, Langton regards their auto-erotic activity as so inauthentic, as to border on the inhuman. 

For we have, writes Langton, a duty as human beings to love others as others and to open ourselves up to that which we are not. In so doing, we unlock the prison of the self and nourish the virtues. Further, we impose an obligation upon others to love us in return. And so, in this way, we slowly erect a moral utopia established upon love, reciprocity, and transparency of the feelings.

Now, readers who are intimately familiar with this blog will doubtless recall that I've discussed this material previously: click here, for example, for a post on masturbation as a form of sex in the head; or here, for another critical summary of Rae Langton's musings in this area. I suppose we might deduce that something else which seems impossible to escape from, once the habit has been formed, is writing about masturbation ...

However, with apologies for any repetition and at the risk of boring readers for whom masturbation isn't such a pressing issue, I would like to offer in the second part of this post a new perspective on this subject; an aesthetico-ethical defence of masturbation as an activity of concern - not merely self-enjoyment - inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher whose thought has recently been subject to a (post-Deleuzean) revival of interest after a prolonged period of neglect.

To go to part two of this post, please click here.


See:

Rae Langton, Sexual Solipsism, (Oxford University Press, 2009), particularly chapters 14 and 15. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Steven Shaviro on Warhol's Failure to Make Space

Someone recently compared me to Steven Shaviro, the American philosopher and cultural critic. Whether this comparison flatters, insults, or stands up to scrutiny, I'm not entirely sure; as a Professor of English at Wayne State University and a highly respected author, he's arguably smarter and more successful than me, but, on the other hand, I'm younger and better looking ...

Still, I'm happy to take it as a compliment; for whilst I don't know the gentleman in question, I am familiar with Doom Patrols (1997), Shaviro's theoretical fiction(s) about postmodernism in which he says many things - not necessarily true or accurate, but often witty and stylish - with which I sympathise and might wish to have said myself (You will, Oscar, you will).

I particularly love Shaviro's reading of Andy Warhol and his swish aesthetic. He is absolutely spot on to acknowledge the importance of Warhol and his pimples; an artist who not only understood how to be Greek in the Nietzschean manner (superficial out of profundity), but how to have done with judgement (I approve of what everybody does) - including the judgement of God, but in a far less aggressive, less hysterical fashion than others:

"For Warhol has none of the anxieties that plagued his great Modernist forebears, none of their transgressive urges or buried ressentiment."

Andy simply didn't care if nothing was true and everything permitted. Nor did he worry about substantial things disappearing behind their own shadows and losing their solidity, their palpability, their presence. For as Shaviro says, an artist is somebody who ultimately wants to turn the whole world into a simulacrum:

"It all comes down to images and nothing but images. [...] The critical spirit finds the world to be radically deficient. Images never satisfy it; it always wants something more. But Warhol just shrugs his shoulders, and suggests that enough is enough. The world, for him, is not deficient, but, if anything, overly full."

It's unfortunate, therefore, that even Warhol - by his own admission - simply produced more art junk, thus cluttering up the world still further. To make a little space, it seems, is the most difficult thing of all ...


See: Steven Shaviro, Doom Patrols, (Serpent's Tail, 1997), ch. 16: Andy Warhol. 

Note: The complete text is available to read free on Shaviro's website: click here.  

In Praise of the Ballet Boot (and Other Kinky Forms of Footwear)

 Leather lace-up knee-length ballet boots 

The so-called ballet boot is a style of footwear given us by the pornographic imagination, that ingenuously integrates the box toe of the ballerina's pointe shoe with an ultra high heel, forcing the foot of the wearer to assume a near vertical position and miraculously transcend the ugly flatness of nature. Obviously, they're not designed as casual wear or for comfort; novices can experience painful lower leg cramps, for example. But for those who admire the art of shoe making, they're a perfect combination of culture, cruelty and contemporary calceology.      

Usually, the height of the heel is a minimum of seven inches; long enough to ensure that the foot is fully extended, but not so long as to prevent standing and tottering about. Knee-high and thigh-high versions will often incorporate zips, buckles, and padlocks as well as elaborate lacing; these things - in addition to the material that the boots are made of - being of crucial import to the devotee (the devil being in the detail, as every fetishist knows).   

Apart from the pointe shoe - which was originally conceived in response to the desire for dancers to appear ethereal, like the much loved Marie Taglioni, credited with being the first ballerina to genuinely dance en pointe in 1832 - another precursor of the ballet boot was the Viennese fetish boot (c. 1900), which came with an eleven inch spiked heel that made standing (let along walking) nigh impossible, but came in handy for anal penetration of the submissive male subject.     

Finally, mention must be made of Alexander McQueen's iconic Armadillo boot from the S/S 2010 collection entitled Plato's Atlantis - one of his most astonishing creations for the catwalk. Designed like the ballet boot with high heel and box toe, this outrageously beautiful ankle boot, hand-carved from wood and covered in snakeskin or iridescent paillettes, not only extends the foot and elongates the leg, but seems to organically fuse with the wearers flesh, transforming her into some kind of alien being.
     

Although somewhat challenging to wear - not only because of their height and shape, but also their weight - a bulge designed above the toes enables the boot to be lifted relatively more easily when walking; not that many women will ever be fortunate enough to experience wearing them, as only twenty-one pairs were ever made.

In 2015, Lady Gaga snapped up the three pairs shown above, auctioned by Christie's New York, for $295,000.

In Praise of the Poulaine (and Other Forms of Pointed Shoe)

Medieval dandy (c. 1450) 

Although no one quite knows why, where or how the trend started, at some point in the 12th century, the long toe shoe - known as a poulaine - became all the rage amongst medieval Europeans. 

Whatever their origin, their popularity was so great that they remained in fashion (in as much as this term means anything with reference to a pre-modern world where styles changed at a snail's pace) for several centuries during the Middle Ages; achieving their most extreme form in the late-14th and early-15th century when the toe length extended by an outrageous twenty-four inches (transforming two feet into four).

In order to provide rigidity and help keep their shape, toes were often stuffed with moss, wool, hair or grass. Alternatively, they could be supported with whalebone. Young men of leisure would often combine their favoured footwear with a provocatively short tunic (as seen in the image above). Predictably, there was vociferous opposition from all the usual quarters to these beautifully bonkers, fabulously frivolous and pointlessly pointed shoes.

In a recent post on the Victoria and Albert Museum's blog, Ruth Hibbard writes:

"They were decried by the Church as sinful for their phallic shape ... [and] their impracticality was seen as leading to laziness or incapacity. ... They were also thought to be too showy to be modest or decent."

The ruling elite, also concerned by the popularity of poulaines, introduced laws regulating  toe length by social class; the longest being the preserve of the nobility (commoners were permitted no more than a mere six-inches).

Eventually, however, the fashion in footwear finally changed and, by the end of the 15th century, short, square toe shoes were the in-thing. But poulaines continue to haunt the cultural imagination and every now and then they make a reappearance; in a very modest form as winklepickers in the 1950s and - currently and far more spectacularly - as botas picudas mexicanas, which can have an extended toe length of up to sixty inches (transforming two feet into seven).  


See: Ruth Hibbard, 'Getting To The Point Of Medieval Shoes' (July 9, 2015), Victoria and Albert Museum Blog: click here.

From Codpiece to Camel Toe Pants

The codpiece was a popular male fashion statement in Renaissance Europe; attached with string ties to the front of the crotch, its purpose was to accentuate the genital area rather than conceal or afford protection.

For despite often being riddled with syphilis, the men of the 15th and 16th centuries were proud and confident in their manhood and these colourful cocksure dandies would compete to have the best shaped, most padded and most decorative codpiece.

This outlandish game of one-upmanship came to a climax in the 1540s; after this date, the codpiece increasingly became an object of derision and fell out of favour amongst the more stylish and sophisticated of men.

Indeed, the word coddy would eventually become a disparaging slang term for those who were governed by their pricks rather than their minds; characters such as the young tram inspector, John Thomas, for example, in Lawrence's short story 'Tickets, Please' (1919).

And today, who wears a codpiece other than the odd leather fetishist or heavy metal musician - and even then it's worn ironically as a theatrical item of macho-camp, rather than as a symbol of phallic pride and undaunted masculinity.

Thus, in the absence of men who might carry off wearing a codpiece with conviction whilst gaily strolling along Piccadilly, it's left to our young women to step up and make an immodest display of their genitalia - and with the creation of camel toe knickers they can do just that ...   

These padded pants, offering the illusion of a perfectly shaped pudendum, have been popular in Asia for some years. Now they've finally arrived for sale in the UK, affording British women the opportunity to turn heads by unashamedly directing attention to their labia. 

Available from Amazon in a variety of skin tones, the pants cost just £28 - which is certainly cheaper than paying a plastic surgeon to design your vagina with a knife ...