Phallic Pictures 2: L'Origine de la Guerre by Orlan

ORLAN: L'Origine de la Guerre (1989) 

Aluminium backed cibachrome 88 x 105 cm 
orlan.eu

For all his phallic bravado, I wonder what D. H. Lawrence would have made of Orlan's reimagining of Courbet's obscene masterpiece, The Origin of the World (1866), now retitled The Origin of War (1989) and featuring a close-up of the indecently exposed lower-body of a naked male - including an erect penis - rather than centring on the hairy, gaping cunt of a woman ...?

I suspect he wouldn't like it; that he would condemn it as a pornographic example of sex in the head, even though, arguably, it's a work that invites comparison with his own canvas, Boccaccio Story (1926), featuring the exhibitionist Masetto caught snoozing with his cock out before some passing nuns.

I suspect also he would be troubled by the fact that the work is by a woman and thus subjects the male body to an ambiguous female gaze that just might be derisive more than desirous; scornful, rather than reverential. For whilst Lawrence wants women to worship the male body in all its phallic beauty and potency (as Connie worships the body of her lover Mellors), he seems full of anxiety that they should find the male sex organ foolish and imperfect; a little disgusting in its unfinished clumsiness.

And then there's the title chosen by Orlan for her work; a title which implies the phallus is a symbol of violent masculinity and lies at the root of armed conflict. Lawrence would absolutely deny this. For him, whilst the penis as a physiological organ obviously belongs to an individual male agent, the phallus is something that rises into being between lovers, forming a bridge that brings people into touch and enables the post-coital bliss that he terms the peace that comes of fucking.

Thus hatred of the phallus - seen here rising darkish and hot-looking from the little cloud of vivid gold-red hair - is uncalled for and betrays perhaps the great modern horror of being in touch; what Lawrence insists is the root-fear of all mankind.

And so, without suggesting readers get on their knees before the phallus and subscribe to Lawrence's phallocentric mystery religion, I do think an attitude of queer wonder that mixes a little awe and excitement is preferable to any lazy attempt to denigrate, belittle and nullify the erect cock, or, indeed, the small soft penis, which is really just another little bud of life as Connie says, rather than a potential source of evil.

When, as it must, the phallus inexorably penetrates the body of another, it might indeed come with the thrust of a sword and bring suffering and death. But, more often than not, it comes with "a strange slow thrust of peace, the dark thrust of peace and a ponderous, primordial tenderness, such as made the world in the beginning" ...


Notes

Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte is a French artist, born in 1947. She adopted the name Orlan (which she always writes in capitals) in 1961, aged fifteen. She's primarily an artist who works with and on the flesh (usually her own); more of a carnal artist, as she says, than just an artist concerned with the body.

Her 1989 work, L'Origine de la Guerre, which uses a photograph of the actor Jean-Christophe Bouvet taken by Georges Merguerditchian, is surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly) little-known. For an interesting discussion of her work, see Cerise Joelle Myers; 'Between the Folly and the Impossibility of Seeing: Orlan, Reclaiming the Gaze' (2006) - click here.

The lines quoted from D. H. Lawrence (including those that I have recalled from memory and put in italics) are taken from chapters 12 and 14 of Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).   

Those interested in reading a related post to this one on D. H. Lawrence's painting Boccaccio Story, should click here.

Phallic Pictures 1: Boccaccio Story by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Boccaccio Story (1926)

Oil on canvas (72 x 118.5 cm)

Boccaccio Story (1926) is one of Lawrence's most charming and amusing canvases. It depicts a scene from Boccaccio's tale of a horny Italian peasant named Masetto, who feigns mutism in order to obtain a gardener's job at a local convent so that he might be afforded the opportunity to fuck the young women therein.  

In the painting, Lawrence shows Masetto asleep - or possibly pretending to be asleep - under a large almond tree on a hot afternoon with his clothes in a state of dramatic disarray, exposing his lower body to the view of some passing nuns who, it might be noted, stare intently at his genitalia, rather than averting their eyes in embarrassment as one might have expected.

For Lawrence, it was great fun discovering that he could paint his ideas and feelings and not just articulate them in his poetry and prose. Keith Sagar insists that the picture is not designed to shock and that it's a perfectly wholesome portrayal of the sexual impulse. But this is rather disingenuous.

For Sagar knows perfectly well that Lawrence's paintings from this period are part and parcel of his provocative project of phallic tenderness, via which, like Nietzsche, he hoped to trigger a revaluation of all values, enabling man to storm the angel-guarded gates and return victorious to Eden.   

In a letter to his American friend Earl Brewster - which Sagar himself refers us to when discussing the late paintings - Lawrence confides:

"I put a phallus ... in each one of my pictures somewhere. And I paint no picture that won't shock people's castrated social spirituality. I do this out of positive belief that the phallus is a great sacred image: it represents a deep, deep life which has been denied in us, and is still denied."

So, Lawrence knew very well what he was about and it's puzzling that Sagar should wish to play down the scandalous aspect of Lawrence's paintings. Puzzling also that Lawrence should react with such (seemingly genuine) distress when Boccaccio Story, along with a dozen other works, was seized by the police after being exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London in the summer of 1929.     

Boccaccio Story may very well be a painting of real beauty and great vitality, as one critic (Gwen John) wrote at the time. But so too is it quite obviously obscene in its subject matter of sexual exhibitionism and the carnal desire of nuns; what would be the point of it - and of Boccaccio's tale - were it otherwise? 


See: 

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam, (Penguin Books, 2003). Note that the story of Masetto and the nuns is the first tale told on the third day. 

D. H. Lawrence, D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, with an Introduction by Keith Sagar, (Chaucer Press, 2003). The letter by Lawrence to Earl Brewster is quoted by Sagar on p. 43 of this work. It can be found in full in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), where it is numbered 3967.

Note that Boccaccio Story is part of the D. H. Lawrence Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Accession Number 65.242). 

Those interested in reading a related post on Orlan's The Origin of War, should click here.

Insecticide and the Eco-Apocalypse

Illustration by Luisa Rivera for Yale E360 (2016)

Do people not realise that in a world without insects buzzing, there'll be no birds singing and no flowers blooming? Or do they simply no longer care so long as their smartphones continue to receive a signal?

Research data gathered by scientists and dozens of amateur entomologists from nature reserves across Germany that indicates the number of flying insects has fallen by around 75% over the last 30 years is certainly shocking, but hardly surprising to anyone old enough to remember when there were not only plenty of bees, butterflies and beetles in the backgarden, but also other invertebrates such as worms, slugs, and snails (not to mention the larger creatures that prey on these things).      

The cause of this huge - and potentially catastrophic - decline is, apparently, unclear. But, of course, we all know in our hearts what (and who) is to blame for the destruction of habitat and widespread use of pesticides on an industrial scale for decades ... Oh, the humanity!  

As the authors of the study conclude, this largely unacknowledged loss of insect biomass must henceforth be taken fully into account when evaluating ecosystems and, ultimately, the sustainability of life on earth in all its astonishing diversity.

Otherwise, the ultimate selfie will be taken by der letzte Mensch alone in a lifeless world.    

See: Hallmann CA, Sorg M, Jongejans E, Siepel H, Hofland N, Schwan H, et al, 'More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas', article in Plos One (Oct 18, 2017): click here to read online.

See also: Christian Schwägerl, 'What’s Causing the Sharp Decline in Insects, and Why It Matters', in Yale Environment 360, (July 6, 2016): click here.

On Mini-Skirts and Morality in Africa

A young woman modelling a mini-skirt 
with an African print: what's not to love? 
laviye.com

Someone wrote to ask why it is I often return to the topic of fashion which, in their view, is both besides the point and after the fact and thus, ultimately, an irrelevance. Surely, they say, there are far more important things to write about than shoes, mini-skirts and stocking tops.

Obviously, as a passionate exponent of a philosophy on the catwalk which is primarily concerned with a politics of style and the interplay between art and popular culture that fashion exemplifies, I don't agree with this. And so, here's another post that demonstrates how and why clothes are a crucial concern and the body - particularly the female body - remains a battleground around the world ...

Back in the sixties, the question of hemlines and morality in wake of the mini-skirt was an issue that exercised many minds. Nowhere more so than in Africa, where those newly in positions of authority saw Mary Quant's creations as fundamentally un-African and believed them to be yet another example of the West's corrupting influence, particularly on young, urban, independent women who were susceptible not only to fashion, but to feminism.     

Such women, who felt liberated by wearing mini-skirts and earning their own income, were branded as prostitutes and as witches who drained phallocratic society of its vital energy. They were subject not only to verbal abuse, but often serious physical violence.

In Tanzania, for example, the ruling party launched a campaign targeting what it regarded as indecent clothing. Gangs of youths patrolled the streets on the lookout for girls they deemed to be inappropriately dressed. Similar attacks on women wearing mini-skirts also took place in Ethiopia, one of which resulted in a riot that caused at least fifty people to be injured.     

In Malawi, meanwhile, president Kamuzu Banda, described mini-skirts as a fashion that was diabolic in origin and which he intended to completely eradicate from his homeland. Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, agreed; citing the mini-skirt and apartheid as the two great evils.

One might have hoped that things would be different in Africa today. But, alas, with the increase and spread of religious stupidity - both Christian and Islamic in origin - things have, if anything, only got worse for those women who would otherwise love to show off their legs. Early this century, for example, idiots in Uganda called for a ban on mini-skirts worn in public, claiming that they were a dangerous distraction to (male) drivers. (To be fair, this is at least conceivable.)

More seriously, cases of women being stripped and beaten by gangs of men acting as both morality police and fashion critics continue to be reported in numerous countries including Kenya, Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Happily, groups of astonishingly courageous women have staged defiant mini-skirt protests in which they demand the right to dress as they please and to be afforded legal protection from violence.      

The irony, of course, is that the notions of deceny that are being defended are arguably more un-African than the alien fashions and other cultural expressions that are so feared. I would suggest that those gripped by a post-colonial determination to be free of foreign influence might want to conduct a genealogy of morals, rather than just dabble with dress codes ...     

Note: those interested in an alternative take on the politics of the mini-skirt in Africa might like to see an article from 2014 by the Kenyan blogger Owaahh: click here.

Zettai Ryouiki: On the Zen and the Art of Entering the Absolute Territory

絶対領域 4:1:2.5

I: On the Erotics of Intermittance

Zettai ryouiki refers to the area of bare skin in the gap between overknee socks or stockings and the hemline of a miniskirt; what is known by worshippers as the absolute territory and regarded as a kind of sacred space that no one can intrude upon without permission. Zettai Ryouiki can also describe the erotico-aesthetic combination and charm of these three elements: skirt, thigh and stocking top.

Originally, the term derived from otaku slang as one of the attributes of moe characters in anime and manga, but it is now used widely in Japan and by those in the know outside of Japan with a penchant or fetish for this kind of thing.

Whilst to non-aficianados debate concerning what is and is not a true example of zettai ryouiki and what the perfect ratio between the length of the skirt, the exposed portion of thigh and the height of the stocking should be might seem trivial, for the devotee the devil is precisely in the detail.

Ideally, whilst the skirt should be short, the socks should be long and held properly in place; if too much leg is exposed, then expect to be downgraded.* For as Roland Barthes points out, what excites is not the flesh itself, but the gap between two edges; "it is intermittance ... which is erotic: the intermittance of skin flashing between two articles of clothing ... it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance".       

Thus whilst zettai ryouiki is not quite a science, it's certainly an art and a discipline of philosophical interest ...

 

II: On Zettai Ryouiki as Part of an Ars Erotica

In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault famously examines how ancient non-Western cultures, such as that found within Japan, developed a non-scientific discourse around sex as an object of knowledge; what he terms an ars erotica.

The truth that this esoteric way of knowing concerns itself with is the truth of sensual pleasure and how it can be experienced and intensified; there is no moral concern with what pleasures are permitted and what ones should be forbidden and neither is there an attempt to arrive at an objective-factual account of the body as organism.

The ars erotica, we might say, is a form of libidinal materialism that concerns itself directly with bodies and their pleasures; the model of scientia sexualis developed in the modern West is, in contrast, the pleasure of analysis and of exchanging lived experience for representation (of getting sex-in-the-head, as D. H. Lawrence would say). 

But - and this is important - the latter is still a pleasure and still belongs to an economy of desire. It's profoundly mistaken to divide the two things off in an absolute sense in order to construct a binary opposition. For man lives just as richly in the mind and the imagination as in the body. 

Ultimately, ideas - like erections - are seminal expressions of joy and there's nothing wrong with preferring to perv over images of zettai ryouiki, rather than physically interact with actual objects which, ironically, often object to their sexual objectification ...              

*Note that there are six grades of zettai ryouiki ranging from A-F. For purists, grades C-F - where socks are of knee-height or below - are sub-standard and ultimately forms of failure. To help secure socks and achieve the perfect look, it's acceptable to use a special glue. Readers interested in knowing more about zettai ryouiki might care to visit the page about such on Know Your Meme: click here. And for an animated treat, click here.

Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Hill and Wang, 1975), pp. 9-10.

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998).

A Short History of Hot Pants with Reference to the Case of Iris Steensma

Jodie Foster as Iris Steensma in Taxi Driver 

wearing a signature pair of hot pants

Although the term hot pants is often used generically, they are more than merely short shorts, as worn for example by athletes. For hot pants belong to the world of fashion, not sport. Thus it is that the term was first used by Women's Wear Daily in 1970 to describe garments made from glamorous materials such as velvet and satin and designed explicitly to catch the eye, unlike gym shorts made from cotton or nylon that serve a dreary practical function.

Personally, I would also distinguish hot pants from the tight denim cut-offs known as Daisy Dukes. For the latter have a distinctive history and allure all of their own and should only be worn by feisty Southern gals who drive like Richard Petty, shoot like Annie Oakley, and know the words to all of Dolly Parton's songs (and if they like to go barefoot whilst wearing them, all the better).

I suppose what I'm saying is that, in my mind, hot pants - like the mini-skirt - are associated very much with Swinging London and when I think of someone wearing them I visualise women such as Madeline Smith, Jenny Hanley, and Carol Hawkins, rather than all-American beauties like Raquel Welch.

There is, however, one exception to this: Iris Steensma, the twelve-year-old prostitute played so brilliantly by twelve-year-old Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1976); a character renowned for her signature outfits assembled from hot pants, crop tops, platform shoes, a silver studded white belt and floppy sunhat.

As fashion historian Valerie Steele rightly notes, by the mid-seventies hot pants had long ceased to be an item associated with the playful character of the sixties; instead, they had entered the darker regions of the pornographic imagination and were increasingly associated with underage prostitution. Such sleazy associations meant that they quickly fell out of favour with the majority of women.

However, forty years on and Iris Steensma is now regarded by fashionistas as a style icon and her distinctive look has captured the imagination of many designers. Marc Jacobs, for example, produced a spring/summer collection in 2011 that was openly indebted to the character (see image below) and Alessandro Michele's penchant for soft pinks frequently paired with deep reds has also been said to owe something to Iris.

Ultimately, is there anything the fashion world loves more than illicit eroticism twinned with nostalgia ...?

Futuristic Fashion: The Sci-Fi Mini-Skirt

Gabrielle Drake as
Lt. Gay Ellis in UFO (1970-71)

I think I've mentioned that I'm not a great lover of science fiction. But the future of female fashion, however, as imagined within the genre, certainly does excite my interest ...

I'm particularly struck by the fact that the mini-skirt is predicted to become almost de rigueur and worn by space babes throughout the universe, whatever their planet of origin; often silver-metallic in design, as worn, for example, by everybody's favourite Moonbase commander, Lt. Ellis, with matching top and boots. 

The question is: how did the short - often dangerously short and knicker-flashing - skirt become such a staple of futuristic fashion as conceived within 20th century science fiction?

It's been suggested that the pulp artwork of Earle K. Bergey, produced in the 1940s, was seminal to this development. Certainly by the fifties, the sci-fi micro-mini was ingrained within the pornographic imagination and the girls on Space Patrol regularly took raised hemlines not only to the outer limits of the universe, but the upper levels of the thigh; as did the lovely Anne Francis as Altaira in the sci-fi classic, Forbidden Planet (dir. Fred M. Wilcox, 1956).    

A decade later, when well above the knee skirts and dresses were officially designated by British fashion designer Mary Quant as minis, we find the women of Star Trek, including Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, also happily showing lots of leg and thus affording Captain Kirk and his mostly male crew the opportunity to perv whilst allowing her, apparently, to feel liberated and empowered.   

There is, of course, no reason why very short skirts shouldn't be popular in the 23rd century; women have been wearing them for almost as long as they've had legs ...

Archaeologists have found evidence, indeed, that neolithic lovelies liked to parade around in such, distracting their menfolk from hunting and other activities (cf. Wilma and Betty in The Flintstones) and Bronze Age beauties in Northern Europe, such as the Egtved Girl, also dressed to impress by wearing very short skirts and midriff-baring crop-top combinations.

So, it's perfectly feasible that women in the distant future and farthest reaches of space will continue to choose playfully provocative outfits that speak of youthful exuberance and optimism; to keep on dancing and reaching for the stars, whilst their hemlines go boldly upwards and their nipples burst through like hyacinth tips, as Germaine Greer once put it ...    

To see more examples of sci-fi minis, go to the Mini Skirt Monday page (#190) on Retrospace: click here.

On Superbugs, Quantum Dots and the Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse

Quantum dots glowing with visible light 

Photo: Tayfun Ruzgar / Shutterstock

As we all know, antibiotics revolutionised medicine in the twentieth-century, allowing doctors to treat and prevent a whole range of nasty and potentially deadly bacterial infections.

However, as many of us also know, laziness and stupidity on the part of healthcare professionals, farmers and consumers, resulted in their misuse and overuse. Ultimately, prescribing and popping antibiotics as if they were medicinal Smarties, allowed bacteria to develop increasingly effective resistance; to become, in tabloid parlance, superbugs.

Antimicrobial resistance is now such a serious concern that England's chief medical officer, Prof. Dame Sally Davies, has taken to the airwaves to warn that modern medicine as currently practised is under threat and that many thousands of lives are already being lost due to drug-resistant infections.*

Indeed, somewhat hysterically, Davies refers to the possibility of a post-antibiotic apocalypse and demands that governments around the world take immediate action to prevent this. Otherwise, no more organ transplants, hip replacements, or caesarian sections. Cancer treatments would also become far riskier in the future - won't somebody please think of the children?

Thankfully, there is some good news to report; science might be able to meet the challenge of the superbugs not just with newly developed antibiotics, but with nanotechnology in the form of so-called quantum dots, or artificial atoms ...     
 

Thanks to these strange, nano-sized crystals - invisible to the human eye - we have a significantly more potent weapon against drug-resistant microbes. In fact, QDs can supercharge traditional antibiotics making them up to a thousand times more effective.

Reacting as they do to certain frequencies of light, QDs can be photo-stimulated in such a manner as to disrupt vital chemical reactions that microbes - including superbug strains of E. coli and MRSA - require for their own well-being. It also appears that the dots can produce a compound known as a superoxide, which is readily absorbed by bacterial cells, further fucking-up their ability to produce energy and to develop.        

It was discovered that QDs best carry out their murderous work when subject to green light. Unfortunately, green light can only penetrate a few millimetres beneath the surface of the human body, which means that QD-enhanced antibiotics can at present only treat skin infections or open wounds. The idea is that, eventually, hard-working biophysicists will work out how to trigger them with infra-red light.

Still, it's good to know that, thanks to quantum mechanics, there's hope that we won't all die off in the bacterial apocalypse imagined by Dame Sally and certain doom-mongering members of the World Health Organization.

As for those with concerns about using nanotechnology to fight disease, well they may continue to drink their own urine, perform caffeine enemas, or dabble with dragon's blood as is their wont ... 


*Presently, the number of lives lost each year to drug-resistant infections is estimated to be 700,000. Failure to address the issue, however, is likely to see this figure increase globally to 10,000,000 by 2050.

On Black Dandyism (With Reference to the Case of Jean-Michel Basquiat)

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988) 

The New York Times Magazine (10 Feb 1985)

"Being a black man", says Ekow Eshun, "means being subject to the white gaze". 

But if that means becoming an object of prejudice, suspicion and negative stereotype, so also does it mean becoming an object of fascination and, indeed, admiration. Certainly when it comes to the crucial question of style, it would simply be churlish to deny that many black men possess it to a high degree and fully understand its importance as a politics of resistance.

Indeed, without wishing to appear full of self-loathing or a sense of racial inferiority, I know exactly what Adam Ant means in Kings of the Wild Frontier when he says that for those of us with pale skin - even when we're healthy and our colour schemes delight - down below our dandy clothes we remain a shade too white.        

And so, whilst there are plenty of good-looking, very elegantly dressed white men in the world, the dandyism of the black man always seems to have something extra; to be that bit sexier and more provocative; to be invested with attitude (which is why the idea of a black actor playing James Bond isn't as outlandish as some suggest - it could only add a certain frisson to the character). 

This is exemplified in the above photo of Jean-Michel Basquiat on the cover of the New York Times Magazine in 1985; arguably the greatest artist of the late-twentieth century, he was certainly the most fashionable.

Pictured here in one of the Armani suits in which he loved to work, Basquiat knows that dandyism is, at its most interesting, not merely a method of flaunting one's individual beauty, but of flouting social conventions governing ideas of class, race, gender and sexuality; a means of saying fuck me and fuck you at one and the same time. 

To be clear: it's not what he's wearing, but how he's wearing it that matters; with barefoot insouciance, completely unconcerned about the fact that the expensive suit is paint-spattered (for he knows he still looks clean) and "confounding expectations about how black men should look or carry themselves in order to establish a place of personal freedom: a place beyond the white gaze, where the black body is a site of liberation rather than oppression" ...

In other words, black styles matter ...

See: Ekow Eshun, 'The subversive power of the black dandy', The Guardian, (04 July 2016): click here to read online. 

See also: Shantrelle P. Lewis, 'Black Dandyism is Back, and It's Both Oppositional Fashion and Therapy at Once', How We Get to Next (30 Sept 2016): click here. 

To read The New York Times Magazine feature on Basquiat, 'New Art, New Money', by Cathleen McGuigan, click here.  

Note: the first large-scale exhibition in the UK of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat is currently showing at the Barbican (London) and runs until 28 Jan 2018: click here for details. 

Black Wonder Women 2: Raje

Renee Cox: Chillin' with Liberty (1998)

reneecox.org 

In her 1998 photomontage series, Renee Cox created an Amazonian alter-ego named Raje, a superhero who fights racism and teaches children African American history. The character, she said, was the granddaughter of Wonder Woman's black twin sister, Nubia. 

Whilst I admire many of the dozen or more large-scale images in this series, like Camille Paglia I have a special fondness for the picture above - Chillin' with Liberty - with its iridescent Pop-art colours and playful deconstruction of American culture and iconography. 

This is Raje in a reflective mood. Although it's hard to tell what she's thinking - and difficult also knowing whether this picture shows her before or after an adventure; is she resting and enjoying a moment's peace, or preparing once more to enter into battle? The title suggests she's relaxing, but titles can be misleading and do warriors ever really let down their guard enough to chill? 

Further, her eyes maintain a smouldering intensity; she's a woman who burns with a sense of injustice, not one who looks on the world with cool indifference. And Raje, like Nubia, looks hot in the erotic sense of the term too; she's a powerfully beautiful woman, as well as a beautifully powerful one who, whilst wishing to combat sexism, doesn't want to deny her own sexiness; she's as strong and dignified as Superman, but more alluring.

Paglia nails it when she argues that Raje's "elegant manner exudes the grace and glamour" of a fashion magazine, whilst her skintight, off-the-shoulder bodysuit and thigh-length patent leather boots exemplify the fetishistic, pro-sex feminism of the period. Her hair, make-up, and jewellery complete the look; uncompromising, but not unflattering.

A certain punk icon is fond of saying that anger is an energy. Which, perhaps, it is - and there's obviously anger in this piece. But anger is ultimately insufficient fuel for the production of significant works of art; these, as Ms Cox knows, also require intelligence, humour, imagination and style - qualities that she has in abundance (and which Rotten had, but Lydon lost).   

Notes

See: Camille Paglia, Glittering Images, (Vintage Books, 2013), ch. 28 'Blue Dawn: Renée Cox, Chillin' with Liberty', pp. 173-79.  

To read part one of this post on Nubia, click here. 

Black Wonder Women 1: Nubia

 Wonder Women (detail) by Marcus Williams (2017) 

marcusthevisual.com

Due to the huge commercial and critical success this summer of Wonder Woman (2017), dir. Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot in the lead role, everyone is talking once again about the Amazonian princess and her place within popular culture as a feminist icon and/or slightly kinky, somewhat sapphic sex symbol.

Thanks not only to her adventures in print, but also the classic seventies TV show starring Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman is undoubtedly the best known of all the DC Comics characters apart from Superman and Batman. Most people instantly recognise her revealing star-spangled, red, white and blue costume and many - even outside the geeky world of comic-book fandom - probably have some memory of her Lasso of Truth, indestructible Bracelets of Submission, and Invisible Plane.    

Far fewer people, however, will recall that her origin story tells how she was sculpted from clay by her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and given life by the goddess Aphrodite along with superhuman powers gifted by other Greek deities, including Athena, Hermes, and Heracles. And only real fans will recall that Princess Diana had a dark-skinned twin sister made from black clay called Nubia ...

Conceived by writer Robert Kanigher and artist Don Heck, Nubia made her debut in Wonder Woman (vol. 1) #204, in January 1973; i.e., over thirty years after Wonder Woman was created by Charles Moulton, but perfectly suited for a period in which blaxploitation was suddenly big business.

Like Diana, Nubia has various super powers and possesses magical weaponry. But if, as Gloria Steinem argues, the former symbolizes many of the values that feminism wishes to affirm - including, for example, strength and self-reliance, sisterhood and mutual support - then surely this might equally be said of the latter, who, as a black woman in a white male world, probably has it significantly harder than her pale and privileged sister.

And yet, as Camille Paglia writes, Nubia is today a forgotten character ... Although perhaps this is not quite the case, thanks in part to the gynaecentric work of Jamaican-American artist, photographer, and activist Renee Cox ...   


To read part two of this post on Raje, click here.

Happy Birthday Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann: 

Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions (1963)

Photo by Icelandic artist Erró, on 35mm black and white film

Next week - October 12th to be precise - is Carolee Schneemann's birthday and I'd like to take this opportunity to wish her many happy returns ...

Her phenomenal work, Eye Body (1963), composed of 36 photographic but still essentially painterly self-portraits - or what she termed transformative-actions - staged in a constructed loft environment in which she'd assembled objects associated with bad luck and the stuff of nightmares, from broken mirrors and open umbrellas to serpents, remains one of my favourite pieces from this period.   

In order to slide herself into this environment and become a living work of art, Schneemann covered her naked body in heterogeneous materials, including grease, glue, fur and feathers. One of the most powerful and most memorable of the images is a frontal nude, featuring two snakes crawling on her torso and in which her cunt is clearly visible and seems to be offered to us as a gift - which, of course, is also to say as a challenge and a provocation: I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.

Commenting on Eye Body, Schneemann has written:

"I wanted my actual body to be combined with the work as an integral material - a further dimension of the construction ... [so that] I am both image maker and image. The body may remain erotic, sexual, desired, desiring, but it is as well votive: marked, written over in a text of stroke and gesture discovered by my creative female will."

Unsurprisingly, the work caused great controversy at the time for its perceived porno-paganism. Critics accused Schneemann of narcissism and self-indulgence and described Eye Body as lewd, a word of Old English origin that has come to mean not only vulgar, but vile; immoral as well as obscene.

However, whilst it may contain elements of these things, ultimately it remains a portrait of a beautiful woman who, in her beauty and in her womanhood, transcends all such labels, all such judgements, without denying the fact that what is best in Woman is also what is most evil ...


Note: readers interested in more about Carolee Schneemann and her work can visit her webite by clicking here.

On the Art of Fondling (Towards a Democracy of Touch)

Milo Moiré: Selfie with Mirror Box taken shortly before 

her performance and subsequent arrest in London 

Image posted on Twitter (24 June 2016)

When Swiss conceptual performance artist Milo Moiré was arrested in London last summer for outraging public decency by strapping a so-called Mirror Box about her waist and then inviting onlookers and passers-by to have a 30-second feel of her cunt, I was vaguely aware that she was attempting to make a point about sexual consent and what does and does not constitute appropriate touching in the wake of events in Cologne and elsewhere in Europe; events that she has protested before and which I have written about elsewhere on this blog [click here]. 

What I didn't realise, however, was that her Mirror Box performance was inspired by Valie Export and her (at the time) revolutionary work Tapp und Tastkino (1968) - known in English as 'Tap and Touch Cinema' - a work that has rightly attained iconic status within (feminist) art history:

VALIE EXPORT: Tapp und Tastkino (1968)

Tap and Touch Cinema was performed by Export in ten European cities during the period 1968-71 (seven more than Moiré has so far managed with her Mirror Box). She wore a tiny 'movie theatre' strapped round her naked upper body, covering the latter from view, but exposing it to the touch of anyone - man, woman, or child - who cared to reach through the curtained front and touch her tits.

(Moiré's X-rated event, in contrast, was for over-18s only - but then she was offering rather more than the chance to cop hold of a breast.)  

Predictably, the media responded to Export's provocative work with moral hysteria and horror; one paper even branding her a witch. They seemed to imply that whilst viewing and aesthetically appreciating representations of female nudity on canvas or screen is perfectly legitimate, placing hands on to real bodies and enjoying a sensual-tactile interaction with the naked flesh is not.

In other words, sex must be a visual-mental thing; you can look and you can fantasise in private, but don't physically touch one another with tenderness or make public displays of affection: No Kissing No Cuddling No Kindness - these are the unspoken rules of pornified contemporary culture.

Export's work may be an ironic transgression, but it matters, I think; in the same way and for the same reasons that D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover still matters. For both works are brave and bold attempts to resurrect the body and contribute towards an immanent utopia that Lawrence terms a democracy of touch; a new socio-political order and new cultural arrangement that affirms and celebrates:

"The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love."

Notes

Milo Moiré has performed Mirror Box in Düsseldorf and Amsterdam, as well as London. Charged in the latter with outraging public decency and spreading Genitalpanik, she spent 24-hours in jail before a judge sentenced her to pay a fine of €1300 and ordered her release. Although she has her critics - not least in the art world - I like Ms Moiré and regard her work as an interesting development and re-enactment of Export's. I'm only sorry I didn't get the chance to meet her last summer ... 

Readers interested in knowing more can visit her website by clicking here. 

To watch a video (censored version) of the Mirror Box performance uploaded to YouTube by the artist, click here. 

Readers interested in knowing more about Valie Export can visit her website by clicking here. 

To watch film of the Tapp und Tastkino performance uploaded to YouTube, click here.   

Finally, to read more about the democracy of touch, see: D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The lines quoted are on p. 323.

Genitalpanik 2: On Valie Export and Her Action Pants

VALIE EXPORT: Aktionshose: Genitalpanik 

Photo by Peter Hassmann (Vienna, 1969)

The claim made by Deborah de Robertis that her new project, Ma Chatte Mon Copyright, is basically an act of homage to the Austrian artist Valie Export (often written in upper case as VALIE EXPORT), is certainly intriguing - though, I must admit, due to my somewhat limited knowledge of 1960s feminist performance art, I wouldn't have guessed this from her recent appearance at the Louvre where she cheerfully stripped off and displayed her cunt in front of the Mona Lisa.  

This recently tweeted photo, however, makes things explicit (in every sense of the word):

Deborah de Robertis Ma Chatte Mon Copyright

Posted on Twitter 29 Sept 2017:  

In the original image, we see Valie Export sitting on a wooden bench, back against the wall, wearing a tight black leather shirt and a pair of crotchless trousers (or, if you prefer, Aktionshose). Although it's a fairly aggressive and confident pose - and despite the fact she's holding a machine gun - Export's bare feet betray a feral vulnerability.

The hair on her head, backcombed in proto-punk fashion, is almost as wild and bushy as that displayed between her legs. There's nothing Summer of Love about this picture; Export looks more fleur du mal than hippie flower child and you can imagine her in The Slits, but not The Mamas and the Papas.

I like the reimagining of it by De Robertis - in particular I approve of her decision to replace the machine gun with a camera - but, visually, it's not as powerful, not as provocative, not as strangely disturbing; the fact that it has been taken within the safety of a studio and the bench replaced with a simple wooden chair that might have come from Ikea, robs it of menace and dirtiness. 

The set of identical poster prints that Export produced in 1969 commemorate an action she carried out a year earlier in Munich. Entering an art-house cinema where experimental film-makers liked to show their works alongside European porn movies, 28-year-old Export paced between the rows of seated viewers wearing her action pants, her exposed cunt at face-level.

(Reports that she also carried her machine gun and put it to the heads of several men threatening to shoot them if they didn't agree they'd like to fuck her, are, alas, apparently untrue).

Export was challenging the representation and, in particular, the sexual objectification of women in art and film, forcing male spectators to acknowledge her agency and flesh and blood reality by staging a public encounter with that part of the female body usually kept under wraps and only seen or experienced in a private space.   

Genius: an inspirational act of guerrilla art and genital activism.

And it's conceivable that her crotchless action pants influenced Malcolm McLaren's thinking when he designed his bondage trousers with a revolutionary zip that didn't come to a stop in its usual position, but, rather, went all the way round and half-way up the arse, thereby allowing full exposure of and convenient access to the sex organs, perineum and anus.


Notes

Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969), by Valie Export, a series of six identical screenprints on paper, is on display at the Tate Modern (London), in the Feminism and Media Room (Level 4).

Now aged 77, Valie Export lives and works in Vienna and is internationally recognised as one of the most important pioneers in conceptual performance art, photography and film, influencing many younger artists, including Deborah de Robertis and Milo Moiré. Those interested in knowing more can visit her website, valieexport.at 

Those who would also like to listen to McLaren explain how to make a pair of subversive trousers, can click here for an episode of the French TV show Being Malcolm (2000), uploaded to YouTube by the Malcolm McLaren Estate, 30 Sept 2015. 

Finally, those interested in reading part one of this post on Deborah de Robertis and her Ma Chatte Mon Copyright project, should click here.

Genitalpanik 1: My Pussy My Copyright

Deborah de Robertis 

facebook.com

Some readers may remember that I expressed my admiration for the performance artist and vulva activist Deborah de Robertis after she initially came to public attention in 2014, by exposing her cunt at the Musée d'Orsay in front of Courbet's obscene masterpiece, L'Origine du monde: click here to read, or re-read, the post. 

It was, I thought, a courageous and amusing attempt to expose the hypocrisy of a phallocentric art world happy to stare into the abyss of a gaping vagina on a canvas or a screen, i.e., when framed by culture and offered as an image to be consumed, but uncomfortable with seeing such in the real world made of actual living flesh.   

Anyway, I'm pleased to report that Ms de Robertis is still continuing with her one-woman attempt to change the world by spreading her legs and declaring ownership of her own body: my pussy, my copyright; this time round obliging visitors to the Louvre to contrast the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa with the explicit display of her sex.

What Leonardo would have made of this, I don't know: for whilst he loved to paint beautiful women and possessed a detailed anatomical knowledge of their bodies, including their reproductive organs, his erotic fascination was clearly for young men and he drew many highly intimate studies of the male anus.

Nor do I know what the mostly bemused tourists who witnessed the event made of it; press reports that they were stunned and outraged seem exaggerated to me. What I do know is that the authorities weren't amused and the artist was held in custody for two days before appearing before a beak who ordered her to face trial on October 18 on charges of sexual exhibitionism and assault (she allegedly bit a security guard during her arrest).

Her defence, of course, will be that her goal was not to exhibit her genitals in a sexually aggressive manner, but to make people think about the role of women within art and, in this case, to remind them of the work of the Austrian artist Valie Export; the stunt at the Louvre being essentially an act of homage to the latter and her 1968 performance Aktionshose: Genitalpanik, which I'll discuss in part two of this post ...

Notes

To watch Ma Chatte Mon Copyright (2017), by Deborah de Robertis, uploaded to YouTube on 29 Sept 2017, click here. 

To read part two of this post on Valie Export and her Action Pants, click here. 

Sologamy (With Reference to the Case of Laura Mesi)

 Image Credit: Niño Jose Heredia / Gulf News (2017)

I've been waiting for me to come along - 

And now I've swept myself off my feet!

The case of 40-year-old Italian fitness trainer, Laura Mesi, has brought the subject of sologamy back into the public arena, with many commentators perplexed and angered at the idea of self-marriage ...

Predictably, the charge of narcissism is often made against those who take themselves up the aisle, as if this were the most terrible of all imaginable crimes. Ironically, however, it's a charge that is itself born of narcissism; for the anti-narcissist is essentially objecting to the fact that there are some people who don't find them attractive as a potential spouse and they're offended by that.

Other critics sneer at sologamy as a transparent and profoundly sad attempt by (mostly) single women attempting to rationalise loneliness and justify isolation as an affirmative lifestyle choice; i.e. the ultimate act of individual autonomy and empowerment.          

Personally, I don't see any need for nastiness and hope Laura and all the other self-loving sologamists live happily ever after. However, what interests me more remains the idea of divorcing the self - i.e., of releasing the self from the self [se déprendre de soi-même] as Foucault would say, offering thus a rather amusing definition of freedom.

Ultimately, ethics is not a question of remaining faithful to the self, but, rather, of subjective infidelity; of learning how to answer not I do, but No, I don't, when asked if you wish to have and to hold on to yourself, in sickness and in health, until death do you part.

Satanic News 2: The Case of Dilara Findikoglu and Her Infernal Fashion Show

II: The Case of Dilara Findikoglu and Her Infernal Fashion Show


Our second story concerns a fashion show held at historic central London church St. Andrew Holborn, as part of London Fashion Week (15-19 September, 2017); a show that the ex-Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, and other leading clerics condemned as blasphemous and unacceptable in its satanic aspect.

To be fair, the show did involve heavily made-up models and drag queens dressed as demons and vampires strutting their stuff along the aisle and posing in front of the altar. Some had horns on their head and some displayed inverted crosses between bare-breasts, so the clergymen aren't getting their cassocks in a twist entirely without cause.

But what did they expect? For the show featured the work of London-based Turkish designer Dilara Findikoglu, whose creations are popular with celebrities who like to provoke controversy and display a supposedly rebellious character whilst wearing expensively tailored clothes. What's more, Ms Findikoglu has spoken openly of her puerile (and, ironically, passé) fascination with magic and the world of the occult.

At the end of the day, she didn't break into St. Andrew's - it was hired from the Church of England authorities and surely it's their responsibility to exercise due caution and protect the sacredness of the space entrusted to them? To claim that they took the booking in good faith and were completely unaware of the show's content and themes, is a pretty piss-poor excuse.

An investigation into the matter is apparently now being carried out. Perhaps they might begin by asking why it is the Church feels so comfortable renting out its properties for secular activities and commercial purposes.

As for Ms Findikoglu, well, she's young; she can do better than this: and will, I'm sure, when she learns that when it comes to fashion, the devil's in the detail not shock-horror cliché. 

To read part one of this post on the case of Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione, click here.

Satanic News 1: The Case of Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione and the Devil's Letter

Satan, the so-called Prince of Darkness, has been in the headlines this month and I would like to discuss two recent news stories, beginning with ...

I: The Case of Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione and La Lettera del Diavolo 


A mysterious letter from 1676, previously believed to be nonsensical, has finally had its diabolical contents deciphered by scientists using code-breaking software found - appropriately enough - on the dark web.

Written shortly after entering the Benedictine convent in Palma di Montechiaro aged fifteen, Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione claimed that her hands were possessed by Satan and that he, not she, should be regarded as its true author. Unable to make (horned) head or (pointed) tail of the letter's contents, her fellow nuns believed her story and - rather surprisingly - put the letter on display, where it remained, unfathomed and seemingly unfathomable, for 340 years.

Until, that is, a team from the Ludum Science Centre in Catania, finally succeeded in translating parts of the text. Unfortunately, it seems that Satan didn't have anything unexpected to tell us on this occasion. He dismisses the divine forces of goodness as burdensome, like dead weights around the neck of mankind and says that morality is a dysfunctional system that benefits no one. He also contrasts God's promise of salvation with the freedom to sin that he offers.

Mostly, however, the letter remains incomprehensible and prone to logical inconsistency, mixing as it does several languages, even those said to be incompatible, into a kind of textual babble that only the wicked might find pleasurable. Whether this is evidence of the Devil's presence, or shows that Sister Maria suffered from some kind of mental disorder, is not for me to say ...


To read part two of this post on the case of Dilara Findikoglu, click here. 

Psychoceramics (Clinical Notes on Cranks and Crackpots)

We are the psycho-ceramics; 

the cracked pots of mankind.

A friend writes to complain about my use of the pejorative term crackpot:

"You use this tabloid-sounding term far too often as a lazy, rhetorical dismissal of people you don't sympathise with and whose views you frequently fail to understand. And, ultimately, isn't everyone's pot a bit damaged in some manner?"

To be fair, he might have a point; maybe I do use this term too often and maybe we do all have idiosyncrasies and mental health issues to deal with.

However, I borrowed the word crackpot from an Adam Ant song rather than the popular press, and I like to think it functions within my text as a specific critical and clinical term to refer to individuals who have an abnormal understanding of what constitutes factual evidence and thus enter into anomalous and sometimes sinister relationships with reality and what is generally accepted as the truth (e.g. the earth is a spherical object that orbits the sun).

Such individuals - often known as cranks as well as crackpots - are invariably people of faith; that is to say, they hold firm and fixed beliefs rather than ideas that are open to interrogation, thus rendering rational discourse impossible. Once they make their minds up on any given subject they cannot be persuaded otherwise. Thus the crazy often resemble broken records as well as cracked pots; endlessly repeating the same thing over and over, forever stuck in a groove.      

In 1992, American mathematical physicist John Baez came up with an amusing checklist, known as the Crackpot Index, that was designed to help identify cranky individuals and the way their minds (mal)function and I would encourage readers to check it out by clicking here.

Baez, like others who are interested in this condition, demonstrates that all crackpots share certain traits, characteristics, and obsessions. Perhaps the key feature is overestimating their own knowledge and ability, whilst underestimating (or dismissing entirely) that of leading experts.

Prone to paranoia as well as megalomania, crackpots also invariably subscribe to conspiracy theories and claim that their unorthodox views and revolutionary discoveries are being suppressed by mainstream science, big business, the government - or sometimes all three under the control of alien overlords. Or the Jews.  

And so, whilst I'm grateful to my friend for taking time to write, I think he should allow me my continued usage of the term crackpot and, further, I would suggest he investigates the work of Josiah S. Carberry, the leading authority in the field of psychoceramics.

For whilst I agree that it's pleasant and proper to be foolish once in a while, insanity marks a loss of conscious integrity and the point at which creativity terminates. And so, whilst a work of art or theory can reveal the presence of unreason, there are, technically, no mad scientists or mad poets.  


Note: the image above is of Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (dir. Miloš Forman, 1975); a film based on a novel of the same title by Ken Kesey (1962). The paraphrased line is from Pt. III, Ch. 2.  

The Internet of Stings: On Apiculture and the Question Concerning Technology

Most people have heard about the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), which, basically, involves embedding computer chips in everyday objects thereby enabling them to send and receive data and to be connected into one great network via the internet.

But many of these people assumed that the things referred to would be inanimate objects; phones, fridges, cars, kettles, central heating systems, etc. with the aim of making dumb things smart or artificially intelligent.

Only a few realised that living beings would also be made part of the IoT. Thus it is that cows, seals, sharks, and now bees are being brought into line by putting them online; a project that we might term die Gleichshaltung von Insekten  ...

Initiating in Manchester, it's hoped that bees across the UK will eventually be fitted with RFID chips on their backs so that researchers can track their behaviour and movements. Their homes will also be bugged (no pun intended), so that hive information - such as temperature - can be monitored and processed.

The aim, it's claimed, is to help the endangered creatures survive in age of colony collapse disorder by enabling the insects to provide status updates and tweet their locations.

And there I was thinking that we just had to plant more wild flowers, use less neonic pesticides and remember that beekeeping is essentially a practice requiring care, rather than a question concerning technology ...  

Time/Flies

dobrador.com 

Like most normal people, I hate flies; particularly that universal pest Musca domestica and its slightly larger relative, the bluebottle (Calliphora vomitoria). Only lunatics and Satanists find these carrion-loving, shit-eating, disease-spreading creatures genuinely attractive.

Having said that, my pteronarcophobia doesn't prevent me from conceding that flies are fantastic little machines of great scientific interest and ecological importance. And the fact that they have been buzzing about in huge numbers in almost every terrestrial habitat since the Middle Triassic period (i.e. for about 240 million years) is certainly something; for that's not only way prior to man, but long, long before there were even flowers.

Arguably, it's even more impressive when one realises that what is an almost inconceivable amount of time for man, is even longer for a fly. For research suggests that perception of time is not something universally shared across species and that for flies time passes far slower than it does for humans.

As an evolutionary rule, it seems that the smaller an animal is and the faster its metabolic rate, the slower time passes for it - and flies are very small with a very high metabolic rate. Because their large compound eyes can perceive light flickering up to four times faster than ours, they essentially see the world moving in slow motion.

Which is why, of course, the little fuckers so often manage to evade being swatted; being able to perceive time differently to a lumbering ape with a rolled up newspaper, is, in this case, literally the difference between life and death.

Of course, as one of the researchers into this area points out, having eyes that send updates to the brain at much higher frequencies is only of value if that brain can process the information just as quickly and lead to good decision making. Hence, we have to admit that even the tiny brains of flies have mighty capabilities and that - for now at least - insect intelligence remains far more astonishing than even the most advanced AI.

They may not be deep thinkers, but they're not so mindless after all ...                  

Note: those interested in knowing more about the current research into the eyes of flies and their perception of time, should visit the BBC science and environment web page and read the recent article by Rory Galloway: click here. 

Thanks to Simon Solomon for suggesting this post and providing the link.

Reflections on The Bat 2: Germaine Richier and Her Art of Becoming-Animal

Germaine Richier: La Chauve-souris (1946) 

Dimensions: 89 x 91 x 59.5 cm

Theodore Roethke's uncanny verse, The Bat, brings to mind many things; D. H. Lawrence's own poetic encounters with bats; Dick Kulpa and Bob Lind's journalistic fiction, the Bat Boy; and, of course, Germaine Richier's terrifying sculpture from 1946, also entitled (in English) The Bat.

Having written about Lawrence's chiropteran poetry and the Bat Boy elsewhere on this blog, it's Richier and her work I wish to discuss here ...     

Germaine Richier was a highly individual 20th century French sculptress. Whilst she had a rather classical approach - preferring, for example, to work from a live model before then reworking the finished piece - her work was often anomalous in theme; she loved to model spiders and insects, as well as monstrous human-animal hybrids. After the War, her style became less conventionally figurative; the bodily deformations that often characterized her work became ever-more accentuated and extreme in an attempt to convey her ever-greater sense of existential angst.

Her Christ figure, for example, although originally commissioned by the Church and designed for the Chapel of Assy, caused outrage and was eventually removed by order of a bishop, who objected not only to the fact that the body of Christ was indistinguishable from the Cross on which it hung (the wood and flesh having fused into one object), but that the figure was also faceless (readers of Deleuze and Guattari will understand why this is so profoundly problematic).

Interesting as this work and the controversy surrounding it are, it's her experimental 1946 piece, La Chauve-souris, that fascinates me most, however, created shortly after returning to Paris from Zurich, where she and her husband had spent the war years. In making The Bat, Richier employed a new technique of dipping rope fibre in plaster, before then draping it over a metal frame.  

As indicated, Richier had a real penchant for portraying (usually female) figures with insect or arachnoid characteristics. But this work was the first time she'd attempted to produce a mouse with wings wearing a human face. Just looking at the small, recognisably human head atop the elongated neck of this creature gives me the willies, in the same way that Roethke's poem creeps me out.

For like her American contemporary, Richier seems to have a great love for things belonging to the natural world, but it's a love that goes way beyond nostalgia for her childhood in rural southern France that some critics insist upon. Richier, like Roethke, appears to have discovered an unsettling, Lovecraftian truth about the latter - what we might term the perverse immorality of nature; the fact that nature is paradoxically invested with elements that are unnatural and preternatural (just as we also contain within our humanity aspects that are nonhuman, inhuman and, perhaps, overhuman).    

What excites Richier as an artist, I think, is not the fact that things naturally evolve, but that they are also subject to a process of becoming, with this latter understood not as the slow unfolding of an essence towards fixed identity, but the affirmation of difference conceived as a multiple process of transformation and an opening up of the self to outside forces (be they animal, alien, or daemonic in character).

And this, of course, is what excites me about her ...


Notes

The version of The Bat shown above was cast in bronze in 1996; the fifth in a posthumous edition of six created under the direction of Francoise Guiter (the artist’s niece) by L. Thinot, Paris, the foundry responsible for casting Richier’s sculptures during her lifetime. It is on long term loan to the Tate (Ref. Number: L02176). 

To read part one of this post on Theodore Roethke and the unheimlich, click here. 

To read the post that anticipates or prefigures this one on Roethke and the Bat Boy, click here. 

To read the post on D. H. Lawrence's becoming-bat, click here. 

To read Roethke's poem The Bat, click here. 

Thanks to Diana Thomson for suggesting this post by pointing me in the direction of Germaine Richier.