Queer as Punk

A punk bromance: Sid 💘 Johnny

 

'Punk is a challenge to reconsider everything you do, think or feel; 

including the ways that you love.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

In the second volume of his memoirs - Anger is an Energy  (2014) - Johnny Rotten flatly denies the persistent rumour that he and Vicious, unlike Cook and Jones, were more than just good friends ... 

 

Perhaps one reason why this romantic myth continues to resonate is because before becoming a term used by the media to identify a form of rock music that emerged in the 1970s, the word punk had a long subcultural history rooted in illicit and deviant sexual activity.   

 

In the 16th century, for example, it was used by writers including Shakespeare as a synonym for a female prostitute and spelt rather charmingly as puncke [2]. By the late 17th century, however, it had taken on a different meaning and described a youth who is provided for by an older man in exchange for certain favours. 

 

This queer [3] etymology takes on renewed significance when one recalls the story of the Sex Pistols; an anarchic collective held together with safety pins and bondage straps which included a far wider and more diverse group of people than the actual members of the band [4]. 

 

The teens who spent their time hanging around 430 King's Road challenged heteronormative values with their behaviour, attitude, and appearance; cheerfully wearing T-shirts designed by McLaren and Westwood which included images drawn from gay porn, including homosexual cowboys, nude adolescents, and well-endowed American footballers [5].     

And so, whilst both Rotten and Vicious were for the most part straight in terms of their sexual orientation, their emphasis on non-conformity, free expression, and open acceptance of gay culture - the band and their followers would often socialise in the early days at a lesbian member's club in Soho called Louise's - was positively received within the queer community at that time.    

 

 

II. 

 

Notwithstanding what I say above, I think we should be wary of retrospectively romanticising the story of the Sex Pistols, or imposing contemporary theoretical interpretations concerning queer sexual politics and identities on to the reality of the UK punk scene in the 1970s. I don't want to be the person who says let's stick to the facts at every opportunity, but I would agree that any analysis showing a flagrant disregard for historical accuracy seems of little real value or interest.   

 

Further, as David Wilkinson points out, "once punk is separated from rooted judgement through failure to locate it within a particular conjuncture, its politics can be celebrated as uniformly positive" [6] and that's a problem: the Sex Pistols did not promise to make things better and punk wasn't entirely gay friendly; there remained elements of homophobia within it (just as there did of racism, sexism, and reactionary stupidity).   

Ultimately, for McLaren and Westwood, same-sex passion was seen as something with which to confront and discomfort the English; they wished to weaponise it, not promote gay liberation or simply camp things up for the fun of it: 

"Given [their] positioning of same-sex passion as alienated, perverse and violent, it is unsurprising that McLaren and Westwood not only seemed to have little interest in the radically transformative aims of gay liberation, but were also prone to homophobic gestures that were calculated to shock in their contempt of even reformist demands for respect, understanding and openness." [7]

 

Ultimately, as Wilkinson says, McLaren and Westwood's "was an idiosyncratic, peculiarly hybrid kind of politics, especially in relation to sexuality" [8]; one based on the radical understanding of desire as "an instinctive, irrational force capable of disrupting social norms once unanchored from the private sphere" [9], but they weren't interested in how to further loving relationships, same-sex or otherwise.   

 

And as for Johnny and Sid, for better or worse, they were more romantically fixated on Nora and Nancy than one another.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing Pete Shelley writing in the second issue of his self-produced punk fanzine Plaything (1978): click here. 

 

[2] Shakespeare used the word, for example, in Measure for Measure (1603-04), where Lucio suggests that since Mariana is 'neither maid, widow, nor wife', she may 'be a Puncke’ (Act 5, scene 1).

[3] I am using this term here as one that includes same-sex desire, but which is not synonymous with such. If it were up to me, as someone who finds the empty secret of non-identity philosophically more interesting than the open secret of same-sex desire, I would restrict use of the word queer to refer to forms of practice and behaviour that have nothing to do with sexuality or gender. 

      See the post of 16 March 2025, in which I discuss the term: click here. 

[4] When I think of the Sex Pistols, I certainly don't just think of Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, and Johnny Rotten, but also of Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, Jamie Reid, Jordan, Soo Catwoman, Helen of Troy, and various members of the so-called Bromley Contingent. 

 

[5] David Wilkinson makes the important point that these designs "deliberately inhabited dominant understandings of unsanctioned sexuality as perverse, sordid and violent in order to provoke a reaction" and that McLaren and Westwood were not consciously offering a set of alternative values. 

      See Wilkinson's excellent essay 'Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t Have?): Punk, Politics and Same-Sex Passion', in Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, No. 13 (2015), pp. 57-76. The line quoted from is on p. 64. 

 

[6] David Wilkinson, ibid., p. 59.

[7] Ibid., p. 65. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. 62.

 

[9] Ibid., p. 63.  

Musical bonus: Tom Robinson Band, 'Glad to be Gay', from the EP Rising Free (EMI Records, 1978): click here. 

 

 

Temporal Reflections Whilst Sitting in My Back Garden

Sitting in the back garden in 1967 and 2025

 

 

I.

 

The debate as to whether we inhabit time, move through time, or if, indeed, time moves through us, remains a fascinating one for both philosophers and physicists alike. 

 

I suppose it ultimately all comes down to how one interprets the nature of time and its relationship to space. If, for example, one thinks of space-time as a single 4-dimensional continuum, then we obviously dwell within it and experience it as fundamental to our being.

 

But if, on the other hand, one likes to conceive of time in a more classical sense as something distinct from the spacial geometry of the universe, then it becomes possible to think of ourselves as objects that are simply carried along from past to to future via the present as if in a fast-flowing temporal stream. 

 

Personally, I'm quite interested in the so-called block model of time that proposes all moments exist simultaneously. According to this model, the idea of moving in a linear and unidirectional manner through time is dismissed as an illusion of consciousness [1].    

 

 

II. 

 

As I confessed in a post published a while back [2], whilst, paradoxically, I have a minimal sense of identity on the one hand, I've always possessed a strong sense of temporal self-continuity, and have never really bought into the idea of there being seven distinct ages into which a single life might be neatly divided up. 

 

Like the Killing Joke frontman, Jaz Coleman, time means nothing to me, and whether something happened fifty-eight years ago or yesterday, is a matter of indifference; even without shutting my eyes, I can still think the thoughts and experience the feelings I had as a child without making an imaginative journey back in time [3]. 

 

In part, this is perhaps helped by the fact that my spatial coordinates and the objects of my universe - my frames of reference - have remained (relatively) fixed and stable as the images above illustrate [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This block theory, also known as eternalism, in which past, present and future, all exist simultaneously should not be confused with presentism, according to which only a perpetual present exists and therefore has ontological primacy. 

      Nor should it be mistaken for the growing block theory of time, according to which an ever-expanding past and present exist, but the future doesn't; in other words, whilst the present becomes the past and therefore adds to the total history of the world, the present does not precede any future. This model is said to confirm the popular understanding of time in which the past is fixed, the future unreal, and the present constantly changing.     

 

[2] The post to which I refer was titled 'Being is Time: Life in the Present Perfect Continuous' (5 Oct 2022): click here. 

 

[3] I'm paraphrasing from the Killing Joke song 'Slipstream', from the album Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions, (Noise Records, 1990): click here. 

 

[4] I'm aware, of course, that time passes (and does so at the same pace) regardless of whether one constantly travels all around the world or sits in the same spot for almost sixty years; that time dilation is related to factors such as gravity rather than the physical location and stationary nature of the subject and that we grow old not matter what we do or don't do.     

 

 

On the Man Who Liked to Stare

 

 'When you stare long into the abyss, the abyss will also stare into you ...' [a] 

 

Nakamura has a fascination for staring death in the face; provided it's the death of another and that individual is deserving of their fate having been found guilty by a court of law of some grievous crime, such as murder.

 

Without getting into the rights and wrongs of capital punishment, most societies consider the unlawful and intentional killing of another human being to be an extremely serious matter, deserving of harsh punishment, be that a life behind bars, or state-sanctioned execution. 

In Nakamura's mind, murder is always an act of malicious evil whilst judicial homocide is morally justifiable and also a social necessity when considered in terms of deterrence, for example. And so, he feels he has a sacred duty to witness the death of criminals and the desire to do so is one that often arises within him:

"Nakamura's pride and joy in witnessing the death penalty, which he had felt on several occasions, and which he had told his friends and even his wife about, was on the rise again. He felt as if something special, something powerful, something stern and unmovable, like divine punishment itself, resided within him." [b] 

 

And yet, on the morning of the execution Nakamura often felt a level of physical anxiety that went beyond nervous anticipation; his entire body would begin to tremble in an unpleasant and uncontrollable manner. And his weak cup of tea "tasted of nothing" [91]. 

 

His wife obviously notices, but when she tries to speak to him and tell him of her dislike for the whole business, he grows angry and wants to strike her. 

 

"'Of course, I don't like it either,' he said. 'But if everyone felt that way, it would be easier for warmongers and criminals. You have to choose one side or the other. Either we, as citizens, will make society safe, or we will leave them to their own devices.'" [92]

 

Having said this, he reassured himself somewhat: "And he also felt that he was a hero, a hero who fulfilled his duty without regard for his own interests" [92]. His wife, however, is less than convinced; she knows that there's a real and often terrible price to pay for repeatedly witnessing executions, as studies have shown and many have testified [c].  

 

Nakamura boards his early morning train. Sat opposite him were a couple of businessmen, two young men in uniform, and "a beautiful, drowsy young woman" [93], who particularly fascinates him:    

 

"Her colour gave him a certain masculine feeling. The girl's eyes, which were a kind of melancholy grey, made him think of the rumpled bedclothes she had just woken up on. [...] Nakamura was so busy looking at her eyes, her breasts, and the rich lustre of her hair, that he almost forgot where the train was heading." [94]  

 

Almost: but not quite. His intrusive and sexualised staring [d] ultimately doesn't distract him from his sacred duty of attending the gallows. For the thought of an imaginary fuck was not as thrilling to him as the prospect of an actual death. It was the latter that filled him with "a certain dark and powerful force" [93] and made his erection as hard as a judge's hammer.   

 

He arrives at the prison: he takes his seat: he awaits the arrival of the condemned: "He was a young man. He was tall. Nakamura could not take his eyes off this man's body" [96], unless it was to look at his "youthful, slightly beaming, blushing face" [96].

 

And when the condemned man's eyes meet his own, "Nakamura thought he saw something beautiful shining in the man's small eyes like a flash of lightning" [96]. 

 

He shivers and feels himself lightheaded as the trapdoor opens, closing his eyes in a kind of ecstasy as "the sound of people’s voices whispering" [97] echoed around the room.  

 

Afterwards, Nakamura is desolate, his eyes glowing "as if fevered" [98], or having ejaculated.  

 

Consummatum est ...

 

Nakamura was obliged to sign a note saying that he had witnessed the execution. Although unable to think clearly, he felt himself filled with the silent knowledge of death; his avaricious curiosity satisfied (for the moment).

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV. 146.

 

[b] Chōkōdō Shujin, 'The Condemned', in Nakajimi Says and Other Stories (The Tripover, 2025), pp. 90-91. All future page references in this post are to this text. 

 

[c] Research suggests that witnessing executions - in whatever capacity - can have a profound and often traumatic impact on individuals, affecting their mental and emotional well-being. Indeed, even those who facilitate the executions and hardened journalists who report on them, often experience significant levels of stress, leading to nightmares, insomnia, panic attacks, and a sense of detachment from reality or other people. 

      Thus, the idea put forward by proponents of capital punishment that executions bring closure and allow healing is questionable to say the very least. 

 

[d] As far as I know, it is not yet a crime to look at someone in a public space, but so-called intrusive staring is now regarded as a form of harassment (particularly if it's an unwanted form of sexual leering) and so can get you arrested and possibly banged up. 

      To be fair, I can see how one might be made to feel uncomfortable if one is watched and evaluated by a stranger, but I don't have much time for arguments framed within the context of objectification; no one is dehumanised by being looked at or lusted after. Ultimately, I suppose whether or not staring is a genuine concern depends on context, the intent of the individual staring, and the sensitivity of the person being looked at. 

 

 

This post is for Soko and Rebecca. 

 

Click here for an earlier post responding to Nakajimi Says and Other Stories (2025). 

Thoughts Inspired by Three Short Stories by Chōkōdō Shujin

(The Tripover, 2025) 

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

 

 

I. 

 

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

 

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

 

 

II. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

III.

 

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

 

Meguri 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

He interviews the young master of the house: 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Nakajima Says

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

The Scent of Roses 

On the suicide of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 1927 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Shujin continues:

 

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

 

That's a nice way to close a story. 

 

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

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

 

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

Bye Bye Blackbird

Stephen Alexander: 

Bye Bye Blackbird (2025) [1]

 

'The blackbird cannot stop his song ... 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

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

David Salle working in his studio 

photographed by Frenel Morris (2023)

 

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

 However, the theoretical and the philosophical can be counterproductive 

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

  

 

I.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

In 2003, he committed suicide (aged 57): 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

II.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

III.    

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

IV.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

V.     

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

VI.

 

Is contemporary art infantalised? 

 

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

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

 

What's going on? 

 

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

 

Maybe. 

 

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

 

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

 

 

VII.

 

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

 

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

 

 

VIII. 

 

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

 

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

 

Why? 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

He continues:

 

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

 

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

 

 

Anish Kapoor: Cloud Gate (2004-06) 

Polished stainless steel (10 x 20 x 12.8 m)

Millennium Park, Chicago, USA.

 

 

Notes

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

To read part one of this post, click here.

 

To read part two of this post, click here. 

 

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

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

 

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

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

Photo by Maria Thanassa taken at Thaddaeus Ropac (London)

 

 

I.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

II.

 

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

 

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

 

III.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

 

IV.

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

V. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

   

 

VI.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Urs Fischer: Horse/Bed (2013) 

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

(218 x 263 x 111 cm.)

Photo by Stefan Altenburger

 

 

Notes

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

To read part one of this post, click here. 

 

To read part three of this post, click here.

 

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