Why Growing Up is So Problematic for an Artist

@artstoheartsproject 

(Instagram 3 July 2025)

 

'The first half of life is learning to be an adult and the second half is learning to be a child.' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

The above cartoon is funny, as Homer would say, because it's true. 

 

Or, at the very least, it touches upon an idea that might possibly be true; namely, that in order to be an artist one must retain some quality (or qualities) associated with childhood.   

 

It's an idea worth investigating further, I think ... 

 

 

II. 

 

I have always remembered an interview with Sid Vicious in which he adamantly insists that he doesn't want to be a grown up and that he and his bandmates are, essentially, just a bunch of kids. According to many people's favourite Sex Pistol: 

 

"When somebody stops being a kid, they stop being aware. It doesn't matter how old you are; you can be ninety-nine and still be a kid. And as long as you're a kid, you're aware and you know what's happening. But as soon as you grow up ... The definition of a grown up is someone who catches on to things when kids discard them." [2] 

 

That, as Jules would say, is an interesting point. 

 

And I suspect it was genuinely Sid's own view, though it also reflects the thinking of the Sex Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren, who encouraged his young charges to be everything this society hates and by which he primarily meant childish, irresponsible, and disrespectful. 

 

This countercultural philosophy, first conceived by McLaren at art school in the 1960s, was central to punk as it developed in the UK in the 1970s. 

 

For Malcolm, like Sid, being a grown up meant conformity, compromise, and complacency. Being a child, on the other hand, meant remaining open to new ideas and experiences and viewing the world with wonder and a certain innocence - traits that also define an artist (at least in the minds of those who think of art as being more than a matter of paint on canvas).         

 

 

III.

 

Innocence: it's a word that Nietzsche uses in relation to his concept of becoming-child [3]. But it's not one I usually associate with D. H. Lawrence. 

 

However, Lawrence does occasionally speak in favour of naïveté and of the need for an artist to be pure in spirit; which doesn't mean being good in a traditional moral sense of the term, but having a supremely delicate awareness of the world and dwelling in a state of delight [4]. 

 

And Lawrence does say that a combination of innocence + naïveté + modesty might return some young writers and painters not merely to childhood, but to a prenatal condition; i.e., ready to be born into a new golden age.

 

For regression to the foetal state must surely, says Lawrence, be a prelude to something positive:

 

"If the innocence and naïveté as regards artistic expression doesn't become merely idiotic, why shouldn't it become golden?" [5]  

 

 

IV. 

 

Astute readers will note Lawrence's concern in that last line quoted above: there is always the possibility that innocence and naïveté don't result in artistic greatness, but, rather, in idiocy and what Lawrence thinks of as arrested development. 

 

And let's be clear: push comes to shove, Lawrence - like Nietzsche, but unlike McLaren and Vicious - doesn't reject adulthood. 

 

On the contrary, he values it above childhood and whilst he may value the positive qualities associated with children, he loathes those adults who behave in a manner that he regards as immature or infantile and dearly wishes they would grow up and put away childish things (as Paul would say). 

 

Referring to novelists, for example, who, in his view, are overly self-conscious, Lawrence writes: 

 

"It really is childish, after a certain age, to be absorbedly self-conscious. One has to be self-conscious at seventeen: still a little self-conscious at twenty-seven; but if we are going at it strong at thirty-seven, then it is a sign of arrested development, nothing else. And if it is still continuing at forty-seven, it is obvious senile precocity." [6]    

 

Such people, says Lawrence - and in many ways I'm one of them - who "drag their adolescence on into their forties and their fifties and their sixties" [7] and either can't or won't grow up, need some kind of medical help [8].  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] This is one of several well-known quotes attributed to Picasso on the relationship between art and childhood. Others include: 'Every child is an artist: the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up' and 'It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.'

 

[2] Sid Vicious interviewed by Judy Vermorel in 1977 for The Sex Pistols, a book compiled and edited by Fred and Judy Vermorel, originally published in January 1978 by Universal Books. 

      To listen to Vicious sharing his views on this question, please click here. Sid also speaks frankly, honestly, and directly to his fans from 'Beyond the Grave' on Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1979) and confidently asserts that just as you can be ninety-nine and still be a kid, so too can you be a grown up at sixteen: click here. 

 

[3] See, for example, 'Of the Three Metamorphoses' in part one of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the third and final stage of which is becoming-child and the entering into a second innocence. 

 

[4] See D. H. Lawrence 'Making Pictures', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 230-231.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', Late Essays and Articles, p. 217.

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Future of the Novel', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 152. Senile precocity is not a recognised medical condition and seems to have been coined as a term by Lawrence in this essay.  

 

[7] Ibid., p. 153.   

 

[8] This condition - increasingly widespread - is often referred to in popular psychology as Peter Pan Syndrome and is associated with the work of Dan Kiley; see his 1983 text, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up. 

      Note that whilst Peter Pan Syndrome is not recognised by the World Health Organization - nor listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - it has a significant overlap with narcissistic personality disorder.

 

 

On the Death of Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino being mourned as he lies in state at the 

Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel (August 1926) 

 

 

I.

 

A century on, and the name Rudolph Valentino has now largely been forgotten by movie goers; today, Timothée Chalamet is the young good-looking actor hailed by members of Gen Z as a sex symbol and fashion icon.    

 

Having said that, there are still some fans of the Latin Lover devoted to his memory and insistent on the fact that whilst Rudy may no longer be universally recognised, he remains an iconic figure whose place in the cultural imagination is assured. 

 

For not only do his films continue to be screened, but books and articles (and blog posts such as this one) continue to be written about his life - and, indeed, his death which, as we shall see, caused mass hysteria and revealed just how insane - but powerful - the cult of celebrity was to become in the modern era, driven by the entertainment industry and mass media.  

 

 

II.

 

On August 15th, 1926, Valentino collapsed at a hotel in NYC. 

 

He was hospitalised and, following an examination, underwent emergency surgery for a perforated stomach ulcer mistaken at first for appendicitis [1].  

 

All seemed to go well and his doctor's were optimistic that the young man would make a full recovery. Unfortunately, however, that wasn't to be: first he developed peritonitis (inflammation of the lining of the wall of the abdomen); then he developed pleuritis (inflammation of the lining surrounding the lungs and chest cavity). 

 

Both conditions are extremely painful: and both can be fatal. 

 

As his condition worsened - and sepsis set in - the initial optimism of his doctors was replaced with the growing realisation that he was going to die (although they said nothing to the press and Valentino himself seemed convinced he would soon recover and chatted with the medical staff about his future plans). 

 

On 23 August, Valentino lapsed into a coma and died a few hours later. He was aged 31.   

 

 

III.

 

Valentino's death triggered some extraordinary scenes; over 100,000 people lined the streets of Manhattan to pay their respects on the day of his funeral and there were reports of distraught female fans committing suicide. 

 

There was even a riot in New York the day after his death, as people fought to view the body lying in state with their own eyes (for some believed the story of Valentino's death had, as they say, been greatly exaggerated; others, that it was entirely false). A large number of extra police were needed to restore order.  

 

The Polish actress and singer Pola Negri - a huge star at that time known for her tragic roles and femme fatale persona - perhaps sensing the career opportunity of a lifetime, collapsed crying in hysterics at the funeral. Claiming to be Valentino's secret fiancée, she also had a floral arrangement spelling out her name placed on his coffin, to the irritation of many of his friends [2]. 

 

(It seems that the four actors in black-shirted uniform hired by the funeral home director Frank Campbell to impersonate a Fascist guard of honour - supposedly sent from Italy by Mussolini himself - did nothing to restrain her.) 

 

As Valentino had made no burial arrangements, his friend June Mathis offered a crypt that she had originally purchased for her ex-husband at the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery and it's here he has remained.  

 

And every year, on the anniversary of Valentino's death, a mysterious Woman in Black arrives by chauffeur-driven car to place a bunch of red roses on his tomb and dab daintily at her eyes with a black-bordered handkerchief, before departing [3]. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] This condition - in which a perforated peptic ulcer causes right lower quadrant abdominal pain, mimicking appendicitis - is now known in the medical world as Valentino's syndrome.

 

[2] It's true that Miss Negri and Valentino had been in a romantic relationship shortly before his death, but there is no evidence they were secretly engaged and, if they were, it was not something he had mentioned to anyone. 

      Interestingly, for the rest of her life - and she died aged 90, in August 1987 - she claimed Valentino had been the love of her life - and not Charlie Chaplin with whom she'd also had a widely-publicised love affair in 1922-23; this despite the fact that D. H. Lawrence insisted that there was greater essential beauty in Chaplin's odd face than Valentino's stereotypically handsome features; see the essay 'Sex Appeal' in Lawrence's Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (CUP, 2004). And see also the post in which I discuss this essay and the relationship between Lawrence and Valentino: click here.     

 

[3] Several myths surround the thickly-veiled Woman in Black. Probably, the idea was originally a publicity stunt dreamed up by Valentino's former press agent Russel Birdwell in 1928, but it is now a rather lovely tradition kept alive by fans, cinephiles, and movie historians.  

 

 

D. H. Lawrence and Rudolph Valentino: the Priest of Love Versus the Latin Lover

Messrs. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Valentino (1895-1926) 

 

Oh Mister Rudolph Valentino / I know I've got the Valentino blues  

And when you come up on the screen / Oh! You're so romantic, I go frantic at the views [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Like many men at the time [2], D. H. Lawrence was not a fan of cinema's greatest male sex symbol of the silent era, Rudolph Valentino, the so-called Latin Lover [3]:

 

"We think ... a handsome man must look like Rudolf Valentino. ... But ... there is a greater essential beauty in Charlie Chaplin's odd face than there ever was in Valentino's ... which only pleases because it satisfies some ready-made notion of handsomeness." [4]

 

 

II.  

 

As the above quote makes clear, Lawrence dislikes Valentino because he thinks the latter reinforces a stereotypical ideal of beauty. 

 

But he also accuses actors cast in the same mold as Valentino of counterfeit emotion and of stimulating such in their audience. In a poem written about his experience at the cinema, for example, Lawrence jeers at the black-and-white feelings and fake ecstasies pretended by those who moan with pleasure when watching close-up kisses on a screen [5].

 

One suspects that, just as he thinks Valentino's sex appeal to be essentialy false, Lawrence might also have cast doubt on the actor's masculinity if given the chance to do so and may even have agreed with the attack upon him by the Chicago Tribune in the so-called 'Pink Powder Puffs' controversy ....

 

 

III.   

 

There had long been those who had called Valentino's manliness and, by unspoken implication, his heterosexuality into question. 

 

Some all-American boys - fair of face and blue of eye - felt threatened by his dark good looks and strange foreign manner; particularly as these things clearly excited the all-American girl. Anti-Italian racism was not uncommon at this time and if wops could also be seen as effeminate as well as criminal and foolish, then that was all the more reason to despise them. 

 

Thus, Valentino's critics repeatedly pointed to his pomaded hair, his dandyish dress sense, and the misogyny that seemed to underlie his treatement of women. 

 

This abuse came to a peak - whilst paradoxically hitting a new low - when an editorial in the Chicago Tribune concerning the installation of a facial powder dispenser in a gentleman's washroom at one of the city's leading hotels, decried the feminization of American men and pinned the blame for this on Valentino and his movies. 

 

The article, published on 18 July 1926, so infuriated Valentino that he challenged the anonymous writer to a fight [6]. As this challenge was not taken up, Valentino sought advice from others, including the writer H. L. Mencken, on how else to respond to such an infamous libel [7].    

 

Unfortunately, however, Valentino didn't get the chance to take matters any further; for he was to die in hospital following surgery the following month, aged just 31.  

 

 

IV.

 

Since his premature death in August 1926 [8], rumours have continued to circulate regarding Valentino's sexuality; was he secretly homosexual; was he bi-curious; or - as the evidence suggests and his recent biographers [9] conclude - was he in fact a genuine lover of the ladies, with no desire to suck cock ...?  

 

Who knows? 

 

And these days, who cares? Thankfully, a man can now present another man with an art deco dildo without everyone rushing to judgement, or speculating as to what such a gift reveals about that person's orientation or sexual preferences.  

 

Even Lawrence, who may not have been a fan of Valentino's - and often addressed questions around gender and sexuality in a way that many might now find problematic to say the least - conceded that the most girlish looking men often have "the finest maleness, once it is put to the test" [10]. 

 

 

Don't you ever stop being dandy  

showing me you're handsome [11]

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from 'Rodolph Valentino Blues', by Jack Frost (published by Jack Mills Inc., 1922). For a recent version of the song uploaded to YouTube by valentinolover70, click here. 

      Note that the spelling of Valentino's first name is not an error; in February, 1922 Life magazine reported that he would henceforth prefer to be known as Rodolph rather than Rudolph. This semi-Italianised styling of the name seems not to have caught on, however.   

 

[2] As the author of the WordPress blog Rudolph Valentino-Connections writes, Valentino was a target of innuendo, racism, and ridicule almost from the start of his career. In the July 1922 issue of Photoplay, for example, which featured Valentino on the cover, the cartoonist and illustrator Dick Dorgan wrote a piece entitled 'Song of Hate' which asserted that all men hate the actor for his foreign features, including his slicked hair and glistening white teeth. 

      Click here to access the post, which also includes the 'Pink Powder Puffs' editorial in the Chicago Tribune (18 July 1926) which we shall discuss shortly and which declares: 'Better a rule by masculine women than by effeminate men.'     

 

[3] Valentino was born in southern Italy, but arrived in New York in December 1913, aged 18. Although eligible - and despite becoming a Hollywood icon thanks to his exceptional good looks, personal charm, and unique talent - he never completed an application for US citizenship. 

       Undoubtedly the role that defined not only Valentino's career but his image and legacy, was that of Ahmed Ben Hassan in The Sheik (dir. George Melford, 1921) - much to his own irritation.  

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 145-146. 

      What Valentino thought of Lawrence's looks is not, as far as I know, on record. But, interestingly, Clark Gable - the actor promoted as Valentino's successor after the latter's untimely death in 1926 - named Lawrence as his favourite author. See the article 'Will Gable Take the Place of Valentino', by Gladys Hall, in Movie Classic (November 1931), which can be read on the Clark Gable archive site dearmrgable.com: click here.   

 

[5] See the poem 'When I went to the film' in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 385.  

 

[6] Although Valentino didn't get to fight the writer of the Pink Powder Puffs editorial, he did box sports writer Frank ONeill from the New York Evening Journal, who volunteered to fight in place of his colleague from the Chicago Tribune. Valentino - who had been trained by world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey - won the fight. Afterwards, Dempsey described Valentino as the most virile and masculine of all the actors he had worked with.

 

[7] Mencken, who found Valentino very likeable, advised the latter to simply let the whole thing fizzle out. After Valentino's death - just a month later - Mencken published a sympathetic piece in the Baltimore Sun, in which he claimed that it was not the Chicago episode that really upset Valentino, but the grotesque futility of his life as a famous film star. See H. L. Mencken, 'Valentino', in A Mencken Chrestomathy, (Vintage Books, 1982), pp. 281-284.   

      

[8] Valentino died on 23 August 1926 from infections following surgery for perforated gastric ulcers. A post discussing the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his death and his posthumous life can be read by clicking here.

 

[9] See, for example, Emily W. Leider's biography Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino (Faber & Faber, 2003).    

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 126. 

 

[11] Lyrics from 'Prince Charming' by Adam and the Ants, a single release from the studio album Prince Charming (CBS, 1981), which reached number 1 in the UK charts. The video for the song, directed Mike Mansfield, famously ends with Adam singing the chorus refrain - ridicule is nothing to be scared of - in the guise of several iconic male figures, including Valentino as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. Click here to play on YouTube.  

 

 

Heads You Lose

 

All compounded things are subject to vanish. [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Pretty much everyone seems to admire those monolithic human figures with giant heads carved from consolidated volcanic ash by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island [2].

 

Originally, these statues - known as moai - gazed inland, as if to protectively watch over everyone. 

 

But, after they were all toppled - many by Europeans, who began arriving in 1722 - it was decided to stand some of 'em back up again, but positioned so as to stare silently out to sea (almost as if they had been awaiting the arrival of the White Man all along). 

 

 

II. 

 

Anyhoo, it seems that these big tuff heads are not immortal after all and are, in fact, rapidly eroding due to a combination of factors, including rising sea levels, wildfires, and the effects of wind and rain over the years on soft and porous volcanic rock.

 

Local communities and busy-bodies from various heritage organisations are working to restore and protect the statues by cleaning them, applying protective treatments, and implementing measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. 

 

Like King Cnut, they are, however, fighting a losing battle - and, arguably, one that should be lost ... [3]

 

For in my view, the way that a people best sustain their culture is not by artificially preserving their past, but by affirming themselves in the present and projecting new works into the future. Taking excessive pride in one's heritage and history can, as Nietzsche knew, be disadvantageous if you're not careful [4].

 

 

III. 

 

And besides:

 

"We have reached the stage where we are weary of huge stone erections, and we begin to realise that it is better to keep life fluid and changing, than try to hold it fast down in heavy monuments. Burdens on the face of the earth, are man's ponderous erections." [5] 

 

Like Lawrence, I now far prefer small sculptures, carved from wood, that aim to be modest and charming, rather than grand and imposing. 

 

Further, there's also something very beautiful in the thought of the moai returning to the blueness of the Greater Day from which they came; for even stone idols should be as evanescent as flowers [6]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] This statement is from the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (Sutta 16 in the Dīgha Nikāya) and is considered to be the Buddha's last teaching. It emphasises the concept of impermanence (anicca); a core principle in Buddhism. Compounded things (sankhara) include not only physical objects, but also mental formations, emotions, and even one's sense of self.  

 

[2] Easter Island is remote volcanic island situated 2,170 miles off the coast of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. It's native name is Rapa Nui. There are roughly 1000 statues on the island in various stages of completion, with about 200 mounted on rectangular stone platforms known as ahu. 

 

[3] In an article on the BBC website entitled 'Is this the end for Easter Island's moai statues? (3 July 2025) - click here - Sofia Quaglia informs us that Rapa Nui community leaders are even considering moving the statues out of harm's way - perhaps housing them in museums - or making 3D scans of them so replicas can be printed at a later date. 

      I have issues with both these options, although it might be noted that several institutions already display cast replicas of moai, including the Natural History Museum of LA County; the American Museum of Natural History; and the Auckland Museum, in New Zealand. As this post makes clear, I'm with those community leaders who argue that erosion is a mysterious natural phenomenon and that the moai should therefore succumb to their elemental fate.

 

[4] See Nietzsche's essay 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life' (1874) in Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 57-123.  

      One of the key arguments made by Nietzsche in this text is that an excess of historical awareness can hinder our ability to act and create in the present by making us feel small in the face of past greatness. It's fine when our heritage informs and invigorates the present, but not when we feel oveshadowed by and subservient to our ancestors. 

      Utimately, we need to let go of things and allow even magnificent monuments to crumble into ruin and beautiful artworks to fade away. That's why I feel the way I do about the Easter Island statues and opposed the rebuilding of Notre-Dame de Paris after the fire in 2019: click here. 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sketches of Etruscan Places', in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 32.

 

[6] Again, I'm aware that some Rapa Nui locals - and archaeologists - strongly disagree with this way of thinking. For them, the moai have such cultural, historical, and scientific importance that they must be preserved at all costs and by any means possible. The fact that they attract more than a 100,000 visitors to Easter Island each year and tourism has become central to the Rapa Nui economy is also a consideration, of course.

 

 

Thanks to Símón Solomon for suggesting this post.      

 

 

More Yellow, More Blue: Further Thoughts on an Exhibition by Megan Rooney

Emily LaBarge and Megan Rooney

against Rooney's Yellow Yellow Blue (2025)

Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas 

(200 x 152 cm / 78.5 x 60 in)   

 

 

I. 

 

Having visited an exhibition by an artist I was shamefully unaware of until very recently [1] - and having come away greatly impressed by the paintings and a little in love with the painter - I simply had to attend an event hosted by the gallery in which said artist, Megan Rooney, was to be joined in conversation by her friend and interlocutor, the Canadian writer Emily LaBarge [2]. 

 

And so, on a sunny Saturday morning, it's back into Town and back to the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (located in one of Mayfair's finest eighteenth-century mansion houses: Ely House) ... 

 

 

II.        

 

As I said in the original post written on Rooney's exhibition, it was the title of the show - Yellow Yellow Blue - that first caught my interest: I like yellow and I like blue, although maybe not with the same obsessive intensity as Megan; she really loves these colours and the chromatic territory that lies between them. 

 

But whilst yellow makes her want to tap her foot and dance and be swallowed by the sun, and blue makes her want to contemplate the secret of a colour that comes in many different shades and varies dramatically in intensity and brightness, I'm still not sure she offers us a new concept of these colours. 

 

But then, to be fair - even if abstract art is an attempt at some level to dissolve the distinction between art and philosophy - Rooney is an image-maker first and foremost and doesn't claim to be a philosopher. For whilst the latter are concerned with metaphysical constructions that define and enable a style of thinking, artists, as a rule, are more interested in novel combinations of sensation and feeling. 

 

In other words, art is a game of percepts and affects, not concepts: just as important and as vital as philosophy, but a very different way of confronting chaos [3]. For whereas philosophy wishes to give to chaos a certain consistency (and moves from chaos to concept), art wants to create forms invested with a little wild and windy chaos, whilst steadily moving from chaos to composition [4]. 

 

In sum: what Deleuze and Guattari say of artists in general, I would say of Rooney in particular; she struggles with chaos "in order to bring forth a vision that illuminates it for an instant" [5]. 

 

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that she's struggling less against chaos and more against the thing that all artists dread: cliché. And the reason she inflicts such violence on her canvases is in order that she might erase any trace of the latter and not simply scrub away the colour. 

 

But that's not an easy task; for the cliché is pre-existent and even after one primes or treats a blank canvas, it's still there, hiding, and threatening to ensure artistic failure (even if one produces a conventionally successful picture that is praised by critics and public alike).      

 

 

III. 

 

Interestingly, Rooney talks about her works as excavations; as if she's searching for something. But what is she searching for ...?

 

We know that beneath the paving stones lies the beach, but what lies beneath the multiple layers of paint she adds, removes, and reapplies to a canvas? Towards the end of their conversation, LaBarge suggested that it might possibly be love, but Rooney (to her credit) seemed resistant to that suggestion. 

 

So let's propose rather that she's looking for something that we might call truth ... Only it's a truth born of chaos and isn't tied to goodness or even beauty (although there is certainly beauty in Rooney's work and perhaps even an ethic to do with innocence and becoming rather than moral conformity).     

Perhaps we might better name this truth with the Ancient Greek term ἀλήθεια (aletheia) ... An unorthodox concept of truth first given us by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides and famously developed by Heidegger, who translated aletheia into German as Unverborgenheit (disclosure or, more literally, unconcealment).

 

Like Heidegger, Rooney seems to be enchanted by the manner in which objects reveal their presence before then withdrawing back into the darkness, never quite allowing us to grasp their truth in full. LaBarge was spot on to write that as soon as we think we have identified something recognisable in Rooney's works - a flower, a sunrise, a chimney pot - it melts once more back into light and colour, or retreats into shadow and silence [5].   

 

And it's the concept of aletheia that explains this phenomenon ... 

 

For aletheia is a radically different notion of truth and a radically different ontological model of the world to the one in which things are fixed and can be made fully present to mind. If one subscribes to the concept of aletheia then you can forget about ever being able to accurately describe a state of affairs or have full knowledge of anything. All of a sudden, absence matters at least as much as presence and being rests upon non-being as a distinct aspect of reality. 

 

In his essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art', Heidegger says the true value of a work of art is that it opens a clearing for the appearance of things in the world; and this glimpse affords human beings the opportunity to formulate not only a degree of knowledge, but meaning [6].

  

Amusingly, as LaBarge also notes, when those things momentarily glimpsed in one of Rooney's abstract (but not resolutely abstract) canvases withdraws it takes your heart with it. And that's not only a rather lovely thought, but an accurate one hinting as it does at the seductive beauty of Rooney's work. 

 

Ultimately, her canvases are like an erotic game of hide and seek; they tease and excite, without ever quite satisfying and this tells us something crucial not only about pleasure and the magical allure of objects, but about the nature of existence.         

 

 

IV. 

   

When leaving the gallery, I overheard a woman say that Rooney's canvases are so completely full of colour that they leave the viewer unable to move or breathe. But, actually, that's profoundly false and if she genuinely feels stifled, then, well, maybe she should loosen her girdle. 

 

For Rooney always leaves (or creates) just enough space to allow us to both move and breathe by making a slit in the Great Umbrella: "And lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision" [7]; a window to the yellow of the sun and the brilliant blue of the Greater Day. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The artist in question is Megan Rooney and the exhibition is titled Yellow Yellow Blue, at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) 12 June - 2 August 2025: click here for details and/or here for my original post on the exhibition (26 June 2025). 

 

[2] Emily LaBarge wrote the introductory text - 'Like the Flap of a Wave' - for the catalogue to accompany Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including the London Review of Books, and she is a regular contributor to The New York Times. For more information and to read her work, visit her website: click here. 

 

[3] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (Columbia University Press, 1994). 

      And see also D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Chaos in Poetry', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116; an essay that Deleuze and Guattari freely borrow from in their work.     

 

[4] This move from chaos to composition is crucial: for art is not chaos, "but a composition of chaos that yields the vision or sensation, so that it constitutes [...] a composed chaos - neither foreseen nor preconceived". See Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, p. 204.   

 

[5] Emily LaBarge, 'Like the Flap of a Wave', introductory essay for the catalogue to accompany Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). 

 

[6] See Martin Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Rouledge, 1993), pp. 139-212. This essay as it appears here was first presented as a tripartite lecture entitled Der Urspung des Kunstwerkes, presented in Frankfurt in 1936.     

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Chaos in Poetry' ... op. cit., p. 109. 

 

 

This post is for Hemma Matuschka (née Khevenhüller-Metsch) Head of Events and Client Development at Thaddaeus Ropac London, in gratitude for all her hard work and attention to detail.   

  

 

Impressionism Reconsidered

Claude Monet: Impression, soleil levant (1872) [1] 

Oil on canvas (48 x 63 cm) 

Musée Marmottan Monet

 

 

I. 

 

My view of French Impressionism has until now largely been shaped by D. H. Lawrence's argument that it was essentially an attempt to dissolve substance and to make the body into a thing of light and colour:

 

"Probably the most joyous moment in the whole history of painting was the moment when the incipient impressionists discovered light, and with it, colour. Ah, then they made the grand, grand escape into freedom, into infinity [...] They escaped from the tyranny of solidity and the menace of mass-form. They escaped, they escaped from the dark procreative body [...] into the open air: plein air and plein soleil ..." [2]   

 

This was a moment of ecstasy; albeit a relatively short-lived and illusionary moment. For invariably the impressionists were brought back to earth with a crash by the so-called post-impressionists, who championed the "doom of matter, of corporate existence, of the body sullen and stubborn and obstinately refusing to be transmuted into pure light, pure colour, or pure anything" [3].  

 

Nevertheless, even if the cat came back - "bristling and with its claws out" [4] - there's no need to denigrate or dismiss the impressionists. And indeed, Lawrence acknowledges that they were wonderful; "even if their escape was into le grand néant" [5] and even if many of their works, whilst delightful, look somewhat chocolate boxy to us now.  

  

 

II. 

 

The thing that I'm now starting to appreciate is that impressionism wasn't just about the attempted escape into the great nowhere via the denial of substance that Lawrence writes of. 

 

It was also characterised, for example, by visible brush strokes, unusual perspectives, and the attempt to capture movement and the passage of time and impressionism was profoundly hated by piss-taking critics of the period not for its idealism, but it's violation of the rules and conventions formulated by the Académie des Beaux-Arts that had long governed painting in France [6].         

 

In other words, the impressionists were not really afraid of the human body anymore than Turner, whose work was so influential on their thinking, was afraid of ships; they were fed-up of a governing body telling them what to paint and how to paint and they turned to colour and the realism of everyday life in order to defy the authority of the Grey Ones obsessed with lines and contours and idealised images of the heroic past.   

 

It's a little surprising, further more, to find Lawrence of all people criticising artists for painting outdoors in order to capture the ever-changing effects of sunlight and shadow on natural settings; would he really prefer them to remain studio-bound and producing true (because fixed and enduring) representations of the world ...? 

 

I know Lawrence believes that a painting has to come primarily from the artist's intuitive awareness of forms and figures - that working from models and objects can actually spoil the picture [7] - but, c'mon! that's no reason to jeer at those who prefer to work en plain air and catch fleeting glimpses of things and people palpitating avec mouvement, lumière, et vie, as Stéphane Mallarmé said of this new style of seeing and painting.  

 

Ultimately, for a writer like Lawrence who values immediacy and quickness and who attempts to compose a new form of verse that he terms poetry of the present - i.e., one that opens out on to chaos and is all about the nowness of the moment - to criticise impressionism in the manner he does, is more than a little surprising, it's disappointing [8].     

And so, today I'm going to give two cheers for the young painters - headed by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir - who, in Paris in the early 1860s, revolutionised the world of painting [9].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The title of this painting provided the movement's name after Louis Leroy's 1874 article - 'The Exhibition of the Impressionists' - implied that the painting was, at most, an amusing though unfinished sketch and not to be taken too seriously. Ironically, the term impressionist - a bit like punk a century later - quickly gained favour with the public and it was also accepted by the artists themselves, even though they were a diverse group in style and temperament, unified primarily by their spirit of independence and rebellion (again, a bit like those musicians categorised under the genre heading punk rock). 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 197. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid., p. 198.

 

[5] Ibid., p. 197.  

 

[6] Via its control of Salon exhibitions and educational programmes, the French Academy of Fine Arts (founded in 1816) enforced rules and conventions for painting in the 19th century, thereby significantly influencing the style and subject matter of art during this period and determining the careers of artists.

      Privileging neoclassical and romantic styles and the depiction of mytho-religious or historical subjects - or traditional portraiture - the Academy required artists to display a high level of technical skill and ability rather than creative innovation. The impressionists - to their credit - challenged the conservatism and authority of the Academy; they weren't interested in producing perfect pictures made with precise brushstrokes and a restrained use of colour, overlaid with a thick coat of varnish and doxa.

      Interestingly, although the French public were at first hostile, they gradually came to admire how the impressionists were offering a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment continued to disapprove of the new style (during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends, obliging them to exhibit independently in the following decade).  

 

[7] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Pictures', in Late Essays and Articles, p. 231.  

 

[8] The only modern painter that Lawrence seems to admire is Cézanne, dismissing other post-impressionists as sulky and still contemptuous of the body, even if they begrudgingly admit its existence and, in a rage, "paint it as huge lumps, tubes, cubes, planes, volumes, spheres, cones, cylinders, all the pure or mathematical forms of substance". 

      See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, p. 198.   

 

[9] And a big shout out also to Gustave Courbet, who had gained public attention and critical censure a decade earlier by depicting contemporary realities without the idealisation demanded by the Académie thereby inspiring the impressionists to be bold; and to Édouard Manet, whom the younger artists greatly admired, even though he never abandoned his liberal use of black as a colour and never participated in the exhibitions organised by the impressionists, of which there were eight in Paris; the first in April 1874 and the last in June 1886. Camille Pissaro was the only artist to show work at all of them.   

 

Yellow Yellow Blue: Notes on an Exhibition by Megan Rooney

Megan Rooney: Yellow Yellow Blue (2025)

Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas

(200 x 152 cm / 78.5 x 60 in) 

Photo by Maria Thanassa

 

'You spend your life as a painter developing a relationship to colour and then 

testing the limits of that relationship. It’s radical, it’s ever-changing - 

it can submit to you and it can betray you. It always seduces, always excites.'  

                                                                                               - Megan Rooney

 

 

I. 

 

Sometimes you visit an exhibition because you know and admire the work of the artist and wish to be reassured of their genius and reconfirmed in the soundness of your past judgement and the continuity of one's aesthetic tastes.   

 

Sometimes, however, you visit an exhibition without any prior knowledge or formed opinion and in the hope that perhaps you'll discover something new not only about art, but about one's self ... 

 

And so to Thaddaeus Ropac, to see an exhibition of new paintings by the London-based artist Megan Rooney entitled Yellow Yellow Blue ... [1]

 

 

II. 

 

Probably it was the title of the show that first caught my interest: I like yellow and I like blue and in this body of work Rooney explores the chromatic territory that lies between yellow and blue (as well as the spectrum of green that emerges from mixing these two primary colours).   

 

Yellow I love for its emotional intensity (its joy, its vibrancy, its madness) [2]; blue for its profundity - for blue is the colour of the Greater Day and of the Void much loved by painters, poets, and philosophers; a colour which Christian Dior once described as the only one that can possibly compete with black, which remains the ne plus ultra of all colours [3]. 

 

But, having read the press release for the show, I was intrigued also to see how Rooney - said to be an enigmatic storyteller - manages to construct a dreamlike narrative indirectly referencing "some of the most urgent issues of our time" whilst also addressing "the myriad effects of politics and society that manifest in the home and on the female body" [4], simply by using colours, lines, shapes, and gestural marks on canvas in an almost entirely abstract manner.

 

For whilst I'm happy to accept that you can use purely visual elements to convey emotion or explore the formal qualities of painting as an art, I'm not entirely convinced (as a writer and philosopher) that you can adequately convey the kind of ideas mentioned above simply with such elements; ultimately, words - not colours - remain the primary tool for this. 

 

 

III. 

 

Located on the gallery's two floors, Yellow Yellow Blue presents pieces ranging from a dozen or so small works on paper (pretty enough, but not massively exciting) to large-scale (slightly overwhelming) canvases alongside a family of works in Rooney's signature wingspan format (i.e., equivalent to the full-reach of her outstretched arms). 

 

A bit like Goldilocks, I preferred these works; not too big, not too small, just right in size; for like D. H. Lawrence, I think it important that an artist acknowedge their limitations and the fact that they end at their finger-tips [5].

 

I liked the fact that Rooney clearly puts a LOT of work into what she does; constantly layering on paint, then sanding the works down and attempting to discover forms which might lie buried deep within the surface, before then slapping on more and more paint. 

 

By her own confession, Rooney often continues working on canvases right up until the opening; some seemed to be still wet in places and one could smell the canvases before even entering the room to view them - this was something else I also liked very much.   

 

Some works made one think of Monet and his water lilies and as I believe abstract impressionism is a thing, I don't think that's too crass or naive an observation [6]. Other works, because of their yellowness as an essential common feature, invariably made one think of Van Gogh. 

 

Still, as Rooney likes to talk of her paintings as having family connections - i.e., of being intimately connected to one another "as well as the lineage of paintings that precedes them" [7], I don't suppose she'll object to my seeing of similarities between her works and those of le dandy of impressionism and het gekke menneke of post-impressionism.  

 

 

IV. 

 

"Does anyone know, really, what a life is?" asks Emily LaBarge [8].    

 

As a reader of Deleuze, I suppose I could put my hand up and answer: Yes: a life is something inseparable from philosophy conceived in terms of pure immanence; something that has to be invented [9].   

But nobody likes a smart arse and I suppose it's essentially a rhetorical question - albeit one the answer to which just might lie in painting, according to LaBarge; an art form that captures something of temporal and spatial reality, even whilst painting does not quite belong to the same temporal and spatial reality of this world.  

Thus it is that: "As soon as we think we have identified something recognisable in [Rooney's paintings] - a copse of trees? a flurry of lilacs? a sunrise? a chimney? a rain-soaked evening? - it disappears ..."  

That's true - or at least, I think I know what Ms LaBarge means by this: All that is solid melts into light and colour, as Marx might have put it. 

 

The moment you grasp something concrete in Rooney's work, "it departs, skitters away, taking your heart with it, if only to throw it back to you [...] with the reminder that this image is also, first and formost, a painting: a made thing, worked and burnished [...] where luminous forms merge and fly like ghosts". 

 

And that's the beauty of abstract art; it doesn't just present on a plate like representational art - it gives, takes back, and gives once more - or, more precisely perhaps, it shows and hides and then shows some more in a provocative game of tease: It always seduces, always excites!

 

And if it fails to satisfy, that's arguably the point and it tells us something crucial not only about pleasure, but about the allure and withdrawal of objects in a way that a still life cannot.  

 

     

Megan Rooney photographed in her studio 

by Eva Herzog (2023)

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Megan Rooney: Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) 12 June - 2 August 2025: click here for details. 

      See also Megan Rooney's page on ropac.net: click here, or visit her own website: megan-rooney.com   

 

[2] See the post 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here. 

 

[3] I have written several posts on the colour blue in art and literature; click here, for example, for a post dated 1 April 2017 on Rilke's blue delirium; or click here, for a post dated 2 April 2017 on the work of Yves Klein.  

 

[4] From the exhibition press release written by Nina Sandhaus (Head of Press, Thaddaeus Ropac London).  

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Why the Novel Matters', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 1985). pp.191-198. 

      Lawrence argues that every man or woman - artist, philosopher, poet, or scientist included - ends at their own finger-tips and that this is a simple, but profoundly vital, truth. We may draw sustenance and stimulation from outside ourselves - from sights and sounds and smells and ideas, etc. - and these may allow us to change, but it's the living body upon which these things act that remains the most important. 

      Rooney appears to share this view, which is why she (mostly) likes to keep her canvases roughly 200 x 152 cm in size; i.e., in relation to her own reach, her own body. Thus, as it says in the gallery's press release: "The body has a sustained presence in Rooney’s work, as both the subjective starting point and final site for the sedimentation of experiences explored through her [...] practice."   

 

[6] Abstract impressionism is an art movement that originated in New York City, in the 1940s, the term apparently being coined by the painter and critic Elaine de Kooning and then popularised by Louis Finkestein (initially to describe the works of Philip Guston). 

      I'm not sure Rooney would wish to be associated with the term, but there is something lyrical in her canvases and although resolutely abstract, her works "contain fleeting suggestions of recognisable forms [...] ladders, beehives, clouds, trees, skies and tombs weave through the exhibition, like fugitive glimpses of a half-dreamed world". Again, see the gallery press release by Nina Sandhaus available to download from the Thaddaeus Ropac website.

 

[7] Nina Sandhaus, press release for Yellow Yellow Blue.  

 

[8] Emily LaBarge, 'Like the Flap of a Wave', written for the catalogue to Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). All lines quoted in this section of the post are from this text unless stated otherwise. 

      The title of the piece refers us to the possibility that if you squint hard enough and long enough at Rooney's large canvases you might just imagine, as LeBarge did, "Virginia Woolf's London as described by her heroine, Clarissa Dalloway, on a fresh morning in spring [...] when everything seems [...] to be happening all at once, the past and present kaleidoscoping in a work of art".      

[9] See Gilles Deleuze, 'Pure Immanence: A Life', in Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, Intro. by John Rajchman, trans. Anne Boyman (Zone Books, 2005). 

 

 

For a follow up post to this one - 'More Yellow, More Blue!' (29 June 2025), please click here.    

 

 

My Purrfect Catwoman

 

Fig. 1 Selina Kyle as Catwoman wearing her classic outfit (DC Comics)

Fig. 2 Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns (dir. Tim Burton, 1992)  

 

I.

 

I think everyone likes the DC comic book character Catwoman, criminal alter ego of Selina Kyle, created by Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane in 1940 [1]. 

 

Even Batman can't resist her feline charms and, despite the fact that she is one of his major adversaries, many stories depict them as a couple caught in a complicated romantic relationship. Probably this has something to do with Finger and Kane deciding from the outset that they wanted to give the character sex appeal [2].  

 

Not that there's anything wrong with that! Even D. H. Lawrence approves of sex appeal, which he defines as the communicating of beauty and the kindling of a sense of warmth and gaiety. 

 

For Lawrence, indeed, the loveliness of a really lovely woman - such as Selina Kyle, in whom sex burns brightly - lights up the entire  world. To encounter such a woman - extremely rare even in a comic book universe containing wonder women and supergirls - is a genuine experience [3].     

 

However, without wishing to jump on any kind of moral highhorse, I do sometimes feel that the kinky hypersexualisation of Catwoman has been taken too far in recent years and that this negatively impacts upon a character with a long and interesting history. 

 

As one commentator writes:  

 

"She's always been attractive, however, her [...] complexity takes a nosedive when creators rely too heavily on feline and female cultural connotations. When she's rendered with an extremely minimal waist, but with boundless cleavage [...] her power is diminished." [4]

 

The same commentator adds that whilst the the way Catwoman is drawn in the comic books diverges from artist to artist, all too often "her imagery falls into the realm of overplayed sex fantasy" and her body is often "twisted submissively into feline poses" [5] that are essentially designed to titilate heterosexual male readers.   

 

 

II. 

 

Many people blame TV and Hollywood for this hypersexualisation of Catwoman; from Julie Newmar in the 1960s, to Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1990s, Catwoman has always been portrayed on screen in a manner that emphasises her physical attributes rather than her criminal skills and intelligence [6]. 

 

However, we might also remind ourselves that it was the comic book writer Frank Miller (in collaboration with artist David Mazzucchelli) who not only reimagined Batman as the so-called Dark Knight, but radically revised Catwoman's origin and character ...

 

Thus, in Batman: Year One (1987), we were now asked to accept that before becoming a cat-suited thief, Selina Kyle had worked as a dominatrix whilst also taking care of a 13-year-old prostitute named Holly Robinson.

 

And that, I would suggest, is a pretty much perfect example of the pornification of popular culture.      

 

 

III. 

 

So, how then would I envision Catwoman, if I were tasked with so-doing? 

 

Well, I'd be tempted to return to her Golden Age look prior to the Batman TV show, consisting of a purple dress, a green cape, a domino mask, and mid-length boots. It's a good look: sexy, but sophisticated and stylish, rather than porno-fetishistic in a way that - even if once transgressive - has now become boring and stereotypical. (See figures 1 and 2 above.) 

 

Alternatively, I think I'd go for a look inspired by legendary English ballerina Margot Forteyn, as Agathe, in Roland Petit's Les Demoiselles de la Nuit (1948): see figure 3 below. 

 

For ultimately my perfect Catwoman is graceful and stealthy rather than raunchy and explicit; a daring thief characterised by impeccable manners and charm, who steals rare and beautiful objects not because they are valuable, but because she enjoys the challenge and the danger involved; a woman who defies convention and lives on her own terms, but doesn't drone on about being empowered or feel the need to have the letters BDSM tramp-stamped on her lower back to show us how sexually liberated she is.    

 

 

Fig. 3: Margot Fonteyn as Agathe the Cat in 

Roland Petit's Les Demoiselles de la Nuit (1948) [7]

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Kyle features as a mysterious jewel thief called the Cat in Batman #1 (Spring, 1940). Although she doesn't wear her iconic cat-suit and mask, the story establishes Kyle's character as a feline femme fatale who both frustrates and attracts Bruce Wayne.

 

[2] As mentioned, what Finger and Kane did not originally give Catwoman, however, was a costume or any form of disguise. It was not until her third appearance that she donned a full-face furry cat mask and not until sometime later that she adopted what became her regular look prior to the Batman TV show, consisting of a purple dress, a green cape, a domino mask, and calf-length boots. This costume is distinct from the sleek and shiny catsuit she is now known for. 

  

[3] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 143-148. I discuss this text in relation to the thinking of E. M. Cioran in a post published on 24 September 2018: click here 

 

[4] Elliot Swan, 'The Oversexualization of Catwoman Harms Her Character', on CBR (6 June 2013): click here. 

 

[5] Ibid.  

 

[6] Julie Newmar was the first actress to play Catwoman during the first two seasons (1966-67) of the live-action TV series Batman, starring Adam West as the caped crusader Bruce Wayne and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson (aka Robin). Newmar later revealed in an interview that the skin-tight costume she wore left her no option but to tell the character's story with the movements, postures, and gestures of her body. 

      Unfortunately, due to an injury, Newmar was unable to reprise the character for the full-length movie based on the TV show (dir. Leslie H. Martinson, 1966), thus opening the way for Lee Meriwether to play Catwoman. But perhaps the most famous actress to do so is Michelle Pfeiffer, who haphazardly stitched and squeezed herself into an iconic shiny black cat-suit in the 1992 movie directed by Tim Burton, Batman Returns, playing opposite Michael Keaton's Batman. This movie was far darker and more sexual in tone - as well as more violent - than many fans and critics were anticipating. 

      Pfeiffer's latex costume - of which there were dozens made at a $1000 a pop - was designed by Bob Ringwood and Mary E. Vogt. Some versions, made from a cast of Pfeiffer's body, were so tight that she had to be covered in baby powder in order to get into them. Ringwood and Vogt found it problematic to add actual stitching to latex and so they essentially painted what looked like stitching on to the suit with liquid silicon while it was worn by Pfeiffer.     

 

[7] Roland Petit's one-act ballet Les Demoiselles de la Nuit premiered in Paris at the Théâtre Marigny on May 22, 1948. The libretto was by Jean Anouilh, with music by Jean Françaix. The costumes and set designs were by Leonor Fini. Petit created the role of Agathe especially for Miss Fonteyn.  

      It tells the tragic story of a poet-musician who falls in love with his beautiful cat Agathe, who has magically assumed semi-human form. Agathe initially attempts to be faithful to her human lover, but is eventually seduced by the sound of male cats howling in the night and the desire for freedom. Leaping from a rooftop in order to escape, the poet-musician tries to grab hold of her and they both fall to their death. 

 

 

Readers might be interested in an earlier post on feline femininity - 'Reflections on the Case of Irena Dubrovna' (4 June 2022) - click here. 

 

Readers might also like this piece of artwork slightly reimagining the work of Finger and Kane from the first issue of Batman (Spring 1940) that I didn't have the chance to use in the main body of this post: