On the Law of Inertia and the Principle of Evil

Portrait of Isaac Newton by Godfrey Keller (1689) 

with the addition of Newton's Law of Inertia

  

  

I. 

 

Like many people who possess a limited knowledge of physics, for a long time I thought inertia only referred to the tendency of objects at rest not to move unless acted upon by some external force or agency; that tumbleweed doesn't tumble unless blown by the wind, for example, and Phoevos the cat doesn't get off my chair unless physically encouraged to do so. 

 

It wasn't until quite recently that I discovered that inertia also refers to the fact that objects in motion will keep on moving in the same direction and at the same pace unless something causes them to divert, slow down, or come to a halt. 

 

Inertia, therefore, doesn't mean unmoving so much as unchanging; it essentially guarantees that the existing state of afffairs will remain the existing state of affairs - whether that state is at rest or in motion - until disrupted [1]. 

 

 

II. 

 

I'm not sure this permits us to describe existence as naturally idle or metathesiophobic, but it does seem to suggest that change ultimately requires forces that are, in some sense, artificial, alien, and demonic.

 

In sum: whilst we may no longer need a creator god to guarantee the status quo and preservation of all things, we still need a principle of evil to shake things up and send them spinning in a new direction [2].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence challenged the classical idea that objects are ever truly at rest, arguing that a thing that appears at rest to us is either moving at the same velocity as us, or is simply travelling at its own rate of motion, slower than we can recognise. Even the desk on which he writes or the chair on which he sits - which seem solid and stable and not going anywhere - are really in motion, says Lawrence. See 'Study of Thomas Hardy', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 60. 

      Interestingly, this aligns Lawrence's thinking with quantum physics which says that, at a quantum level, particles don't have definite positions or states of rest, but exist rather in a superposition of possibilities, described by probability waves.   

 

[2] I'm aware of the fact that for modernist writers - including critical theorists like Adorno - it is the principle of inertia that is identified with evil, with the latter still conceived in conventional moral terms. But my thinking owes more to Jean Baudrillard, for whom evil is an inhuman form of intelligence that operates outside of the traditional moral frameworks; a principle of change and reversal that destabilises and disrupts the established order.   

 

 

For a post on the art and politics of triviality (20 July 2025) which anticipates this one, click here. 

 

 

On the Art and Politics of Triviality (Wilde Vs Adorno)

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) / Theodor W. Adorno (1903 - 1969) 

 

I. 

 

The narrator of Lady Chatterley's Lover identified the modern era as an essentially tragic age; one in which the skies have fallen and we are left among the ruins, with no smooth road into the future. Nevertheless, we are encouraged to live and learn, rather than weep and wail; to scramble over the obstacles and build new little habitats, have new little hopes. [1]

 

However, this post-cataclysmic emphasis on the small scale - on being more modest in all things, including our architectural ambitions and personal aspirations - does not mean a fall into triviality, as I very much doubt that Lawrence wants us simply to peel potatoes and listen to the radio, even if this is arguably a preferable alternative to tragically wringing our hands [2]. 

 

That said, Lawrence is surprisingly ambivalent when it comes to this subject: one might have expected him to be strongly opposed to things lacking significance or a certain grandeur and, at times, he is; often contrasting the elemental beauty and primeval darkness of a natural landscape with the ugly triviality and falsehood of modern life [3]. 

 

But, at other times, Lawrence criticises those who hold themselves aloof from small talk and playful banter, suggesting that it is this refusal that hinders their ability to develop more meaningful relationships: 

 

"They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse." [4]

 

 

II. 

 

Unlike Lawrence, some people are not so ambivalent on this question: they aggressively condemn those individuals who devote themselves to activities regarded as trivial pursuits; i.e., childish games, old-fashioned hobbies, pointless pastimes, amateur undertakings, etc. 

 

Doubtless, this includes blogging ...   

 

In fact, I recently received an email from an anonymous reader informing me that blogging in the almost obsessive manner that I blog - about what are trivial personal concerns disguised with philosophical or literary references in order to appear of import or possible interest to others - reveals me to be an affected narcissist who, in avoiding the serious challenges of the real world is effectively part of the problem. 

 

They close their email thus: 

 

I'm sorry to say, but you're essentially a complacent conformist who blogs more as a coping mechanism, rather than to bring about much needed social and political change and I would remind you of these lines from Adorno: 

 

"Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil." [5]    

 

 

III. 

 

Now, appreciative as I am of such criticism, I can't say that I'm persuaded by Adorno's identification of triviality with evil (nor of evil with inertia, when the latter is not merely the negative ideal that he would like us to believe, but a vastly complex state) [6].      

 

Ultimately, as with his broader critique of the Kulturindustrie, I find Adorno's thinking on this question somewhat exaggerated and overblown; no one, as far as I'm aware, is attempting to consummate triviality and thereby lead us into absolute horror. 

 

The fact is, being trivial does not make you evil; it simply means that you prefer to linger at the crossroads, uncertain of which way to head, but happy to chat with others you may encounter rather than forge ahead on a single path leading you to the mountain top.  

 

And so, push comes to shove, I'm more inclined to side with Oscar Wilde rather than Adorno, who advised: 'We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.' [7]  

 

It seems to me that it is this mode of thought - more comical than critical - that offers us the best chance of surviving among the ruins; for it allows us to find something more important than meaning and that's humour. Refusing to take things tragically, means learning how to laugh in the face of adversity, which might not make us better human beings, but it will almost certainly make us less earnest and the enemy of ascetic idealism [8].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing (and quoting words and phrases from) the opening paragraph to D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). I have written about this opening in a post dated 21 September 2019: click here.  

 

[2] In the second version of Lady C., the narrator of the tale says: "We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. Having tragically wrung our hands, we now proceed to peel the potatoes, or to put on the wireless." How we read this line is very much open to interpretation.

      See The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 223.  

 

[3] See, for example, the letter to J. D. Beresford (1 February 1916), in which Lawrence contrasts the Cornish coastline, with all its heavy black rocks, to the "dust and grit and dirty paper" of the modern world in all its non-elemental triviality and shallowness. 

      The letter can be found in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vol. II., ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge Universty Press, 1982), p. 519. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron (Cambridge University Press, 1992), chapter VII, p. 178.

 

[5] Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 115: 

 

[6] I know this because inertia became a key term in D. H. Lawrence's understanding of energy and materiality. Unlike other modernist writers - including Adorno - who disliked inertia and always wrote in praise of dynamism, Lawrence contrasted negative inertia (associated with industrialism and the ideal of limitless production) to positive inertia (associated with the limits and fragility of life and its generation). 

      Readers who are interested might like to see the essay by Andrew Kalaidjian, 'Positive Inertia: D. H. Lawrence and the Aesthetics of Generation', in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 38, No. 1, (Indiana University Press, Fall 2014), pp. 38-55. This essay can be accessed via JSTOR: click here. 

      See also a follow up post to this one on the law of inertia and the principle of evil (21 July 2025): click here. 

 

[7] Oscar Wilde, from an interview with Robbie Ross, published in the St. James Gazette (18 Jan 1895): click here. This, of course, is the philosophy behind The Importance of Being Earnest (1895): 'A Trivial Play for Serious People' as it was originally subtitled.      

 

[8] In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche concludes that the ascetic ideal has "even in the most spiritual sphere, only one type of real enemy [...] these are the comedians of the ascetic ideal", i.e., those who arouse mistrust in the latter via a refusal to take things seriously. See On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press, 1994), III. 27, p. 125. 

      Readers interested in this, might also like to see Keith Ansell-Pearson's essay 'Toward the Comedy of Existence', in The Fate of the New Nietzsche, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill (Avebury Press, 1993).     

 

I Stood Watching the Shadowy Fish ... Notes on the First Line of D. H. Lawrence's 'The White Peacock'

  

I. 

 

The opening line from Lawrence's debut novel, The White Peacock (1911), reads: 

 

"I stood watching the shadowy fish slide through the gloom of the mill-pond." [1]  

 

It is spoken by Cyril Beardsall; a fairly obvious self-characterisation, even if Lawrence cannot be completely identified with the (artistically inclined but somewhat priggish) narrator of his novel. 

 

Cyril is as enchanted by the intense stillness of the water as he is by the grey-silvery fish and the manner in which the entire scene was "gathered in the musing of old age" [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, a Heideggerian critic might be tempted to suggest that Cyril knows what it is to not merely inhabit a space and reflect upon it like one of those moon-like philosophers whom Zarathustra condemns [3]. 

 

That he knows how to dwell in the world; i.e., to form a deep and meaningful relationship with all the various elements of his environment, in this case, fish, gloom, water, stillness, and temporality.     

 

For Heidegger, dwelling is a fundamental aspect of Dasein that allows men and women to exist as mortals beneath the sky, upon the earth, and in the presence of gods.  

 

But whilst it allows connection and interrelationship, dwelling is not a way for us to project ourselves into all things; i.e., it's not a form of existential narcissism and Cyril is not merely admiring his own reflection in the mill-pond and desiring to become one with it.   

 

 

III. 

 

Finally, it's interesting to compare the opening of Lawrence's first novel with one of his early poems, 'The Wild Common', whose setting and situation are somewhat similar.

 

In this poem, the young male narrator observes his own reflection on the surface of a pond: "Naked on the steep, soft lip / Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro" [4]. 

 

It is only after he plunges naked into the water that he fully appreciates how the natural world has physical reality that is not dependent upon his perception and understanding of it: "Oh but the water loves me and folds me / Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me ..." [5] 

 

And that it is his self, in fact, which has no substantial reality apart from the world of flowers, sunlight, and pulsing waters.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. 

 

[2] Ibid. 

 

[3] In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche critiques the concept of immaculate perception (i.e., the mistaken idea that we are capable of pure knowledge and a detached, moon-like contemplation of the world free of all desire; emasculated leering, as he calls it). See the section entitled 'Of Immaculate Perception' in part two of Zarathustra.    

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common' - click here to read online. 

      Note that this is the original version of the verse, written c. 1905-06 and published in Amores (1916). Lawrence later revised it for his Collected Poems (1928), adding new material and finally saying what it was he had started to say (incoherently in his view) when he first wrote it as a young man. This final version can be found in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 5-6.

      For a critical reading of 'The Wild Common', see the first chapter of M. J. Lockwood's, A Study of the Poems of D. H. Lawrence: Thinking in Poetry, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1987). 

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wild Common'. 

 

 

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.