Shadows Are the Means by Which Bodies Display Their Form

Malcolm McLaren, photographed by Bob Gruen in NYC, 

jumping in front of a Richard Hambleton Shadowman,  

whilst an amused Andrea Linz looks on (1983) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

I have to admit, for a long time I was one of those people who (mistakenly) believed that the human death shadows left behind at Hiroshima were due to the vaporisation of bodies after the Americans detonated an atomic bomb over the city on 6 August, 1945, killing tens of thousands of people (mostly civilians). 

 

I now know, however, that the shadows are not the vaporised remains of the dead, but were caused, rather, by the flash bleaching of the surrounding area behind the bodies located directly in the path of the blast and that, as a matter of fact, it would take a huge amount of energy to instantly vaporise a living body (far more energy even than released by Little Boy) [2].

Nevertheless, this doesn't rob them of their macabre interest and poignancy. 

 

 

II.

 

I don't know if the Canadian artist Richard Hambleton was thinking of the above when he came up with his idea of the Shadowman, but when I look at his work I'm certainly reminded of what happened in Japan (just as when viewing the Human Shadow Etched in Stone exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I can't help thinking of Hambleton's work).

 

Along with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hambling emerged out of the vibrant NYC art scene in the 1980s, although he considered himself a conceptual artist rather than merely a street artist, even if he often graffitied his images on to the walls of public buildings.

 

Early work includes his notorious series of Mass Murder images (1976-78), in which he painted what appeared to be a chalk outline around bodies of volunteers pretending to be homicide victims and then splashed some red paint around to complete the bloody crime scene. These scenes were reproduced on the streets of numerous cities across the US and Canada and would often startle passersby.  

 

But it's the mysterious (somewhat scary) Shadowman paintings for which he is now best remembered [3]; each one a life-sized figure splashed with black paint on hundreds of buildings and other structures across New York City (and, later, other cities, including London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome). 

      

Again, Hambleton often selected locations calculated to have maximum impact on those who encountered a Shadowman - frightening some and delighting the imagination of others; including Malcolm McLaren, who persuaded the artist to license a design for his and Vivienne Westwood's final collaboration together: Witches [4].

 

It was during this duck rocking period that I first met McLaren and I vaguely remember him telling me that 'shadows are the means by which bodies display their form' (though I've since discovered that he was, in fact, quoting Leonardo da Vinci).

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] The photo of Mclaren, his talented muse Andrea Linz, and Hambleton's Shadowman was taken by the American photographer Bob Gruen on Bethune Street, in the West Village, in April 1983. This and many other photos of Malcolm can be found (and purchased) on Gruen's website: click here.

 

[2] On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Little Boy atomic bomb was detonated at an altitude of 1,800 feet over the city of Hiroshima, exploding with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT.

      Among its other effects, it subjected the ground area to an extremely high radiant temperature for several seconds; high enough to set clothing alight and cause extensive damage to human flesh, but not high enough to vaporise a body so that no physical traces (such as carbonised tissue and bones) would remain. Nevertheless, the belief has persisted that the shadows are the traces (or even the souls) of people killed, quite literally, in a flash.  

 

[3] I say remembered for rather than known for as Hambleton died on 29 October 2017, aged 65.

 

[4] A Shadowman design was used on a roll top jersey skirt that formed part of the McLaren-Westwood Witches collection (A/W 1983): click here to view on Etsy. 

 

 

This post is for Andrea.

 

It is But Death Who Comes at Last

Keith Haring Untitled (For James Ensor) 1 (1989)

Acrylic on canvas (36 x 72 in)

The Keith Haring Foundation

 

Apparently, having penetrated the object of their desire, the average male lasts between four to eight minutes before ejaculating. Many men may like to believe they last longer - and many female partners may wish that were the case - but, according to those who have studied the matter, it simply isn't so.     

 

Of course, some men climax much more rapidly than four minutes; expelling semen and experiencing orgasm soon after initiating sexual activity and with minimal stimulation [2]. This is often characterised as a form of male sexual dysfunction, although there is no universally agreed definition amongst the experts about what constitutes ejaculatio praecox; some say anything under a minute is premature, whilst others don't think there's any real issue if the man can last over fifteen seconds before jizzing [3].

 

On the other hand, there are men who can last much longer than the average time; although for some delayed ejaculation is problematic rather than pleasurable and can also cause discomfort for their partners [4].     

 

Either way, and whatever the ejaculation latency time one averages out at, it's crucial to remember the following wise words of Sir Walter Scott: 

 

And come he slow, or come he fast, 

It is but Death who comes at last. [5]

 

I don't think even Bataille could have put it better ... [6]

 

Notes

 

[1] Shortly before his death in February 1990, Keith Haring produced a number of works with an erotico-thantological theme, including this work depicting a skeleton ejaculating on a flowerbed. It formed the first panel of a diptych (for James Ensor). In the second panel, thanks to the dead man's sperm, the flowers have grown and are in full bloom, much to the delight of the skeleton.

 

[2] The 1948 Kinsey Report suggests that three-quarters of men ejaculate within two minutes of penetration in over half of their sexual encounters.

 

[3] The belief that premature ejaculation should be considered a medical condition (or an indicator of neurosis) rather than a normal variation, has been disputed by some sex researchers, including Alfred Kinsey, who viewed it as a sign of masculine vigour and pointed to the fact that in the natural world male mammals often ejaculate rapidly during coition in order to increase their chances of passing on their genes. 

      It would seem to me that any coital imperative which posits an optimal-time to ejaculate, merely contributes to the pressure on men to perform like machines and furthers the pathologisation of male sexuality in the modern world.    

 

[4] Delayed ejaculation - which is far less common than premature ejaculation - refers to a man's persistent difficulty in coming, despite his wish to do so and even if he is sexually stimulated. Whilst, as we have discussed, most men reach orgasm within a few short minutes of active thrusting during intercourse, a man with delayed ejaculation either does not have orgasms at all or cannot have an orgasm until after a prolonged period of huffing and puffing.

 

[5] Sir Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), canto 2, st. 30, lines 567-568.

      This historical romance in verse consists of six cantos, each with an introductory epistle and extensive notes. It concludes with the Battle of Flodden (1513). Those who are interested can find the work on Project Gutenberg: click here.  

[6] Bataille famously explores the relationship between Eros and Thanatos in his work, demonstrating how the idea of orgasm as la petite mort is not merely metaphorical. As Nick Land notes: 

      "Orgasm provisionally substitutes for death, fending-off the impetus toward terminal oblivion, but only by infiltrating death into the silent core of vitality […] The little death is not merely a simulacrum or sublimation of a big one […] but a corruption that leaves the bilateral architecture of life and death in tatters, a communication and a slippage which violates the immaculate [otherness] of darkness." 

      In other words, when we come, we open ourselves onto this otherness and to the possibility of personal annihilation; losing identity in a spasm and an exchange of shared slime. It is, as Bataille argues, a betrayal of life as something individual and distinct.

      See Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (Routledge, 1992), p. 136. And see also my post of 21 September 2016 on orgasm and the will to merger: click here. 

Why I Love the Seated Ballerina

Jeff Koons: Seated Ballerina (NYC May 2017)

I've long been an admirer of Jeff Koons, one of three American artists I remember Malcolm telling me about in the mid-1980s (the other two being Julian Schnabel and Keith Haring). And his giant new inflatable figure - Seated Ballerina - temporarily installed in the heart of NYC's Rockefeller Center, doesn't disappoint.

In fact, it's such a joyous piece - a young dancer adjusting her blue ballet shoes and quietly preparing for the performance of a lifetime - that one feels the city of Manchester would benefit enormously were it to be installed in St. Ann's Square as a permanent memorial for the lives lost in the recent atrocity, affirming as it does all the purpose, promise and potential embodied in youth.      

Art isn't, of course, the solution to terror or religious fundamentalism. But, in the face of Islamofascism, we certainly need the gaiety of artistic creation; the inoculation into the body politic of playful serenity (to paraphrase Simon Solomon, if I may). 


Note: the 45ft inflatable discussed here is a version of smaller, mirror-polished stainless steel piece with transparent colour coating, which featured as part of the Antiquity series of works (2010-15): click here for more details. It was inspired by a previously little-known porcelain figure by the Ukrainian artist Oksana Zhnikrup, entitled Ballerina Lenochka.