Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley ... Starring Sebastian Horsley as Maxim de Winter

Maggi Hambling: Sebastian Horsley XI (2021) 

Oil on canvas (125 x 95 cm)

 

"The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. 

But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. 

And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea."

- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)

 

 

I. 

 

I honestly can't remember what visions (if any) disturbed my sleep last night, but, earlier today, I went to an excellent group exhibition curated by Daniel Malarkey at the Alison Jacques gallery, whose title is a paraphrase (or perhaps misremembering) of the opening line to Daphne du Maurier's famous Gothic novel Rebecca (1938): 

 

Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley ... [1]  

 

 

II.

 

According to Malarkey, who spent over 18 months working to stage this show, it wasn't until he came to name it that he realised that he had subconsciously been curating an exhibition about the favourite novel of his adolescence [2]; a book that I came to know much later, but have also grown to love [3].

 

Malarkey's aim, according to the gallery's press release, is to "retell the story of Rebecca, taking the viewer on a path which explores notions of memory, darkness and transformation" [4], forming temporal connections and demonstrating the potential of narrative to facilitate all kinds of strange becomings. 

 

In order to accomplish this, Malarkey brings together the works of over 30 artists, some of whom - such as Leonora Carrington, Maeve Gilmore, and Torpedo the Ark favourite Aleksandra Waliszewska [5] - I am familiar with; whilst others - including Jean-Marie Appriou, Leonardo Devito, Graham Little - I am now grateful to have discovered. 

 

 

III. 

 

To be honest, as much as I love Rebecca - and as interested as I am in the folk and fairy tale tradition which more obviously inspires many of the works in this exhibition [6] - I felt compelled to attend the show more for the opportunity to see (in the decomposing flesh, as it were) one of Maggi Hambling's portraits of much-loved (and much-missed) Sebastian Horsley [7]: 

"Finally, the viewer is led downstairs through an arch into the 'Underworld', where Maggi Hambling's portrait of Sebastian Horsley presides over the space, introducing themes such as the conflict between morality and religion, resistance to authority, and a questioning of established traditions." [8]

 

Whether we are invited to imagine Horsley as the character of Maxim de Winter (crossed with Dorian Gray), I don't know - but it's a nice idea, I think, and not one that would displease Horsley who, like de Winter, was a passionate floraphile (although not, as far as I'm aware, a wife killer).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, curated  by Daniel Malarkey (24 Jan - 8 March 2025) at Alison Jacques, 22 Cork Street, London W1. For full details and to view all the artworks included in the show, click here.

 

[2] Like Alice Inggs, I'm tempted to question whether Malarkey's claim about Rebecca being a once favourite book that exerted a subconscious influence on his thinking when assembling this exhibition is "strictly true or a retroactive application to works very much open to allegory", but it doesn't really matter either way.

      And, as Inggs later concedes, you can certainly find more than a few "curious (and apparently incidental) parallels between passages from the book and the artworks [...] wherever you walk, there is Rebecca: the windows open to the sea, the white cats, the uncanny figures, the wrought-iron gates, the driftwood and rope, the rhododendrons, the antique wallpaper, the almost-silhouettes, the subtly erotic scenes, the sense of expectation …" 

      See her (cleverly titled) review, 'Psyche For Sore Eyes', in The World of Interiors (7 Feb 2025): click here. 

 

[3] For a two part post published in November 2024, in which I explore my own memories of Manderley,  please click here and/or here. 

      Interested readers can also find several other posts written on the work of Daphne du Maurier on Torpedo the Ark; simply go to labels and click on her name. Many of these posts are also reproduced on the official Daphne du Maurier website: click here.  

 

[4] This press release, written by Bella Kesoyan, can be found on the Alison Jacques website: click here.

 

[5] See the post entitled 'Why I Love Aleksandra Waliszewska' (13 Oct 2023): click here.

 

[6] To quote from the press release once more: 

      "All the works in the show challenge conventional notions of fairytales as children's stories and idealised narratives. While often adopting the visual language of magical landscapes, imaginary beings, and extraordinary human powers, the exhibition also explores darker and complex readings of this age-old genre." 

      That being so, one might have just as easily called this show Last Night I Dreamed of Angela Carter and one wonders how familiar Daniel Malarkey is with The Bloody Chamber (1979), her collection of ten short stories in which, to use Carter's own phrase, she extracts the latent content from traditional tales including 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'Little Red Riding Hood'.     

 

[7] As Emily Spicer notes: 

      "Hambling painted Horsley several times after his death, imagining, it would seem, his decomposing body, his likeness falling from his bones to reveal the white skull beneath. In all of these paintings he is disintegrating, melting or dissolving into oblivion. Hambling has said that Horsley’s life was an elaborate rehearsal for death and we feel her coming to terms with this, searching, unflinchingly, for an image that reconciles this tragic irony." 

      See her review of The Quick and the Dead exhibition at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (20 Oct 2018 - 6 Jan 2019) on the Studio International website: click here. This show included Sebastian Horsley VIII (2011). 

      See also the post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'The Picture of Sebastian Horsley' (6 Sept 2019), in which I muse on Hambling's 2011 portrait of Horsley: click here. 

 

[8] Bella Kesoyan, press release for Last Night I Dreamt of Manderley, as linked to above in note 3.

 

 

This post is for Ann Willmore, who encouraged me to write it. 

 

 

Bring Me the Head of Oscar Wilde

Visualisation of how Eduardo Paolozzi's Oscar Wilde 

sculpture will look when installed in Chelsea

The Paolozzi Foundation

 

 

A new sculpture of Oscar Wilde - or, more precisely, of the Irish playwright's head cast in black bronze, lying on its side and sliced into segments - has been condemned by his grandson, Merlin Holland, on the grounds that it fails to adequately convey Wilde's genius and is, from a purely aesthetic perspective, absolutely hideous (his words, not mine) [1].      

 

I have to say, Holland's criticism of the work, which is based on a maquette by the late Eduardo Paolozzi [2] - one of the most seminal British artists of the post-war era and a pioneer of Pop Art - seems rather ridiculous. And the fact that he should describe the work as unacceptable is troubling.

 

Holland may know more about his grandfather, whose life he has researched and written about extensively, than anybody else, but he has failed to appreciate that Paolozzi's cubo-surrealist sculpture is not meant to be a lifelike representation, nor is it attempting to capture Wilde's joie de vivre. 

 

Actually, the piece is very much in line with other sculptural works by Paolozzi; see for example his piece entitled The Head of Invention (1989), located at the entrance of the Design Museum in Kensington - click here - and if one were to criticise the Wilde sculpture it would be on the grounds that one has seen this kind of thing before.         

 

In sum: it lacks uniqueness, but it's not gloomy or hideous and it's certainly better than the hilariously bad memorial statue of Wilde by Danny Osborne located in Dubin's Merrion Square - click here - though not as challenging as Maggi Hambling's A Conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998), which can be found off the Strand in London, in which the playwright rises from the dead, cigarette in hand: click here.    

If Paolozzi's work tells us more about him than it does Wilde - and I admit it probably does - I can see this might be an issue for some, including Wilde's grandson. But that doesn't trouble me as an admirer of both men and, besides, our task ultimately is to learn to appreciate the piece as an object in its own right and not as something tied to a human subject.     

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting from the article by Dalya Alberge entitled '"Absolutely hideous": new London sculpture of Oscar Wilde condemned by his grandson', in The Guardian (21 September 2024): click here. 

 

[2] In 1995, Paolozzi along with eleven other invited artists submitted a design for a statue of Oscar Wilde to a committee chaired by Sir Jeremy Isaacs. The committee, of which Merlin Holland was a member, eventually shortlisted six candidates, including Paolozzi, and requested they create maquettes (i.e., scale models). Ultimately, Paolozzi's design was rejected as too brutalist and the committee chose Maggi Hambling's more playful (if somewhat macabre) sculpture. 

 

The Picture of Sebastian Horsley

Maggi Hambling: Sebastian IX (2011)

Oil on canvas (53 x 43 cm)

There have only been two deaths that have touched me to the extent that I often dream of the individuals in question and wake up thinking of them. Both men died in the same annus horribilis (2010) and both men I continue to mourn to this day: Malcolm McLaren and Sebastian Horsley.

Malcolm I knew better and for much longer and he had the more profound effect upon me. Sebastian, I met only twice, if I recall correctly, and although we exchanged a few emails - and I attended his funeral at St. James's Church, at the invite of one of his former lovers - I wouldn't say we were friends or close in any respect.

It's rather queer, therefore, that since his death my affection for Horsley has intensified and he has continued to haunt my imagination and dreams. In other words, he means more to me dead than he meant to me alive and perhaps that explains why the (slightly ghoulish) posthumous portraits of Horsley painted by Maggi Hambling continue to fascinate.

Hambling, well-known for her portraits of the dead, has said it's her way of coping with the loss of persons, like Sebastian, to whom she was close, whilst at the same time honouring their memory. It is, of course, a strategy other artists have also employed; see for example Heide Hatry's Icons in Ash project: click here. 

Having little talent for image-making, however, this isn't a strategy of mourning that's open to me. All I can do is write little posts like this one, in fond memory; admire the work of others, such as Hambling; and keep dreaming ...