We're Born Naked ... Notes on Simon Doonan's Complete Story of Drag (Part 1: On Glamour Drag and Art Drag)

(Laurence King Publishing, 2024)

 

 

I.

 

Firstly, I should point out that the above is a concise edition. And so, whether it's quite as comprehensive as the story told in the complete (hardback) edition, published in 2019, I don't know. 

 

However, I'm guessing by the shared number of pages, that it is and that this (paperback) edition is therefore just smaller in size, but not scope; a book to be carried and read on the tube, rather than left at home sitting on one's coffee table. 

 

I believe the only real textual difference is that this mini-edition comes with a Foreword by Fenton Bailey, the award-winning British producer, director and author of Screen Age: How TV Shaped Our Reality ... (2022) - a book that I have not read, but which, as a Baudrillardian and one who forages "the detritus of popular culture" [a], has a title that interests.   

 

As Bailey points out, Doonan aims to give drag historical context in the hope that this will give drag queens a greater understanding of themselves, thus providing "a creative boost and a sense of empowerment" (2). 

 

Obviously, I'm tempted, as a Foucauldian, to insert a rolling eye emoji here, as this clichéd notion of empowerment is one that triggers a certain amount of irritation and disdain. But I shall resist the urge to do so, even though it pains me to see how this concept continues to be employed by the very people it was designed to further entrap by providing a false sense of agency that hides the real functioning of power.  

 

Bailey also insists that we live in performative times and that drag is thus the perfect medium or art form for the 21st century: 

 

"We are children of the screen [...] we have grown up [...] watching countless performances. It makes sense that we would explore and express ourselves in the same way, playing and performing as the star of our own musical/drama/sitcom - or all three." (3)

 

That's an interesting point of view and one I'm broadly sympathetic with. 

 

However, I smiled to see Bailey end his Foreword by suggesting that it's conservatives who have "failed to address any of the serious issues facing America and the world" (3) - not drag queens and trans activists who subscribe to this playful and performative ideology. 

 

That seems a little partisan and sectarian to me ... And I'm surprised that after eighteen seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race - Bailey and his partner Randy Barbato are executive producers - he's still subscribing to a repressive hypothesis and speaking about attempts to erase the LGBTQ community [b].   

 

To demonise conservatives and posit a simulated political struggle is to avoid looking at how drag itself has been institutionalised and robbed of its subversive character by the corporate-media machine that Bailey himself plays a leading role within. What is the drag queen today if not just another neo-liberal subject within a commercial universe ...? 

 

 

II.  

 

To be fair, Simon Doonan is alert to the dangers of corporate assimilation. As he notes in his Introduction, the mainstreaming of drag over recent years "seemed like a death knell" (7). 

 

However, thanks to the success of RuPaul's Drag Race and the new generation of queens, drag has been reinvented and the future looks even more fabulous than the past. The gender revolution has also transformed everything for the better; gender fluidity results in a revival of interest in drag. 

 

"And who could have anticipated the vigorous politicizing and reinvigoration of drag that would be triggered by the election of Donald Trump?" (9) 

 

Who indeed? It seems that conservatism can be catalysing and not just repressive, then. Doonan kind of gives the game away by acknowledging that the politics of resistance is symbiotic with oppression.   

 

Like Bailey, Doonan quickly falls into a trap of his own making. On the one hand, he insists that we must cast aside old definitions and preconceived notions; learn to accept that the rules have changed: "In fact, there are no rules." (10)

 

But, on the other hand, he is obliged to apologise in advance to the rule-enforcing pronoun police: "I have done my best to use the correct pronouns and to dot all my i's and cross all my gender-identity t's" (11), so any offensive faux pas are "completely unintentional" (11).

 

Unfortunately, I'm not sure, Simon, ignorance of the new morality is a defence in woke law ...

      

 

III. 

 

The first chapter is on what Doonan calls Glamour Drag ... One of the defining characteristics of which is fierceness and the ability to deliver "taboo-busting spectacle" (13); something a bit Medusa-like. Having said that, Doonan wants to backtrack a little: "It would be a mistake, however, to think of glamour drag as being nihilistic" (16). 

 

To which one can only say, that's a shame - but worse is to follow; ultimately, says Doonan, drag is not a confrontation with the terrifying aspect of womanhood, it's a way of "satirizing our gender confusion, misogyny and castration anxieties [...] thereby mitigating our hang-ups" (16). 

 

In other words: "Drag is profoundly therapeutic." (16)  

 

At this point, I can no longer resist inserting the emoji I thought about inserting earlier: 🙄

 

If this is true, then drag is not an art and nor is it transgressive; it is rather a queer form of self-help (or self-empowerment to use that term again). 

 

But perhaps it isn't true: Doonan himself later quotes Holly Brubach (author of the 1999 study Girlfriend) who sees glamour drag "as less of a psycho-therapeutic" (40) phenomenon and more an attempt by men to to enter the 'realm of appearances' and so enjoy "'the privilege of not being accountable to truth or meaning or content, of dwelling entirely on the surface'" (40). 

 

Somewhat surprisingly, Doonan says this point is essentially true - thereby moving across from the sexual politics of desire to the fetishistic politics of seduction; i.e., a magical and ritualistic form of artifice that challenges the modern obsession with truth, transparency, and sexual liberation. Again, as a Baudrillardian, this makes happy. 

 

Moving on, one comes across other problematic claims: "The Victorian and Edwardian eras were noteworthy for their extreme prudishness." (18). Again, if the author only bothered to read a little Foucault, then he'd know not to say such silly things [c]; no woman ever fainted at the sight of a piano leg. 

 

Doonan is much better at simply giving us names, dates, and other details concerning actual drag queens from days gone by (and the book comes with many fantastic images). Though I'd have liked to have heard a little more about this claim: "The sexualization of drag [in the 1950s] was propelled by working-class gay men, living out fantasies of seducing heterosexual men and thereby becoming 'real women'." (23)

 

If that's true, then it feeds into (and arguably justifies) the so-called Lavender Scare which - along with the fear of communist infiltration - defined American culture in the post-War period [d]. 

  

I'm hoping Doonan might also say a bit more at some point about the relationship between drag queens and trans women - one might imagine certain tensions arising amongst those for whom femininity is pure artifice and performance (i.e., about the clothes and the makeup and the wigs and about the way you walk and talk) and those for whom it is born of hormonal drugs and gender affirming surgery.    

 

This paragraph, referring to the world after Wigstock - a drag festival founded in 1984 in Manhattan's East Village - certainly caught my attention:

 

"The post-punk era saw an explosive growth in a new kind of drag queen culture. Suddenly drag became much hipper, smarter, and, yes, postmodern. Glamour drag queens began to graze on perverse aspects of pop culture, mashing it up and spewing it back at their audience with knowing vigour. Judy and Marilyn were fine for the old gin-swilling gay audiences of the 1950s, but the Wigstock generation craved fresh sources of dragspiration." (33)

 

Doonan explains how the "new wave dragsters were inspired by a broad range of camp cultural offerings" (35), drawn from the worlds of film and popular music, and "propelled drag out of the gay ghetto and into broader culture" (35). In other words - and these are Doonan's words - the tacky gave way to the trendy. 

 

Drag culture formed a close alliance with the growing Harlem ball scene (i.e., the world of voguing) and it was "only a matter of time before drag hit the runways" (35) of the fashion world; the supermodels were, argues Doonan, essentially a type of drag queen - and Billy Beyond was a type of supermodel.   

 

Finally, Doonan closes his first chapter by inviting readers to meet the look queens ... 

 

"Look queens are glamour drag queens who generate shock and awe through extreme levels of cosmetic artistry. [...] They take that shimmering feminine visual realm that Brubach talked about, and magnify it for the age of Insta selfies and social media." (43)

 

Again, it was Jean Baudrillard who got there first and provides the best description of these look queens: 

 

"Everyone seeks their look. Since it is no longer possible to base any claim on one's own existence, there is nothing for it but to perform an appearing act without concerning oneself with being - or even with being seen. So it is not: I exist, I am here! but rather: I am visible, I am an image - look! look! This is not even narcissism, merely an extraversion without depth, a sort of self-promot­ing ingenuousness whereby everyone becomes the manager of their own appearance." [e]

 

There is, as we have mentioned, a politics attached to this - but it's a politics of seduction and not the politics of empowerment - a term that Doonan tediously returns to. To seduce, is to disempower the subject who exerts their gaze - it's the revenge of the object (something we have discussed many times on Torpedo the Ark).   

 

But seduction requires a certain horror and Doonan insists that the look queens have "helped to expunge any sordid and sinister overtones" (43) associated with drag; "constructing a creative, welcoming environment for cis females and young kids" (43). It's glamour drag for all - which is very democratic and inclusive, but also very boring; just another form of good clean fun for all the family. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Chapter two is on art drag. But readers who hope this will mean I reproduce a picture of Grayson Perry - the patron saint of such - are going to be disappointed. For I do not like Grayson Perry and do not recognise him as a "beloved public intellectual" (45). 

 

I'm a bit suspicious of this bold claim: "The incendiary nature of drag telegraphs edgy avant-gardism ..." (45) - particularly as it comes just a couple of pages after Doonan has told us that drag is now free of any danger or threat. You can't have it both ways, Simon. 

 

And, ultimately, there's a world of difference between Duchamp and Grayson Perry. As there is, indeed, between Warhol and Perry. The latter may be indebted to these two - who isn't? - but while Perry works within the conceptual framework they established, he seems keen to place art back on a more traditional basis (i.e., as something involving craftsmanship rather than just amusing ideas, ready-made objects, and mass production).     

 

Whilst I'm not overly keen on Grayson Perry, I really dislike someone else that Doonan seems to think the business - Leigh Bowery. 

 

Did Bowery really achieve "unimaginable levels of artistic originality, perversity and creativity" (57), or, ultimately, was he not just a self-indulgent narcissist looking to shock via crude provocation? 

 

One can't deny he had a talent for this - and that he was influential on the work of many talented individuals - but I think we need to keep things in critical perspective when it comes to figures who are regarded as iconic and/or legendary (though I appreciate that the curbing of enthusiasm is not a concept understood within the world of drag; a world wherein everyone and everything is fierce and fabulous all of the time).      

 

Doonan says that in comparison to someone such as Bowery, Duchamp's "early forays into art drag now seem quite genteel" (61). And I suppose that's true. But - Barthesian criticisms of gentility aside - I think I prefer some degree of refinement and self-restraint and see these as vital components of art (and society). I don't like vulgar individuals whether they are seeking to naturalise bourgeois values or passing themselves off as transgressive. 

 

One might even build a case arguing that in the current age good manners and good taste might ironically be seen as avant-garde (because countercultural) - and that it just might be more interesting to be charming and delightful than "appalling and provocative" (63). 

 

But that's another post, for another day ...  

 

  

Notes

 

[a] Fenton Bailey, Foreword to Simon Doonan's Drag: The Complete Story (Laurence King Publishing, 2024), p. 2. Please note that all future page references to Doonan's book will be given directly in the main text (in round brackets). 

 

[b] Not only has RuPaul's Drag Race aired for eighteen seasons in the US, but it has inspired many spin-off shows and numerous international franchises. The show has also earned multiple Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, for four consecutive years (2018 to 2021). 

      So I'm not quite sure why Bailey continues to speak only of the repression and erasure of his community by mainstream (heteronormative) society.      

 

[c] I'm thinking of L'Histoire de la sexualité 1: La volonté de savoir (1976) and Foucault's famous interrogation of the repressive hypothesis; i.e., the idea that Western society suppressed sexuality from the 17th to the mid-20th century. Foucault argues that discourse on sexuality in fact proliferated during this period, during which experts began to examine sexuality in a scientific manner and encouraged people to confess their sexual feelings and actions. 

      Interestingly, Foucault also shows how in the 18th and 19th centuries society took an increasing interest in sexualities that did not fit within the heteronormative framework; this included the sexuality of children, the mentally ill, the criminal, and the homosexual.   

 

[d] See the post titled 'Cocksuckers and Communists' (21 May 2015): click here.  

 

[e] Jean Baudrillard, 'Transsexuality', in The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict (Verso, 1993), p. 23.  

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this post might like to see a very early post on TTA - dated 26 December 2012 - and titled 'Life's a Drag' - click here.  

 

 

Part two of this post on butch drag, black drag, historical drag and comedy drag, can be accessed by clicking here.  

 

And for part three on popstar drag, cinema drag, and radical drag, click here.  

 

 

It's Your Verses That We Want and Your Verses We Shall Have! Notes on Plagiarism, Piracy, and Found Poetry

 

'Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, 

and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Coming as I do from a punk anarchist tradition [2], I'm pretty much of the view that all property - including intellectual property - is theft and that piracy is a swashbuckling method of redistributing gold and cultural capital.

 

And I have little sympathy when bourgeois poets complain about plagiarism, bleating that such an illicit compositional technique is an assault upon originality of expression and the authenticity of experience (i.e., their artistic integrity). 

 

I can see there's something slightly shameful about covert plagiarism, when an attempt is made to hide or disguise what one's doing; if you're going to steal, then do so like Willie Brodie for the sake of the danger and to liberate ideas, not merely so that you might pass off something taken as your own. 

But if you're upfront and open about what you're doing - if your plagiarism is overt and you make no secret of the fact that you located your materials here, there, and everywere - then that seems admirable to me. 

 

In fact, I'm something of a fan of so-called found poetry ...

 

 

II.

 

Found poetry is verse created by recontextualising words, lines, and even whole passages purloined from elsewhere and then making a number of crafty modifications to the text in order to give it fresh meaning or look. How and to what extent the poem is changed - or treated, as they say in the trade - is really up to the finder.    

 

In a sense, a found poem is the literary equivalent of the readymades that Duchamp and the Dadaists foisted on the art world over a century ago. I don't know if he was the first to hit on the technique, but the great American writer and artist Bern Porter famously published Found Poems with the Something Else Press in 1972 [3] and it's him that I initially think of whenever the subject comes up.   

 

 

III.

 

Having found a text to work on, there are several ways one might then begin to fuck with it, including  ...  

 

(i) Erasure

 

Poems produced by erasure have had words from an existing text redacted or blacked out, thereby producing a new work whilst at the the same time making us curious about what has been concealed.

 

Thus, whilst erasure may subvert the question of authorship, it nevertheless acknowledges (and draws attention to) an original text and perhaps raises political questions around censorship, secrecy, and the control of information. 

 

The name often associated with the technique is Doris Cross, who, in 1965, famously placed certain columns from a 1913 edition of Webster's Dictionary under erasure [4]. 

 

(ii) Patchworking

 

A cento is a poetical patchwork entirely composed of verses, passages, or simply short fragments taken from an author (or several authors), then stitched into a new body of text à la Dr. Frankenstein. 

 

It's a very old form, originating in the 3rd or 4th century (if not earlier), but it's one that is still explored and experimented with today by writers such as myself [5]. 

 

(iii) Découpé

 

This is what we call in English a cut-up technique; i.e., one that involves a lot of textual snipping and rearranging in order to create what is known as an aleatory narrative; i.e., a story that incorporates chance or randomness into its composition and/or structure. 

 

William Burroughs and his pal Brion Gysin popularized this technique in the 1950s and 1960s, although it can be traced back to the Dadaists of the 1920s (Tristan Tzara was a fan of such instant poetry). 

 

It has since been used by many scissor-wielding artists in a wide variety of contexts, though those who think that découpé might magically reveal a text's implicit content or true meaning are being ridiculous [6]. 

 

In closing, let me express my admiration for Deleuze's attempt to transform the cut-up into a rather more promiscuous (and less learned) pick-up technique. As he writes: 

 

"You should not try to find whether an idea is just or correct. You should look for a completely different idea, elsewhere, in another area, so that something passes between the two which is neither in one nor the other." 

 

Deleuze continues:  

 

"You don't have to be learned, to know or be familiar with a particular area, but to pick up this or that in areas which are very different. [...] Burroughs' cut-up is still a method of probabilities - at least linguistic ones - and not a procedure [...] which combines the heterogeneous elements" [7]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] T. S. Eliot, 'Philip Massinger', essay in The Sacred Wood, (Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1920), p. 114.

 

[2] That is to say, an anarchist tradition that owes more to Malcolm McLaren than it does to Proudhon. 

 

[3]   In 1972, Bern Porter published Found Poems via Something Else Press. It features hundreds of found poems selected from newspapers, ads and everyday printed matter, some involving collage techniques, others displayed as readymades. 

 

[4] For an interesting attempt to answer the question 'Who Is Doris Cross?' by Lynn Xu posted on the Poetry Foundation website (25 April 2014): click here. 

[5] See the post: 'My Name is Victor Frankenstein' (6 March, 2022): click here. 

[6] Burroughs was drawn towards the idea of a text being invested with unconscious meaning. He also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination: 'When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.' That seem's doubtful, although it's a nice thought. 

      I found this line from Burroughs in the 'Translator's Introduction' to Síomón Solomon's Hölderlin's Poltergeists (Peter Lang, 2020), p. 14.  

 

[7] Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (The Athlone Press, 1987), p. 10.   

Fuck Everyone and Be a Disgrace! In Memory of the Dada Baroness: Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven 

(1874 -1927)

 

"Every artist is crazy with respect to ordinary life ..."

 

I. 

 

The relationship between dada and punk has long been acknowledged; Greil Marcus, for example, famously traces out a secret history of twentieth-century art in which he discerns a direct lineage from the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 to the Sex Pistols in 1976 [1].

 

And it's arguable that the German-born artist and poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven who, via her radical performance of self during the years 1913 to 1923 came to embody dada, might also be described as a proto-punk.

 

For not only did she look and act the part, but she even coined the term phalluspistol in her profane and playfully obscene poetry [2], anticipating the name Malcolm McLaren would come up with for the group operating out of 430 King's Road. 

 

I'm not suggesting that McLaren stole Elsa's idea in the same way as Marcel Duchamp allegedly stole credit for his most notorious readymade from her (see below), but it's an interesting coincidence.

 

II.

Apart from her writings, Baroness Elsa was famous for two things: (i) her numerous love affairs and (ii) her utilisation of found objects - including actual rubbish picked up from the streets - into her work and wardrobe (she once wore a bra, for example, made from old tins cans). 

 

Her aim, she declared, was to sleep with everyone and become a living collage, thereby dissolving the boundary between life and art whilst, at the same time, challenging bourgeois notions of femininity and cultural value. If this made her an embarrassment to her friends and family and a disgrace in the eyes of society, well, she didn't care (again, her attitude and behaviour is now what some would term punk).

 

Her colourful and unconventional life took her to New York in 1913 and it was here that she made a name for herself as a model, artist, and poet [3]. To help make ends meet, Elsa also worked in a cigarette factory like Bizet's Carmen. 

 

Whilst Man Ray once filmed Elsa shaving her pubic hair, it was Marcel Duchamp for whom she had the hots and, in a public performance c. 1915, she recited a love poem whilst rubbing a newspaper article about the latter over her naked body, making her romantic interest explicit. Several years later she would make an assemblage entitled Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1920-22), which was only rediscovered in 1966. 

It was her connection with Duchamp that would lead to a more recent controversy. For there is now speculation that several artworks attributed to other artists of the period can either be partially attributed to Elsa, or that she should in fact be acknowledged as their sole creator - and this includes one of the most famous and important artworks of the twentieth-century ...

 

 

III. 

 

In April 1917, a porcelain urinal signed with the name R. Mutt was submitted by Duchamp for the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. Duchamp entitled this readymade work Fountain - and the rest, as they say, is avant-garde art history [4].
      

But some have suggested that the work was, in fact, the idea of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven who had submitted it to her friend Duchamp and there is, to be fair, circumstantial evidence to support this claim. Most art historians, however, maintain that Duchamp was solely responsible for this landmark work in twentieth-century art and he remains credited for it [5].   

   

Ultimately, we'll probably never know the truth of this for sure. 

 

 

IV.  

In 1923, the Baroness returned to Berlin, where she lived in poverty and suffered mental health problems.

 

Things improved after she moved to Paris, but, sadly, she died on 14 December 1927 from gas inhalation (whether this was or was not intentional is unclear). 

 

She's buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, so in good company.

 

There have since been several biographies published and every now and then there's an attempt to bring the name Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven to wider public attention [6], though one suspects that she'll always remain a marginal figure of interest only to those in the know.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 1989). 

 

[2] See the poem 'Cosmic Chemistry' in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, ed. Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo (The MIT Press, 2016). Click here to read on allpoetry.com.

 

[3] Although most of her poems remained unpublished in her lifetime, some were featured in The Little Review alongside extracts from Joyce's Ulysses.

 

[4] The original piece is now lost, but, along with numerous replicas made with Duchamp's permission in the 1950s and '60s, we still have the famous photograph of it taken at Alfred Stieglitz's sudio and published in The Blind Man (a two-issue journal featuring work by dada artists and edited by Duchamp in 1917).

 

[5] See, for example, the letter from Dawn Adès (Professor emerita of art history and theory, University of Essex) addressing this controversy in The Guardian (15 June 2022): click here.  

[6] See for example Irene Gammel's biography, Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity (The MIT Press, 2003). Gammel makes a strong case for Elsa's artistic brilliance and punk spirit. 

 

 

A Brief History of the Mug Shot From Alphonse Bertillon to Andy Warhol

Top: Alphonse Bertillon's self-taken mugshot (1900)

Bottom: A canvas from Andy Warhol's Most Wanted Men series (1964)

 

I. 

 

Thanks to Donald Trump, everyone is talking about mug shots ... An informal term for a police photograph, typically taken soon after an individual's arrest in order to help with future identification [1].    

 

The act of photographing criminals began soon after the invention of photography in the 1840s, but it wasn't until 1888 that French police officer and biometrics expert Alphonse Bertillon standardised the process in terms of lighting and angles, etc. [2] 

 

His mug shot selfie, reproduced above, is typical; one side-view image and one face-on, against a plain background. Such photos are often compiled into a rogues gallery of images or a so-called mug book, although, in high-profile cases, the mug shot might also be circulated via the mass media and feature on wanted posters.

 

It is thanks to the latter phenomenon that mug shots gradually came to have a certain cachet and became fixed within the cultural imagination; the faces of gangsters such as Clyde Barrow, John Dillinger, and Al Capone, became as well-known as famous film stars and a whole host of Hollywood celebrities would eventually pride themselves on having had their own images captured by a police photographer.

 

Fascinated by both crime and celebrity, the American Pop artist Andy Warhol created a large mural of twenty-two mug shots in 1964 entitled Thirteen Most Wanted Men - a work which I would like to discuss below ...

 

 

II. 

 

Although Warhol had been commissioned to create a work for exhibition at the 1964 World's Fair in New York, Thirteen Most Wanted Men almost certainly wasn't what those who invited him to decorate the façade of the New York State pavilion had hoped for; in fact, the expectation was that he would produce a celebratory work that would represent the best - not the dark underbelly - of America. 

 

Partly inspired by a 1923 work by Marcel Duchamp, in which the French artist placed his own face on a wanted poster [3], Warhol decided to screen-print large-scale copies of images from a booklet published by the New York Police Department, entitled The Thirteen Most Wanted, and containing mug shots of dangerous criminals (including a child murderer) whom the authorities were anxious to arrest. 

 

As an anonymous critic writing for the Christie's website notes: "By elevating the criminal visage to a form of high art Warhol is aligning these nefarious figures with his own earlier celebrity portrayals." [4]   

 

Unfortunately, two weeks before the fair was due to open, Warhol was officially informed that he must remove or replace the work within 24-hours. Not wanting to do either, Warhol instead gave his permission for the 30-metre wide canvas to be painted over with silver house paint prior to the opening of the Fair [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Mug, of course, is an English slang term for (usually an ugly) face, dating from the 18th century. Often, when posing for a mugshot, a person will pull a face in an attempt to distort their features, thereby making future identification by a law enforcement agent a little more troublesome (thus we speak of mugging for the camera).  

 

[2] Bertillon was one of the founding fathers of forensic anthropometry; i.e., a system of identification based on the finding that that several measures of physical features - such as the size and shape of the skull - remain fairly constant throughout adult life. Bertillon concluded that when these measurements were made and recorded systematically, individual criminals could effectively be differentiated. 

 

[3] Created in 1923, Duchamp's Wanted: $2,000 Reward lithograph was the final work of art he completed before leaving New York that year to return to Paris. 

      Duchamp pasted two mug shots of himself on a joke poster he'd come across and had a printer add another alias to those already listed; that of his recently invented alter ego Rrose Sélavy. Duchamp re-created the (now lost original) work throughout his career and hoped it would played a significant role in the (de)construction of his artistic identity.

 

[4] See the essay on the Christie's website entitled 'Warhol's Most Wanted' (16 May 2018): click here.

      One can't help wondering why it is that the male homosexual gaze so often lingers on the faces and bodies of violent felons; is it the inevitable result of criminalising love? Or is it simply an inconvenient truth that evil attracts and has a more photogenic quality? Richard Meyer touches on these questions in his book Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Art (Oxford University Press, 2002).

 

[5] The official reason given was that the Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, was concerned that the images of mostly Italian-Americans would be offensive to a significant section of his electorate. However, it is also believed that Warhol himself was dissatisfied with the work and so more-than happy to have been afforded the opportunity to paint it over in his favoured colour of negation. 

      Warhol would later use the original silkscreens to produce paintings in his Most Wanted Men series and many of these were exhibited in Paris, Cologne, and London, in 1967-68.

 

On the Aesthetico-Perverse Appropriation of Objects (With Reference to the Work of Christoph Niemann)

Two Sunday Sketches by the brilliant German illustrator

 and graphic designer Christoph Niemann

Members of the kinky community pride themselves on their ability to re-imagine the world around them and see things from a queer perspective. They take giggly pleasure, as Steven Connor says, in the idea of so-called pervertibles; common household items that can be put to a sexual use of some kind.

At first, this sounds philosophically intriguing; a creative attempt to appropriate objects and further the pornification of the everyday.

Sadly, however, necessity is more often than not the mother of invention and the rationale behind pervertibles is usually financial in character; an attempt to become a sadomasochist on a budget, or masturbate on the cheap as well as on the sly. Why purchase expensive lubes and sex toys when you can just use cooking oil, clothes pegs, and a toilet brush?

To the outrage of genuine objectophiles, the majority of those who enjoy playing with pervertibles possess no affection for (or concern with) things as actual entities existing outside of any erotico-utilitarian function. For most perverts, things interest only when they are on hand to stimulate a variety of sensations and help facilitate orgasm; they have little or no time for ontological reflection. 

And that's why - as I've said before and will doubtless have occasion to say again - even perverts disappoint.

They're so intent on finding everything sexy and turning the world into their own private toybox, that they miss entirely the wider allure and fascination of objects. It's a failure of sensitivity and it demonstrates the limits of a pornographic imagination which remains tied to what Foucault termed the austere monarchy of sex (that most ideal form of modern agency).   

And it's why being an artist is more than being a pervert. For when an artist looks at an object, he or she sees an infinite number of possibilities and not just something that might possibly substitute for a dildo, butt plug, or nipple clamp.

Thus it is that, for Duchamp, a urinal can become a fountain; for Dalí, a lobster can become a telephone; for Picasso a shovel, a tap, and a pair of forks bound together with wire can become a magnificent bird; and for the genius of Christoph Niemann, pretty much anything can become the inspiration for one of his Sunday Sketches ...     

See: Christoph Niemann, Sunday Sketching, (Abrams, 2016).

The Most Beautiful Streets of Paris (Notes on Surrealist Mannequin Fetish)

André Masson: Mannequin (1938)

Photo by Raoul Ubac (gelatin silver print)

The Cleveland Museum of Art

 

If you love Love, you'll love Surrealism ...

Unfortunately, however, I don't love Love - certainly not as some kind of moral absolute - and so have never really much cared for Surrealism as conceived by André Breton, whom, despite his admirable anti-theism ("Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God!") remained an idealist and a dogmatist at heart.

However, there are some aspects - the darker, pervier aspects - of Surrealism that do excite my interest. And one of these aspects is the erotic fetishization of mannequins; agalmatophilia being a major component of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, held in Paris at the beginning of 1938.

The exhibition, organised by Breton and the poet Paul Éluard, pretty much involved everyone who was anyone in the world of Surrealism at the time, including Duchamp, Dalí, Max Ernst, and Man Ray. It was staged in two main sections and a lobby area, displaying paintings and objects as well as unusually decorated rooms which had been redesigned so as to create what would today be called an immersive environment or experience.

It was the first section - Les plus belles rues de Paris - in which a parade of surrealist mannequins was located, including, most dramatically, the one by André Masson pictured above.

The mannequin, or lay figure, has a long if relatively humble history within the world of art; as a tool it's pretty much on a par with an easel, a brush, or a palette knife, even though it served several purposes; from helping fix perspective and understand the fall of light and shadow, to acting as a support for drapery and costume.

Perhaps, in their loneliest moments, some artists looked affectionately - even longingly - at their mannequins as silent companions. But it was only from the 19th century, however, that the latter became the subject of the painting and, ultimately, an objet d'art in its own right. For the Surrealists, however, the mannequin became something else too: a sex object.

Upon entering the most beautiful streets of Paris, visitors encountered sixteen artificial female figures provocatively designed, dressed and posed by Masson and friends. These kinky mannequins were deliberately intended to disturb and to arouse strange (often illicit) desires.

Duchamp, for example, dressed the upper-half of his model in male clothing, but left the lower-half naked, thereby playing with notions of androgyny and obscene exposure. Max Ernst, meanwhile, had intended to place a glowing red light bulb in the underwear of his 'Black Widow' mannequin (revealed by looking up her conveniently raised skirt), but - ever the prude and policeman - André Breton prevented this. 

It was, as indicated, Masson's mannequin that attracted the greatest attention, however,  with its pretty head squeezed into a bird cage covered with red celluloid fish. The mannequin was gagged with a velvet ribbon and had a pansy placed in its mouth.

What this all means, I'm not entirely certain. But it surely isn't just about female objectification and misogyny masquerading as art, or the pornographic violence inherent in male sexuality. Those critics and commentators who exclusively discuss these works in such reductive terms are mistaken and being intellectually lazy, I think. 

This isn't to say that these things aren't realities or worthy of serious discussion. But simply that there are other considerations here; for example, the way in which objects became central within consumer culture - the mannequin in particular being the very embodiment of urban modernity, as Hans Richter pointed out. Or the manner in which fetishization can elevate an object from base utility, transforming it into something magical and seductive, with its own strange allure.         

For me, as a perverse materialist, mannequins, statues and sex-dolls need to be considered as things in themselves and not as mere substitutes for real women. And the men who choose to erotically privilege such over biological entities are deserving neither of ridicule nor condemnation.

The adult imperative to grow-up, stop touching yourself and get a steady girlfriend (i.e. one who is actual, rather than imaginary; human, rather than synthetic; alive, rather than dead) is one that at least some of the Surrealists dared to challenge and for that I admire and respect them.  

Besides, maybe Proust is right to argue that we are all forever isolate at some level; that reciprocity is an illusion and the objects of our affection - whatever their ontological status - simply allow for the projection of our own ideas, fantasies and feelings ... 


Note: those interested in knowing more about the role and rise of the mannequin in Western art should see Jane Munro, Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish, (Yale University Press, 2014). 

Infrathin Erotica (Fragment from an Illicit Lover's Discourse)

 

The blissful feeling that the Illicit Lover experiences when he sits in a seat on the Tube vacated by a young woman and her body heat is transferred unto him is heightened by his knowledge that this is not merely a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, but an example also of Duchamp's ambiguous concept of the infrathin - a concept which refers to (amongst other things):

(i) those fleeting sensory experiences whose pleasure escapes any form of rational explanation  ...

(ii) that intangible fourth dimensional state that transcends mundane existence ... 

(iii) the almost imperceptible difference that exists between two seemingly identical objects ...  

Later, he notices how the perfume of the Prostitute marries with the scent of her flesh into an intoxicating cassolette. And he delights also in the way that her cigarette smoke smells of the mouth that exhales it (the same mouth that fellates him with such consummate ease).