Reflections on the Exhibition Time to Fear Contemporary Art (17-21 March, 2025)

Time to Fear Contemporary Art  (17-21 March, 2025)

exhibition poster featuring a work by SJ Fuerst

galleryeight.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Although my own interest in art that 'preys on our fascination with fear and plunges contemporary painting into the exhilarating world of horror' [1] doesn't have the same obsessive character as that of my esteemed frenemy Síomón Solomon, I still felt compelled to visit the exhibition currently showing at Gallery 8 and featuring work by a handful of artists [2]. 

 

Whilst relatively modest in scale, the exhibition has the grand aim of countering the recent trend of making art accessible and less intimidating. Whether it achieves this is debatable, but the artists on show certainly did their best to immerse visitors into the dark world of the queer-gothic imagination, showing us how beauty doesn't always have to be tied to the good and the true.         

 

 

II. 

 

Primarily, the work I wished to see was a small oil on panel (40 x 25 cm) by Lizet Dingemans, a London-based artist originally from the Netherlands, entitled Pediophobia (i.e., an intense and irrational fear of dolls and not, as some might mistakenly think, a fear of children). 

 

Now, whilst I have several phobias and anxiety disorders, this, fortunately, isn't one of them; although, having said that, I can see that some dolls are extremely creepy and seem to have come straight from the Uncanny Valley. However, they don't scare me and I don't think they pose an actual threat - except Voodoo dolls, obviously, although that might be more related to my fear of pins and needles (belonephobia). 

 

In fact, regular readers of this blog will recall that, if anything, I have a positive fascination with dolls and other human-like figures. Indeed, some might term it a fetish, although it stops just short of my wanting to have sexual relations with a doll or fall in love with a statue à la Pygmalion [3].  

 

Anyway, returning to Dingeman's work ...  

 

Pediophobia is only one of a series of phobia paintings included in the exhibition; the others being Ailurophobia, Arachnophobia, Ornithophobia, Phasmophobia and, last but by no means least, Thanatophobia. 

 

Why anyone would be afraid of cats, spiders, or birds, is beyond me; ghosts (and other supernatural entities) I can understand - I can even, at a push, see why some people might fear death, although, as Heidegger pointed out, authentic being is a being-towards-death and Angst is a crucial aspect of this seeking for an ontological grasp of one's own mortality and the fact that being rests upon non-being. 

 

Those who would in some way deny us our experience of Angst lessen Dasein's experience of life. In a sense, fear is a fundamental source of freedom [4].

 

 

III.

 

Whilst I was interested in and impressed by Dingeman's work - as indeed I was by the work of all the artists exhibiting - for me, the star of the show (and curator) was SJ Fuerst, allowing the dark undercurrent of her more colourful works of pop surrealism to finally surface, whilst, at the same time retaining her playfulness and sense of humour. 

 

There were no inflatable animals or toy cars in this exhibition (as far as I remember) - and I suppose we might describe her new works as sugar-free - but, nevertheless, works such as Trixie in the Basement and Shattered Psyche made me smile; as did the very amusing and thought-provoking Objects in Mirror (see figure 1 below).  

 

Objects in Mirror was obviously going to seduce me: firstly, as an object-oriented philosopher; secondly, as someone fascinated by the idea of mirror life (or homochirality) [5]; and thirdly, as someone who believes that behind every reflection, every resemblance, every representation, a defeated enemy lies concealed, just waiting to take their revenge [6]. 

 

As Katie B. Kohn says in her essay written for the exhibition, the figure in Fuerst's work seems to defy their own entrapment within the pictures as images. The fact that the female figure is painted (in oil) on a looking glass only enhances the effect and evokes "the spectral reflections of the Daguerrotype as well as the galvanic shocks of the phantasmagoria" [7].     

 

Ms Kohn is also spot on to say that to regard a portrait of oneself too closely (à la Dorian Gray) - or a reflection in a mirror - is to trouble subjectivity; "to find oneself ever so subtly at risk of being unravelled ..." [8] 

 

Nevertheless, that's precisely what I thought I'd experiment with when standing in front of Fuerst's Objects in a Mirror (see figure 2 below) - attempting to see if Bram Stoker was right to suggest that when we look into a mirror it is mistaken to think the figure we see is ourselves; "the glass is a window; on the other side lies a stranger" [9].   

Figure 1: SJ Fuerst: Objects in Mirror 

Oil paint on mirror over interactive video installation, 51 x 73 cm (framed size)

Figure 2: SJ Fuerst's 'Objects in Mirror' as viewed by S. A. Von Hell (2025)  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This from the Gallery 8 website: click here. 

 

[2] The five artists whose work is shown in the exhibition are Luca Indraccolo, Lydia Cecil, Lizet Dingemans, SJ Fuerst, and Svetlana Semenova. Here, for reasons of space, I shall only discuss the work of two of the above: Lizet Dingemans and SJ Fuerst.  

 

[3] For those who are interested in agalmatophilia, there are several posts on Torpedo the Ark which touch on the subject: click here. For posts which specifically refer to sex dolls, click here and here. Readers might also be interested in the following paper presented at Treadwell's in October 2012: The Pygmalion Syndrome: Sex-Dolls, Solipsism, and The Love of Statues - available on request.

 

[4] I'm guessing that SJ Fuerst understands this, which is why she included a picture in this exhibition entitled The Anxious Thinker (oil paint on mirror, 37.5 x 43 cm).

 

[5] For a post dated 21 December, 2024 on the idea of homochirality, click here. 

[6] For a post dated 22 December, 2024 on the revenge of the mirror people, click here.

 

[7] Katie B. Kohn, 'Exhibition Essay' - available to read in the exhibition catalogue: click here.  

 

[8] Ibid. 

[9] Bram Stoker, 'The Judges House' (1891), quoted by Katie B. Kohn in her 'Exhibition Essay', op. cit.

 

 

What's in a Word: Queer

Strange, peculiar, odd, perverse ... how queer!

 

"Queer is a term that desires that you don't have to present an identity card ..." [1]

 

 

I.

 

Originally meaning strange or peculiar, the word queer now serves either as a synonym for homosexual - having been reclaimed as a term of pride by gay activists - or as a wider umbrella term for anyone who locates themselves on a colourful spectrum of non-heteronormative sexual or gender identities, but which, nevertheless, remain precisely that; i.e., identities, or expressions of self-sameness by which one wishes to be known. 

 

As someone who finds the empty secret of non-identity philosophically more interesting than the open secret of same-sex desire, I find this problematic and would challenge those who use queer as an overarching, unifying, or trendy academic label for what are often distinct forms of practice and behaviour that have nothing to do with sexuality or gender.  

 

For me, the appeal of queerness is precisely that it deconstructs all categories (particularly those that rest upon binary opposition) and offers a form of resistance to the idea of essential identities as if these were natural givens and thus afforded a privileged relationship to truth and being, rather than contingent cultural-historical formations belonging to an insubstantial world of free-foating and accidental attributes and disappearing cats who leave only a smile behind (to be queer is to be not quite here or there).

 

 

II.

 

Now, I appreciate that some people who assemble beneath a rainbow flag and delight in adding more letters to the ever-extending initialism they repeat like a mantra, will vehemently object to my use of the term queer. They consider this to be at best a dubious reappropriation and, at worst, an offensive misappropriation on behalf of someone who hasn't experienced oppression, discrimination, or violence for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

 

And so, they will argue that as a cisgender heterosexual - their terms, not mine - I have no right to a word which now belongs in their vocabulary and which, whatever its past meanings or etymology, now only means what they say it means. Almost, it laughably becomes a question of intellectual property rights, with queer trademarked as a kind of communal identifier.   

 

But, as I hope to have made clear above, I do not accept that there can be a queer community; nor indeed that any individual can ever say I am queer as a way of informing others who and what they are; queerness is a form of not-being (neither this nor that, or even the other).     

And so, whilst (as a theorist and critic) I feel at perfect liberty to continue using the word, I'm not doing so in order to self-identify, nor am I trying to place myself on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum simply for the cultural and political cachet. 

 

On the other hand, nor am I trying to be gratuitously offensive. I'm simply trying to suggest that queerness is primarily about what Judith Butler terms contestation and it should never be something that is clearly defined, or tied to just one area of life (or one set of life experiences), or owned by one group of people; for to do so is, ironically, to normalise it in some sense (i.e., rob it of its very queerness). 

 

Notes

 

[1] Judith Butler, 'The Desire for Philosophy', an interview conducted by Regina Michalik, Lola 2, (Lola Press,  May 2001). 

      As Butler makes clear, when queerness as a movement first emerged it was very much about suspending the question of identity and challenging the politics of such; it was an argument against normativity.  

Memories of a Duck Rocker

Nick Egan: Front cover of Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock (1983) [1]

and Duck Rock (2023), a mixed media collage on canvas, 48 × 36 in [2]

 

 

I. 

 

I was very pleased to discover that the artist, designer, and film director Nick Egan is alive and well and living in the Hollywood Hills with his wife and family. 

 

I was even happier to discover that he has recently been reimagining some of the record covers he designed back in the 1980s; including Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock (1983), which has been transformed from a 12" square image into a large mixed media collage on canvas, using digital artwork, airbrush, oil pastels, acrylic and metallic paints.    

 

Still referencing the art of Keith Haring and Dondi White [3], which formed such a vital part of the original work, it also includes the magically customised boom box (or ghetto blaster, as we used to say) designed by Ron West, that became known as the Duck Rocker - one of the most iconic objects in the cultural history of hip-hop.   

 

Due to the size and shape of Egan's 2023 work, it reminds one of poster art; and in fact Egan has admitted that this was his intention:  

 

'I saw it as a poster that had been put up on the walls of a New York subway station, with the Duck Rocker retained as the base image, but, as time went on, people would come by and graffiti over it. Some would try to peel it off the wall, and others would stick another flyer over it until it became almost unrecognisable from the original, exactly how it would look if it did appear on a subway wall.'

 

I suppose it's fair to say that Duck Rock is Egan's greatest achievement as a designer of record covers [4]; although his recreation of Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) for the cover of the Bow Wow Wow album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! (1981), will always just top it for some of us [5].

 

 

II. 

 

I first met Nick Egan back in the spring of 1983, at Malcolm's first floor office on Denmark Street, after he'd kindly offered to help find me a six-week work attachment of some description. He was very tall and thin with lots of blonde hair and wore a large punk-style jumper, a pair of striped pirate trousers, and a Buffalo coat from Nostalgia of Mud, so looked good.     

 

He gave me several names and numbers to try, including that of the press officer at Charisma Records, and told me not to worry as he was sure something could definitely be arranged (although unfortunately not at Moulin Rouge, as he and McLaren were both going to be in New York for a lot of the time in April and May). 

Thus it was I ended up at 90 Wardour Street; in the Charisma offices above the Marquee Club, working as Lee Ellen Newman's assistant (and general dog's body). Amongst my more amusing assignments was taking the Duck Rocker to the HMV, where it was to feature in a window display dressed by Nick to promote Malcolm's album [6].

 

Whether this was the original customised boom box - or one of several that were made - I'm not sure; but it looked fantastic and was surprisingly heavier to carry than one might imagine. Judging by the stares of astonishment it received - and the number of people who stopped me as I walked along Oxford Street requesting a photo - it wasn't only the Zulus in South Africa, the Hip-hoppers in New York, or the Hilltoppers in the Appalachian Mountains, who were enchanted by it.       

Unfortunately, I didn't think to have a photo taken with the Duck Rocker. However, here's a picture taken in the Charisma press office, standing in front of a smaller replica (which, I think, was eventually given away as a prize in a Smash Hits competition), accompanied by a photo of Malcolm in NYC with the mighty original [7].

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren's groundbreaking studio album Duck Rock, produced by Trevor Horn, was originally released on Charisma Records in 1983. Arguably, it has proved to be as influential - if not more so - than Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977). 

      A 40th anniversary double vinyl edition was issued on the independent label State51 Conspiracy in 2023. This featured six additional tracks and was produced in collaboration with Young Kim of the Malcolm McLaren Estate: click here for details.

 

[2] Duck Rock (2023), by Nick Egan, is available to buy from the Wilma Gallery: click here for more details. For those who can't afford the asking price of the original canvas (£22,800), there are some very nice limited edition prints available, starting from just £150: click here. 

      Other works by Egan can also be viewed on (and purchased from) the Wilma Gallery website: click here.     

[3] Keith Haring (1958-1990), was an American Pop artist who emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. At Nick Egan's invitation, he provided the illustration that formed the pink background image of the Duck Rock sleeve (for which he was paid $1000).

      Dondi White (1961-1998), was also an American street artist; he provided the Duck Rock lettering, again having been asked to do so by Nick Egan (unfortunately, I don't know how much he was paid).

 

[4] The album cover artwork for Duck Rock is now included in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art: click here.

 

[5] Amusingly, Egan transformed Andy Earl's 1981 photograph, inspired by Manet's canvas, back into a painting entitled We're Only in it For the Manet (2023): click here for details. 

      By his own admission, Egan always felt a little awkward being credited for the original record sleeve, as it contained none of his graphics; yes, he directed the photo shoot, but the artist responsible for the actual image was Andy Earl. With this new canvas, however, he has made it very much his own.       

      For those who are interested, I explain why I love Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe in a post on TTA dated 27 April 2017: click here. 

[6] According to my diary, this was Monday 23 May, 1983. 

      Amusingly, Malcolm had agreed to dance with a buffalo gal in the store window on the following Saturday, but he pulled out at the very last minute, insisting he must have been drunk to have ever agreed to such; much to Lee Ellen's irritation, as she had already informed several journalists who went along to witness the event.  

 

[7] The photo was taken by Bob Gruen in April 1983. Many more wonderful photos of McLaren taken by Gruen can be found on the latter's website: click here.

 

 

Bonus 1: click here for a fascinating interview with Nick Egan conducted by Mike Goldstein in August 2013, in which he discusses his work with Malcolm on the cover of Duck Rock. As Egan makes clear, he was involved with McLaren as a conceptual partner rather than simply an art director; in other words, he worked on Duck Rock from its inception all the way through its recording and mixing, contributing ideas at every stage. 

      Egan is currently working on a book project which explores the cultural influence of Malcolm McLaren and features his artwork from the Duck Rock period. 

 

Bonus 2: To watch the feature documentary Creative Vandal (dir. Peter Pahor, 2024), chronicling the career of Nick Egan, click here. 

 

Bonus 3: The essential track on Duck Rock is, of course, 'Buffalo Gals', which was released as a single in November 1982 on Charisma Records. The video pretty much captures what was happening in NYC at the time (filtered through the imagination of Malcolm McLaren who directed it): click here.

      For those who might be interested, my post on 'Buffalo Gals' (dated 19 Feb 2019) can be accessed by clicking here.     

 

Reflections on the Miners' Strike (1984-85)

With Arthur Scargill (Madame Tussauds, London, 1985)

 

 

I. 

 

I was surprised that the year long miners' strike, which began in the spring of 1984, wasn't more widely commemorated seeing as we've just passed the 40th anniversary of the ending of what was a significant event not just within the coal industry, but UK history. 

 

 

II. 

 

Led by the charismatic figure of Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, the strike was an attempt to prevent the closure of pits deemed by the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher as uneconomic (although the political goal was clearly to smash and humiliate the NUM, as well as weaken the wider labour movement; the fact that the miners had been able to bring down the Conservative government under Ted Heath in 1974 had neither been forgotten nor forgiven).

 

Of course, it was a battle they could not win; few major trade unions officially backed the NUM and some miners, particularly in the Nottingham area, continued to work throughout the dispute, thereby helping the government keep the lights on (what would D. H. Lawrence have made of this, one wonders; would he have supported the men of Eastwood, or would he have condemned the crossing of picket lines and called them scabs?).

 

I was living in Leeds when the strike started, so it very much felt as if it were unfolding on my doorstep, even if Cortonwood Colliery, where the strike kicked off, was based in South not West Yorkshire and the infamous Battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984 took place 30-odd miles away in Rotherham [1].

 

In July, however, I moved to London: nevertheless, I followed events with interest and would regularly put what I could in the buckets held by those collecting money for striking miners and their families, for whom it was impossible not to feel tremendous sympathy and with whom, indeed, one felt a sense of working-class solidarity (my own father had gone down the mines after leaving school in Newcastle aged 14, in 1926, just a year after the Montagu pit disaster in Scotswood, in which 38 men and boys lost their lives).         

 

I also remember buying Arthur Scargill and the NUM Christmas cards, though I can't vouch that any of the money from such ever went to the strikers, as it should have done. 

 

And I still have (in a box in the loft) a copy of a 7" single by The Enemy Within called 'Strike' and which featured voice samples of Arthur Scargill. Released on Rough Trade Records in October 1984, I'm pretty sure that proceeds from sales of this did go to the Miners Solidarity Fund [2]. 

 

Despite my meagre efforts at showing support - and despite all the sacrifice made by the striking miners and their families - on 3 March, 1985, the dispute ended with a decisive victory for the Coal Board and the Tory government, opening the way for the closure of most of Britain's collieries [3]. 

 

 

III. 

 

In a diary entry, I noted:

 

This is a very dark day and a very sad day - almost one might call it tragic. The striking miners return to work on Tuesday. Many of them clearly feel betrayed. Rightly or wrongly, Scargill points the finger of blame at the TUC and the Labour Party.

      I suppose this marks the end of militant left-wing opposition to the Tories (at least for the foreseeable future) and Thatcher is gleeful and triumphant. Not sure this is an England I want to live in. Feel a lot of  admiration for the miners - proud men who deserve better. When asked on the news by a reporter what he intended to do now, Scargill simply smiled and said: 'Go home.' 

      Sadly, if his predictions about pit closures and the destruction of mining communities are even half correct, then a lot of people are going to find that might not be an option for them much longer. [4]

   

 

Notes

 

[1] For those who don't know, the Battle of Orgreave was, as the name indicates, an extremely violent confrontation between pickets and a huge army of bluebottles - some of whom were drafted in from as far away as London - at a British Steel Corporation coking plant. It was a pivotal event in the strike and, indeed, British history; one that changed industrial relations forever in the UK and how many people now view the police. 

[2] The enemy within is how Thatcher referred to the leaders of the miners' strike and other militant trade unionists. The single was written by Keith LeBlanc and produced by Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc. To play both sides of the single (the B-side is a mix of the A-side) on YouTube, click here. 

 

[3] What remained of the coal industry - in public ownership since 1947 - was sold off in December 1994 and by the end of 2015 the last of the deep-mining coal pits, The Big K (i.e., Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire), had closed. Prior to the 1984-85 strike there had been 175 working pits. Many of the coal mining communities have never recovered and some are now ranked amongst the poorest towns in the country. 

 

[4] Entry from the Von Hell Diaries (Sunday 3 March 1985). 

      This retrospectively surprising and slightly embarrassing mixture of sympathy, socialism, and sentiment, is still in evidence the next day, as I continue to heap praise on Scargill and approve of his walking off a TV-am set rather than share a sofa with Chris Butcher, a miner from Bevercotes Colliery - known as 'Silver Birch' - whom Scargill regarded (rightly as it turned out) as a scab and class traitor (Butcher was secretly being funded by the Daily Mail to travel around the country opposing the strike; he was also involved in legal action against the NUM).   

 

What's in a Word: Punk

 'The cult is called punk; the music punk rock ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In a pre-Grundy television interview, Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten is asked by Maggie Norden:

 

"What about the word 'punk' - it means worthless, nasty - are you happy with this word?"

 

A crucial question to which he replies: 

 

"No, the press gave us it. It's their problem, not ours. We never called ourselves punk." [1]

 

It's a somewhat surprising response which every idiot who proclaims that they'll be a punk until they die might care to consider ...

 

 

II.  

 

When Rotten refers to the press, he was more than likely thinking of posho freelance journalist and photographer Caroline Coon, who, having risen to prominence as part of the British Underground scene in the 1960s, attached herself to the new youth movement spearheaded by the Sex Pistols in the mid-70s [2].

For it was Coon, writing for the influential music paper Melody Maker, who famously described this anarchic subculture held together with safety pins and bondage straps as punk - a name by which, for better or for worse, it has been known ever since (despite Rotten's disavowing of the term) [3].

 

Personally, I always think it a pity when something as beautifully fluid, ambiguous, and messed up as the scene that grew out of at 430 King's Road is identified and codified; to name is to know and to know is to kill. Calling the Sex Pistols a punk band was to suggest they were not something radically new or different; that they could, in fact, be compared with other groups and to prevailing rock trends.

 

That's undoubtedly true of the Clash - the band with whom Coon became most closely associated - but it's absolutely not true of the Sex Pistols as conceived by McLaren and Westwood. And not true either of Alan Jones, Jordan, and all those others who either worked at or hung around 430, King's Road. 

 

Assuming that a collective term of reference is at least provisionally needed, what should we call this assemblage of individuals ?   

 

Perhaps the best answer to this question was supplied by cultural critic Peter York, who, in October '76, referred to the "Sex shop people" and characterised them as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [4]. 

 

That, I think, is spot on: and very much in line with how I think of the Sex Pistols and those closely associated with them - as more funny peculiar than punk; i.e., as unusual, strange, abnormal, deviant, perverse, extraordinary, singular, exceptional, outlandish ... 

 

The photo below perfectly captures just how queer things were before being named and tamed by the media and the music business and before an army of identikit punks emerged.         

 

The Sex shop people: (L-R) Steve Jones, Danielle, Alan Jones, 

Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, and Vivienne Westwood 

Photo by David Dagley (Forum, June 1976)

 

Notes

 

[1] The full six minute interview with McLaren and Rotten - including a pre-recorded performance of 'Anarchy in the UK' - was on the tea-time current affairs show Nationwide (BBC1 12 Nov 1976). It can be found in the BBC Archive on Facebook: click here. A shorter version - without the band's performance - can also be found on YouTube: click here.   

 

[2] Acting on the recommendation of Alan Jones, then working as an assistant alongside Jordan at McLaren and Westwood's shop on the King's Road, Coon attended an early Sex Pistols gig and, like many others, she was captivated by what she saw happening both on and off stage and immediately began to document this new scene.  

 

[3] See Coon's Melody Maker article entitled 'Punk Rock: Rebels Against the System' (7 August 1976).       

      Although the word punk had already been used fairly widely for several years in connection to rock music in the US - and, indeed, has a much longer and more complex history than that: click here - it was Coon's piece that played a crucial role in introducing a slightly revised version of the term to a British audience and helping to identify a novel (but not radically new) genre of music.

      Coon obviously had a gift for this kind of thing as, interestingly, she was also the person who named the hardcore group of friends who followed the Sex Pistols as the 'Bromley Contingent'.

 

[4] Peter York, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. York was writing in an article entitled 'Them', in Harpers & Queen (October, 1976).

 

 

Her Smile Ineffably is Sweet / Divinely She is Slim: On the Sexual Politics of Waitressing

 

 

I.

 

Waitressing isn't perhaps the most glamorous job in the world, but, as Mr White recognises, it's a major occupation amongst non-college graduates and the one honest job that almost any woman can fall back on when times are tough and (just about) earn a living from.

 

And, like Mr White, I agree that women serving table work hard for very little pay and fully deserve their tips (despite the fact that Mr Pink does make some valid points) [1].

 

II. 

 

What they probably don't deserve, however, is to be sexually objectified and leered at by their male customers; either in real life, or, indeed, in the world of the TV sitcom, as Moira the waitress is objectified and leered at by Bob and Terry in a second season episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? 

Watching as she bends over a table in order to collect the tea cups and wipe the surface, Bob claims that whilst he could never actually cheat on his wife, Thelma, he can't help noticing other girls - including Moira and "her provocative body". 

 

Terry agrees that she does possess fantastic legs - "right up to her throat" - and have a "naughty little bum". However, later, when he gives her a suggestive wink, she tuts and looks away in disgust [2]. 

 

 

III.

 

Scenes like this - perfectly acceptable at the time, but less so now - remind one of why there was probably a need for feminist groups like the Waitresses, formed in 1977, and consisting of female artists who also worked in the service sector in Los Angeles.     

The group, active until 1985 and which eventually had over a dozen members, was co-founded by Jerri Allyn and Anne Gauldin, after Allyn, who had been working as a waitress for seven years, watched Gauldin perform a piece at the Feminist Studio Workshop in which she attempted to expose the dark side of the profession (i.e., the everyday sexism, the physical abuse, the poor working conditions and low pay, etc.).

 

The Waitresses also explored the sexualisation of women working in the service industry; how they were not just seen as common and available for exploitation, but encouraged to prostitute themselves by dressing in a sexy manner and acting flirtatiously in order to secure bigger tips from male customers [3].      

For their guerilla performances, the group created playful and provocative characters such as 'Wonder Waitress', who had come to help the harried and hassled waitresses of the world and advise them on how to unionise.

 

In 1979, the Waitresses and their supporters marched wearing waitressing uniforms in the Pasedena Doo Dah Parade, playing pots and pans instead of traditional instruments; they repeated this in 2007 to mark the 30th anniversary of the group's formation, marching in support of equal pay.   

 

 

The Waitresses marching in 1979 

Photo by Jerri Allyn

 

  

Notes

 

The title of this post is taken from a poem entitled 'Weary Waitress' by the English-born Canadian poet Robert W. Service (1874-1958): click here.  

The image by Stephen Alexander is based on a screen shot of Nova Llewellyn, as Moira, in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (see note 2 below).

 

[1] I'm referencing characters in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992); Mr White is played by Harvey Keitel and Mr Pink is played by Steve Buscemi. See the opening scene set in a diner: click here.

 

[2] See the series 2 episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? entitled 'Between Ourselves', directed Bernard Thompson, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, starring Rodney Bewes as Bob Ferris and James Bolam as Terry Collier. Moira the waitress was played by Nova Llewellyn. 

      The episode, first broadcast on BBC1 on 19 March, 1974, can be watched in full on YouTube by clicking here. The relevant scenes takes place between 20:25 and 21:44.

 

[3] Some who study human sexual behaviour argue that men like to give gifts - including tips in restaurants - to attractive women for much the same reason that male birds like to share food or nesting material with potential mates. So maybe what some regard as sleazy behaviour is rooted deep in the male psyche and has a long and complex instinctual history. 

     Of course, there's always the possibility that a male customer isn't tipping in an attempt to put the waitress under an obligation that might be repaid sexually, but is simply being generous; although, as researches have also pointed out, good deeds among men tend to increase when there's even a remote chance they may get to copulate. 

Dangerously Close to Love: Hommage à Steve Jones (Sex Pistol and Style Icon)

 

Steve Jones wearing an Anarchy shirt and pair of 

Seditionaries boots and looking like the coolest man alive

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

I. 

 

If Johnny Rotten was the face of punk - and Malcolm McLaren the brains - then Steve Jones was the genitalia; the one who supplied a lot of the stylish swagger and foul-mouthed humour to the Sex Pistols; the one who called Bill Grundy a fucking rotter ...

 

Perhaps that's why I always had a lot of affection for Jones, who, in 1972, co-founded The Strand [1] with former schoolmates Paul Cook and Wally Nightingale [2]. They were the band from out of which the Sex Pistols would eventually evolve, sans Wally, but with the crucial addition of Glen Matlock on bass and, later, John Lydon, as lead vocalist and frontman; a role that Jones was never comfortable in. 

 

In fact, Jones was probably much happier nicking musical equipment from wealthy rock stars and clothes from the King's Road store owned by McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. We might discuss whether Vicious is fairly labelled as The Gimmick - or Rotten as The Collaborator - in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), but Jones certainly loved to steal and so his being cast as The Crook is hardly unjust.    

Fortunately for Jones, Malcolm seemed extremely fond of him and in mid-1975, after years of constant pestering from Jones on the matter, McLaren reluctantly agreed to become the group's manager - but only on the condition that Cook and Jones agree to fire Nightingale (which they did). 

 

Mclaren was also keen that the band change their name and, after suggesting various alternatives, it was agreed that they would be known as Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols ...

 

For McLaren, the latter part of the name not only referenced his and Vivienne's store, then called SEX, but it also hinted at the idea of young assassins for whom everything was permitted and to whom it was reasonable to demand the impossible. 

 

As for the first part of the name ... well, Kutie was a word much favoured by pornographers to describe a young female model; thus it was, for example, that a vintage fetish magazine published in the late 1950s and early 1960s was entitled QT, punning on this term, as well as the idea of it being something that those in the know kept quiet about [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Why did Wally have to go? 

 

Partly it was because he was, at heart, more pub rock than punk rock and he and Jones found themselves constantly at odds over the band's musical direction; the former favouring a traditional R&B sound, whereas the latter was very much into Bowie, Roxy Music, and the New York Dolls.  

 

But it was also a question of style, not just music; Nightingale didn't look the part, whereas the rest of the band - Cook, Matlock, and especially Jones - were as obsessed with fashion as they were with music; particularly the unique designs sold at 430 King's Road, created by McLaren and Westwood.  

 

This is evidenced by the above photo, taken in August 1976, in which Jones can be seen wearing a pink striped Anarchy shirt, accurately described by Paul Gorman as "the visual equivalent of the music made by McLaren's charges the Sex Pistols; jarring, violently expressive and an act of collage representing an exciting and scrambled manifesto of desires" [4]. 

 

This variant of the shirt contains several of the (now) familiar elements, including the Karl Marx silk patch, the chaos armband, and a stencilled slogan that greatly amused McLaren: Dangerously Close to Love.  

 

Jones is also wearing a pair of Seditionaries boots; if hippies liked their Birkenstock sandals - and skinheads loved their Doc Martens - then the footwear of choice for those punks who could afford to buy a pair was this refashioned suede and leather jodhpur boot, commisioned from the famous English shoemakers George Cox, that came complete with bondage-style straps and buckles.  

I'm not sure about the blue denim jeans - or the slightly dodgy-looking barnet - but Jones looks the business in this picture - as indeed do the rest of the band (before punk became just another uniform):

 

The Sex Pistols: Rotten, Matlock, Cook, and Jones

Photo by Wolfgang Heilemann (August 1976)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The band took their original name - later changed to the Swankers, at Wally Nightingale's suggestion - from the Roxy Music song 'Do the Strand', written by Bryan Ferry and found on the album For Your Pleasure (Island Records, 1973). Steve Jones has often spoken of his love for Roxy Music during the glam rock period. 

      Those who don't know the song - as well as those who never tire of hearing it - can click here, or here to watch a live performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC2, 3 April 1973). Surprisingly, 'Do the Strand' wasn't released in the UK as a single until 1978, when it failed to chart.  

 

[2] The guitarist Wally Nightingale is arguably the Pete Best of the Sex Pistols story; it was he who suggested to Cook and Jones that they form a band and he would happily assist the latter in stealing instruments and equipment. He is also credited with writing the music for 'Did You No Wrong', a song which featured as the B-side of the Sex Pistols' single 'God Save the Queen' (1977) - a song that I hated then and still hate now; but which can be played by clicking here.  

      Unfortunately, McLaren didn't think he fitted the image for the band that he had in mind. And so he was fired and Jones became the guitarist. Within six months of Nightingale leaving, they had found a new singer and played their first gig as the Sex Pistols (6 November, 1975) - and the rest, as they say, is history. Sadly, Nightingale died, aged 40, in 1996; still somewhat bitter about his expulsion.    

 

[3] Published monthly by the London-based company Concord Publications, QT ran for 94 issues between late 1956 and the summer of 1964. Click here for more details. In 1974, the magazine was revived under the title New QT, again featuring the work of Britain's top glamour photographer Russell Gay and published by Concord.  

 

[4] Paul Gorman, 'The Anarchy Shirt', Dazed (1 May, 2013): click here.  

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Silly Thing' is a song written by Paul Cook and Steve Jones and which features the latter on vocals. It was released as the third single from the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), reached number 6 in the UK charts, and is a fresh and crisp example of punk popcorn: click here.     

Know Thyself: A Reflection

Ai Weiwei: Know Thyself (2022) 

Lego bricks 192.5 x 192.5 cm [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Whenever I come across the ancient Greek injunction know thyself [b], I immediately think of Nietzsche's preface to the Genealogy in which he mocks the very possibility of this, even for those who pride themselves on being men of knowledge: We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers ... [c]

 

But I also think of Foucault's text entitled Technologies of the Self ...

 

 

II.     

 

Based on a lecture given at the University of Vermont in October 1982, this text is hugely interesting for its insistence that care of the self - conceived as an ethico-aesthetic project of stylisation - is at least as important as knowing the self (understood in relation to a moral conception of Truth).

 

In the modern era, care of the self was almost entirely decoupled from the more imperative-sounding command to know the self. And that is unfortunate to say the least, because care of the self crucially entailed the forming of external relations with others, whilst knowing the self is a much more internalised and solitary pursuit (like masturbation).

 

For Foucault, "the equation of philosophical askesis with renunciation of feeling, solidarity, and care for one's self and for others - as the price of knowledge - was one of the biggest wrong turnings" [d] in Western history. 

 

But rather than simply regret this, or naively call for an impossible (and undesirable) return to an ancient way of life [e], Foucault began to think things through in his own inimitable manner (more as a hermeneutics of the self than an epistemological exercise) ... 

 

 

III.

 

Gnōthi seauton is one thing; epimeleisthai sautou is another. Without doubt, says Foucault, we moderns have overemphasised the former and largely forgotten the latter. 

 

In the Graeco-Roman world, however, "the injunction of having to know oneself was always associated with the other principle of the care of the self, and it was that need to care for oneself that brought the Delphic maxim into operation" [f]. It was, in other words, one of the key principles (and practices) governing "social and personal conduct" [226].

 

For Foucault, this "profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society" [228] has occurred for two main reasons: 

 

"We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality [...] We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was paradoxically the way to self-renunciation." [228] [g]

 

The second reason - just as crucial - is that in modern philosophy from Descartes to Husserl, "knowledge of the self (the thinking subject) takes on an ever-increasing importance as the first step in the theory of knowledge" [228].

 

 

IV.

Does any of this really matter today?

 

To many people, perhaps not: but to me, as a philosopher who, like Foucault - and, indeed, like Socrates - cares about the question of care, it matters a great deal. 

 

For I would love to see a greater concern with ethos as the Greeks understood this term; i.e. a way of being and of behaviour, of stylising the self (in relation to others) that was evident in every aspect of the person (their appearance, dress, manner, etc.). 

 

The immanent utopia realised now/here in the bonds between people that D. H. Lawrence terms a democracy of touch will be a society founded upon such an ethos; one in which everybody takes proper care of him or herself whilst also properly conducting themselves "in relation to others and for others" [h]. 

 

Ultimately, let me add in closing - once more in agreement with Foucault - the relationship between philosophy, politics, ethics, and art is permanent and fundamental. And that's why one can't simply visit an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, for example, and simply come away speaking about aesthetics or his method of working [i].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This Lego mosaic by Ai Weiwei, based on a first-century Roman work depicting a skeleton and the Greek phrase ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ, is presently on display at the Lisson Gallery (London). It previously featured as part of Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition Know Thyself, at Galerie neugerriemschneider, in Berlin (September 14, 2023 - March 30, 2024). 

      Why the artist chose to reverse the image and write the Greek maxim as if viewed in a mirror, I don't know; perhaps it is meant to indicate the fact that he is reflecting on the complex relationship between past and present (I very much doubt, from what I know of him, that he is advocating a reversal of moral wisdom).  

 

[b] Know thyself was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. It has been quoted and interpreted by countless thinkers, scholars and authors ever since. It is usually written in Greek as Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seauton).

 

[c] The original German reads: Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst ... See Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), p. iii. 

[d] Paul Rabinow, introduction to the Essential Works of Foucault 1: Ethics, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (Penguin Books, 2000), p. xxv.

 

[e] In answer to the question whether he sees the ancient Greeks as offering an attractive and plausible alternative, Foucault says: "No! [...] you can't find  the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people." Further, Greek ethics "were linked to a purely virile society" founded upon slavery and he doesn't much like that idea. 

      See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 256. 

 

[f] Michel Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 226. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text. 

      A slightly different version of this text appeared in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), pp. 16-49 and this can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[g] It's important to note that Foucault sees many continuities between pagan and Christian culture and does not see a clean break as many modern Christians and neo-pagans like to imagine. Christianity - a religion of confession and salvation - is, as Nietzsche once said, in many respects a form of Platonism for the people (see his preface to Beyond Good and Evil, 1886) and the Christian tradition is not uniquely to blame for the moral world we now inhabit. 

      See the interview with Foucault from January 1984, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', which can be found in an amended translation with footnotes in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... pp. 281-301, where he stresses this point.  

 

[h] Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 287. 

[i] In a recent post published on Torpedo the Ark, I discussed how Ai Weiwei's transformation of a well-known canvas by Van Gogh enables the viewer to reflect upon contemporary social, cultural, and political concerns. Those interested in reading the post, can click here. 

 

Wheatfield with Crows and Drones

Vincent van Gogh: Korenveld met kraaien (1890) 

Oil on canvas 50.5 x 103 cm 

Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam)

Many people like to believe that Wheatfield with Crows captures the violent turmoil of Van Gogh's mental state at the time and that it was the final canvas he produced; i.e., a picture painted a year-and-a-half after the Xmas ear cutting incident in Arles, but only moments before he shoots himself in the chest with a revolver in Auvers-sur-Oise, a commune on the outskirts of Paris, in the summer of 1890.

 

But that's a cinematic fiction invented by the makers of Lust for Life (1956); a biographical film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Kirk Douglas as everybody's favourite Dutch artist (although it was Anthony Quinn who won the Oscar for his performance as Gauguin).  

I don't know why he shot himself - dying in bed a couple of days later - but it wasn't due to his annoyance with the birds and, as a matter of fact, he finished several other works after completing Wheatfield with Crows [1].  

However, as I've said many times, people believe what they want to believe, particularly if their Romantic version of events has been reinforced by a Hollywood movie. And the fact remains that this elongated double-square canvas is rightly regarded as one of his greatest works, albeit one weighed down by critical interpretations of a depressingly predictable and simplistic psycho-symbolic character.

 

 

II.   

The above is intended as art historical background to the work I really wanted to comment on; Ai Weiwei's playful (yet deadly serious) reimagining of Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows using coloured interlocking plastic toy bricks, or what most of us now generically refer to as Lego [2]. 

 

Replacing some of the crows of the original painting with far-more menacing drones, Ai Weiwei has produced a powerful comment (I'm guessing) on the war in Ukraine; a country known for its pale golden wheatfields and its strategic use of advanced aerial technology for the purposes of reconnaissance, surveillance, and precision strikes against Russian targets, transforming modern warfare and battlefield tactics in the process.  

As the press release for his new show at the Lisson Gallery (London), puts it: "This transformation highlights the ongoing relevance of historical artworks, revealing how they can serve as mirrors reflecting our current societal challenges." [3]

I think that's probably true, although I'm less convinced by his claim that an individual life can be conceived metaphorically as a building brick, or, indeed, as a series of pixels belonging to the digital plane, but that's something to be discussed another day ... 

 

Here, then, is Ai Weiwei's reworking of Van Gogh; along with a close-up to allow a better view of the brickwork in detail:   

 

Ai Weiwei: Wheat Field with Crows (2024) 

Toy bricks (WOMA) 320 x 160 cm  

Lisson Gallery

 

 

Notes

[1] Van Gogh's letters indicate that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July 1890 and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall and what is probably his final work, Tree Roots. He died on the 29th of July. 

[2] As pretty much everybody in the world knows, LEGO is a brand of plastic building blocks that snap together to create models of objects, manufactured by the LEGO Group; a Danish company founded in 1932. Whilst the LEGO Group actively discourage the use of the word 'Lego' as a generic term for any interlocking brick toy, it is, of course, commonly used as such in everyday language. 

      For the record, the bricks used by Ai Weiwei in his work are manufactured by Woma Toys; a Chinese company that produces custom designed building blocks.     

 

[3] This press release, written entirely by Chat GPT4 at the artist's request (apart from a few clarifications and the insertion of quotes taken from an unpublished text in which Ai Weiwei explains how Lego bricks allow a new method of artistic creation), can be found on (and downloaded from) the Lisson Gallery website: click here. 

      Photos of works included in the exhibition - Ai Weiwei: A New Chatpter [sic] - can also be found on the gallery's website. The show, which opened on 7 February, runs until 15 March 2025.