Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas (2024)

I. 

 

Regular readers will recall that back in April of this year, I went along to the Horse Hospital to view the overtly political artwork of Gee Vaucher and hear what she had to say about her time working with Crass (an anarcho-hippie collective based at Dial House in Essex and masquerading as punks during the period 1977-1984): click here.  

And they might also recall that in September of this year, I visited the Richard Saltoun Gallery, in Mayfair, to view a solo exhibition by Penny Slinger; another British-born artist who likes to combine elements of surrealism with (feminist-informed sexual) politics and another woman now aged in her seventies (at 77, she's just two years younger than Vaucher): click here. 

 

Anyway, completing this trio of septuagenarian female artists is Marlene Dumas (71), whose solo exhibition of sixteen new(ish) works at the Frith Street Gallery - including the large (100 x 30 cm) canvas pictured here entitled Mourning Marsyas - I went to see earlier this week ... [1] 

 

II.

 

For those, like me, whose knowledge of ancient mythology is patchy at best (but who aren't fortunate enough to have the Little Greek on hand to fill in the gaps), Marsyas was the satyr who - skilled as he was on the double pipe (αὐλός) - mistakenly challenged Apollo to a contest to determine who was the best musician. 

 

All-too-predictably, the Muses found in favour of the latter, and Apollo, proving that the only thing worse than a bad loser is a vindictive winner, punished Marsyas by skinning him alive [2].  

 

There are, I suppose, numerous ways we might interpret this story. But Dumas - who was born and grew up in South Africa during apartheid - always likes to side with the victim, be that Christ hanging on his Cross or a dead member of the Red Army Faction.

 

Thus, for Dumas, Apollo is the villain and Marsyas symbolises not hubris, but the right of the individual to freely express themselves artistically. And so she mourns Marsyas and all others who have died in their attempt to challenge those wielding power and authority. 

 

I've seen it suggested that there's a certain tenderness in Dumas's canvas which is missing from the savage beauty of Titian's Flaying Marsyas painted 470 years earlier. And that might be the case: or it might be pity which is on display here, which is an altogether different thing (often confused with compassion) [3]. 

 

It's a shame that Iris Murdoch isn't around to consult on this question [4]. 

 

 

III. 

 

All in all, I like Dumas's paintings; created, according to the gallery press release, 'through a mixture of chance and intention [...] combining very fast and focused actions with reflective pauses'. 

 

What that means is that Dumas often pours paint directly onto the canvas and then goes from there, teasing out a central figure or a face. Sometimes these figures and faces appear in an instant, whilst at other times they require careful consideration [5].

 

Strangely, despite Dumas openly confessing that her works are "'heavy with the weight of a bad conscience, deceased lovers, past failures and present atrocities'" [6], I found the exhibition quite refreshing; perhaps Nietzsche was right after all and cruelty is indeed one of the oldest festive joys of mankind [7].       

 

Apart from the central work after which the exhibition took its name, there were several other works that caught my eye, including a phallic picture consisting of a pair of big black cocks and a smaller canvas commemorating the 69 people killed at a summer camp on the island of Utøya in July 2011 by the Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik (what this tells us about her and/or me readers can decide).

 

 

Marlene Dumas: Two Gods (2021) Oil on canvas (150 x 140 cm) 

and Utøya (2018-2023) Oil on canvas (40 x 50 cm) 

Photos by Peter Cox courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

   

 

Notes

 

[1] Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas opened at the Frith Street Gallery (Golden Square) on 20 September and finishes on 16 November 2024. Full details can be found by clicking here. 

 

[2] For those readers keen to know further details, the story of Marsyas can be found in Book VI (lines 382-400) of Ovid's Metamorphoses: click here for a translation by A. S. Kline (2000) on poetryintranslation.com 

 

[3] Nietzsche famously viewed pity as a dangerous pathological condition that weakens the pitier and degrades the pitied. It is thus a form of practical nihilism disguised as a moral virtue. Compassion, on the other hand, is a feeling with the one who suffers; not a feeling for and is born of a true love for others as well as a love of fate. 

      Readers who wish to know more on this might like to see the essay by Suzanne Obdrzalek, 'On the Contrast between Pity and Compassion in Nietzsche', in Aporia, Vol. 7 ( BYU, 1997), pp. 59-72. It can be downloaded and read as a pdf by clicking here.

 

[4] The Irish-British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch was a huge fan of Titian's late masterpiece (painted c. 1570-76), once describing it as the greatest of all works of art in the Western tradition in that it manages to touch on life in all its ambiguity, horror, and misery whilst, at the same time, being a beautiful work that invests the human story with something divine. 

 

[5] It's not surprising to discover that Dumas often refers to the concept of pareidolia when discussing her work; i.e., the psychological phenomenon by which the brain is given to perceive meaningful images (such as faces) in random visual stimuli. I have written on this phenomenon in a post dated 4 June 2015: click here. 

 

[6] Dumas writing in an introductory essay to the Mourning Marsyas exhibition and cited by Adrian Searle in his interview with her in The Guardian (23 September 2023): click here. 

 

[7] See Nietzsche, Morgenröthe (1881), I. 18. Translated into English by R. J. Hollingdale as Daybreak (Cambridge University Press, 1982).  

 

Marlene Dumas

marlenedumas.nl 

frithstreetgallery.com

Vive le flâneur - et la flâneuse!

 

Mariateresa Aiello: The Flâneur

(Ink on paper, 2011)

sketchbloom.com 

 

"Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. 

The flâneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them." - Walter Benjamin

 

I. 

 

In comparison to the concept of dandyism, which has often been referred to on Torpedo the Ark [1],  the idea of  flânerie - as embodied by the figure of le flâneur - has, rather mysteriously been overlooked.

 

I don't know why that is, particularly as this blog is essentially a form of strolling amongst literary leftovers, philosophical fragments, and the ruins of contemporary culture; coolly observing what passes for (and remains of) the real world whilst collecting images and ideas as I go, thereby making me a kind of postmodern flâneur in all but name.

 

For although the term flâneur threatens to transport us back to the arcades of 19th-century Paris and the musings of Baudelaire and Benjamin [2], that needn't be the case. For the concept of the flâneur - and flânerie as a practice - has been brought into the 21st-century by those who are more interested in moving through virtual spaces and exploiting the opportunities afforded by mobile technologies than actually standing on street corners. 

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, as someone who has concerns with the question of technology, I'm not averse to physically still drifting through Soho; gazing in the windows of shops and restaurants; observing the street life whilst sipping coffee on Old Compton Street; jotting down notes for future blog posts; vaguely hoping someone I know will pass by, or that I might encounter the ghost of Sebastian Horsely; essentially just idling time away (much as I have the last forty years) [3].

 

Paradoxically, as a flâneur one is both an essential part of urban life and yet detached or set apart from it - which kind of suits me as I want to belong, but only on the margins or fringes of society; Johnny Rotten may want to destroy the passer-by, but I'm happy to be a non-participant who is not caught up in events or overcome with enthusiasm (for one thing, this provides a certain degree of immunity from infection by political or religious fanaticism).

 

 

III. 

 

Of course, it isn't easy to be a flâneur in the poetic-philosophical sense today.

 

Some (perhaps overly pessimistic) commentators suggest that the flâneur has been supplanted by the badaud - an open-mouthed bystander who simply gawks without intelligence or aesthetically attuned appreciation for what he sees; one who is enchanted by the Spectacle and is a representative of das Man [4].

 

Way back in 1867, before Debord and Heidegger were even born, the French journalist and author Victor Fournel wrote this:

 

"The flâneur must not be confused with the badaud; a nuance should be observed here. […] The simple flâneur […] is always in full possession of his individuality. By contrast, the individuality of the badaud disappears, absorbed by the outside world, which ravishes him, which moves him to drunkenness and ecstasy. Under the influence of the spectacle that presents itself to him, the badaud becomes an impersonal creature; he is no longer a man, he is the public, he is the crowd." [5]

 

However, just as I believe in fairies, so too do I believe there are flâneurs still amongst us today; just much rarer in number and harder to spot. And I was reinforced in this by a chance meeting a couple of weeks ago at the National Poetry Library with an astonishing young woman called Tamara who gaily confessed herself to be a flâneuse ... [6]

Notes

 

[1] Click here for several posts on TTA which have mentioned dandyism over the years.  

[2] Developing the work of Charles Baudelaire, who described the flâneur both in his poetry and the seminal essay Le Peintre de la vie moderne (1863), Walter Benjamin spurred artistic and theoretical interest in the flâneur as a key figure of the modern world; see The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Harvard University Press, 1999). And for a short discussion of this work by Benjamin - and my convoluted relationship with him - see the post dated 21 October 2024: click here. 

 

[3] Readers will doubtless understand that this is a form of active idleness; as one French literary critic noted, flâneurie is tout le contraire de ne rien faire. 

     

[4] The badaud is essentially the anti-flâneur; more bystander than passer-by; the sort of person who today films events on their mobile phone, bartering away the sheer intensity and joy of experience for mere representation. This includes filming those terrible sights from which any decent person would look away; the mangled remains of some poor devil who jumps from the platform in front of a train, for example. 

      In contrast, the flâneur takes single snaps that are technically imperfect and full of flaws, but never obscene or sensational; images that give a fleeting glimpse without exposing objects or making them strike a pose (thereby allowing objects to retain their allure). 

 

[5] Victor Fournel, Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris [What One Sees in the Streets of Paris] (1867), p. 263. The (uncredited) English translation is cited on the Wikipedia entry for the subject of badaud: click here.  

      Walter Benjamin essentially adopts this distinction between the two figures of flâneur contra badaud in his work. 

 

[6] The feminine term flâneuse was born of recent feminist lit-crit and gender studies scholarship; previously, the term passante was used to describe the somewhat elusive modern woman who liked to wander round the city, experiencing public spaces in her own manner. Proust famously favoured this term.  

      Readers who are interested, might like to see Lauren Elkin's book: Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London (Chatto & Windus, 2016), in which she discusses a number of flâneuses, including George Sand, Virginia Woolf, Agnès Varda, Sophie Calle, and Martha Gellhorn.    

 

Booking In at the Clinic Exclusive (In Memory of Georgina Ward)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A Brief Astrophilosophical Reflection

Zodiac Man (Homo Signorum) [1]

 

 

I can't quite recall where, but I'm sure Baudrillard once mused on the idea of changing one's fate by the simple measure of adopting a new star sign. For if a man can identify as a woman (and vice versa), then surely someone unhappy with being tied down by an earth sign could, for example, identify as a free-floating air sign.

 

Having said that, I have no desire to transition from one sign to another. I'm perfectly content having been born on February 13th to be an Aquarian [2] and my sense of self closely and comfortably corresponds to the sign I was given at birth, which I suppose makes me ciszodiac.

 

I hope, however, that this doesn't make me dismissive of those queer individuals who, for example, no longer wish to identify exclusively with one star sign; or those who feel uncomfortable within the confines of the traditional zodiac divided into twelve houses across three modalities (cardinal, fixed, and mutable) [3].

 

For as Baudrillard also said (I think): We ought to be as cruelly indifferent to star signs as they are to us as individuals ... [4]

 

Notes

 

[1] Frequently encountered in astrological (and medical) works from classical, medieval, and early-modern times, the Man of Signs illustrates the (imagined) correlation between the cosmos and human physiology; as above, so below and all that (occult) jazz. 

 

[2] The philosopher Sam Harris argues that one of the things that might be said in favour of astrology is that it's profoundly egalitarian; that there are no inferior zodiac signs. However, I'm not sure that's quite true. For it does seem to me that Aquarius has a rather special status; not only is it the rarest of the twelve signs, but stands above all others due to the enigmatic and multifaceted nature of those who are governed by it (this might have something to do with the fact that Aquarius is a sign ruled by not one, but two celestial bodies: the revolutionary Uranus and the disciplined Saturn).

 

[3] The German philosopher Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, who specialises in thinking about aesthetics, politics, and culture in a playful, stylish, and slightly dreamy (neo-organic) manner, has written a short satirical skit developing this idea; see 'Genders and Zodiacs' on the Medium website (20 July 2023): click here.     

 

[4] Unfortunately, I don't have access to my books at the moment and it might be the case that I'm misremembering what Baudrillard wrote. However, I can say with confidence that he definitely suggested in one of the volumes of Cool Memories (1980-2004) that we should accord equal importance to the star sign we die under as to the one we are born under. 

 

  

Fear of a Deaf Planet: Or Why I Don't Like Alexander Graham Bell

David Call: George and the Dragon

University of Oregon Libraries

 

"As long as we have deaf people on earth, we will have signs."

 

 

I. 

 

Putting aside the fact that I have a strong aversion to making or receiving telephone calls - due more to philosophical reasons tied to the question concerning technology, rather than to social anxiety - I still have good reason to despise the man credited with patenting the first such device in 1876; namely, Alexander Graham Bell.

 

For whilst this Scottish-born inventor was undoubtedly a man of considerable talent - responsible for groundbreaking work in many fields - he was also a fanatic advocate of oralism; i.e., the phonocentric insistence that deaf people abandon the use of sign language (or manualism as it was known amongst reformers in the 19th-century) and communicate primarily (if not exclusively) by mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech and learning to lipread.    

 

Advocates of oralism, such as Bell, whose mother and wife were both deaf - and whose father, grandfather, and brother were all associated with work on speech and elocution - believed that even those who were born without the ability to hear could - and should - learn to speak; that it was just a question of training (in much the same way as he had once trained the family dog to say How are you, grandmama?) [1].   

 

II. 

 

Now, as someone who has previously attempted to see the world through deaf eyes and opposed audism on several occasions - click here, for example - I obviously find Bell's work as a self-professed teacher of the deaf problematic. 

 

Particularly as he was closely associated with the eugenics movement, which feared the development of a deaf race which, it was believed, threatened the phonocentric basis of society with their sinister use of sign language. In order to prevent this, it was necessary to reduce the deaf race by preventing them from marrying and having children. 

 

To be fair, Bell didn't support the more extreme measures advocated by some. But, in lengthy essays such as Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race (1884) [2], he did openly advocate for oralism and the banning of sign language within schools and wider society. He also wrote lines such as this: 

 

"Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriage of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy." [3]

 

Utimately, Bell wanted the integration not the elimination of deaf people. Nevertheless, the image of an insular, inbred, and proliferating deaf race was a pernicious fantasy that was repeated for many years and such surdophobia [4] was carefully exploited by those promoting the ideology of oralism. 

 

Thus, Bell is not regarded positively by those within the deaf community today and I understand why deaf artists and activists, such as David Call, have depicted him in a less than flattering light, as the image above illustrates [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Actually, it was a trick: having taught the poor dog to growl continuously, Bell would reach into its mouth and manipulate the animal's lips and vocal cords to produce a crude series of sounds. Listeners were then persuaded to believe that the dog was talking. 

 

[2] In this work, Bell issued a warning that deaf people were effectively forming an alternative society, by intermarrying and socialising with one another. Like others, he was even led to the conclusion that a deaf race was in the process of evolving - despite evidence to the contrary put forward by those who, for example, pointed out that although deafness can be an inherited condition, only a small percentage of deaf couples have deaf children.  

[3] The irony was that Bell was himself able to use sign language; even though, he strongly opposed it. In fact, his last word was signed to his deaf wife Mabel on his deathbed.

 

[4] Surdophobia is a term recently coined by Gardy van Gils, a deaf researcher at Utrecht University. She defines it as a form of hostile intolerance for deaf individuals, or an irrational fear of the deaf community resulting in opposition to the use of sign language. 

 

[5] This image by David Call - linocut on paper - was purchased by the University of Oregon in 2019 from the Eye Hand Studio. It shows the American educator, filmmaker, and activist George Veditz slaying A. G. Bell depicted as a dragon. 

      Veditz, the son of German immigrants, lost his hearing aged eight due to scarlet fever. He served as the seventh President of the National Association of the Deaf from 1904 to 1910 and is celebrated within the deaf community today as one of the most passionate and visible advocates of American Sign Language. His film "Preservation of the Sign Language" (1913) was added to the US National Film Registry in 2010. In it, Veditz not only makes a strong defense of the right of the deaf people to use sign language, but also talks of its beauty and complexity as a valid form of human communication. 

 

 

Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen

Autumn-Foliage-Strike-Fun

 

 

It's often said that the Greeks have a word for everything, but, as a matter of fact, that's not true [1].

 

Fortunately, however, when the Greeks fail us, the Germans are usually ready and willing to step up to the mark with a compound noun ... [2]

 

Thus, when Maria was unable to supply a term for the pleasure of kicking through autumn leaves - something that I enjoy as much now at sixty as I did at six years of age - I immediately consulted with my friend in Berlin and she was happy to text the following: Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen ... [3]

 

There's something profoundly impressive about the German ability to capture in a single word a relatively complex idea or emotion that would take an English speaker a whole sentence to explain; no wonder Heidegger insisted that German is uniquely qualified for the task of thinking [4] (he wasn't simply trying to piss off certain French intellectuals).    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have even used this idiomatic expression myself on Torpedo the Ark; see the post of 27 September 2020, for example, in which I briefly discuss the 1930 stage play by Zoe Akins from which the phrase derives: click here.

[2] See Ben Schott, Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition (Blue Rider Press, 2013); an amusing dictionary of neologisms that capture the idiosyncrasies of life as only the German language can.  

 

[3] It's pronounced: hairbst-laowb-tritt-fair-gnuu-ghen.   

 

[4] Whilst Heidegger never actually said that if you want to think you have to do so exclusively in German, he did argue that German, like ancient Greek, but unlike Latin - the language of metaphysical philosophy - is particularly suited to thinking because it's phenomenologically well grounded. 

      See Heidegger's famous interview with Rudolf Augstein and Georg Wollf from Der Spiegel (conducted on 23 September, 1966; published posthumously on 31 May, 1976): click here to read the English translation by William J. Richardson under the title 'Only a God Can Save Us'. 

 

 

Feisty One I'm Not!

 

The other day, at an event held at the National Poetry Library [1], I asked a perfectly reasonable question of the speakers (at their invitation). 

 

The question was pretty much brushed aside, but I was thanked for providing a feisty contribution to the evening. 

That word - feisty - irritated me at the time and has been troubling me ever since: for I am not a small farting dog looking to cause a stink and don't wish to be patronised as such [2].

 

I'm assured it was meant lightheartedly and in the modern sense. 

 

However, when middle-class people label working-class people feisty, then - even if unaware of the carminative origins of the word - it's insulting in much the same way as the word uppity is a highly offensive way of describing black people [3].

 

For the implication is given that those who dare to challenge the prevailing narrative are behaving in a manner that is just a little too rude and aggressive for polite society and next time might think twice before speaking (or even remain silent altogether in the presence of those who are clearly their superiors) [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For details, click here.  

[2] Etymologically, feisty means something quite different from its modern sense; relating as it does to the breaking of wind and to canine flatulence in particular. See the entry on the term in the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary: click here.  

 

[3] See the article by Elspeth Reeve, 'Yep, "Uppity" Is Racist', in The Atlantic (22 November 2011): click here.

 

[4] There's arguably also a subtle sexism operating behind this word feisty when used by a man to describe a woman. See Melissa Mohr's article of 10 September 2020, on the Christian Science Monitor website: click here. 

A Feisty Evening with Isobel Dixon, Douglas Robertson and D. H. Lawrence

Isobel Dixon, Douglas Robertson & D. H. Lawrence

 

 

I. 

 

A couple of nights ago, I went to the National Poetry Library - which, for those who don't know, is housed on the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall in London's Southbank Centre - for what was billed as a D. H. Lawrence celebration, with particular focus being given to the collection of poems entitled Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923).

 

The event also called attention to a recent book by the South African poet Isobel Dixon, produced in collaboration with the highly acclaimed Scottish artist Douglas Robertson who provided a dozen finely detailed illustrations: A Whistling of Birds (Nine Arches Press, 2023).

 

II. 

 

Whilst this work is essentially a response to Lawrence's text - and his short essay 'Whistling of Birds' (1919) lends the book its name - Dixon also invites others, including William Blake, Emily Dickinson and Ted Hughes into the conversation, whilst still finding time to make her own distinctive voice heard. 

 

It's a work that will leave the majority of members of the D. H. Lawrence Society very happy, as it uncritically reinforces the idea of Lawrence as a nature lover in the English Romantic tradition and a poet with an almost uncanny ontological insight into the essence of birds, beasts, and flowers. 

And in their hour long presentation at the NPL, this idea of Lawrence was further reinforced; it was almost as if the important challenge thrown down by the Indian author Amit Chaudhuri twenty-odd years ago to read Lawrence's poetry in light of poststructuralist theory has been completely forgotten [1].

 

Which is profoundly unfortunate in my view. For it results in an interpretation of Lawrence that not only fails to understand the radical nature of his aesthetic, but means he is sold short as a thinker-poet whose primary object is language. 

 

It's because Lawrence writes so well, that we believe he has captured the true nature or being of a snake, for example, when, actually, he dissolves such essentialism based on the idea of a fixed identity into a game of difference and becoming - which is why philosophers including Derrida and Deleuze are such admirers of Lawrence's poetry [2].     

 

 

III. 

 

Just to be clear: I enjoyed the event and wish Dixon and Robertson every success with their book (which has already garnered considerable praise).

 

However, they disappointed by refusing to take Lawrence seriously as a writer; preferring instead to think of him in all too human terms (thus the frequent references to biographical details, as if these somehow might illuminate the text or explain away its complex and often troubling character). 

They also disappointed by dismissing Lawrence's work as a painter in a lighthearted manner, saying it simply wasn't very good. Again, without wanting to go into too much detail here - as I've written at length on this subject elsewhere - this simply betrays an ignorance of what it is Lawrence is attempting to do on canvas; namely, produce an art of sensation that is concerned with the invisible forces and flows that shape the flesh via what Deleuze terms a very special violence. 

 

His is a non-representational depiction of the body without organs and therefore Lawrence is not overly concerned with anatomical fidelity, or reducing figures to the level of optical cliché. In other words, he is not trying capture a likeness and, by his own admission, his pictures are rolling in faults of technique - but that doesn't matter; Lawrence is not so much interested in that which is merely true-to-life, but that which is more true-to-life (we might call this phallic realism).   

 

In sum: just as Lawrence's poetry is primarily involved with language and the assembling of textual abstractions, his painting is involved with colour, line, and the forces of chaos; a violence that works upon the flesh and upon the canvas, distorting and deforming bodies and liberating pictures from the tyranny of the stereotype; a violence that knows nothing of symbolism or signification and cares nothing for narrative or illustration (for if painting has no model to depict, neither has it a story to tell).

 

Lawrence may not be a great painter, or even a very good one. But he's a better one than his critics realise - and a far more intelligent and sophisticated writer than they think him too.   

  

One of Robertson's illustrations for A Whistling of Birds (2023) feat. a squirrel 

next to Lawrence's astonishing Ink Sketch (1929) feat. a nude man and woman 

within a field of rhythm and desire demonstrating how waves 

of inorganic life exceed the bounds of organic activity.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Amit Chaudhuri, D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference': Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present, (Oxford University Press, 2003). 

      I have discussed this book and made reference to it elsewhere on this blog: click here. I might not agree with everything Chaudhuri says, but this is an important text whose challenge to the (almost wilfully naive) manner in which Lawrence is usually portrayed and his writing interpreted has still not been met by many within the Lawrence world.

 

[2] See for example Derrida's discussion of Lawrence's poem 'Snake' in volume one of The Beast and the Sovereign, trans. Geoffrey Bennington, edited by Michel Lisse, Marie-Louise Mallet, and Ginette Michaud (Chicago University Press, 2009).

      Readers might also be interested in a post dated 17 July 2015 on Lawrence, Derrida, and the snake: click here.

 

 

Re the use of the word feisty in the title of this post: click here. 

 

This post is for Chloe Rose Campbell and Tamara Ber.   

 

Halloween at the Kit Kat Club 1984/2024

Kit Cat Club Halloween Special: Sat. 26 Oct 2024

 omearalondon.com

 

 

I was amused to see that even ageing goth clubbers like to mark anniversaries and can be a bit wistful for times gone by; it makes these creatures of the night trying so hard to appear undead and vampiric reassuringly all too human after all. 

 

Anyway, for one night only, the famous Kit Kat Club [1] was reincarnated on Saturday for a Halloween special in the hope that it might be possible to summon the alternative spirit of the mid-1980s with a musical mix of post-punk, dark disco, and synthpop. 

 

The strictly enforced dress code consisting of  glam-goth, cyber, industrial, fetish, drag, burlesque, steampunk, etc. is apparently in place to protect the club's status as edgy and avant-garde and encourage individual imagination and diversity [2].

 

One can't help thinking, however, that its real aim is to create a safe space for those who, for whatever reason, feel threatened by street wear and casual clothing; as if a single pair of trainers might somehow challenge their beautifully crafted aesthetic and dispell the whole illusion of the night. 

 

According to an online flyer for the event (see above): 'There will also be legacy guests, fashionistas, Glampires, a Monsterlune Catwalk Show, two live bands and a dedicated area where we can immerse ourselves in nostalgia, with visuals, photos and music evoking memories of those classic '80s nights that defined a generation.'

 

Unsure if such a gathering would delight the original founder and godfather of goth Simon Hobart [3], or have him spinning in his grave, I decided to give it a miss. 

 

Besides, I've never been much of a clubber and was never really a goth. Although, having said that, there were gothic elements to my look in this period; as can be seen in the photo below taken on 31 October 1984, when, concidently, I paid my one and only visit to the Kit Kat ... [4]

 

 

S. A. von Hell looking a bit post-punk gothic

(Halloween 1984) 

 

Notes

 

[1] Operating out of a "converted warehouse known as the Pleasure Dive in Westbourne Grove", the Kit Kat would quickly become "London's premier goth hangout, providing a more glamorous and tongue-in-cheek alternative to its more po-faced rival, the Batcave in Soho".

      Lines quoted from David Hudson's obituary for Simon Hobart in The Guardian (2 November, 2005): click here.

 

[2] I'm actually paraphrasing from a statement concerning the dress policy of the Torture Garden, not the Kit Kat, though I'm sure both venues would justify their dress codes on the same grounds. See my post on Europe's largest fetish club published on 12 December, 2012: click here.

 

[3] Simon Hobart - who would go on to become a crucial figure on the gay club scene in London - launched the Kit Kat Club in February 1984. Following a huge police raid (intended to discover drugs) in January 1985, 20-year-old Hobart found himself on the front page of The Sun where he was described as the 'Godfather of Goth'. Sadly, Hobart died in 2005 (aged 41). See the obituary by David Hudson cited in note [1].

 

[4] Unfortunately, I don't remember much about my visit and, if my diary entry from 31 October 1984, can be trusted my experience of the Kit Kat was entirely uneventful; much as I'd like to report that I copped off with Princess Julia that night, I left at the relatively early time of 1.30 am and caught the nightbus home.

      Note that the photo was taken earlier that day in Soho Square (and not at the club).   

 

 

Eros und Freundschaft: Notes on the Hannah Arendt-Martin Heidegger-Walter Benjamin Triangle

Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

 

 

I.

 

At a 6/20 talk the other day on Walter Benjamin [1], some clever clogs in the audience posed the following thought experiment:

Imagine that Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin were both hanging perilously from a cliff edge and she could save the life of only one man; whose hand would Hannah Arendt reach for? 

 

This raised a few knowing laughs in the room, but it is, as a matter of fact, a perfectly serious question; one which obliges us to ponder where her ultimate loyalty lay: to her lover, or to a friend to whose cousin she was married?

 

Without guaranteeing that we'll arrive at a definitive answer, I thought it might be instructive nevertheless to examine the relationships between these three fascinating figures ...

 

 

II. 

 

Let's begin with a few remarks on the woman at the centre of this philosophical threesome and her relationship with Heidegger, who was not only a married man seventeen years her senior, but also her university tutor.

 

Born in Germany in 1906, Hannah was a pretty and brilliantly precocious Jewish child raised in a secular and progressive family, mostly by her mother, Martha (her father having died from syphilis when she was just seven years old) along strict Goethean lines.

 

Fiercely independent, Hannah studied classical literature and founded a philosophy circle whilst still at school, having read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason before her fourteenth birthday. After completing her secondary education in Berlin, Arendt studied at the University of Marburg under newly appointed professor Heidegger, with whom she formed a romantic as well as a close intellectual relationship exchanging love letters and philosophical ideas.

 

Indeed, despite everything that was to happen, Heidegger remained one of the most profound influences on her own work and Arendt continued to acknowledge him as the secret king ruling over the realm of thought (just as he would later confess that she had been the inspiration for his work on thinking as a form of passion) [2]. 

 

They remaind friends until his death in 1976. 

 

III.   

 

In September 1929, Arendt married Günther Siegmund Stern (aka Günther Anders), who, like her, had been a student of Heidegger's (they had first met in 1925, although she took little notice of him at the time). 

 

As mentioned, he also happened to be Benjamin's cousin and, during Arendt's exile in Paris from Hitler's Germany during the 1930s, she and Benjamin became close friends (but not, as far as I'm aware, lovers).  

 

Walter Benjamin is something of an odd duck: as Arendt recognised in the long introduction she wrote in 1955 to a collection of essays by Benjamin known in English as Illuminations [3]. 

 

In this text, she attempts to explain Benjamin's fate as a posthumous individual - i.e. one who, as Nietzsche says, only comes into their own after they die - by referencing his incomparable genius and the fact that this made it difficult to classify his writing. 

 

Not quite this and not quite that, Benjamin was someone who thought both poetically and philosophically, but without being either a poet or a philosopher. 

 

But Benjamin was also, according to Arendt, cursed with bad luck; he himself used to speak of the 'little hunchback' [bucklicht Männlein] who bedeviled him from earliest childhood and caused him to appear as a bit of a bungler (or what our American friends refer to as a screw-up). 

 

Who knows, perhaps this was one of the things Arendt found so attractive about him; hugely gifted, but, like Proust, unable to change a lightbulb, let alone the circumstances of his life; even when the latter threatened to crush him. Some women love winners; some women love losers.           

 

At any rate, Arendt and Benjamin - shared a certain vision of modernity (and, indeed, an angelic concept of history) and they loved to converse and exchange ideas, or play chess together. She admired the older man's "gestures and the way he held his head when listening and talking; the way he moved, his manners, but especially his style of speaking, down to his choice of words and the shape of his syntax; finally, his downright idiosyncratic tastes" [4]. 

 

But did she care for Benjamin (her friend) with the same intensity and devotion with which she cared for Heidegger (her former lover)? 

 

I doubt it. 

 

In fact, I doubt she even cared for her husband with the same passion (whom she divorced in 1937) and it's arguable that what she liked about the cousins was that they each reminded her in some way of Heidegger (whom Benjamin always regarded as his nemesis) [5]. 

 

Thus, despite the 6/20 speaker, Anja Steinbauer, expressing her hope that it would be Benjamin's hand Arendt would grab in the imaginary clifftop scenario set out above, I strongly suspect it would in fact be the latter's. 

 

Notes

 

[1] The paper, by Dr. Anja Steinbauer on Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project (1927-1940), was given at the 6/20 Club (London) on Sunday 20 October, 2024, hosted (as always) by Christian Michel, a French polymath who has graciously organised twice-monthly events at his west London home for twenty-odd years, during which time an impressive assortment of speakers have presented papers on a huge number of topics.  

 

[2] As might be imagined, Arendt faced a good deal of criticism for her continued admiration of Heidegger due to his involvement with (and support for) the Nazi Party after his election as rector at Freiburg University in 1933. But good on her, I say; isn't this evidence that love ultimately triumphs over ideology?

      For Arendt's description of Heidegger as the hidden king, see Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's biography Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (1982), p. 44. It was this work that first revealed their love affair, although it wasn't until 1995 that Elżbieta Ettinger published her controversial work on the relationship having gained access to their correspondence. 

      In 1998, all the letters between Hannah and Heidegger were finally published. See the English translation by Andrew Shields; Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger: Letters, 1925-1975, ed. Ursula Ludz (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004).

 

[3] Originally published in German as Schriften, this collection of essays, edited by Arendt, was translated into English by Harry Zorn and published as Illuminations by Jonathan Cape in 1970. 

 

[4] Hannah Arendt, Introduction to Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zorn (The Bodley Head, 2015), pp. 24-25. 

 

[5] See Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis (eds.), Sparks Will Fly: Benjamin and Heidegger (SUNY Press, 2015), a collection of essays which considers points of affinity and friction between these two thinkers. 

      It's interesting that, despite being contemporaries, neither man directly engaged with the work of the other, even though Arendt was keen to point out that Benjamin actually shared more common philosophical ground with Heidegger than he did with his Marxist friends; see her introduction to Illuminations, p. 50.