ONLY CONNECT 1 PLEASURE GROUND

ONLY CONNECT

2 five exercises in aesthetics

Christophe Van Eecke

Lokaal 01 ‘Verweile doch! Du bist so schön’

Goethe, Faust, Part I

4 5

‘Once I could speak joyfully of beautiful things, thinking to be understood; – now I cannot anymore; for it seems to me that no one regards them. Wherever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty.’

John Ruskin TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction, 9

Chapter One: Better Living Through Art Chapter Four: Engaging The World War and Resentment, 24 Making the World, 289 The Power of Vision, 34 Unmaking the World, 299 Divine Substance, 39 The Brutality of Fact, 304 The Therapeutic Fallacy, 43 The Quickening, 312 Narrative Didactics, 47 The Order of Things, 321 Feeling and Form, 56 Dionysian Mysteries, 329 Virtual Spaces, 70 Cleansing Cleanliness, 339 Fields of Vision, 80 Irreligious Rituals, 348 Virtual Life, 90 Lost in the Stars: A Materialist Manifesto, 354 Against Form, 98 Demonic Time, 357 Genius Redeemed, 104 Comes Undone, 364 Inventing the Human, 109 Chapter Five: Frail Gazing Chapter Two: Artworld Inc. Pathetic Fallacies, 371 6 Art Criticism After the End of Art, 122 Having the World, 378 7 Skirting Langer, 131 Doubling, 386 A Short History of the Avant-Garde, 140 Body Doubles, 389 Kondylian Combinations, 145 Pictures Imperfect, 392 Art and Philosophy, 154 Scattergorising the World, 404 Beauty and Ugliness, 163 Optics of Desire, 410 Killing Art, 169 Imagining Petals, 416 Avant-Garde After the End of Avant-Garde, 177 Living Memory, 422 Radical Chic for Chic Radicals, 184 Inner Space, 432 Magmatic Poetics, 441 Chapter Three: Getting Physicals Perchance to Dream, 445 A Body of Art, 193 Soft Sightings, 450 From Performance to Concept, 199 Cinechroma, 459 Engaging the Audience, 204 Gardens of the Underworld, 467 Lethal Objections, 214 Into the Garden, 473 The Meating of Porn and Art on a Dissecting Table, 219 Do Androids Wank to Electric Wet Dreams?, 228 Bibliography, 482 Mathesis Sexualis, 238 Scientia Sexualis, 243 Pleasure Machines, 251 Bodice Rest and Motion, 259 Moving Towards Stillness, 268 The Belly of a Dyslectic, 277 Introduction

This book takes its title from the epigraph of E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End (1910) and takes as its own epigraph a phrase from Goethe’s Faust that is meant to recall 8 Immanuel Kant’s idea of purposiveness without purpose 9 in the experience of art. As such, the title really does say it all. It is the project of this book to present, in a series of interconnected essays, a philosophy of art that seeks to demonstrate how art is one of the primary ways in which human beings express their connectedness to the world. The book was developed out of a series of four essays written for the exhibition project Pleasure Ground at Lokaal 01 in Breda, The Netherlands, in the Spring of 2010. Pleasure Ground was an investigation of the relationship between an art institution and the artists it exhibits and the mutual engagement this implies. My task consisted in framing the exhibition process with four essays that would investigate several aspects of commitment or engagement in art. These essays were published in ThRu, the theoretical journal published by Lokaal 01, and form the backbone of the first four chapters. The texts were heavily edited and expanded for the book. Chapter Five is entirely new. what you should cut and what you should keep in a book. Although the book develops an argument, the five chapters But I have always felt that editors are a frustrated breed of can be read as self-contained pieces. Every chapter in turn people who are incapable of writing good books themselves consists of a series of sections that develop its argument. and who get off telling other people how to write theirs But many of these sections can also be read as self- to compensate. I also suspect that there is a conspiracy of contained essays. This applies especially to the sections that philologists at work here. First, they get themselves a job offer an extended analysis of the work of one individual editing your texts into something entirely at odds with artist. As such, Chapter Three ends with a very long your intentions. Then, forty years on, if you happen to have discussion of the films of Andy Warhol, the first chapter become famous, they get themselves another job editing the contains a discussion of David Hockney, and the fourth critical edition of your works, restoring the text to resemble deals at some length with Francis Bacon. Chapter Five is “the author’s original intentions”. But since you had those structured almost entirely as a series of such interconnected intentions to begin with, why tamper with them? Would essays. So the reader should feel free to browse. If the size we require a painter to submit his painting to an editor and of the book seems rather intimidating but you have a liking then make the recommended changes to his canvas? Would 10 for Warhol, you might simply read those sections and we require Rodin to lose the thinking person on his already 11 hopefully be triggered by that discussion to find out how my alarmingly overcrowded Gates of Hell? I don’t think so. approach to Warhol’s films is embedded in the philosophical Filmmakers have to deal with this kind of shit all the time discussions elsewhere in the book. But readers would in any because film is all about investors and money and people case be well-advised to first read the sections dealing with crunching popcorn and spilling drinks in the aisles – but Susanne K. Langer in the first chapter. Since Langer provides usually history proves the director’s cut right. Obviously, any the philosophical foundations on which this book is built, intelligent writer will be open to constructive criticism. But some knowledge of her work will be helpful. But apart from if and how he or she deals with it is entirely his or her affair. that, feel free to pick and choose. Is my treatment of Early So don’t kill your darlings. As Nigella knows, ‘in cooking, German Romanticism a bore? Don’t complain about it, go as in writing, you must please yourself to please others’ read about pornography in Chapter Three! If SM is your (Lawson 1998: viii). thing, rush to Chapter Four to discover its metaphysics. But Given the structure of the book and the many excursions if you’re not keen on Derek Jarman you will probably need and diversions that people it, it seems sensible to provide to seek professional help. an overview of the several chapters, so that the reader may For me the patchwork structure of the book meant that I did know what can be found where and how it should all be not have to kill my darlings. I know that there is a law of the connected. There are many threads running through the literary land which states that you need an editor to tell you several chapters and I trust the reader will often be triggered to connect (details in) discussions in later chapters with much more persuasive account of how art works. In fact, elements encountered in earlier chapters. It is impossible it is the most persuasive philosophy of art I know. Langer’s (and tiresome) to constantly point out such possible links. ideas are illustrated with, among other things, a section on Reading the book several times will certainly help bring the work of David Hockney. Finally, at the end of the chapter, out the connections. Among our constant concerns are we return to Early German Romanticism to find there the relationship between feeling (or meaning) and form, the roots of our postmodern concept of the self, which is the transformation of commonplace objects, voyeurism, illustrated in a discussion of Shakespeare, who made us. fetishism, pornography, creation or world-making, the The second chapter is called Artworld Inc. and investigates burden of identity, and several kinds of embodiment. the way the larger artworld influences our relationship with This intricate web of connections means that the reader art. An important element in our discussion is the influence is invited and even encouraged to constantly make such of philosophy on the way we perceive and judge works of connections, also to things that are not in the book. That is art. Most of the chapter is devoted to a heroic attempt at the point of Only Connect. refuting the work of Arthur C. Danto and his ideas on the Chapter One, Better Living Through Art, takes the so- transfiguration of the commonplace in art. But we also take 12 called “culture wars” in America as a starting point for issue with the emergence of the PhD in the arts. Along the 13 a discussion of the artist’s relationship to the larger way we sketch two histories of the avant-garde that are community. This is an old philosophical question, at least at odds with Danto’s account of the avant-garde. One of as old as Plato’s Politics: does the artist have some kind of our counterexamples is the German philosopher Panajotis moral or social responsibility or not? The chapter argues Kondylis, whose concept of postmodernism will stay with that those who feel that art does have a role to play in our us for the rest of the book. Finally, we will also address the moral well-being are guilty of the “therapeutic fallacy”. issue of the avant-garde after the end of avant-garde. Since Several sections of the chapter sketch a brief outline of the both history, art, and the avant-garde have been pronounced history of the therapeutic fallacy, specifically in American dead quite a few times, it is interesting to see how the art, where art has often become very politicised. There is a artworld tries to maintain an air of progressive avant- brief detour through German Romantic philosophy which gardism in view of this tragic demise. will prove useful further in the book. This discussion of the The third chapter, Getting Physcials, is devoted to the therapeutic fallacy finally leads into a critique of Martha body, which is put into play in performance art and Nussbaum. She makes several claims about the moral value pornography. There are two main themes running through of art, especially literature, but we will argue that her claims this chapter. First, it attempts to provide a definition of are not very persuasive. The major part of the chapter is what performance art actually is (surprisingly, such a devoted to a discussion of Susanne K. Langer, who gives a definition is rather hard to come by in existing discussions of performance art); second, it tries to define what kind of at beautiful things is a wonderful pastime and the entire art pornography is and what its distinctive features might chapter is a defence of this much-maligned practice. be. This soon leads us into a discussion of the body as a We start our discussion with John Ruskin’s notion of mechanical sex object. We trace part of the history of this the pathetic fallacy, which forbids us to see the world as concept, which allows us to celebrate the Marquis de Sade animated. It soon becomes clear that the general trend of in an entire section devoted to his divine godless universe. the present book is quite at odds with this idea, although This chapter also contains elements of a philosophy of we do reclaim Ruskin for beauty. After that, it’s beauty voyeurism and fetishism. The final sections of the chapter all the way. The long chapter is a tapestry of interrelated are devoted to a monographic study of the work of Andy discussions of artists that take up many topics from the Warhol. earlier chapters. Animism, beauty, memory, fetishism, With Chapter Four, Engaging The World, we start our and the joys of looking are several of the themes that are swerve away from politicised art and we venture out in traced through the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, search of beauty. Our guide on this search is the American Wolfgang Tillmans (who takes us back to our discussion of philosopher Elaine Scarry. There are two major parts in voyeurism and fetishism), Nan Goldin, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 14 her work (at least from the perspective of our concerns): a John Boorman, Terence Davies, and Jesús Franco (an unusual 15 discussion of pain and a discussion of beauty. These two, suspect for a philosophy of art). Along the way, many other apparently opposite, concerns are linked in her work. So artists are discussed. We end, I hope, in beauty, in Derek if we want to get at beauty, we must first deal with pain. Jarman’s garden. The structure of the chapter runs as follows: if we live in Several recently published books came to my attention too a world of alienation (and we claim, along with Marx, that late to include them in my discussion. Armando Maggi’s we do) then we must first get through this alienation before The Resurrection of the Body (2009) covers much of the ground we can engage in a new relationship with the world. The on Pasolini’s late work from a point of view that seems work of Hermann Nitsch serves as a gateway to such a similar to mine (I first published my extensive discussion rebirth, explaining how masochistic rituals (a continuation of Pasolini’s Saló in the Summer 2007 issue of Cinemagie). of themes from the previous chapter) can be an incentive I love Richard Sennett’s The Fall of Public Man (1977) and to a more intense awareness of the world. By way of finale regret I did not come across The Craftsman (2008) sometime we offer an extended analysis of Béla Tarr’s film Sátántángo, sooner. Hermann Nitsch recently published his magnum which is all the metaphysics we need today. opus, the massive, three-volume Das Sein (2009). Reading it Elaine Scarry is also our guide in the fifth and final chapter, is a month’s work and could not be accomplished before Frail Gazing, which seeks to substitute what I call the “frail deadline. Also, I regret I had to omit, for reasons of space gaze” for that ocular monster, the “male gaze”. Looking and structure, sections on Coil, Oleg Kulik, and others. The line needs to be drawn somewhere. Readers who pornography in a November 2010 lecture, just before the want the shortest possible introduction to the experience book went to press. Sofie Verdoodt invited me on both of masochism as discussed in this book should seek out (and other) occasions and it is always a pleasure to speak director João Pedro Rodrigues’ mighty O Fantasma (2000), at OFFoff. Through happy coincidence, Tom Van Imschoot which makes visible many sensations and experiences that invited me to lecture on Scarry in his seminar at Sint-Lucas previously seemed to resist representation. (Ghent) just as I was writing the sections on Scarry for Finally, some notes on the material that is usually gathered this book. These earlier texts and lectures have not been under the heading ‘Preface’. These are the thank you notes copy-pasted together to create the semblance of a book. and the references to material published before elsewhere. Rather, the earlier texts were treated as research to feed Much of the material in this book draws on essays published on, not sources to copy. Only on a very few occasions have in the last five years. Since I did not think it appropriate I scavenged my own earlier essays and excerpted longer to make endless references to my own work in the text, I pieces of text. This applies especially to the discussion have simply listed the relevant items in the Bibliography. of Early German Romanticism in Chapter One and the My discussions of the PhD in the arts, Anthony Goicolea, discussion of Scarry and Marx in Chapter Three. These 16 and Terence Davies draw on pieces published in rekto:verso. sections reproduce, in sometimes heavily edited form, 17 If I manage to slip in my own definition of the sublime in material published in two booklets that are available online the very last paragraph of the book, this is entirely due from Lokaal 01: Absolute Beginnings (2009) and Stock Footage & to the fact that I have previously elaborated on it in that Shock Tactics (2009). same journal in a piece on “cinetrauma”. My discussions of Finally, then, for the many thanks due to others. First and voyeurism and masochism, along with some material on foremost, I would like to thank the crew at Lokaal 01 for Rorty and Goldin, were first essayed in Streven. Discussions supporting and publishing this book. Once the idea of a of Warhol, Pasolini, Boorman (and affiliated films), and book was underway, I ran with it; a kidnapping operation Tarr draw on material published in a series of essays for that was most graciously tolerated and even encouraged Cinemagie. The discussion of radical chic for chic radicals by everyone at Lokaal 01. Nobody suffered heart-attacks draws on material presented in Metropolis M. My brief when the book kept getting bigger and bigger. I would also presentation of Regula Maria Müller draws on an essay like to thank the editors of rekto:verso, Cinemagie, Streven, written for one of Regula’s artist’s books. and Metropolis M for so often giving me carte blanche in the The material on Nitsch was first presented, in a somewhat choice of topic and the mode of analysis in the essays they briefer incarnation, as a public lecture at OFFoff in Ghent always (but no doubt sometimes grudgingly) published. in 2009. The audience at OFFoff also got a preview of These essays were an excellent playing ground to try out my musings on the link between performance art and ideas and approaches that I hope have come to some kind of fruition in this book. Especially my work at rekto:verso was AEA Danto, After the End of Art good learning. I can only imagine my friends’ dismay when PDA Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art TC Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace they hear that after all those essays they will now have to suffer through an entire book containing more of the same. KdU Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft

My research wasn’t subsidised by any research grant, so FF Langer, Feeling and Form I ain’t thankin’ no government. Since I have no scientific MI Langer, Mind. Volume I PA Langer, Problems of Art community to bask in, nobody needs to be thanked for PNK Langer, Philosophy in a New Key reading earlier versions, correcting my mistakes, or thinking PS Langer, Philosophical Sketches in my stead. However, over the course of the years I have OMT Nitsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater benefited from discussions with (in alphabetical order) Antoon Braeckman (who pointed me towards Kondylis PJ Nussbaum, Poetic Justice

and Manfred Frank), Jean-Marie Bytebier (with whom I BBJ Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just share a way of looking at trees for extended periods of BP Scarry, The Body in Pain DB Scarry, Dreaming by the Book time), Linda Hoo Hui Lan, Sander Jongen, Kris Van Dessel, 18 Karel Van Haesebrouck, Tom Van Imschoot, Sofie Verdoodt, 19 and Frederik Vergaert. I hope I haven’t overlooked anyone. Many of these people have encouraged my work from the very start, although this never prevented them from airing constructive criticism where needed. Finally, but not in the least, I dedicate this book to Kris, my partner, who has had to live with it for the better part of our relationship. He has also created my website (www. christophevaneecke.be) and is the cause of a certain obsession with Nigella (‘Now really, how difficult was that?’).

Sigla For ease of reference I have introduced a number of sigla to refer to books and sources that are frequently referred to. They are listed here. Full bibliographical details can be retrieved in the Bibliography. 20 21 Chapter One

BETTER LIVING THROUGH ART 23

When Plato designed his ideal state, he felt the poets should be kept out. They were an unruly lot who threatened the moral fabric of the polity by presenting misleadingly immoral images of the gods. Poetry, to be permissible, must strengthen morale. In the Sophist it is the visual artist who comes under attack. Plato thought that the material world was only an imperfect copy of an ideal world of ideas. An image made by an artist was therefore a copy of a copy of reality and could only lead to falsehood and misrepresentation. Plato was no friend to the arts. Many centuries later Friedrich Schiller also mused on the morality of art in his letters on the aesthetic education of man, published in 1795. Schiller wasn’t quite as pessimistic as Plato and he believed that the theatre, which (as a dramatist) was his favoured art, could provide the public with moral lessons attractively packaged in entertaining sto- ries. In that way the theatre could be an invaluable contribu- Arts (NEA), which is to say that it was partially paid for with tion to public morality and education. The idea that art can taxpayers’ money. However, the hullabaloo over Serrano’s and should somehow help us become better people has been picture was to become part of a much larger controversy that at the heart of aesthetics and morality for centuries. More focused on a major Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective (Bau- often than not art is attacked or defended on the grounds of erlein 2009: 89-95). On December 9, 1988, the Mapplethorpe its supposed moral effects and not on grounds of aesthetic retrospective The Perfect Moment opened at the Institute for achievement. In recent times we have seen an upsurge of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia. It would later travel moral concern with the arts, as in the so-called “culture to Washington and Cincinnati. The exhibition showed a wide wars” that have ravaged American artistic life since the late selection of photographs, including the infamous X Portfolio, 1980s. Both opponents and defenders of the arts argue from a series of thirteen images showing men involved in extreme the idea that art has moral effects on the public, desirable acts of sadomasochism. This exhibition had also been partial- or undesirable effects depending on which side of the politi- ly funded with an NEA grant. Both Serrano’s and Mappletho- cal spectrum a person chooses to locate herself. In this way rpe’s work came under attack from the American Family the debate on both sides implies that artists have some sort Association, who alerted D’Amato to the scandal. On May 18, 24 of social responsibility: voices from the Right feel art should 1989, thirty-six senators signed a letter demanding changes 25 bolster traditional values, voices from the Left feel art should to the NEA policy so ‘that shocking, abhorrent and completely speak for the oppressed. Neither party seems to believe that undeserving art would not get money’ (Morrisroe 1995: 372). it is the foremost business of art to be beautiful or of out- On June 12, 1989, it was announced that the Corcoran Gallery standing aesthetic value. All these questions, however, raise a in Washington D.C. had decided to cancel the Perfect Moment much more fundamental issue about the nature of art: what exhibition in view of the controversy. This caused outrage in is it? How does it work? What does it do? Such questions the art community and on June 30, a protest was organised must be dealt with before we can say anything about the way outside the Corcoran with protesters projecting slides of art functions in society. Mapplethorpe’s works onto the facade of the building. To Ca- mille Paglia, who commented on the events in an essay, this War and Resentment protest represented what she called ‘Mapplethorpe’s essence, The culture wars officially started on May 18, 1989, when his spectral identity as a suffering Romantic artist forever Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato tore apart a reproduc- outside the pale. The demonstration ingeniously replayed, tion of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987) on the Senate floor. without knowing it, the cinema of Blake’s great poem “Lon- Serrano’s photograph showed a plastic crucifix immersed in don,” where solitary, excluded voices smear or mar the cold the artist’s own urine and had been shown in an exhibition stone walls of society’s institutions’ (Paglia 1993: 41). partially funded through the National Endowment for the On July 26, the Senate approved restrictions proposed by Jesse Helms, Republican senator for North Carolina. These restric- tions demanded that the NEA would not ‘promote, dissemi- nate or produce’ a veritable catalogue of offensive materials, namely: ‘(1) obscene or indecent materials, including but not limited to depictions of sadomasochism, homo-eroticism, the exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts; or (2) material which denigrates the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or non-religion; or, (3) material which denigrates, debases, or reviles a person, group or class of citizens on the basis of race, creed, sex, handicap, age or national origin’ (Hughes 1994: 163). Much could be said about this amendment, first and foremost the fact that it casts its net so widely as to become virtually useless. Any- thing could be objected to by just about anyone according to 26 the phrasings of this text. What, for instance, could conceiv- 27 ably be meant by someone’s ‘religion or non-religion’? And would Helms support the suppression of religious speech that reviles homosexuals on the grounds that it denigrates on the basis of sex? In the end, it didn’t really matter because the Senate voted the restrictions down on September 29. But that was not the end of the controversy, for in March 1990 The Perfect Moment, by now surrounded by a heady atmosphere of scandal and prurience, opened at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, where obscenity charges were lodged against Dennis Barrie, the Center’s director. On October 5, 1990, however, both Barrie and the CAC were acquitted by a jury because the prosecution had failed to show that Map- plethorpe’s work lacked artistic merit. ‘The jury was unani- mous in deciding that Mapplethorpe’s pictures appealed to a prurient interest in sex, and that they were patently offen- sive, but they couldn’t agree that they lacked artistic merit’ (Morrisroe 1995: 375). This in effect sunk the prosecution’s lieved that art history was written by and for men and sought case, for the three counts must be fulfilled in order to deem a to redress the imbalance by recovering female artists from work legally obscene. the mists of the past. This research has brought to light some The Perfect Moment controversy was a highly publicised case, interesting women artists but it has not changed the general but it was only one in a series of conservative attacks on the outline of art history. arts and the media. But the Left has been just as repressive Parallel to the rise of gender feminism the 1980s also saw the and many leftists, especially militant feminists (but also sev- rise of so-called “issue-based art,” which is a highly politi- eral other groups, notably gay activists), have made concerted cised form of art about social oppression. In no particular efforts to police public speech, education, the arts, and the order this movement yielded feminist art, gay or lesbian media in similar ways. The 1980s saw the rise of so-called art, African-American art, and any kind of minority art one “gender feminism”. Gender feminists are not ordinary femi- cares to imagine. This vogue was born from ‘the notion that nists. The tradition of feminism as it was conceived in the one of the specific tasks of the contemporary artist was to nineteenth century finds its expression in what is called “eq- give a voice to groups that in some way saw themselves as uity feminism”: the demand for equal rights and freedoms disadvantaged’ (Lucie-Smith 2001: 207). Most issue-based 28 for women, but with no demands for special treatment and art was dull and preachy and barely bothered to rise above 29 without rancour or hatred towards men. Gender feminism the level of public whining. But there was no need to rise is much more radical and displays an outspoken hostility because feminists had made the idea of aesthetic quality towards men. Christina Hoff Sommers has called it a ‘femi- subservient to social concerns. A work could become valid as nism of resentment that rationalises and fosters a wholesale art on the strength of its being an expression of the suffer- rancour in women that has little to do with moral indigna- ing of the oppressed. According to Robert Hughes, who was tion’ (Hoff Sommers 1995: 41). Gender feminism is a kind of severely critical of this development, issue-based art led to identity politics that claims that women have been, and still ‘the belief that mere expressiveness is enough; that I become are, oppressed and abused by a patriarchy that condones an artist by showing you my warm guts and defying you to and even encourages violence against women. The mission reject them. [...] I am a victim: how dare you impose your of gender feminism is not simply to do away with the many aesthetic standards on me?’ (Hughes 1994: 188). Feminists grievous discriminations women face in the world, which is a believed they had to police the arts for offensive materials, project that no sensible person could oppose, but to create a very much in the way that conservatives wanted to keep rift between men and women. They are at war with the pa- publicly funded art clean from immoral elements. Porn came triarchy and seek to denounce, shame, and, if at all possible, heavily under attack, especially from latter-day Puritans like censor all utterances, writings, opinions, or works of art that Catharine MacKinnon. Male artists such has Picasso became they deem offensive to women. Gender feminists further be- virtual untouchables in women’s studies because of their per- ceived sexism and were replaced with the work of oppressed approach considered to be unacceptable because it implicitly women and with the joys of quilt-making, which became the denigrates those who are given lesser status. The very idea of ruling feminist metaphor for art in the new, liberated mode. “genius” is regarded with suspicion as elitist and “masculin- One of the most saddening aspects of the feminist hysteria ist”’ (Hoff Sommers 1995: 64-65). The second response was of- was its attack on beauty itself, lead by Naomi Wolf’s book The ten used to buttress the first and relies on deconstruction in Beauty Myth (1990), which claims that beauty is an ideological the New Historicist mode: by “demonstrating” that works of tool instilled in women as a form of self-surveillance. Beauty art are mere “effects” of “social energies,” the idea of the in- was perceived as making women complicit in their own sub- dividual artist as a creative genius could be done away with. ordination. Also, beauty, and especially physical beauty in Thus, the death of the author was cheerfully proclaimed. Ob- women, was guilty of inviting the male gaze, an objectifying viously, there is nothing wrong with contextualising works of way of looking that reduced beautiful women to mere sex art to enhance understanding. But to see works of art as mere objects in the eye of lascivious beholders of evil intent. effects of anonymous social energies, about which very little In literature departments the canon came under attack. If can be proved (the idea of social energies is just as ephemeral art history was a male conspiracy to keep women back, then and metaphysical as Freud’s subconscious or the argument 30 the history of literature was the work of “dead white Euro- from design in religious circles), is quite something else. Har- 31 pean males”. This diagnosis elicited two responses. The first old Bloom opposed New Historicism and pointedly remarked was the substitution of contemporary minority literature of that ‘William Shakespeare wrote thirty-eight plays, twenty- questionable literary quality for the more canonical texts that four of them masterpieces, but social energy has never writ- were read in the traditional curriculum. This was euphemisti- ten a single scene. The death of the author is a trope, and a cally called an “expansion” of the canon. Such an expansion rather pernicious one; the life of the author is a quantifiable might be marginally tolerable if the substitutes were works of entity’ (Bloom 1994: 37). literary merit, but, as Harold Bloom points out, ‘the “expan- Bloom famously baptised these trends in feminism, minority sion of the Canon” has meant the destruction of the Canon, thinking, and New Historicism the “School of Resentment”: since what is being taught includes by no means the best fuelled by a misguided sense of egalitarianism and social writers who happen to be women, African, Hispanic, or Asian, justice they reject any kind of greatness and desperately try but rather the writers who offer little but the resentment to drag everything down to their own level. ‘Originality is the they have developed as part of their sense of identity’ (Bloom great scandal that resentment cannot accommodate’ (o.c. 25). 1994: 7). Christina Hoff Sommers remarks that the gender Talent and genius are denied, standards of quality and excel- feminists ‘challenge the very idea of “great art,” “great litera- lence are jettisoned as oppressive tools of discrimination, ture,” and [...] “great science.” Talk of “greatness” and “master- and politics takes the place of aesthetics because beauty is in pieces” implies a ranking of artists and works, a “hierarchical” the gaze of the rapist. And so extremes meet in the American culture wars. Both the Right and the Left have tried to censor the new edition, leaving some pages virtually blank. This kind art and language. The Right wants to censor anything that is of ‘pre-emptive self-censorship’ is made necessary because, offensive to their religious, patriotic, or other moral beliefs, as Waugh dramatically but entirely justifiably claims, ‘we fear the Left would like to censor anything that transgresses for our livelihoods and our freedom and safety, as well as, the norm of political correctness. So common sense, art, more pragmatically and importantly, for the ability to distrib- and education get stuck between what Robert Hughes has ute this edition’ if such possibly offensive images are left in called the two PCs: Patriotic Correctness and Political Cor- (Falkon 2006: 21). rectness (Hughes 1997: 619). In both cases the censorship is The third example of PC censorship is taken from my own founded on the belief that art has a public role to fulfil and experience. Like many of my friends, I have a Facebook page. that this role is somehow moral in nature. Art educates, art One day I decided to create ‘The Aiden Shaw Appreciation makes us better people. According to your definition of what Society’ as a fan page for the now-legendary gay porn star. constitutes a “good” human being you can write your own It was meant in a tongue-in-cheek way, as the name of the catalogue of unwanted expressions, language, art-works, page suggests. There was no offensive material on the page, ideas, television programs, and so on. This wave of Political only a picture of Shaw’s bare chest (with pants on) and a brief 32 Correctness resulted in a series of cases of actual censorship text extolling his fine physique. The page only had a hand- 33 that were often so bizarre that they could have been funny ful of fans, since my stock of Facebook-friends is limited to if the situation wasn’t so desperately depressing. In a much- people I actually know, many of whom are not even gay. On publicised case, Nancy Stumhofer, an English instructor at January 31, 2010, I received a warning from Facebook that Pennsylvania State University, pressured administrators into my Appreciation Society had been removed because it vio- removing a reproduction of Goya’s The Naked Maya from a lated the Terms of Use, which forbid groups that are ‘hateful, classroom because it created “a hostile work environment” threatening, or obscene’. Since the page was in appreciation (Hoff Sommers 1995: 270-271; Paglia 1995: 50). The sheer force of a person, I assume it wasn’t hateful or threatening. So it of the PC movement, and the very real dangers of legal ac- must have been obscene, despite the fact that there were no tion it entails, often resulted in self-censorship by authors offensive pictures or foul language on it. Therefore, I must and artists. This was the case when scholar Thomas Waugh assume that the very fact that Shaw is a gay male porn star edited what he diplomatically calls ‘a “reasonably faithful” was deemed obscene and offensive by Facebook. At the same facsimile edition’ of Felix Lance Falkon’s classic book of gay time, however, several politicians from the (extreme) right graphic art, Gay Art. A Historic Collection, originally published maintain Facebook pages without interference, regardless of in 1972. This book collected homo-erotic drawings from the the fact that they stand for hateful, racist, and often threat- sexual underground and contained several images that sug- ening ideologies. Apparently, a gay male porn star is obscene gested sex with minors. Several such images were cropped in per se, but right-wing racists are not. This gives an idea of the kind of PC democracy and freedom Facebook stands for. was considered by many to be the Second Coming. By con- Finally, the e-mail closed with the warning that ‘further she- sequence, Shaker beliefs allowed great equality between the nanigans wit’in Ye Olde Facebook’s borders mayhapse cause sexes, as God had become manifest both through Jesus Christ ye arrrrrcount t’ be used fer cannon fodder!’ There is some- and through Ann Lee. But Lee also held strict views on world- thing unsettling about this phrase. Its jocular tone suggests liness. Of jewellery and decoration she said: ‘You may let the that I’ve really just been a very bad boy and should know moles and bats have them; that is, the children of this world; better by now. It treats the whole affair as a quibble among for they set their hearts upon such things; but the people of friends. But where’s the joke in censorship? God do not want them’ (Kirk 1997: 52). However, in his fine study of Shaker art and culture, James T. Kirk rightly points The Power of Vision out that the Shakers were ‘not against beauty, but against The idea that art has a moral role to play in society is at the ostentation’ (o.c. 54) and that they ‘usually sought to expunge heart of the American concept of art and can be traced back unnecessary details from thoughts, daily living, and designs’ to the historical roots of the republic. The three most impor- (o.c. 37). As a consequence, Shaker culture has created objects tant religious sects to seek refuge in America from religious of great economy but splendid beauty. Several Shaker phrases 34 intolerance in the Old World, namely Puritans, Quakers, and give us insight into the principles they used when creating 35 Shakers, disapproved of art to a great extent. The 17th century objects for use, in the first instance architecture and furni- New England Puritans had a profound distrust of the image. ture: ‘Regularity is beautiful’; ‘There is great beauty in har- This distrust extended to religious art because it fell under mony’; ‘Order is the creation of beauty’; ‘Beauty rests on util- the ban on graven images in Deuteronomy. And since the ity’. So Shaker culture does not reject beauty, but for Shakers Puritans did not approve of excessive worldliness the idea of beauty ‘has to do with order [and] is judged by perception of painting a landscape for the sake of a landscape was equally unity and appropriateness’ (o.c. 55). anathema. The only kind of painting they did commission American attitudes towards art would change with the ad- was portraiture, which had no “expressive” goal but simply vent of Romanticism, not because the religious ideas behind served to preserve a person’s features for posterity (Hughes the dislike disappeared, but because Romanticism offered 1997: 32). The Quakers were in some respects the opposite a concept of art, and especially of landscape painting, that of the austere Puritans, for they celebrated ‘unstructured, was commensurable with the religious ideas of Puritans. The ecstatic, spirit-led relationships with God’ (Kirk 1997: 11). But Romantics started to explore the relationship between man just like the Puritans they disapproved of worldliness. The and nature and saw nature as a guide to divine presence in Shakers evolved out of the Quakers and were especially noto- the material world. But the rise of landscape painting as the rious for the ecstatic dancing during their religious services. quintessential American genre did not happen overnight. In Their most important early spiritual leader was Ann Lee, who the early decades of the republic portraiture dominated the visual arts to the extent that it became a burden on artists’ influences on health, morals and politics’ (o.c. 127). As John ability to develop their craft: artists were so dependent upon Armstrong points out, ‘the belief that it makes a difference commissions that they had to devote most of their attention what you contemplate relies upon the assumption that what and energy to portraits. There was a group of artists, how- you contemplate somehow gets inside you; contemplation ever, who were fortunate enough to have wealthy families or is the spiritual analogue to eating’ (Armstrong 2000: 99-100). patrons who could afford (and were willing) to finance a trip People become infected by what they see. An interesting to the Old World in order that the artist might study the art effect of this new moral perspective on art was ‘increased of Europe. When these artists returned to the United States, respect for mind and artistic creativity. Uncontaminated they found that the European aristocratic approach to art nature, the standard of perfection for Americans at home, was at odds with the American perception of artists as crafts- developed a competitor. God revealed His true greatness not men. For Americans, painting was a trade like any other. But through His own works, but through the man-made objects as art-historian Neil Harris explains in his study of The Artist which He inspired.’ From now on art could no longer be seen in American Society (1966), the artists who had sojourned in simply as a trade because ‘art’s triumphs were also nature’s, Europe ‘had spent years developing techniques to differenti- but nature ripened and extended. [...] True masterpieces were 36 ate themselves from mere visual craftsmen, and they did not distinguished not by manual tricks or sleight of hand, but by 37 even consider surrendering their hard-won technical mastery a grandeur of mind. [...] The purpose of painting, therefore, and their intellectual objectives to straightforward record- was not to imitate nature’s beauties but to present a great ing of the ordinary. Higher, more transcendental goals alone and original concept. “The great artists do not give us nature, could justify their sacrifices and trials. Art was “divine,” and but give us themselves,” wrote James Freeman Clarke. [...] The divinity precluded compromises with vulgar needs’ (Harris artist’s primary function was to be true to his own concep- 1982: 87). tualisations, enriching natural views with personal insights’ Soon, American artists and critics ‘produced grandiose (Harris 1982: 131). conceptions of art as a moral and political instrument, and The aesthetic experiences of Americans abroad often took a panacea for human ills’ (o.c. 124). It is difficult to over- on a near-religious intensity. This rapture was shared by the estimate the importance of the Amercian artists’ travels many clergy who travelled to Europe and who returned to through Europe for this shift of perspective. As Neil Harris the homeland to testify to the transforming power of the has pointed out, ‘it is impossible to accept the continual visual arts. One of the reasons the clergy became convinced emphasis on the moral efficacy of art objects, as threats or of art’s moral power was the fact that the Catholic church bulwarks to the established order, unless it is understood had for centuries been the most important patron of the arts that the art experience of many travellers was so traumatic in Europe. Aesthetic rapture was most often experienced that they believed vision could exert permanent and radical in front of Renaissance and Baroque saints in transports of ecstasy. The very force of these works made it clear that art the landscape experience was that of God as supreme artist, could be a powerful ally for any religion and it seemed a pity it need only be a short step to the idea that artists were seers that American Puritans had denied themselves the benefits or priests. [...] They were trained to read the Book of nature, of such a valuable tool. From the 1830s on Americans began in which God’s will was inscribed, as surely as in the Bible’ to look favourably upon such new ideas imported from the (Hughes 1997: 138-139). Old World. The idea of art as religious revelation pleased Americans because there had always been an element of Divine Substance pantheism in Puritanism, which tended to see ‘evidence But the Transcendentalists did not think of all this on their of divine planning in natural disasters and windfalls’ (o.c. own. In fact, much of their philosophy was also a European 171). This mystico-religious approach to nature was made import. It was very close to German idealism, and especially explicit in the philosophy of the Transcendentalist move- to Schelling’s philosophy of Nature. Schelling had in turn ment, whose most famous representatives were Ralph Waldo been profoundly influenced by the work of Spinoza, who was Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). generally held to be responsible for reintroducing the her- Transcendentalism was the philosophy of the worship of esy of pantheism into modern thought. The concept of the 38 Nature. As Neil Harris explains, ‘Transcendentalists held American Sublime, the American brand of landscape painting 39 that material objects were significant only as emanations of with its heroic concept of the artist and his relation to nature, Spirit, the world being [...]. It was vital for man to understand is very much a continuation of ideas that were at the heart his proper relationship with the external world, for strang- of Romantic philosophy in Europe. So it is useful to briefly ers to nature were alienated from God. The energy of the look at this history and see where Emerson and his kind got Supreme Being, what Transcendentalists called “Spirit,” lay their metaphysical ideas. It is a fascinating story that starts, behind and throughout all material objects. All matter was for our purposes, with Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), who therefore good in the sight of God, and all of nature deserved at the dawn of the eighteenth century was the world’s most reverence’ (o.c. 172-3). This way, Transcendentalism ‘opened despised philosopher because he had published a tract in the door to art appreciation, but also constrained it. [...] Art’s defence of religious tolerance and because his concept of God only importance lay in its representation of nature’ (o.c. 173). was felt to be nihilistic, pantheistic, and atheistic. Spinoza Transcendentalism therefore provided the key element in the saw God as infinite substance, an all-encompassing entity in transition from Puritan suspicion of art to a celebration of which all events were linked in an endless chain of causality. art as the seat of moral and religious sentiment. ‘If American God therefore is nature. But this was a tricky idea, for if the nature was one vast church,’ Robert Hughes remarks, ‘then world consists of a series of tightly connected causes, then landscape artists were its clergy. This changed the status of this raises the obvious question of the final cause: if every American artists themselves. [...] If the presiding metaphor of cause is in turn explained by another cause, this leaves the problem of what caused the first cause, and whether a first die Lehre des Spinoza (1785), which would become immensely cause, namely God, can exist at all. Therefore, materialism influential among young Romantic philosophers. Jacobi’s and the denial of God’s existence were felt to be but a breath book is a messy affair, a collage of fragments and snippets away and Spinoza was duly condemned for his unorthodox from letters. Mendelssohn was shocked and dismayed by it, views. Henry More even called him ‘the most impudent of especially since Jacobi had not bothered to ask permission mortals’ (Israel 2001: 229). Within less than a century, how- to publish extracts from Mendelssohn’s letters. Mendelssohn ever, Spinoza would rise to prominence again thanks to Ger- felt he should respond and soon a major philosophical con- man Romantic philosophy. And it is one of those subtle iro- troversy was in the making, with arguments being made for nies of history that one of the chief thinkers responsible for and against Lessing’s alleged Spinozism by both the original this revival was a man who heartily disliked Spinoza. Moses contenders and several other philosophers who felt the need Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was profoundly critical of Spinoza to contribute to the debate. In the end, the controversy would but became an unwilling participant in Spinoza’s comeback claim Mendelssohn’s life. Rushing to get the manuscript of at the hands of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819), one of An die Freunde Lessings, his final rebuttal to Jacobi, to his pub- the first German Romantic philosophers. lisher on December 31, 1785, the coldest day of the year, Men- 40 Jacobi claimed that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) had delssohn forgot to put on his coat, fell seriously ill, and died 41 told him that ‘there is no philosophy other than Spinoza’s’ within days on January 4, 1786 (o.c. 74). Jacobi was widely (Beiser 1987: 66). Lessing is now chiefly remembered as the held to be responsible for Mendelssohn’s tragic and untimely author of a famous essay on Laokoön oder über die Grenzen demise. The controversy itself would continue a while longer, der Malerei und Poesie (1766) but he was a man of formidable but the main effect was that the name of Spinoza was now stature in the eighteenth century and a personal friend of once again foremost in philosophers’ minds. And no Roman- Mendelssohn’s. Jacobi’s claim about Lessing’s supposed Spi- tic philosopher would be more deeply influenced by Spinoza nozism was not an unlikely suggestion since between 1774 than Schelling. and 1778 Lessing had published the Wolffenbüttler Fragmente, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was one of selections from the Spinozist writings of one H.S. Reimarius. the many young Romantic philosophers who read Jacobi’s Lessing’s commentary on these fragments was widely felt to book with passionate interest. He would go on to become the be too impartial and not sufficiently critical of Spinoza. When quintessential Romantic philosopher and is primarily re- Mendelssohn heard about Jacobi’s intent to disclose Lessing’s membered as the author of an ambitious philosophy of na- Spinozism, he felt he should defend his friend’s posthumous ture in a Spinozist vein. Schelling’s clearest statement of this reputation and started to exchange letters with Jacobi on the Romantic philosophy can be found in his System des transzen- matter. Eager to make his case, Jacobi assembled a selection dentalen Idealismus (1800). Schelling sees Nature as a produc- from their correspondence and rushed it into print as Über tive force that constantly creates itself. It is infinite self-real- isation. Nature brings itself into being, which is reminiscent man Romantic philosophers. Novalis had also claimed that of Spinoza’s idea of God as perpetually creative substance (in ‘the sense of poetry has much in common with mysticism. fact, Schelling’s philosophy on this point was also profoundly [...] It sees the invisible, feels what cannot be felt [...]. The influenced by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who in the early 1790s poet is truly out of his senses – that is why everything is in was a terrific philosophical presence in Jena, where Schelling him. [...] The sense of poetry is closely related to the sense of studied). All the natural phenomena, be they plants, animals, clairvoyance and to the religious, in fact to the art of the seer. minerals, or human beings, are products of this process of The poet establishes order, unites, chooses, creates – and yet self-realisation. The end of the process is mankind because in it is unclear to him why things must be so and not otherwise’ man Nature has generated something that is similar to itself: (Frank 1989: 174). Robert Rosenblum has suggested that many a being that wants to realise its own goals in nature. Just like of the ideas about art and nature expressed in these philoso- Nature, humans engage in self-realisation by transforming phies could also be found in the art of Romanticism, and he the world around them to suit their purposes. That is why has pointed to the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) Schelling saw man as a microcosm: the basic dynamic of as the clearest representative of this trend, which he has Nature is also at work in man. With man, Nature has reached called the Northern Romantic tradition. Rosenblum also sug- 42 the end of its self-realisation because, in a sense, it has recre- gests that there is a link between this European tradition in 43 ated itself, or its double. Man is Nature’s crowning achieve- landscape painting and a similar tradition in America, exem- ment. And of all man’s endeavours, the greatest and most plified by Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900), but he offers divine is the creation of works of art through which man no proof of this link. It seems possible, however, that the lines expresses himself in the external world. of influence can be traced through the Transcendentalists’ Schelling is a cardinal figure in the history of the philosophy enthusiasm for German philosophy. of art because he created the stereotype of the Romantic artist as a genius inspired by higher forces. In his System The Therapeutic Fallacy des transzendentalen Idealismus Schelling writes that genius The idea of nature and the artist as gateways to the divine is possible only in the arts, where he famously found ‘the had important consequences for American art. For one thing, expression of tranquillity and quiet greatness’ (‘der Ausdruck the new concept of landscape and of landscape painting der Ruhe und der stillen Grösse’; Schelling 2000: 291). And the became linked to the idea of Manifest Destiny, which is ‘the artist, in creating the work of art, is unconsciously driven by belief that westward colonisation of America was not only a a desire to fulfil an irrepressible natural urge within himself. right but a sacred duty’ (Hughes 1997: 157). To the American The artist’s genius is a gift from nature, granted at birth. Al- mind, the continent was a land of plenty, most of which as though Schelling is the locus classicus for this concept of the yet unexplored, which had been created by God to be ex- artist, such ideas were common currency among Early Ger- plored, settled, and cultivated by the brave frontier man. If the material world could be read like the Bible, then the mes- sive book Kosmos was published in 1845. On the basis of sage written down in it seemed to have been lifted straight his wide-ranging research, supported by a global network out of Genesis: submit the earth. In the name of Manifest of correspondents and scientists who forwarded him their Destiny explorers set out from the East coast to cross the measurements of temperature, barometric pressure, rainfall, continent, claiming the land they found and driving the Indi- and other phenomena, Von Humboldt had reached an all- ans before them. The classic formulation of Manifest Destiny encompassing vision of the universe as one huge organism in was written by the journalist William Gilpin and read to the which everything is connected, a cosmos where, in his own U.S. Senate in 1846: ‘The untransacted destiny of the American words, there ‘is a unity in diversity of phenomena: a harmo- people is to subdue the continent – to rush over this vast field ny, blending together all created things, however dissimilar in to the Pacific Ocean – to animate the many hundred mil- form and attributes; one great whole animated by the breath lions of its people, and to cheer them upward... to teach old of life’ (o.c. 158). This inspired in him a great respect for all of nations a new civilisation – to confirm the destiny of the hu- nature which would become the root of the environmentalist man race... Divine task! Immortal mission! Let us tread fast and movement in America, where the English translation of Kos- joyfully the open trail before us! Let every American heart mos, published in 1848, was a huge success. As Aaron Sachs 44 open wide for patriotism to glow undimmed, and confide remarks, Von Humboldt ‘cared about each element of nature 45 with religious faith in the sublime and prodigious destiny of because every weed, stinging insect, and poisonous snake his well-loved country’ (Hughes 1997: 190). The West, to the played a crucial role in what he came to think of as particular Americans, was a Promised Land that was there for the tak- ecosystems, all of which seemed to thrive on biodiversity’ ing, a divine gift to God’s new chosen people. (Sachs 2006: 52). Not everyone agreed with this vision. A major dissenter was Von Humboldt’s success coincided with the rise of Transcen- the German explorer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt dentalism and his influence on Thoreau was massive. What (1769-1859), who was a great admirer of the young Ameri- made Von Humboldt especially attractive to Transcenden- can republic but never tired of castigating it for what he talists was the fact that he saw man as an element in the considered its two greatest moral blights: slavery and the cosmos. This meant that man was not immune to changes in oppression of indigenous Indian cultures. Von Humboldt the ecosystem: there was an intrinsic link between man and had become very famous for his expedition, in the company his world. It also meant that the experience of nature could of Aimé Bonpland, to South- and Central-America between transform men, not only in a physical, but also in a spiritual 1799 and 1804. At the end of his journey Von Humboldt was way; and that man could relate this spiritual renewal to his received by president Jefferson and the two men would keep fellow men. One of the ways this spiritual experience could in contact through correspondence. Von Humboldt reached be communicated was through landscape painting. Its great- a new level of global fame when the first volume of his mas- est American exponent was Frederick Edwin Church, who painted huge canvases of sublime American nature that political in character’ (o.c. 103). It included a series of badges, carried the force of revelation. But this was not the end of created by Daniel Martinez, that bore part of the slogan “I art’s moral mission. By the 1880s art as religion had begun can’t imagine ever wanting to be white”. Every visitor was to mutate into something only slightly less transcendent in issued such a badge at the admission desk. Another “work” nature: art as therapy. This change profoundly affected the on display was the infamous video of the Rodney King beat- shape of a new American institution, the museum. The earli- ing, showing Los Angeles police officers kicking a black man. est American museums originated from private collections. The question whether such works were art at all (a question As Robert Hughes explains, these museums were supposed that is especially salient in the Rodney King tape, which was to ‘create zones of transcendence within the society’ (Hughes not made as a work of art but filmed by a man who happened 1994: 180). The museum was conceived of as a kind of health to be on the scene with a camcorder), let alone good art, took spa, a space where nervous conditions could be soothed. a back seat to their political and emotional urgency: the only This idea was born from the fact that many collectors had thing that mattered was their ability to raise consciousness turned to collecting for personal comfort. ‘Some of them, among the public about social injustice. Similarly, in the Sep- notably Charles Freer and Isabella Stewart Gardner, were tember 26, 1993 issue of The Washington Post, Camille Paglia 46 deeply neurasthenic creatures who looked to art to cure their wrote that when she and artist Alison Maddex ‘toured the 47 nervous afflictions and thought it could do the same for the Whitney’s rape exhibit this summer, we were appalled and less well off’ (o.c. 181). This attitude was heavily influenced incredulous. Visitors were wandering around with tears in by yet another European import: the psychoanalysis of Sig- their eyes, as rape victims recited their sorrows on a video mund Freud, where art was seen as symptom, the sublimated monitor. When the offerings of a major museum are indistin- expression of suppressed desires and drives. But it resulted guishable from the victimisation soap opera of television talk in a concept of art that is still pervasive in American culture shows, art has ceased to exist’ (Paglia 1995: 114). It certainly and which Robert Hughes has called ‘the therapeutic fallacy,’ does seem to be the case that such exhibits transgress the namely the idea that ‘works of art were moral in themselves boundary that separates art from non-art. It is part of the because, whether you knew it or not at first, they pointed the business of this chapter to explain why and how. way to higher truths and so did you good’ (o.c. 183). It is essentially this approach to art that fuelled the politically Narrative Didactics correct backlash against “offensive” art and the promotion of The locus classicus for art as therapy is obviously Aristotle’s issue-based art in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Arthur Poetics. In the sixth chapter of this book, which has only been C. Danto the 1993 Whitney Biennial was ‘a high-water mark partially transmitted, Aristotle writes that ‘a tragedy is an of the politically tumultuous 1980s’ (Danto 2003: 106). ‘The imitation of an action which is serious and, having grandeur, work presented was for the most part accusatory, and angrily complete in itself, done in language seasoned with embel- lishments, each appearing separately in different parts of the work, in dramatic rather than narrative form, accomplishing by way of pity and fear the catharsis of such feelings’ (Barnes 1995: 276). The idea of catharsis has proved very enduring. In ancient Greek it could mean two things, either the purgation of the body through laxatives and emetics or ritual purifica- tion in religion. In his discussion of tragedy Aristotle suggests that in a good play a similar catharsis can be accomplished for feelings like fear and pity: we are purged of them by see- ing them represented. This, in essence, is the root of the ther- apeutic fallacy: the notion that art can somehow “cure” us of something. As Jonathan Barnes points out, there is much un- certainty about how this “purification” should be understood. The idea of art as catharsis also raises many objections, and 48 the most important is that ‘to suppose that the primary rea- 49 son, or even a main reason, for encouraging productions of Oedipus is that they clean up our feelings is to turn art into emotional therapy’ (o.c. 279). But that is exactly the approach to art that underlies the culture wars, both on the Right and on the Left: art is supposed to be good for us. It is something to help us deal with the perplexities of life, or at least to help us become better citizens. As literary critic Kenneth Burke as- sures us, ‘poetry is produced for purposes of comfort, as part of the consolatio philosophiae’ (Burke 1973: 61). In recent philosophy about art and its social uses and ef- fects several influential theories have been put forward that seem to fit into the tradition of the therapeutic fallacy. In Contingency, irony, and solidarity (1989), Richard Rorty claims that all people have what he calls a “final vocabulary”. This vocabulary is ‘a set of words which they employ to justify Arthur C. Danto their actions, their beliefs, and their lives’ (Rorty 1989: 73). God, justice, nature, our nation, or decency, along with a host ways possible, books can suitably substitute for actual people. of other words, can all function as parts of a final vocabulary: Martha Nussbaum has addressed similar issues and is equal- they are the words in the name of which people take moral ly persuaded of literature’s ability to alter our relationships stands. Such a final vocabulary ‘is “final” in the sense that if with other people. In Love’s Knowledge (1990) she suggests doubt is cast on the worth of these words, their user has no that books can be “friends” to us in a way similar to our hu- noncircular argumentative recourse. Those words are as far man friends. She illustrates this with an example from her as he can go with language; beyond them there is only help- own personal history as ‘a child whose best friends were, on less passivity or a resort to force’ (ibid.). Rorty further intro- the whole, novels’ (Nussbaum 1990: 11) and with the fictional duces a type of person whom he calls an “ironist,” namely example of David Copperfield, who also turns to books for someone who ‘has radical and continuing doubts about the companionship. Nussbaum next asks ‘what kinds of “people,” final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been as friends, novels are’ (o.c. 236). She has tried to answer that impressed by other vocabularies’ (ibid.). So Rorty implies that question in a series of books that argue for a philosophy of our final vocabulary is not fixed: although we might cling the emotions that also allows for a theory of the social uses to it and defend it with great passion, to the point of being and effects of the novel. She has developed the arguments 50 willing to give up our lives for the ideals expressed in it, the for literature most clearly in Poetic Justice (1995), where she 51 contents of our vocabulary may shift throughout our life as a explains how reading novels can be useful to reach con- result of inner changes, emotional growth, or through contact sidered judgements in the courts or in our dealings with with other people’s vocabularies. The ironist is someone who other people about whom we know very little and towards accepts this fluidity and might even go one step further: the whom we might otherwise feel distrust. This argument was ironist is not unlikely to go out into the world to meet new then further elaborated in Cultivating Humanity (1997), where vocabularies to make sure that there is not some vocabulary Nussbaum wants to ‘ask about the relationship of a liberal out there that might be more worthwhile than the one she is education to citizenship’ (Nussbaum 1997: 8). She feels that currently living in. the global and multicultural character of contemporary soci- Considering the ironist’s quest for a more suitable vocabulary ety requires future students of the world to be able to tackle Rorty claims that ‘our doubts about our own characters or the many differences between people and cultures they are our own culture can be resolved or assuaged only by enlarg- bound to encounter. To this end she argues for an educa- ing our acquaintance. The easiest way of doing that is to tion that ‘liberates the mind from the bondage of habit and read books’ (o.c. 80) because in books we can find a ‘detailed custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity description of what unfamiliar people are like’ (o.c. xvi). To and alertness as citizens of the whole world. This is what enlarge our acquaintance with other vocabularies we should Seneca means by the cultivation of humanity’ (ibid.). Such ideally meet as many people as we can. Since this is not al- an education must foster ‘the capacity for critical examina- tion of oneself and one’s traditions’ (o.c. 9) and train people of the kind of reasoning that a judge should engage in when ‘to see themselves not simply as citizens of some local region judging criminals. The novel teaches us that ‘governments, or group but also, and above all, as human beings bound to wherever they are, should attend to citizens in all their indi- all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern’ viduality and variety, responding in a sensitive way to histori- (o.c. 10). At the heart of this educational enterprise lies what cal and personal contingencies’ (PJ 45). Just like the charac- Nussbaum calls ‘the narrative imagination. This means the ters in a novel, citizens and criminals have a personal history ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a that is entirely unique and that should not be set aside when person different from oneself [and] to be an intelligent reader judging their actions. In this sense Nussbaum sees the liter- of that person’s story’ (o.c. 10-11). And what better way for ary artist as ‘the equalizer of his age and land,’ a description students, and citizens in general, to learn to read other peo- she borrows from Walt Whitman (PJ 4): the literary artist who ple’s stories than by reading novels, which are the paradigm writes a novel or a poem (for Nussbaum stresses that her of such human narratives? views also apply to poetry) makes us aware of the fact that Nussbaum suggests that the distinguishing feature of the other people, no matter who they are, are very similar to us novel is its close attention to the intricacies of individual in their vulnerability and in the things they care about or the 52 lives and the complex contexts in which they are situated. ways they care about them. 53 Novels help us understand the particular lives of particular But the question this raises and that interests us most is how people by giving us detailed insight into their daily doings, this comes about. Nussbaum talks of ‘modes of interaction’ their ways of expressing themselves, and even their deepest that are at work in the novel and that can fundamentally thoughts and feelings. According to Nussbaum the novel is change readers’ outlook on the world. Nussbaum claims that ‘a morally controversial form, expressing in its very shape ‘good literature is disturbing’ and that it ‘summons power- and style, in its modes of interaction with its readers, a nor- ful emotions, it disconcerts and puzzles. It inspires distrust mative sense of life. It tells its readers to notice this and not of conventional pieties and exacts a frequently painful con- this, to be active in these and not those ways. It leads them frontation with one’s own thoughts and intentions’ (PJ 5). But into certain postures of the mind and heart and not others’ what are those ‘modes of interaction’? Nussbaum explains (PJ 2). Novels stress how differences in education or social that they have to do with the style of the novel and illustrates circumstances form a person’s character and their actions. By this elaborately with the example of Charles Dickens’ novel sketching such a broad context for human action the novel Hard Times (1853). Nussbaum describes how Dickens manipu- is ‘a paradigm of a style of ethical reasoning that is context- lates our experience as readers through his style and choice specific without being relativistic’ (PJ 8). In this respect the of words. By presenting one character in an ironic manner novel is a fine example of the kind of thinking governments and another character in a sentimental way, he directs our should deploy when dealing with their citizens and especially sympathies and instructs us about which characters and actions to approve of and of which to disapprove. In fact, pact that reasons sometimes have on us as feeling persons. ‘the structure of the novel – its ways of presenting the world We feel the force of reasons’ (Siegel 1997: 48) and this force to us and its enticements to identify ourselves with certain in turn moves us in a dual way: first, felt reasons “move” us characters rather than others – set us up, if we respond to in the sense that they are emotionally gripping; but second, them, in a posture of the heart and mind that is not one of they also “move” us in the sense that they can cause us to sceptical indifference, that does not feel that anything at all act in a certain way, literally putting us into motion to act. It that happens to these people is as good as every other thing’ is clear that there is a degree of similarity between Rorty’s (PJ 83). But this does not really explain anything. The effect final vocabularies and Siegel’s felt reasons: in both cases we that the novel has upon the reader is explained in terms of are dealing with a kind of reasons for our actions that can- certain stylistic strategies cunningly deployed by the author. not be fully explained with reasons. We cannot argue for our But a more fundamental explanation would make us under- final vocabularies. Similarly, a felt reason is a reason with a stand how such strategies and stylistic devices come about surplus of visceral power that is itself not subject to reason: it and why they are at all successful. Nussbaum does not really is a feeling that attaches itself to the reason. But Siegel ap- explain, she simply describes, albeit in great detail and with pears to be aware of the fact that to simply speak of felt rea- 54 much sensitivity, the literary strategies the effectiveness of sons without any further explanation is unsatisfactory for at 55 which needs to be explained. To say that the novel (or art in one point he exclaims: ‘But what are “felt” reasons? Are they general) moves us because the author (or any artist) has used some weird sort of abstract entity, altogether different from a series of stylistic devices designed to elicit certain emo- more garden variety sorts of reasons?’ Clearly, they are not: tions, feelings, and evaluations in the reader is circular. It ‘Felt reasons [...] are ordinary reasons whose power to move begs the question what it is about these stylistic devices that people is made obvious or manifest by the way in which makes them effective. Why does art move us? those reasons, and the person for whom they are reasons, A similar problem arises in the work of another, less well- are portrayed. Felt reasons are not a different kind of reasons: known, philosopher. In Rationality Redeemed? (1997) Harvey they are rather a particular kind of presentation of reasons’ Siegel makes a plea for rational education. Siegel feels a (o.c. 52). But this simply begs the question: if felt reasons be- good education should equip young people with the skills come powerful through the way they are presented or pack- they will need to reflect upon and justify their choices and aged, we should like to know what it is about this packaging beliefs in life. Siegel also feels that novels have an important that makes these ordinary reasons so much more powerful part to play in this project. To explain how novels do this he as to pack an emotional wallop. This is a problem similar to introduces the concept of “felt reasons”. Despite their ratio- the one we found in Nussbaum. Both Nussbaum and Siegel nal nature reasons sometimes have a visceral quality: their claim that the emotive force of the novel and felt reasons urgency can be deeply felt. This visceral quality is ‘the im- respectively has something to do with the form in which they are presented. Neither explains how and why these forms, In Philosophy in a New Key (1942) and especially in Feeling and these stylised presentations, are at all effective. Or, to put it Form (1953) Langer proposes that we see art as a form of sym- in a more general way: what is it about art that moves us? bolisation: ‘Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human And how does this come about? What does art (the novel, the feeling’ (FF 40). But this definition immediately entails a new poem, the special presentation of reasons) do to move us? question, for what is a symbol? ‘A symbol,’ Langer states, ‘is any device whereby we are enabled to make an abstraction’ Feeling and Form (FF xi). So works of art are manmade objects that present us The question of the nature of art was of central concern to with an abstraction of human feeling. How must we under- Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985) and her philosophy of living stand this? Langer explains that symbols are ‘vehicles for the form is a very good point of reference for the kind of discus- conception of objects’ (PNK 60-61). She distinguishes concep- sion upon which we are about to engage. In fact, Nussbaum tions from concepts. ‘Concepts are abstract forms embodied herself at times comes very near the kind of reasoning we in conceptions; their bare presentation may be approximated find in Langer. In Love’s Knowledge she states that it is one by so-called “abstract thought,” but in ordinary mental life of her central claims ‘that there is, with respect to any text they no more figure as naked factors than skeletons are seen 56 carefully written and fully imagined, an organic connection walking the street. Concepts, like decent living skeletons, 57 between its form and its content’ (Nussbaum 1990: 4). Nuss- are always embodied’ (PNK 61). So conceptions would seem baum has stressed this organic connection repeatedly, as to be more elaborate presentations of concepts. ‘A concept when she claims that ‘in the reading of a literary text, there is all that a symbol really conveys. But just as quickly as the is a standard of correctness set by the author’s sense of life, concept is symbolised to us, our own imagination dresses as it finds its way into the work’ (o.c. 9). Unfortunately Nuss- it up in a private, personal conception’ (PNK 71-72). If, for ex- baum never really thinks through the organic metaphor for ample, we think of a circle, we do not think of a concept (all the way art works. Neither does she give a very satisfactory the points in a field that are at the exact same distance from account of how a “sense of life” may be present within a work a given point) but we usually imagine a specific circle. The beyond her claims about the stylistic devices used by authors circle I have in mind may be smaller than the one you have to steer the reader’s mind and feelings in a desired direction. in mind, it might be drawn in a different colour than yours or But these are exactly the kinds of issues Langer’s work does against a different background, but whatever its imaginary clarify. One of Langer’s central questions is how art moves properties, it will still be a circle according to its geometrical us. What kind of objects are works of art? What is their logi- definition. The same thing applies when we think of the con- cal structure and how does this structure affect the spectator cept of a house. ‘Consider a photograph, a painting, a pencil or reader? To answer these questions is to enter into a fresh sketch, an architect’s elevation drawing, and a builder’s dia- relationship with works of art. gram, all showing the front view of one and the same house. With a little attention, you will recognise the same house in a periodic measure: it is the perceived connectedness of suc- each representation [because] each one of the very different cessive events. Langer now suggests that works of art ‘bear images expresses the same relation of parts, which you have a close logical similarity to the forms of human feeling’ (FF fastened on in formulating your conception of the house. [...] 27), which are rhythmic in the sense just explained. Langer’s Likewise, another person’s conception of that same house preferred example to illustrate this is music, which shows will agree in its essential pattern with the pictures and with us ‘forms of growth and of attenuation, flowing and stow- your conception, however many private aspects it may have’ ing, conflict and resolution, speed, arrest, terrific excitement, (PNK 71). calm, or subtle activation and dreamy lapses – [...] the great- So works of art are abstractions or symbols of conceptions of ness and brevity and eternal passing of everything vitally human feelings. To explain this Langer famously introduced felt. Such is the pattern, or logical form, of sentience; and the the term “living form”. Human life and feeling are filled with pattern of music is that same form worked out in pure, mea- movement. ‘All life is rhythmic’ (FF 126) and is subject to sured sound and silence. Music is a tonal analogue of emotive processes of flowering and decay, birth and death, and all life. Such formal analogy, or congruence of logical structures, physical and mental developments in-between. Langer here is the prime requisite for the relation between a symbol and 58 makes very specific use of the word “rhythm,” which she de- whatever it is to mean. The symbol and the object symbol- 59 fines as ‘a functional involvement of successive events’ (PA ised must have some common logical form’ (ibid.). Living 52). This means that ‘a rhythmic pattern arises whenever the form ‘expresses life – feeling, growth, movement, emotion, and completion of one distinct event appears as the beginning of everything that characterises vital existence’ (FF 82). As these another. The classic example is the swinging of a pendulum. statements suggest, ‘the word “feeling” must be taken here The momentum of its drop drives the weight upward in the in its broadest sense, meaning everything that can be felt, from opposite direction, and builds up the potential energy that physical sensation, pain and comfort, excitement and repose, will bring it down again; so the first swing prepares the sec- to the most complex emotions, intellectual tensions, or the ond; the second swing was actually begun in the first one, steady feeling-tones of a conscious human life’ (PA 15). and similarly, after that, each swing is prepared by the one Langer’s concept of living form invites two remarks. First, it before. The result is a rhythmical series’ (PA 51). But rhythm might seem questionable to define feeling in such a broad need not be serial or periodic. Whenever an action or move- way. But this is necessary to the enterprise, for since art can ment seems to beget another, a sense of rhythm manifests be and is about everything that falls within human experi- itself. All succession is rhythmic, even if it is not periodic. ence, any theory that tries to say anything about art will have This explains ‘why a tennis player, a wheeling bird, and a to embrace the full scope of human experience. It will be up modern dancer who does not necessarily repeat any motion to the subsequent theory to specify this in view of the indi- may exhibit rhythm, too’ (PA 52). So the rhythm of life is not vidual kinds of art. Second, it is of vital importance to stress that Langer speaks of a logical similarity between life and art. art, but not abstract art, is a contradiction in terms’ (HC 323). This means that the relationship between art and the feel- Obviously, Arendt was not writing about Expressionism as ings it expresses is a formal relationship. This formal aspect a movement in the history of art, but about expressiveness brings up the question of expression. If art expresses human in the literal sense of venting one’s emotions in an immedi- feeling, we must understand what “expression” means here. ate way. What is created in art is not self-expression (which It is a common mistake to think that art is a direct expression does not require creation or art at all) but expressive form, of the artist’s personal feelings. When Langer claims that art ‘perceptible forms expressive of human feeling’ (PS 84). The works are symbols and therefore abstractions, she introduces artist has conceived of human feeling and found a form that an element of distance. The artist does not express his feel- expresses this feeling. ings directly but seeks a formal analogue for them. He steps Langer was not entirely original in her use of the term “living back, contemplates the feeling he wants to express in his form”. She explicitly conceives it as a further development work and then sets about finding a fitting form. ‘What art and refinement of Clive Bell’s infamous “significant form” (FF expresses is not actual feeling, but ideas of feeling; as lan- 31-33). But the term “living form” itself already appears in the guage does not express actual things and events but ideas of work of Friedrich Schiller, who introduces it in the fifteenth 60 them’ (FF 59). So we must be wary of ‘the confusions between letter of his epistolary treatise Über die ästhetische Erziehung 61 feeling shown and feeling represented, symptom and symbol’ des Menschen (1795). Schiller’s thoughts on art are structured (FF 184). It is of paramount importance to keep in mind ‘that dialectically. He conceived of humans as beings with two the feeling in a work of art is something the artist conceived as basic but conflicting drives, the material or “sense drive” he created the symbolic form to present it, rather than some- (‘Stofftrieb’) and the rational or “form drive” (‘Formtrieb’). The thing he was undergoing and involuntarily venting in an ar- sense drive spurs man towards life in its organic and sensual tistic process’ (FF 176). This act of conceiving transforms the sense. It is also linked to individual existence and concerns feeling from something experienced into something represent- everything that has to do with our own particular experience ed. ‘But as soon as an expressive act is performed without in- of being alive. The form drive, on the other hand, represents ner momentary compulsion it is no longer self-expressive; it is the universal element within us, the reason that is common expressive in the logical sense. It is not a sign of the emotion to all human beings. These two drives are in constant dynam- it conveys, but a symbol of it; instead of completing the natu- ic intercourse with each other, seeking the balance of human ral history of a feeling, it denotes the feeling, and may merely life to make sure that our lives are neither too focused on one bring it to mind [...]. When an action acquires such a meaning or the other. For Schiller, art has an important role to play in it becomes a gesture’ (PNK 152). Hannah Arendt was point- this balancing act because it always presents us a message ing in the same direction when she declared, in a footnote in (which pleases the rational form drive) in an attractive shape her great book The Human Condition (1958), that ‘expressionist (which is agreeable to the sense drive). As such, art is “living form” (‘lebendige Gestalt’): a fusion of mind and matter, of rea- present’ (PA 66). In her Introduction to Symbolic Logic (1937) son (and morality) with sensuality (or beauty). This dialectic Langer had also spoken of ‘logical intuition’ as ‘the power of of feeling (sense experience in a broad sense that comes very discovering analogies’ (Innis 2009: 14). This formulation is near Langer’s) and form (the higher meanings for which the a clue to the fact that Langer’s concept of intuition is much sense experience of the work of art is the vehicle) is the main indebted to Gestalt psychology, which holds that ‘when sen- theme throughout all of Schiller’s writings. It would also sory elements are combined, they form some new pattern of influence Hegel’s philosophy of art. And as we shall see in configuration. Put together a group of musical notes, [...] and Chapter Two, Hegel’s dialectical worldview resurfaces in Ar- something new – a melody or a tune – emerges from their thur C. Danto’s notion of “the transfiguration of the common- combination, something that did not exist in any of the indi- place,” which states that objects become works of art because vidual elements (the notes). Stated succinctly: The whole is meanings are embodied in them. different from the sum of its parts’ (Schultz and Schultz 1996: Langer calls the expressive form ‘an apparition given to 322). That is why Langer can say that we know the import of our perception’ (o.c. 86). This takes us to the heart of what a work of art by an act of intuition: the work of art is a Gestalt, is at stake in her work. To make this clear we must turn to something immediately perceived as a whole. In the first vol- 62 Langer’s concept of intuition. As early as The Practice of Phi- ume of Mind she writes that a work of art ‘presents the sem- 63 losophy (1930) Langer wrote that intuition ‘is not a method, blance of feeling so directly to logical intuition that we seem but a natural phenomenon. It occurs; it cannot be invoked or to perceive feeling itself in the work’ (MI 67). She even claims taught. Moreover, its result is not knowledge, but that fun- that ‘artistic import requires no interpretation; it requires a damental experience which knowledge is about [...]. It is our full and clear perception of the presented form’ (MI 84). source of direct contact with the world’ (Innis 2009: 13-14). It is a core tenet of Langer’s philosophy that ‘a work of art is As Robert E. Innis explains in his survey of Langer’s work, always a prime symbol,’ (FF 369) which is ‘the expression of intuition ‘supplies us with the given in experience’ (o.c. 14). human consciousness in a single metaphorical image’ (PA This means that Langer conceives of intuition as our source 53). This symbol could ‘be analysed, in that its articulation of felt experience. In the first volume of Mind (1967) she calls may be traced and various elements in it distinguished; but it ‘the basic intellectual function’ (MI 128) and compares it it can never be constructed by a process of synthesis of ele- to Locke’s ‘natural light’. In Problems of Art (1957), here she ments, because no such elements exist outside it. They only also refers to Locke, she calls it ‘the fundamental intellectual occur in a total form’ (FF 369). Speaking of books Langer says activity, which produces logical or semantical understand- that they are ‘like a life: all that is in it is really of a piece’ ing. It comprises all acts of insight or recognition of formal (PNK xi). ‘A work of art is a single, indivisible symbol,’ writes properties, of relations, of significance, and of abstraction and Langer, ‘although a highly articulated one; it is not, like a exemplification. [...] Intuition is not true or false, but simply discourse (which may also be regarded as a single symbolic form), composite, analysable into more elementary symbols ing that is not analysable into atomic parts. Put another way, [...]. It may, indeed, be analysed, in that its articulation may Langer is challenging the early Wittgenstein’s picture theory be traced and various elements in it distinguished; but it can of language and transforms it from the inside out. That is never be constructed by a process of synthesis of elements, why Robert E. Innis writes that Langer’s work deals with because no such elements exist outside it. They only occur ‘meaning after language’ (Innis 2009: 48), although I would in a total form’ (FF 369). Every good work of art is of a piece. modify the expression to “meaning beyond language” because This is related to the aspect of perception that is tradition- Langer does not give up on language (after all, literature is ally called hololepsis, the seizing of the whole that turns a one of the great arts) but tries to show that meaning is pos- work into something more than ‘a mere aggregate of separate sible, and logically possible, beyond the limits of discursive items’ (Armstrong 2000: 92). As John Armstrong explains, language. To accomplish this, she broadens Wittgenstein’s ‘there is no sense in which a heap can be complete’ because picture theory. Simply put, Wittgenstein’s theory says that ‘nothing in its own nature determines [its] maximum’ (ibid.). sentences are propositions that logically represent a state of To be complete, a work must have an internal dynamic that affairs in the world. In this sense they are a logical picture determines its limits. This is essentially what Aristotle meant of reality. Words are names of things and sentences describe 64 when he said a good play should have a beginning, a middle, how these things are related to each other. The truth-value 65 and an end. ‘His concern is with the way in which features of a proposition depends upon the question whether a state of the work can be seen to have internal qualities of develop- of affairs in the outside world corresponds to its structure. ment – a development which can be seen to start and can Sentences that do not represent such a picture of the world reach a conclusion. When the end does come, it has the char- are essentially senseless. This means that all evaluative and acter of finishing something rather than of being an arbitrary expressive language, including ethics, aesthetics, religion, halt. The end, as it were, makes sense in relation to what has and metaphysics, are beyond the pale of meaning. In fact, come before. Equally, the opening is not just a chance start the only meaningful propositions are those of the natural but seizes the origin of the process to be followed through’ sciences, which cannot say anything about what is really (o.c. 93). As we shall see in a subsequent chapter, even works important in life: love, art, religion. That is why Wittgenstein, of art that are (partly) improvised or open-ended adhere to after finishing the Tractatus (1921), felt he was through with this structure because they are conceived to be improvised philosophy, which was really a lot of talk about nothing. The or open-ended. This is why a film indeed need not, as Godard final proposition of his book famously states that ‘whereof once quipped, produce beginning, middle, and end necessar- one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’ (Tractatus 7; ily in that order. Sluga and Stern 1996: 11). Not because such things are not Seeing the art symbol as a prime symbol means that Langer important, but because language simply fails to communi- accepts the possibility of a logical representation of mean- cate anything meaningful about them. Langer would prob- ably have amended this final proposition to ‘whereof one not determined yet, because there are many possible ways of cannot speak, thereof one must make religion, ritual, and, developing the composition’ (FF 121). This development, the most essentially, art’. Langer agrees with Wittgenstein that composition of the work itself, will often be a process of trial the human mind creates a picture of the world and that this and error. But the commanding form will guide this process picture is logical. But the logic that guides Langer’s idea of as a kind of blueprint because it is ‘the general Gestalt [that] picture-making is not the discursive logic of science, but the serves as a measure of right and wrong, too much and too symbolic logic of living forms. What cannot be said in discur- little, strong and weak’ (FF 122). In this sense, the work of sive language can be expressed metaphorically, in ritual and art enforces its own rules. Writers sometimes speak of the art. A work of art is also a picture of the world, but it is not a universe of their novel and of the fact that this universe does scientific picture. As Robert E. Innis has stated, ‘a picture for not allow them to write whatever they please. This is exactly her is a symbol, not a duplicate. It shares only “salient fea- the kind of restriction the commanding form would impose tures” with what it is a symbol of (PNK 68), a “certain propor- upon an artist. Sometimes the artist will simply have a nag- tion of parts” (69). Saliency is contrasted with irrelevancy’ (Innis ging feeling that something about the work is not right and 2009: 40). There are many essential things in the world and in will keep tinkering with it until this feeling is dispelled. Very 66 life which discursive projections cannot adequately express often the commanding form will command the artist to “kill 67 or convey. These things open up the ‘unexplored possibility of his darlings” in order to make the living form reach its full a genuine semantic beyond the limits of discursive language’ potential. I suggest that it is something like the commanding (PNK 86). Where language fails, man will look for other means form that Nussbaum was referring to when she wrote about of expression. Therefore, ‘the field of semantics is wider than ‘a standard of correctness set by the author’s sense of life, as that of language’ (PNK 87). it finds its way into the work’ (Nussbaum 1990: 9). But instead Speaking of works of art as prime symbols, or Gestalten, im- of looking for this standard of correctness within the formal plies an organic view of their form. This view is obviously also character of the work of art, Nussbaum tried to find it in the present in Langer’s discussion of the creation of works of art. supposed discursive nature of narrative. To explain how works of art come about Langer introduces Such a confusion of art with discourse as we find in Nuss- the notion of “commanding form”, which is ‘the fundamental baum is a common error. Art shares its symbolic nature with feeling to be explored and expressed. This is “the work of art language, but at the same time there is a profound difference in the artist’s head.” As soon as he conceives this matrix of the between language and art. Every language has a vocabulary work-to-be, he knows what must be its general structure, its and a syntax. Within the vocabulary words have fixed mean- proportions, its degree of elaboration’ (FF 389). Once this com- ings that can be retrieved in a dictionary. If we apply the manding form has been conceived, the work of art ‘is implicit rules of syntax we can combine the smaller symbols that are there, although its final, completely articulate character is words into larger symbols that are propositions. Any proposi- tion or sentence is in turn a single symbol and may be taken also explains why it is impossible to translate a work of art to symbolise or refer to a state of affairs in the world. A third into another medium. There are no basic elements like words characteristic of language, based on the first two of vocabu- and no syntax. Therefore one cannot translate a painting into lary and syntax, is its translatability. It is possible to translate a poem, a novel into a sculpture, or a musical suite into prose. a proposition into another language by substituting the cor- There is, however, one art form that does seem to translate rect words and applying the appropriate syntactic rules in the works of art in a successful way and that is the cinema, other language. Neither of these three features applies to the where films are often based on novels or plays. This is un- arts. Art, as we saw, does not have discriminate constituent derstandable since novels, plays, and cinema share the abil- parts analogous to words. To be sure, a picture, like language, ity to tell a story in a quasi-discursive way. These arts allow ‘is composed of elements that represent various respective of progressive narrative exposition. Art forms where linear constituents in the object; but these elements are not units narration is less prominent are not usually made into films. with independent meanings’ (PNK 94). A line or a blot of co- One rarely hears, for instance, of poems being filmed. Obvi- lour may signify something in a work of art, but taken in iso- ously, cinematic variations on poetry or visual poems have lation it is meaningless. A patch of brownish paint may sug- been a stock in trade of the experimental cinema for decades, 68 gest a figure in the background within the painting, but seen but such works are rarely narrative. In fact, when the main- 69 in isolation it is simply an indiscriminate patch of brownish stream cinema does translate poetry to the screen, it is usu- paint. As regards syntax, there are no rules one can follow to ally narrative poetry such as the Odyssey, the Iliad, Le Morte create a work of art. There are certainly techniques one can d’Arthur, or even The Raven. But nobody has yet attempted learn to master, but there is no guidebook or recipe to help the cinematic version of Emily Dickinson’s verse. However, you make a good work of art with these techniques. That is most films that adapt literary sources have to simplify and why Langer speaks of the creation of works of art rather than reduce the scope of the original work to an extensive degree of merely making them. ‘The difference between creation and and end up being little more than illustrations of the story other productive work is this: an ordinary object, say a shoe, that was told in more depth in the original work. But illustra- is made by putting pieces of leather together; the pieces were tion is an applied art and it is typical of the applied arts that there before. [...] A picture is made by deploying pigments on form is a function of content. The function or the message a piece of canvas, but the picture is not a pigment-and-can- of the object is primary and the form has been designed to vas structure. The picture that emerges from the process is a facilitate the function in the smoothest and most agreeable structure of space, and the space itself is an emergent whole way possible. The form is shaped as a vehicle for function or of shapes, visible coloured forms. Neither the space nor the meaning. That does not mean illustration can never rise to things in it were in the room before’ (PA 28). the level of the creative arts; it can, but to do so it would need Finally, the total reference of works of art as prime symbols to retain its expressive power outside the context for which it was created. That is probably why we now value as art all in art, is fictional. What is created in the visual arts is an im- kinds of well-designed furniture and tools from the past, be age of space. ‘This virtual space is the primary illusion of all it Art Deco chairs, Biedermeier furniture, or space-age lamps plastic art. Every element of design, every use of colour and from the not-so-distant psychedelic 1960s: these objects semblance of shape, serves to produce and support and de- are now appreciated mainly for their form and not for their velop the picture space that exists for vision alone. Being only practical use. They have become objects to look at rather than visual, this space has no continuity with the space in which objects to use. we live’ (FF 72). This last point is of cardinal importance. Art is Virtual Spaces about creating an illusion, an image. Art is fiction and noth- In Feeling and Form Langer systematically addresses each ing in it is real. The characters in a performance of Hamlet die, of the arts to define its primary illusion, which is the basic but not the actors performing them. The pasture captured in way in which living form is expressed in that form of art. paint is not an actual place, it is a painted image. A bronze The primary illusion of an art form is the basic structure of figure of a king is not the king himself but his likeness. expression that all instances of that art have in common. So We shall return to the importance of the fictional in art in a it is necessarily a very general description of what unites all subsequent chapter, but for our present purposes it is impor- 70 instances of that form of art. But at the same time it must be tant to stress that what is represented in a work of art is not 71 sufficiently specific to clearly tell this art form apart from all coextensive with the real world. A painting is not a window the others. The primary illusion is the basic structural way with a view of the world. It is a representation and interpre- in which a given art form communicates its message. And tation of the world. It is an image of the world seen. ‘Virtual before we return to our discussion of Nussbaum we shall space, being entirely independent and not a local area in ac- look at the primary illusion of the visual arts. ‘The purpose of tual space, is a self-contained, total system. [...] If, therefore, all plastic art is to articulate visual form,’ Langer writes, ‘and the artist presents semblances of objects, people, landscapes, to present that form – so immediately expressive of human etc., it is for their visual values as portions of perceptual feeling that it seems to be charged with feeling – as the sole, space’ (FF 75). In fact, all the elements that an artist intro- or at least paramount, object of perception. This means that duces in his image of space ‘have the purpose of making space for the beholder the work of art must be not only a shape visible and its continuity sensible. The space itself is a projected in space, but a shaping of space – of all the space that he is image, and everything pictured serves to define and organ- given’ (FF 71). The visual arts, which are painting (and draw- ise it. Even representation of familiar objects, if it occurs, is ing), sculpture, and architecture, create what Langer calls a means to this end’ (FF 77). It is clear that virtual space is virtual space, which is not experiential space (namely space as always subjective, experienced space. Even figurative art is it is physically present around us) but a visual representation never simply about presenting a representationally accurate of space. The space created in a work of art, like everything image of what it represents. All art, including representa- tional art, expresses a way of seeing the world, or a mode of ture, windows, etc. Very few pictures are so large as to fill our experiencing space, and hence the vantage point of a sub- physical field of vision completely at normal distance, i.e. at a ject. Taking Cézanne as her example Langer writes that ‘the distance that lets us see the forms presented in them to best transformation of natural objects into pictorial elements took advantage. Yet a picture is a total visual field. Its first office place in his seeing, in the act of looking, not the act of paint- is to create a single, self-contained, perceptual space, that ing. Therefore, recording what he saw, he earnestly believed seems to confront us as naturally as the scene before our that he painted exactly what “was there”’ (FF 78). This means eyes when we open them on the actual world. That is to say, that art aims at truthfulness not in the sense of representa- the illusion created in pictorial art is a virtual scene. I do not tional fidelity but in the sense of a truthful representation of mean a “scene” in the special sense of “scenery” – the picture what our lived experience feels like. Rather than simply pro- may represent only one object or even consist of pure decora- vide us with a carbon copy of reality, art shows us reality as it tive forms without representative value – but it always cre- is perceived. For the visual arts this means that they show us ates a space opposite the eye and related directly and essentially to not simply space but how we perceive and experience space. the eye. That is what I call “scene.”’ (FF 86). We shall elaborate This is especially clear in the case of Modernism, which was this concept of scene in the next section, but before we turn 72 an explosion of individual movements that sought the basic to that discussion we must briefly address the primary illu- 73 elements that would allow of a faithful representation of sion of sculpture and architecture. ‘Sculpture,’ Langer writes, the world. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism sought to ‘even when it is wedded to a background as in true relief, is accurately represent the way we actually perceive colour and essentially volume, not scene. The volume, however, is not a shapes. And Cubism is essentially about the perception of cubic measure, like the space in a box. It is more than the objects in space, as David Hockney pointed out when he said bulk of the figure; it is a space made visible, and is more than that Cubism was ‘about saving the possibility of figuration [...] at the area which the figure actually occupies. The tangible form the moment of its greatest crisis, what with the onslaught of has a complement of empty space that it absolutely com- photography with all its false claims to be able to accomplish mands, that is given with it and only with it, and is, in fact, such figuration better and more objectively. It was about as- part of the sculptural volume. The figure itself seems to have serting all the things photography couldn’t capture: time, a sort of continuity with the emptiness around it, however multiple vantages, and the sense of lived and living experi- much its solid masses may assert themselves as such. The ence’ (Weschler 2008: xix). void enfolds it, and the enfolding space has vital form as a Langer describes the primary illusion of each of the three continuation of the figure’ (FF 88). main plastic arts. The primary illusion of painting is what Where a painting is framed in the sense that it is a total visu- Langer calls “scene”. ‘Physically, a picture is usually one of al field upon itself, regardless of its surroundings, a sculptural several things in our sight; it is surrounded by a wall, furni- work ‘is a centre of three-dimensional space. It is a virtual kinetic volume, which dominates a surrounding space, and We can profitably illustrate Langer’s idea of the ethnic do- this environment derives all proportions and relations from main with what Christopher Alexander has called The Time- it, as the actual environment does from one’s self. The work less Way of Building (1979), which takes “pattern languages” as is the semblance of a self, and creates the semblance of a the key to architecture. Just like Langer, Alexander puts the tactual space’ (FF 91). Sculpture is the centre of its space in human experience at the heart of architecture. The timeless the same way that we, as subjects, are the centre of our expe- way of building is ‘a process which brings order out of noth- riential space. We are the perceiving subject that is aware of ing but ourselves’ (Alexander 1979: 3). This process ‘lies deep an object world that surrounds us. But all perception is fo- in us: and only needs to be released’ (o.c. 14). That is why it cused in us, the subject at the centre of experience. Sculpture can be called timeless: it is inscribed almost in our genetic is an image of this experience of selfhood, commanding the make-up because it is a way of building that arises out of our space it inhabits from its centre. This engagement with the being and our needs as human beings who are alive in the surrounding space is taken a step further in architecture. ‘As world. Rather than build from the requirements of a mod- scene is the basic abstraction of pictorial art, and kinetic volume ern society that seeks to make optimal use of the minimal of sculpture, that of architecture is an ethnic domain. Actually, amount of space to store people in boxes that harbour them 74 of course, a domain is not a “thing” among other “things”; it while awaiting the next day of work, the timeless way of 75 is the sphere of influence of a function or functions’ (FF 95). building seeks to conceive of buildings and towns from the This introduction of function into a discussion of architecture needs of human being. The quality that distinguishes such should not mislead us into thinking Langer was an adherent timeless places (and place, for Alexander, encompasses ev- of functionalism in architecture. The functions that she aims erything as small as a room or a doorway and as large as a to highlight are quite simply the vital aspects of human liv- house, a town, or a major city) is that ‘they live’ (o.c. 9). Alex- ing. ‘A culture is made up, factually, of the activities of human ander suggests several ways of describing the timeless way, being; it is a system of interlocking and intersecting actions, but in the final reckoning it seems to be about ‘our liveliness’ a continuous functional pattern. [...] The architect creates (o.c. 122) in a decidedly Langerian sense: a timeless place is its image: a physically present human environment that a place that is expressive of life entirely felt. The structure, expresses the characteristic rhythmic functional patterns or what Alexander calls the pattern language, that underlies which constitute a culture. Such patterns are the alternations a place that is alive ‘covers the whole of life’ (o.c. 230) and is of sleep and waking, venture and safety, emotion and calm, ‘a tapestry of life’ (o.c. 347). To determine whether a building austerity and abandon; the tempo, and the smoothness or is alive and fit for human living all we have to do is consider abruptness of life’ (FF 96). In this sense architecture is ‘a uni- its effect upon our feeling. It is feeling and feeling alone that verse created by man and for man,’ it is ‘the spatial semblance determines whether a place is alive. ‘We can always ask our- of a world’ (FF 97). selves just how a pattern makes us feel. And we can always ask the same of someone else. [...] It is not the same, at all, stress of failure, of not being good enough, of never being al- as asking someone his opinion. [...] It is also not the same as lowed to be oneself. One must always check one’s behaviour asking for a person’s taste. [...] And it is also not the same as and be aware of the fact that the world is looking in. This is asking what a person thinks of an idea. [...] It simply asks for incredibly stressful, up to the point that it can make a person feelings, and for nothing else’ (o.c. 290-291). depressed. In any case, it will have a negative effect upon a Since it is our feeling that determines aliveness, it is a quality person’s performance, because people who are ill at ease are that we can all recognise in buildings. For example, schools never happy workers. often make us feel uncomfortable and ill at ease just being What kind of structure must a place have to be in any sense there. This is often due to the fact that many schools were alive rather than dead? Alexander claims that ‘every place never built or designed for human living but for purposes of is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep surveillance, conditioning, and the inhibition of free move- on happening there’ (o.c. 55). This reads like an almost literal ment. Many schools are built to expose their inhabitants to rendering of Langer’s principle of an ethnic domain, which is the gaze of power. This often happens, quite perversely, in determined by ‘characteristic rhythmic functional patterns’ the name of transparency or a sense of community. For ex- (FF 96). And a building’s character is essentially determined 76 ample, many classrooms, especially in older school buildings, by what happens there most often. For example, the structure 77 still have windows along the corridor, so that anyone pass- of a family home should be determined by the rhythms of ing in the hallway can see everything that happens within family life, which includes such everyday acts as sleeping, the classroom. This kind of transparency can put enormous eating, resting, living together, taking showers, doing laundry, stress, if not on the students, then on the teacher, who might cooking, doing homework, repairing a bike, etc. Any build- live with the daily fear of being exposed if a class is difficult ing or town that is alive is thus created from the ‘fabric of to handle and anyone passing can see their inability to keep relationships’ that runs through them. This fabric ‘is the stuff the group in check. The terror of visibility is built into many that actually repeats itself’ in that place (Alexander 1979: 89). schools, as it is built into many public buildings (just think For a town or larger city this means that the structure and of working environments where individual offices have glass width of streets will be determined by their organic function walls, making them look like cabinets or small cages in which in the greater whole. Some roads are veritable arteries within people seem to be both trapped and exposed). This is the the fabric of a city, whilst others are simply narrow streets inhumanity of much public building: instead of sheltering lined with grocery shops. Similarly, on the small scale of the us, it exposes us to something much more damaging than family home, the kitchen should be structured around the the natural elements, namely human cruelty. To be exposed recurrent relationships between cooking, eating (and how at all times to the gaze, and especially to the judging gaze, we eat), being together for meals, and the storage of food, of others and of one’s superiors, is to live under the constant amongst others. The relationships that determine the alive- ness of the kitchen are simply the activities that happen to spend time with her children. The result of such situations there most often and recurrently. These activities determine is misery and unhappiness. A vivid memory I have of being the quality (the sense of aliveness) of the place. And the home sick from school as a child, is the silence in the neigh- place will only feel alive as a kitchen if its structure allows of bourhood and the occasional sounds of my mother’s pres- all these activities. It will not do to simply cramp a stove, a ence in the house. Otherwise, nothing could be heard. During sink, some cupboards, and a table into a small room to pro- the daytime, whole neighbourhoods seem to be deserted duce a kitchen. For every place ‘there is a fundamental inner areas. Homes are left abandoned, empty places that simply connection between each pattern of events, and the pattern spend the day waiting for someone to come home again. Be- of space in which it happens’ (o.c. 92). Thus, every building, cause such neighbourhoods are designed for the sole purpose every neighbourhood, and every city is defined, ‘in everything of providing “pleasant housing” (whatever that may be) for that matters, by the patterns which keep on repeating there’ families, they end up being excluded from the fabric of every- (o.c. 95). day life. Every day people have to make the excursion to the Our sense of life and our sense of well-being are determined centre of town to do the shopping. Such towns are compart- by the surroundings in which we have to (or may be doomed mentalised. Furthermore, the crucial human activity of work 78 to) live out that life. ‘The specific patterns out of which a has often been excised from them and transplanted to the 79 building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the ex- bigger cities, abandoning life in the town (or in the suburbs) tent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us to diurnal dreariness. free; but when they are dead they keep us locked in inner But the deadness or aliveness of a place is not simply deter- conflict’ (o.c. 101). In fact, ‘a person is so far formed by his mined by such macroscopic elements. The smallest structural surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on detail of a place is crucial. A fine example are windows. Imag- his harmony with his surroundings’ (o.c. 106). For instance, ine an apartment bedroom with only one window looking out in towns ‘where work and family life are physically separate, into an air-shaft. All one sees are brick walls and other dreary people are harassed by inner conflicts which they can’t es- windows with the curtains drawn. No natural daylight ever cape’ (o.c. 107-108). A person who lives in a neighbourhood of enters the room, which is dark and damp, a dreadful place family houses, such as many suburbs or small communities, that is hardly conducive to a good night’s rest. Such windows must commute to work and will come home at night feeling are not windows at all: they are simply holes in the wall. A tired and stressed. Children come home from work to find crucial pattern in the pattern language of the home is there- the house empty, and when their parents do arrive, they are fore “the light on two sides pattern,” which says that any irritable, stressed, and pressed for time. Similarly, a woman room should have at least two windows in opposite walls, to who wants to be a working mother will find herself having to assure a continual presence of natural light in the place. ‘At make impossible choices between her career and her desire one time,’ Alexander writes, ‘it would have been unthinkable to build any room, except a stable or a workshed, without ing in particular, modern art is essentially about representing windows on two sides. In our own time, all knowledge of subjective point of view. And as David Hockney pointed out, it this pattern is forgotten. Most rooms, most buildings, have is Cubism that was probably most successful at this because light from one side only. And even a “great” architect like Le it let go of one-point perspective. Kepler reportedly once said Corbusier, builds whole apartments, long and narrow, with that painters are ‘educated into blindness’ through linear windows only at the narrow end [...] with terrible glare and perspective because it is an unnatural way of looking (Hyman discomfort as results’ (o.c. 234-235). In fact, Alexander more 1998: 159). Hockney would certainly concur. Nobody in the than once offers Le Corbusier as an example of how not to real world ever perceives the world the way it is in a Vermeer build housing. ‘Le Corbusier’s radiant city [...] actively makes painting. We are constantly passing through the world and us feel bad. It may excite our intellect, or our imagination; but our vantage point is constantly shifting. Moreover, the field when we ask ourselves how we shall feel in a place which is of focus of our eyes is limited, which means that our eyes really built like this, we know again, that it will not make us are constantly moving about and bringing new details of the feel wonderful. Again, our feeling is the way our knowledge of world into focus. Just put two pens in front of you on the ta- its functional emptiness presents itself to us’ (o.c. 289). ble, about twenty centimetres apart. Then try looking at them 80 both at the same time. You cannot. Your eyes first look at one 81 Fields of Vision pen and then jump to the other. This is the way we perceive What ties the three modes of virtual space together is the and it is this mode of perception that was being expressed in structurally implied point of view. Scene, kinetic volume, Cubism, which tried to bring together in a two-dimensional and ethnic domain are all organised from the point of view plane the many aspects and acts of perception that consti- of a subject, a perceiver. This is the human point of view, the tute our integrated sense of the world. human measure of things. In architecture it is the functions This means that the supposed distortion we find in Cub- of human life that organise the domain. In sculpture the ist painting is not distortion at all: it is a profound form of structure of the piece functions as a semblance of selfhood, realism, very true to life in its expression of sight and of structuring space around it as we structure the space around our experience of space. ‘People complained about Picasso,’ us through our sentient presence in it. And painting always Hockney told Lawrence Weschler, ‘how he distorted the represents point of view because something is always shown human face. I don’t think there are any distortions at all. from a vantage point. Even if the work is abstract, this ab- For instance, those marvellous portraits of his lover Marie- straction is always the result of a process of reflection on how Thérèse Walter which he made during the thirties; he must we perceive, on what are the essentials of perception, or even have spent hours with her in bed, very close, looking at her on how we would perceive (and therefore can conceive of) face. A face looked at like that does look different from one the sublime, the divine, the metaphysical. Looking at paint- seen at five or six feet. Strange things begin to happen to the eyes, the cheeks, the nose – wonderful inversions and repeti- the experience of space,’ (o.c. 112) he said about these works. A tions. Certain “distortions” appear, but they can’t be distor- point of departure for a discussion of this aspect of his work tions because they’re reality. Those paintings are about that might be Santa Monica Blvd. (1979), a huge canvas that was kind of intimate seeing. [...] Analytic Cubism in particular [...] left incomplete. In it Hockney tried to paint the panorama of was about perception – about the difficulty of perception. I’ve what one could see cruising down Santa Monica Blvd. The recently been reading a lot of books about Cubism, and I keep driver moving at a slow pace through the streets is like a coming upon discussions of intersecting planes and so forth, latter-day version of Baudelaire’s flâneur, taking in the sights as if Cubism were about the structure of the object. But re- from his crib of chrome with leather furnishings. The paint- ally, it’s rather about the structure of seeing the object. If there ing itself is a collage of sights and details that Hockney had are three noses, this is not because the face has three noses, photographed and then collaged together to make one inte- or the nose has three aspects, but rather because it has been grated painting. But he was displeased with the result. When seen three times, and that is what seeing is like’ (Weschler he returned to the motif of the visual cruise through scenery, 2008: 22-23). Pierre Bonnard, although not a Cubist, is a great the results were quite different. The expansive Mulholland master in this rendering of the searching eye. Consider the Drive: The Road To The Studio (1980) has let go of traditional 82 many paintings of his wife Marthe, made within the enclo- one-point perspective and shows the landscape as it pre- 83 sure of their home (due to illness, Marthe was confined to sented itself to Hockney on his daily drive to his studio. It is a the house for the better part of twenty years). Especially the collage of aspects and vistas that are assembled next to each paintings made in the bathroom show Bonnard looking for a other in a Cubist manner. Hockney has stressed that this way vantage point that captures the experience of being in there of painting is ‘more realistic than you might think. When with her. In an impressive series of three late Baignoires the you look at Mulholland Drive – and “Drive” is not the name bathroom is almost reduced to an abstract play of colours of the road, but the act of driving – your eye moves around and forms. Perspective is constantly being anamorphosed the painting at about the same speed as a car drives along and distorted, being painted from impossible bird’s-eye view the road’ (Hockney 1993: 67). Just like Picasso and Bonnard, or from distances that appear unreal within the confines of Hockney is trying in Mulholland Drive to convey the constantly a room. Bonnard abandons linear perspective and paints the shifting field of vision of the eye in movement. The result is actual experience of looking, the way the eye roves through in a very literal sense a field of vision, flattened out, almost space and registers details that are then assembled into our the way a child might draw a street, with houses flat along experience of that space. Eyesight is never linear, it is always both sides of the street, or with several aspects of a building warped. piled one on top of the other. Hockney produced several other In his paintings and photographic collages of the 1980s David pieces conveying this sense of actual perception. A Visit with Hockney undertook a similar project. ‘I’m trying to convey Christopher and Don, Santa Monica Canyon (1984), for example, takes us on an experiential tour of the home of Christopher experience of the world’ (o.c. 10). ‘The general perspective Isherwood and Don Bachardy, supposedly distorting space in [of these composite images] is built up from hundreds of order to make it more expressive of actual lived experience. micro-perspectives’ (o.c. 20). But by mid-May 1981 Hockney The space around the house and the rooms within it appear had abandoned the Polaroids and moved on to traditional to have been folded open and welded together, along with photographs, which came with the added advantage that the constantly shifting view of the surrounding landscape, they did not have a white frame around the image. Hockney to create a dynamic impression of what it is actually like to now started to assemble immensely complex photo-collages move up to and about in the house. Interestingly, the Dutch that were meant to convey the actual experience of looking experimental filmmaker Frans Zwartjes had earlier created at space. This meant that the images would have to translate similar visual effects in his short films, notably the film Living how we experience space as our eyes move through it, from (1971) in which he takes us on a guided tour of his new home one point of focus to the next, assembling a sense of the by holding his camera at arm’s length from his own face overall space in the mind. ‘Everything we look at is in focus and having it tilt and turn in all directions, an almost literal as we look at it,’ Hockney explains. ‘Now, the actual size of expression of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s view of the self as a the zone the eye can hold in focus at any given moment is 84 transparent eyeball, inviting us to turn our eyes upside down relatively small in relation to the wider visual field, but the 85 to view the world in a fresh way (Sitney 2008: 7-8). eye is always moving through that field and the focal point of Hockney next took this new way of looking at space into view, though moving, is always clear’ (o.c. 31). By using indi- photography, which is the medium most closely connected to vidual photographs to capture one such focal point of view, (and structurally determined by) one-point perspective. His Hockney could assemble large numbers of such photographs first photographic experiments were made with a Polaroid into overall impressions of a space. He soon found that this camera. Hockney would photograph several aspects and de- also allowed him to introduce an element of time in the im- tails of his subject and afterwards assemble the Polaroid pic- ages. Since the photographs were taken one at a time and tures in a grid that offered a general overview of the subject, since the eye of the viewer can only look at one photograph, almost as if the complete picture had been made from one or a limited cluster of photographs, at a time, the eye is con- perspective. Only on closer inspection does it become clear stantly moving over the composite image, travelling through that every separate image has its own perspective. Hockney space and time. In this way the composite image actually correctly (and in Cubist tradition) assumed that this way of conveys the experience of being in a room with other people, looking was truer to life than linear perspective. ‘I realised where several things happen at the same time. The fact that that this sort of picture came closer to how we actually see, these many things are all captured in individual (clusters of) which is to say, not all at once but rather in discrete, sepa- photographs allows the viewer to see everything in detail rate glimpses, which we then build up into our continuous (and in focus), which he would not be able to do if he were actually present at the event. It is as if, in such collages, we for example, The Scrabble Game, Jan. 1, 1983 (1983). This shows are allowed to endlessly walk around in one moment of time a group of people, including Hockney’s mother, engaged in that is made to stand still for us. But in its overall impression, a game of Scrabble. Each participant’s face has been photo- the image does feel like it is an entirely realistic representa- graphed at several moments in time, but the resultant pic- tion of how we actually experience a room and the people in tures have been assembled to create a dynamic impression it in the moment. This, Hockney says, allowed him to deal with of their faces as they move through different expressions people’s ‘liveliness’ (o.c. 27). Instead of having to sit still, his and moods. Since the collage was assembled through time, models could now simply go about their business as Hockney the game of Scrabble can even be reconstructed, with several snapped away with his camera. pictures showing how the words aggregate on the board (We- Initially, Hockney would include his own feet in such collages schler 2008: 39). Similarly, Luncheon at the British Embassy, To- to ‘plant’ both the image and the viewer in a specific point kyo, Feb. 16, 1983 (1983) gives an impression (made from Hock- of view. From this vantage point he would take in the scene ney’s seat at the table) of a dinner party and its several guests and translate it into a collage expressive of the actual experi- as perceived from one point of view. The image strongly re- ence of looking at the scene; that is to say, not one overall calls Gustave Caillebotte’s painting Le Déjeuner (1876), an op- 86 image created through linear perspective, but an assembly of pressively melancholy depiction of the elaborate dinner table 87 individual points of focus that, in themselves, are made with at the home of the artist’s mother, painted from the vantage linear perspective (that is to say, with a camera), but which point of the artist himself. Like many of Caillebotte’s other together do not add up to anything resembling such a tra- paintings the image has a heavily anamorphosed perspective ditional perspective. Impressive examples are both Sitting in that is reminiscent of the way straight lines can become bent the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto, Feb. 1983 (1983) and in a photograph. We see this ravine-like tilt of space also in Walking in the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto, Feb. 1983 his famous depiction of Rue de Paris; temps de pluie (1877) and (1983). The former image shows an impression of the tem- in his mighty Jeune homme à sa fenêtre (1875) (see Distel et al. ple’s raked garden from one point of view, the latter gives an 1995: 194, 116, 148). impression of the garden as Hockney is walking through it. Hockney’s greatest masterpiece in this kind of collage is un- ‘When I first pieced them together,’ Hockney says, ‘I thought I doubtedly Pearblossom Hwy., 11-18th April 1986 (Second Version) had made a photograph without perspective’ (Hockney 1993: (1986), ‘a panoramic assault on Renaissance one-point per- 100). Equally impressive are the highly subjective views of spective’ (Hockney 1993: 112) that looks almost like a paint- everyday places, such as his impression of a Telephone Pole, ing of a stretch of highway in the desert, with some traffic Los Angeles, Sep. 1982 (1982). As Hockney’s prowess in this new signs, several trees, and some litter on the side of the road. manner of photographic collage grew, the images became Hockney explains that ‘it took me two days out there at that more and more complex, and more and more lifelike. Take, intersection in the desert to photograph all of those details; I had to climb on a ladder, for example, to get the head-on may be limited in scope, but we never see anything in a blur shots of the stop sign, and for that matter to get the proper (at least not under normal conditions and with healthy eyes): down-gazing vantages of the foreground asphalt. Those beer what the eyes see, they see in focus. cans to the side, I had to get right up close to them and then This brief overview of Hockney’s experiments in painting and photograph them from an angle which subsequently would photography can hope to convey but a small portion of the meld with all the surrounding shots I was taking. And all of artist’s insights in the art of representing the actual felt expe- that is what accounts for the sense of immediacy, of close- rience of space and sight. But it has convinced Hockney that ness, of being right there’ (Weschler 2008: 176). Hockney’s Cubism is probably the most important thing that happened investigations into vision would eventually lead him to a in the art of the twentieth century and that it is the aesthetic revolutionary insight in the visual techniques of great paint- question that contemporary art will have to return to sooner ers of the past. This is his famous hypothesis, formulated in or later because too many issues are still left unresolved. To his book Secret Knowledge (2001), that artists of the past would his mind, abstract and conceptual art, which would come to sometimes use a camera obscura and other optical devices dominate art in the latter half of the twentieth century, are to help them achieve realistic effects in their paintings. Al- temporary excursions and not the major line that art should 88 though controversial, Hockney’s argument is often extremely be following. ‘The great misinterpretation of twentieth cen- 89 persuasive. It also overturned the traditional view of early tury art is the claim advanced by many people, especially masters as “primitives,” especially in the case of the Flemish critics, that Cubism of necessity led to abstraction, that Cub- primitives. With regard to Van Eyck’s famous altar piece with ism’s only true heritage was this increasing tendency toward the Adoration of the Lamb (ca. 1432), Hockney suggests that the a more and more insular abstraction. But on the contrary, Flemish master’s approach of the canvas might have been Cubism was about the real world. [...] I mean, several paths quite similar to the technique Hockney used on Pearblossom led out from those initial discoveries of Picasso and Bracque, Highway. ‘I’m convinced Van Eyck was doing something re- and abstraction was no doubt one of them. [...] But still you markably similar, pulling in close for each face in the crowd, have to ask yourself, why didn’t Picasso and Bracque, who for each clump of trees, for each flower, and then feathering invented Cubism, ever follow that path? And I suspect that all of those vanishing points one atop the next’ (ibid.). The it’s because sitting there in Paris back in the early 1910s, play- immense detail in Early Flemish Primitive painting is, ac- ing out the various possibilities in their minds, they could cording to Hockney, due to ‘hundreds of individual vantages, already see that abstraction led into a cul-de-sac, eventually one after the next, bringing every detail up close’ (o.c. 175). even just an empty room, and they didn’t need to do it to find The result is an image of great clarity and overall sharpness. out. I mean, the urge to depict and the longing to see depic- In fact, ‘the convention of the blur comes from photography’ tions is very strong and very deep within us. [...] And a long- (o.c. 38): in real life everything we see is in focus. The focus ing like that doesn’t just disappear in one generation. Art is about making correspondences – making connections with ing to say? And: What is the poet trying to make us feel?’ (FF the world and to each other. It’s about love in that sense – 208-209). But this approach, which we find in Nussbaum, goes that is the origin of the erotic quality of art. We love to study against common sense because ‘every critic who is worth his images of the world, and especially images of people, our salt has enough literary intuition to know that the way of say- fellow creatures. And the problem with abstraction, finally, is ing things is somehow all-important’ (FF 208). After all, if the that it goes too far inwards and the links become tenuous, or object of literature is merely to communicate information or dissolve, and it becomes too hard to make those connections. to inspire adequate feelings and attitudes (“postures of the You end up getting these claims by some of the formalist heart and mind,” as Nussbaum calls them) in the reader, then critics that art just isn’t for everybody – but that’s ridiculous’ why write literature in the first place? Why not simply state (o.c. 50). one’s case in plain language? Why create a work of literary art? Moreover, much poetry and quite a bit of narrative fiction Virtual Life is not easy to understand: does the poetic or narrative form If we are to address the shortcomings we perceived in Nuss- not hamper rather than facilitate the swift communication baum’s pragmatic approach to literature we must now look of ideas? Does it not endanger the presumed pragmatic func- 90 at how Langer sees expressive form at work in literary works tions of language? If all one wants is to communicate, why do 91 of art. Langer puts poetry at the heart of her discussion of it in such a roundabout and often absurdly embellished way? literature but maintains that the basic principles at work in The answer, obviously, is that literature does not aim at com- poetry can easily be extended to the novel or any other work munication at all. For this reason, Langer avoids speaking of of literature. Right from the start Langer points to the lure art’s “meaning” and prefers to speak of its import, because the of the discursive: ‘The reason why literature is a standard expressiveness of a work of art ‘is conveyed’ rather than com- academic pursuit lies in the very fact that one can treat it municated (PA 60 and 67). This distinction becomes especially as something else than art. Since its normal material is lan- crucial when dealing with literature, which uses language, guage, and language is, after all, the medium of discourse, it the very instrument of discursive thought, as its instrument. is always possible to look at a literary work as an assertion of But a poet or novelist ‘uses discourse to create an illusion, a facts and opinions, that is, as a piece of discursive symbol- pure appearance, which is a non-discursive symbolic form. ism in the usual communicative way. [...] It is a truism for The feeling expressed by this form is neither his, nor his he- modern pragmatists that there are only two essential func- ro’s, nor ours. [...] He has made an illusion, as complete and tions of language (however much they talk about its many, immediate as the illusion of space created by a few strokes many uses), namely to convey information, and to stimulate on paper [...]. He has made an illusion by means of words feelings and attitudes in the hearer. The leading questions [...]. But what he creates is not an arrangement of words, for of poetry criticism, therefore, must be: What is the poet try- words are only his materials, out of which he makes his poetic elements. [...] The poet’s business is to create the appearance we can experience directly), we do not yet know how all our of “experiences,” the semblance of events lived and felt, and experiences connect. I cannot know that the man I met this to organise them so they constitute a purely and completely afternoon will turn out to be the love of my life. In fact, it is experienced reality, a piece of virtual life’ (FF 211-212). This, possible that I hardly noticed him or heartily disliked him on then, is the artistic import and primary illusion of the liter- our first meeting. It is only many years from now that this af- ary arts: they express the experience of life entirely felt. To ternoon will take on the form of “the afternoon I met my fu- do this, the literary artist uses words just like the visual art- ture husband”. It is only with hindsight that we see connec- ist uses lines and colours. As we stressed earlier, the work of tions, reasons, or larger biographical narratives. It is only near art is a total reference and none of its elements has mean- the end of a life, or after a considerable part of life has been ing outside of the total reference. This applies equally to the lived, that a person can look back upon that life and write a words used in a work of literature. It is obviously true that all coherent (auto)biographical narrative. ‘Past experience, as we the words used also have meaning outside the literary work: remember it, takes on form and character, shows us persons this is the meaning (or the meanings) we can find in the dic- instead of vague presences and their utterances, and modi- tionary. But outside of the literary work the words have none fies our impressions by knowledge of things that came after, 92 of the import they have within it: a dictionary can tell us what things that change one’s spontaneous evaluation. Memory is 93 a word means in general discourse, but it can never explain the great organiser of consciousness. [...] It is the real maker how the word functions and which feelings it conveys in the of history – not recorded history, but the sense of history it- fabric of a specific work of literature. And in that sense the self, the recognition of the past as a completely established words do indeed lose their (work-specific) meaning or import (though not completely known) fabric of events, continuous outside the total reference of the work. in space and time, and causally connected throughout’ (FF But we must explain how literature goes about creating vir- 262-263). This also implies that the past tense enables us to tual life. How does it create the felt experience of life entirely reflect upon history, because we can only evaluate events if lived? Several aspects come into play and with regard to nar- we have an overview of the entire fabric in which they are rative prose, and especially the novel, the element of tense integrated. The past tense also helps create a sense of dis- is paramount. Novels are usually written in the past tense tance which is crucial to the aesthetic experience: it conjures because this is the tense of memory. If a novel is to tell a life up the past, and in the case of the novel the virtual life that or to tell a series of events, it must construct a history. In is being offered for our perception, as a whole: ‘the mode in this, the novel resembles memory: it endeavours to create which events appear is the mode of completed experience, ‘a perception of the whole history as a fabric of contributive i.e. of the past. This explains why the normal tense of literary events. Actual experience has no such closed form’ (FF 262). narration is the past tense’ (FF 264). When we experience the present (and the present is really all In a work of literature, as in any other work of art, life is presented in an enclosed form that is not coextensive with to switch the reader’s or hearer’s attitude from conversational the real world in which we live. The novel is fiction and the interest to literary interest, i.e. from actuality to fiction’ (FF narrative presentation is a framing device that makes clear 213) so that ‘the reader is confronted at once with a virtual that what is presented is not a real event but a virtual event. order of experiences’ (FF 214). It is common knowledge that ‘Literary events are made, not reported, just as portraits are lovers of literature will often read the first line of a novel painted, not born and raised’ (FF 257). This element of fram- before purchasing it. This makes perfect sense: if the first ing should be well understood. It refers exclusively to the fact line does not draw one into the fabric of the virtual world that the world represented in a work of art is not an exten- presented in the novel, one is not likely to persevere for the sion of the real world. So the frame that cuts a work of art off many following pages. A particularly fine example of a first from the real world is the very fact of its being a work of art. This line that immediately establishes an entire fictional world applies equally to all the arts. The room depicted in a paint- can be found in Virginia Woolf’s great modernist novel Mrs ing is not an extension of the room in the museum where Dalloway (1925): ‘Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers the picture is hung. The painting is framed not because there herself.’ This sentence does many things at once. By using a happens to be a wooden frame around it but because it cre- passive construction in the past tense, the events are imme- 94 ates a virtual space in itself and all of its own. Similarly, the diately framed at a distance. The elegance of the short sen- 95 virtual space created by dancers on a stage is not coextensive tence gives the illusion of something entirely self-contained: with the space of the spectators in the theatre. As Langer it is a marvel of concise expression. It also gives one a feeling points out (and as we shall discuss at greater length in Chap- of who this Mrs Dalloway is, for there is a sense of decisive- ter Three), the dance creates a relation of forces in which the ness in the utterance. Even in the passive she seems to speak dancers seem to magnetise and attract each other: a virtual with conviction. She is mistress of the house, something space with no ties to the surrounding world (FF 175-176). So which is also made clear by referring to her formally as “Mrs framing has nothing whatsoever to do with the presence or Dalloway,” although we will presently get to know her more absence of an actual frame around the work of art. Simply intimately as Clarissa. The sentence is at once distanced by being presented as a work of art, namely something ficti- and engaged with its subject. And it immediately propels us tious, a virtual reality, the work of art is framed, cut off from into the narrative for the use of the definite article to refer to the everyday. So we may say that the frame is the fictional “the” flowers implies that everyone in the virtual world of the character of the work. Michael Polanyi, speaking of framing novel knows which flowers are referred to, that there is a very in literature, says that ‘the frame and the story embody each specific reason for buying the flowers, and that this reason other’ (Polanyi and Prosch 1975: 87): the work is framed by is known to all relevant parties in the virtual world. So we virtue of its being a virtual presentation. are alerted to the fact that we are about to find out what the Framing starts with the very first line of the work, ‘which has flowers are for, why they are needed, and why Mrs Dalloway announces so decidedly that she will get them herself. Final- is successful we enter into it and imaginatively supplement ly, and most brilliantly, the sentence encompasses the entire other features. But even in our mind there is never an entire- scope of the novel, for much of the subsequent life in the ly detailed picture of the virtual world: we are happy to have novel will consist in a stream of consciousness presentation an overall sense or feel of the place. Once we have entered of Clarissa Dalloway’s impressions, feelings, and thoughts as into the novel, the fabric of its virtual world seems to weave she journeys through London to get the flowers in question. itself. That is why it was so apt of Clive Barker to situate the Interestingly, once the virtual world of a novel is created, the fantastical parallel world of his novel Weaveworld (1987) in author need not go into detail about its individual proper- the images depicted in the fabric of a carpet: the world he ties. The reader will supply much of the material that is not creates is embedded in an actual tapestry that can be read as explicitly mentioned. Many novels do not bother to give us a a metaphor for the creative act itself. detailed outline of the scenery through which the characters The fabric of the virtual world must be successfully created move and a novel does not lose its vividness if we as read- or the novel fails to capture our imagination. And once it ers are not familiar with the detailed geography of the city in is created it is not easy to isolate elements from the fabric which it is set. Similarly, novels rarely elaborate on the furni- without losing their artistic or emotive import. That is why, 96 ture, curtains, wallpaper, or other decorative aspects of each when we look up a favourite passage in a novel, it sometimes 97 and every room the characters enter. Such details are only seems colourless and unconvincing when read in isolation. supplied when they are necessary for the fabric of the virtual What seemed imaginative, lively, and highly original on the world. Once the sense of life has been created, the reader’s first reading, may even seem pedestrian on rereading. The imagination will fill in the gaps. This means that no two read- reason for this is that our first reading was embedded in our ers will read exactly the same novel. But that is no matter, for experience of the entire virtual world. The bare words were all the details that do matter are mentioned. We may ad lib doubly enhanced on that occasion: they were enhanced by the rest at will. This is especially important in relation to the their inclusion in the work of art made with words and by more fantastical genres in literature such as fantasy or sci- our engagement with the virtual world thus created. When ence fiction. Authors of such literature often take time to de- we reread such a passage or sentence in isolation, we are scribe the scenery of, for example, an exotic planet on which often confronted simply with the words. We often have simi- the action is situated, but they too are not able to go into ex- lar experiences with photographs. We take photographs to haustive detail about the properties of the virtual world they memorise a special occasion, special people, or the flavour of create. But the illusion works as long as the author offers the a place. Photographs are meant to capture the moment. But salient features that make the scene, and therefore the sense looking at them some time later we are often left with simply of life, come alive. The elements they offer suggest a vital the buildings, the surroundings, and the people in them. The pattern of what the virtual world is like and if the suggestion moment is lost to us and the photograph becomes merely anecdotal. In fact, a good poem, a piece of music, or another The life expressed in art is virtual, which means that a work work of art is more likely to trigger in us the sentiment ex- of art will always be a work of fiction. This is intrinsically perienced on that specific occasion than a photograph that linked to its framed nature, which cuts it off from the realm leaves us feeling less than what it shows. Works of art that of actual everyday life. So art is a fictional symbolic repre- are unrelated to the memorialised event can bring back the sentation of the felt experience of life that is (an apparition) feel of the moment because they are works of the imagina- presented to our perception. Turning at last to Nussbaum, tion that offer us symbols of feeling. They succeed because with whom we still have something of a philosophical quar- they, unlike the photograph, create a virtual experience that rel to resolve, we find that Nussbaum has very little time is discontinuous with the realm of everyday life and evokes for Langer’s theory of art. In Upheavals of Thought (2001) she the feeling apart from the anecdotal event. That, incidentally, dismisses it because she feels it rests on what she consid- is probably also the reason why art can soothe and calm us: ers to be a simplistic theory of the emotions that fails to see not because art has some cathartic effect (as the aristotelians emotions as intentional. According to Nussbaum, Langer and pragmatists would claim) but because it envelops us in sees emotions as immediate and unreflected reactions to another reality, a virtual world in which our actual life is mo- outward impulses whereas Nussbaum has convincingly ar- 98 mentarily suspended. Art does not resolve our emotions, its gued that there is an evaluative moment in all emotions and 99 illusions give us temporary relief from our emotions by invit- that emotions are therefore never entirely “expressive” in an ing us to direct our complete attention and sense of felt life unmediated way. But even if we were to accept this criticism towards the logical expression of feeling in the forms of the that does not mean that we should reject Langer’s theory of work. Harold Bloom reports that during the week following art. In fact, we might want to try and adjust it and introduce the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade an intentional theory of the emotions, such as Nussbaum’s, Center in New York he ‘taught scheduled classes on Wallace into it. It then becomes clear that such an operation would Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop, on Shakespeare’s early come- not invalidate or even change Langer’s theory of art. Whether dies, and on the Odyssey. I cannot know whether I helped my emotions are conceived of as intentional or not does not students at all, but I momentarily held off my own trauma’ necessarily affect their relationship with the forms we create (Bloom 2002: 3). Reading literature did not cathartically re- to express them since Langer holds that art is never directly solve or heal trauma but kept it at bay. expressive of emotions. Whether an emotion is understood as intentional or not has nothing to do with the legitimacy Against Form of the claim that feeling is expressed in expressive forms. So Let us summarise the Langerian insights into art we have we could (if we were to pursue the issue) accept Nussbaum’s gained. According to Langer, art is expressive form, a logical criticism of Langer’s theory of the emotions and still stand by symbol of the felt experience of life. But that is not enough. Langer’s theory of art. But Nussbaum is also critical of Langer because she is one of But this is of course the issue that concerns Nussbaum most: a series of ‘writers on art who are lovers of music and wish following a tradition that she traces back to Aristotle, Nuss- to give music a special place among the arts’ (Nussbaum baum claims that the issues of citizenship and ethics that 2001: 261). But surely, if it is legitimate to take literature as a she addresses in literature are themselves aesthetic issues paradigmatic case of the arts, as Nussbaum does, it should and that an aestheticist approach that focuses on formal be equally legitimate to favour music in such a way. Besides, qualities is too reductive. She claims that ‘one of the great- Langer several times points out that the fact that music is est contributions of both Plato and Aristotle to aesthetics often her prime exhibit should not be taken to mean that was their subtle account of the ways in which literary forms it is somehow the “highest” form of art or the most pure or themselves convey a content, a view of what is worth taking the most representative. All the arts are equally pure in their seriously, and what the world is like. What could someone greatest accomplishments and there is no hierarchy of the mean by saying that these questions are not aesthetic? Such arts. I feel Nussbaum is so quick to dismiss Langer because a claim can be seriously supported only by defending a pic- Langer’s theory of living form is broader in scope than Nuss- ture of the aesthetic that has had a relatively narrow and baum’s ideas on literature and because many of Nussbaum’s recent history in the Western tradition, namely the Kantian 100 observations can be more adequately explained through and Post-Kantian formalist tradition, according to which the 101 Langer’s theory. To look at Nussbaum through Langer is to see proper aesthetic attitude is one that abstracts of all practical the limitations of Nussbaum’s approach, for it is clear that interests’ (Nussbaum 1997: 102). But Nussbaum misrepre- Nussbaum’s theory of literature does not travel well to the sent the issue. Langer would never deny that literary form other arts and that what she says about literature requires conveys a content that we should take seriously. All content more grounding in an analysis of literary form. Langer shows present in a work of art is artistic by being part of the work. that the “modes of interaction” Nussbaum isolates move us But Nussbaum would have us believe that the presence of a not for their discursive content but because they are integrat- content that deserves to be taken seriously is often in itself ed parts of the fabric of an illusion of life entirely felt. What the full measure of a work’s artistic import. And this is sim- Nussbaum claims literature tells or teaches us could just as ply claiming too much for seriousness and demanding too easily be stated, and in fact in a discursively much less am- little from art. All art is serious, but not all serious things are biguous way, in a statistic. Nussbaum’s theory does not show art. Besides, to state that ‘literary forms themselves convey a why literature needs to be literature because it fails to identify content’ is a simplistic truism: how could one use words and anything in literature that makes it specifically literary as not convey some content? Even nonsense poetry relies on the opposed to a social pamphlet or an elucidating statistic. She fact that words, even words randomly put on paper, always mentions style and form but never explains how they func- suggest meanings and associations. Nussbaum might just as tion. well argue that the aesthetic import of Richard Strauss’ opera Salomé lies in the fact that it narrates how the titular vixen prejudice against non-discursive thought in her work. That managed to trade her dance for a baptist’s head. And surely may be a reason (but surely not the only reason) why she has the supreme import of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion cannot lie in tried to establish the reason of emotions in her work, notably the fact that it reports how a man came to die on a cross. in Upheavals of Thought. If emotions can be shown to have The problem is now clear. Kant’s theory of aesthetic judge- reason, they can be made to work in a discursive way and are ment, which started the formalist-aestheticist tradition in thus rescued from the shapeless muddle that we usually call modern art theory, was primarily devised from the point of “the emotional”. But even if we grant that this view of the view of the visual arts and music, whereas the tradition to emotions is correct, and Nussbaum’s writing on the issue is which Nussbaum belongs has always been concerned more persuasive enough, this does not mean that we need to reject with literature, and especially the example of Greek tragedy. Langer’s theory. But Nussbaum does so nevertheless. This Langer shows that it is possible to expand the formalist ap- rejection is probably due to the fact that Langer accepts that proach to include all the arts, including literature, while re- certain facts, feelings, or emotions do not allow of discursive taining a keen awareness of each art’s individual characteris- symbolisation. Langer accepts the limits of language and the tics. But Langer also suggests that any approach that looks at limits of discursive reason and subsequently suggests that 102 art discursively runs the risk of agreeing with the early (and this need not lead us into unreason: it simply opens a new 103 only the early) Wittgenstein that it is best to keep silent about perspective on a symbolism that is not discursive but still matters about which it is not possible to speak. To take dis- logical. Nussbaum would seem to stick with early Wittgen- cursive meaning as the standard for evaluating all the arts is stein: if something is not communicable in discursive lan- to overlook the fact that some of the arts might be very well guage (or translatable into it), it is senseless. suited to express feelings and subtleties that discursive lan- Nussbaum’s view of art, as represented in her very nar- guage is often unable to communicate. A discursive approach row focus on literature (and, one might add, only one very to art makes two assumptions, namely ‘that language is the specific kind of literature, namely the realistic novel of the only means of articulating thought’ and that ‘everything nineteenth century), is still utilitarian instead of aesthetic. which is not speakable thought, is feeling’ (PNK 87) about Basically, Nussbaum still sees art as what Kenneth Burke which it is best to keep silent. But it is wrong to assume that once called ‘equipment for living’: aesthetic objects that help ‘all articulate symbolism is discursive’ (PNK 88). Whenever us cope with the many perplexities of life (Burke 1973: 61). language encounters feelings or facts that do not allow of Nussbaum’s work is a latter-day example of the therapeutic discursive expression another kind of symbolism may be fallacy that the ultimate legitimacy of art lies in its thera- sought to express them. Such a symbolism would be a non- peutic or social benefits. In a sometimes vicious criticism discursive symbolism as can be found in the arts. Nuss- of Nussbaum’s work Geoffrey Galt Harpham claims that for baum’s stress on literature suggests that there is a utilitarian Nussbaum ‘the specificity of literature as a discourse, an object of professional study, is almost altogether erased and which sets his work going, whether it comes suddenly like an replaced by a conception that treats it bluntly as moral phi- inspiration or only after much joyless and laboured fuddling, losophy. [...] Her relation to literature, and to the world of the is the envisagement of the “commanding form,” the funda- mind in general, appears to have been based on the most mental feeling to be explored and expressed’ (FF 389). This “primitive” of all readerly responses, identification with fic- ‘power of conception’ is what Langer calls ‘genius’ (FF 408). tional characters’ (Harpham 2002: 59). ‘Literature, she says, is Genius is a much-maligned word and has become politically useful because it cultivates emotions, and emotions are use- incorrect since the triumph of the School of Resentment. It ful because they foster a human community. The most useful has also often been used in vague and pseudo-mystical ways. literature is therefore realistic fiction’ (o.c. 68). Nussbaum’s But the fact that many people have used a word badly should social and moral goals may be laudable in themselves, but not prevent us from using it correctly. There is nothing ob- they cannot be imposed upon art without reducing art to scure or arcane about genius: it is simply an artist’s ability something which it is not. But this, in essence, is the error to conceive of expressive form. Harold Bloom has called it that lies at the heart of the therapeutic fallacy and that was ‘fierce originality’ (Bloom 2002: 11). In this, genius is differ- also exposed by Langer when she pointed out that the ef- ent from talent. ‘Although some degree of talent is necessary 104 fect of the pragmatic approach to art ‘is that aesthetic values if genius is not to be still-born, great artists have not always 105 must be treated either as direct satisfactions, i.e. pleasure, or had extraordinary technical ability; they have often struggled as instrumental values, that is to say, means to fulfilment of for expression, but the urgency of their ideas caused them to biological needs. It is either a leisure interest, like sports and develop every vestige of talent until it rose to their demands. hobbies, or it is valuable for getting on with the world’s work [...] But it is a mistake to think genius is complete from the – strengthening morale, integrating social groups, or vent- beginning. Talent is much more likely to be so, wherefore the ing dangerous repressed feelings in a harmless emotional infant prodigy is a well-known phenomenon. [...] Since ge- catharsis. But in either case, artistic experience is not essen- nius is not superlative talent, but the power to conceive invis- tially different from ordinary physical, practical, and social ible realities – sentience, vitality, emotion – in a new symbolic experience’ (FF 35-36). projection that reveals something of their nature for the first time, it does admit of degrees; and a small amount of genius Genius Redeemed is not a rare endowment. Whatever its scope, it is the mark of A final question must be answered. We have said that art is the true artist’ (FF 408-409). expressive form. But what sets the creative dynamic in mo- Harold Bloom explains that genius is derived from the Latin tion? How does the artist engage upon a work of art? Cre- and means ‘to be an attendant spirit for each person or place: ation starts with an act of conception, namely when an artist to be either a good or evil genius, and so to be someone who, conceives of a commanding form. ‘The act of conception for better or for worse, strongly influences someone else.’ It is ‘our inclination or natural gift, our inborn intellectual or the attitude of resentment. To enable communication with- imaginative power’ (Bloom 2002: 7). Note that there is a dou- out mental expansion Nussbaum approaches literature as a ble aspect to genius: it is an inborn power, but at the same mode of discourse while the New Historicists look at litera- time it is a power that may influence someone else. This in- ture as an effect of social forces: it could happen to anyone fluence is what Harold Bloom calls authority. ‘Genius asserts and you could discourse on it with everyone. This is equality authority over me,’ Bloom claims, ‘when I recognise powers as method. greater than my own’ (o.c. 3). Quoting Emerson, Bloom writes Does all this mean that art can have no social or moral ben- that words of genius are words that ‘sound to you as old as efits? Not entirely. But it does mean that we must understand yourself’ (ibid.): we recognise genius when someone says these benefits properly. Oscar Wilde prefaced his novel The something about our deepest nature which we felt we always Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) with a series of aphorisms and knew but were never able to verbalise. This, too, is put most one of the most famous states that ‘there is no such thing as eloquently by Emerson when he writes that ‘in every work of a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts: they come written. That is all’ (Wilde 1991: 129). This is much more than back to us with a certain alienated majesty’ (quoted in Bloom a programme for aestheticism: it states the simple truth 106 2002: 246). By denying greatness and originality the School of that no art can be successful if it is not successful as form. 107 Resentment limits human growth and rejects the possibility It is the forms that allow us to conceive of import, not the that a mind may be larger than our own and may help ours to content. Harold Bloom has stated he has grave doubts about expand through exposure to the expressive forms it creates. literature’s value as educator since most of the great master- Harold Bloom was very accurate to speak of resentment in pieces are not the kinds of books one can read as benevolent relation to many contemporary critics for there is something social tracts in the way that Nussbaum reads Dickens. Most narrow-minded and ungenerous in the inability or unwilling- great literature is filled with villains and characters with ness to see greatness anywhere. But as Langer points out, ‘a grave moral flaws who display all kinds of behaviour that we critic who cannot be awe-struck is not equal to his material’ might not judge very commendable for everyday use. There (FF 246): his mind is incapable of imagination, of conceiv- is dubious morality in much great literature and many great ing feelings and ideas that he does not yet know. The cruel literary characters would deserve our moral condemnation irony of this, of course, is that the social reform that people if they were real. As Harold Bloom sarcastically remarks, ‘the like Nussbaum would like to generate through art depends new commissars tell us that reading good books is bad for entirely on our imaginative ability to put ourselves in the the character, which I think is probably true. Reading the very minds of unknown others. But this requires an expansion of best writers [...] is not going to make us better citizens. Art is the mind, of the possibilities of felt experience. There is no perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who attitude more pernicious to this generous state of mind than was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere’ (Bloom 1994: 16), a truth to bear in mind when level [because] the arts we live with – our picture books and confronting politically correct critics who feel that mere ex- stories and the music we hear – actually form our emotive pressiveness makes for good art. They are wrong: real artists experience. [...] This influence of art on life gives us an indica- don’t cry, they conceive of expressive forms. tion why a period of efflorescence in the arts is apt to lead What, then, is literature, or art in general, for? As Harold a cultural advance: it formulates a new way of feeling, and Bloom points out, ‘the true use of Shakespeare or of Cer- that is the beginning of a cultural age. It suggests another vantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is matter for reflection, too: that a wide neglect of artistic edu- to augment one’s own growing inner self. [...] All that the cation is a neglect in the education of feeling. Most people Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own are so imbued with the idea that feeling is a formless total solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confronta- organic excitement in human beings as in animals, that the tion with one’s own mortality’ (o.c. 30). ‘What Johnson and idea of educating feeling, developing its scope and quality, Woolf after him called the Common Reader [...] does not read seems odd to them, if not absurd. It is really, I think, at the for easy pleasure or to expiate social guilt, but to enlarge a very heart of personal education’ (PA 71-72). In her Philosophi- solitary existence’ (o.c. 518). The confrontation with great art cal Sketches Langer adds that art is ‘the spearhead of human 108 cannot make us better people and it cannot cure social ills, development, social and individual. The vulgarisation of art is 109 but it can expand our consciousness, deepen our insight, and the surest symptom of ethnic decline’ (PS 83-84). help us reach some kind of wisdom. ‘The question we need to put to any writer must be: does she or he augment our con- Inventing the Human sciousness, and how is it done? I find this a rough but effec- As an example of the way art can help us shape our emotion- tual test: however I have been entertained, has my awareness al lives Langer points to Irwin Edman’s suggestion that ‘our been intensified, my consciousness widened and clarified? If emotions are largely Shakespeare’s poetry’ (PA 72). This idea not, then I have encountered talent, not genius. What is best has recently been elaborated by Harold Bloom in a massive and oldest in myself has not been activated’ (Bloom 2002: 12). study of Shakespeare’s work. But the notion that Shakspeare Langer points to something similar when she writes that art provided the model for the personality and emotional make- can help us form and expand our emotional lives. ‘As soon as up of modern man can be traced at least to Early German Ro- the natural forms of subjective experience are abstracted to manticism and the work of Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) and the point of symbolic presentation, we can use those forms Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), a context which Bloom does not to imagine feeling and understand its nature. Self-knowledge, mention but which is worth a detour here because it will take insight into all phases of life and mind, springs from artistic us right back to the problems we have been tackling in this imagination. That is the cognitive value of the arts. But their chapter. Friedrich Schlegel was probably the quintessential influence on human life goes deeper than the intellectual Early Romantic philosopher. His work includes a philosophy of Romantic irony and fragmentation that often reads like a Schlegel calls the tendency towards the Absolute within the manifesto of postmodern sensibilities. Like the other Roman- finite. This is a rather abstract way of saying that allegories tics, Schlegel believed that the ultimate foundation of every- are an attempt to somehow show or capture the Absolute in thing, which was usually called the Absolute, was unattain- a finite form. In an allegory we use an image to refer to some- able. Therefore it became the object of a never-ending search. thing else. It is an attempt to capture something elusive or This search was the essence of philosophy, which Schlegel abstract in an image. So an allegory uses an image of some- defines as ‘Sehnsucht nach dem Unendlichen’ (Frank 1997: 521) thing finite to focus on something beyond the finite: ‘Because or a longing for the infinite. The destination of our longing is it is ineffable, the highest can only be expressed allegori- forever beyond reach, it remains a mystery. Because of his in- cally’ (Frank 1989: 136; Frank 1997: 932). It should therefore ability to gain access to his essential nature, man is split. Man come as no surprise when Schlegel writes, in fragment 48 of is a broken being that feels at once finite and infinite. This his Ideen (1800), that ‘where philosophy ends, poetry must double aspect is due to the unattainability of the Absolute: begin’ (Frank 1997: 944). Poetry or allegory takes over from we have an essence, a unity, a foundation, but we cannot philosophy because philosophical reflection falls short of attain it. Our most fundamental self remains forever alien to its intended goal, which is to gain insight into the Absolute. 110 us. We cannot find out what we really are and can therefore Reading fragment 48 one feels as if one were standing on 111 never be truly whole. Nevertheless, we feel ourselves whole. the cross-roads between Langer and Wittgenstein: discursive We feel or sense the Absolute. But every time we try to grasp language and rational philosophical reflection fail to express it, it eludes us. So we are on an infinite quest for insight into the ineffable, but where Wittgenstein takes his silent leave the Absolute. During this quest we feel at the same time fi- and retreats into profound silence, Schlegel and Langer point nite, namely a corporeal being that is limited and cut off from towards a different symbolic order, a mode of expression that the Absolute, and infinite, namely somehow linked to that allows us to give form to what eludes rational discourse. But elusive Absolute, attracted to it but never able to take hold of allegory, which may surely be read here as shorthand for the it. As a consequence, the subject experiences itself as a mere arts, is not the only way Schlegel feels we can glimpse some- fragment. It experiences a feeling of limitation that expresses thing of the Absolute; there is also the joke, which is the op- a most distressing truth: ‘dass wir nur ein Stück von uns selbst posite of allegory. In the joke we actually find a short flash of sind’ (o.c. 876). The other, missing part is the Absolute. insight into the Absolute. Where allegory is directed upwards, This longing for the Absolute which cannot be fulfilled, and away from the finite and with the gaze fixed upon the beyond cannot be fulfilled on principle, is expressed in a dialectic or to of the Absolute, the joke tries to capture the Absolute firmly and fro between the principles of allegory and the joke. The within a piece of the finite. The joke is like a flash of insight dialectical movement between these two principles is what into the Absolute, like lightning striking into stone (lightning Schlegel calls irony. Let us first look at allegory, which is what or ‘Blitz’ was a preferred image of Schlegel’s to characterise the joke). Jokes are funny because they are contradictory, they to anything. So we can and will say anything and then sim- go against logic and common sense. They turn the usual or- ply deny it. What separates Romantic irony from postmod- der upside down. In doing so, they illuminate our inner split. ern irony is a sense of the tragic, of loss, of being bound to Irony is the attitude man has when he confronts the Abso- something we cannot attain. For postmodernists it no longer lute. Fully aware of his lacking self, man mocks both the finite seems to be tragic that we lack essence. It has simply become and the infinite. This mockery is irony. Man mocks the finite a joke. A shallow and hollow joke and a rather petite sort of because it is always in conflict with itself, a constant chaos of lightning. Postmodernity is simply irony made easy. fragments and ever-changing individual positions that never But now for Shakespeare. Romantic irony is not the everyday come together in a coherent whole and always remain lack- irony we use to distance ourselves from people or ideals. ing in relation to the Absolute. But man also mocks the Abso- Neither is it the famous Socratic irony that feigns ignorance lute itself because it is unattainable. To be grasped by human only to entrap an antagonist in debate. Romantic irony is a reflection (or philosophy) the Absolute must limit itself (in higher form of irony that is not even necessarily funny. To allegory, in the lightning flash of the joke). But in doing so, Tieck, it is a spirit that penetrates a complete work of litera- the Absolute is simply not showing itself. Since the Absolute is ture and both destroys and holds together everything in it. 112 infinite (and unattainable) no finite form can ever capture it. Tieck himself has called this spirit an ‘Äthergeist, der [...] über 113 In showing itself, the Absolute retreats. So all fragments are dem Ganzen schwebt’ (Frank 1989: 371). This means that irony in the end revealed to be but failed images of the Absolute. is not an element in the plot of a novel or play. It is not even Irony is the tragic consciousness of one’s fragmentary condi- an attitude of the characters. It might be those things, but it tion. It is clear that what we have here is an early, and prob- is essentially more. It is a spirit that pervades the entire work ably the earliest, systematic description in the modern era of and that must therefore be ingrained in its very fabric. And what we have come to call “postmodern irony”. But there is a that means that irony must be found in language itself. Both difference, and an important one. Postmodern irony can be a Schlegel and Novalis have spoken of a ‘Transzendentalpoesie’ very irritating attitude that easily lends itself to smugness. It in this context, analogous to Kant’s concept of a ‘Transzen- is often an excuse to not take any position at all. Postmodern dentalphilosophie’. This is a philosophy that does not seek irony can never be taken to account for anything because it to describe what we know but how we know. This was also never really stands up for anything. This smug irony repre- the project of Kant’s first critique: to analyse how we gain sents a shift away from Romantic irony. The Early Romantics knowledge of the world and describe that epistemological and Schlegel never denied the existence of the Absolute. They mechanism. Similarly, transcendental poetry would be a po- simply believed that it could never be attained. Postmodern etry that reflects on itself as poetry while it is being written. irony will usually do away with this belief in the Absolute. It is a text that announces itself as text. ‘Transzendentalpoesie,’ Since nothing universally applies, we need not truly commit Schlegel writes, ‘[stellt] in jeder ihrer Darstellungen sich selbst mit dar’ and is ‘überall zugleich Poesie und Poesie der Poesie’ (o.c. 364). losopher as Richard Rorty defined an ironist as a person who It is at once poetry and poetry of poetry. This self-reflexivity always maintains a distance towards his supposed essence means that poetry loses its unequivocality and becomes all- because such essences are never final). encompassing in its meanings. No single word has one single Tieck has described this concept of irony in his early essay meaning anymore. on Shakespeares Behandlung des Wunderbaren (1793), in which So Romantic irony for Tieck is a stylistic irony. Robert Minder he asks how Shakespeare gets us to suspend disbelief in the has called it ‘la grâce tieckienne’ (o.c. 371). It is to be found in face of the many wondrous and surreal things that happen the way Tieck treats his language and can be gleaned only in his plays. According to Tieck, Shakespeare succeeds by indirectly, in the lightness of phrasing, in the inconsistent making sure that the attention of the spectator can never way characters are developed, and in the loose way in which stay completely focused on one element. He constantly drama is motivated. Negatively put, this means that Tieck’s shifts from humour to terror, from horror to drama and back irony can be seen in the fact that there is something light to comedy, piling up stylistic and dramatic contrasts in such and ephemeral in his phrasing, that his characters act in a way that the mind is overwhelmed by the onslaught of inconsistent and implausible ways, and that there is no firm shifting moods and perspectives. There is such a clash of op- 114 causal relation between dramatic events, so that these events posites, and it is sustained at such a level and for such a long 115 might at some times seem somewhat absurd or bizarre. The time, that the mind simply starts to feel exhausted and is no Romantics believed that this lack of consistency, this free- longer able to find any reason or rationality in the proceed- dom from solid character, was in fact the true freedom of ings. This leaves the mind with only one option: to sit back human nature. Why, after all, should man have substance? and surrender wholly to the illusion of the play. To put it un- What if the real freedom of man lies in the fact that he does kindly, and profoundly unjustly, Shakespeare might be said not have substance? This insight, which reads thoroughly to beat his audience into submission by the sheer power of postmodern to our eyes, was neatly expressed by Schelling his mercurial imagination shooting all over the place. Inter- in a 1820/21 lecture where he describes human subjectivity estingly, Tieck believes that Shakespeare can do this because as a ‘durch alles gehen und nichts sein, nämlich nicht so sein, dass the human mind itself is very susceptible to this method. es nicht auch anders sein könnte’ (o.c. 372). To be human is es- The mind of man is nimble. It has no essence and is there- sentially never to exist in such a way that existence could not fore plastic. What we have here, is the un-essentialist Ro- be different. In man, nothing is determined and all is possible mantic view of the subject that we found in Schelling’s state- because, as Novalis once wrote, ‘jeder Mensch ist ohne Maass ment. For man, all is possible. So man is also receptive to a veränderlich’ (Frank 1985: 23): there is no limit to our mutabil- poetry (which stands pars pro toto for all the arts) in which ity. Since the Early Romantics this lack of essence has been everything is possible, even the wondrous and supernatural. linked to the concept of irony (and as we saw, as recent a phi- Romantic irony, in the sense of Tieck, but also in the sense of Schlegel, expresses human nature through its agile to and a ‘naturalistic unreality’ (o.c. 12). As Bloom points out, ‘the fro between extremes of emotion and experience without reading of character appears infinite in Shakespeare’ (Bloom ever attaining an essence or an end. Of Tieck’s own literary 1994: 53) and ‘no other writer, before or since Shakespeare, characters Manfred Frank has written that they are driven has accomplished so well the virtual miracle of creating ut- by an ‘inner Void’ (Frank 1989: 386). This void is the essence terly different yet self-consistent voices for his more than of Romantic subjectivity. If one writes for the stage, this sub- one hundred major characters and many hundreds of highly jectivity is expressed through sheer inconsistency. This was distinctive minor personages’ (Bloom 1998: xix). Shakespeare also the view held by Novalis, who demanded ‘Mannigfaltig- achieved this through what Bloom calls ‘a psychology of keit in der Darstellung von Menschen,’ and especially ‘nur keine mutability’ that ‘originates the depiction of self-change on Puppen, keine sogenannten Charaktere – lebendige, bizarre, inkon- the basis of self-overhearing [...]. We all of us go around now sequente, bunte Welt. Je bunteres Leben, je besser’ (ibid.). talking to ourselves endlessly, overhearing what we say, then This mercurial man, leaping from either extreme of the emo- pondering and acting upon what we have learned’ (Bloom tional gamut to the other and responsive to sudden violent 1994: 48). swings in mood and perception, was invented by William Through this self-discovery through speech Shakespeare’s 116 Shakespeare. Modern man, ironic and sceptical, forever characters develop to a point beyond our grasp. They create 117 torn by the question whether to act or not to act, is Hamlet, themselves through the art of speech and become larger Prince of Denmark. ‘Even at its darkest,’ Bloom writes, ‘Ham- than ordinary life. ‘Hamlet baffles us by altering with nearly let’s grief has something tentative in it. “Hesitant mourning” every phrase he utters’ (Bloom 1998: 410). In a similar way, is almost an oxymoron; still, Hamlet’s quintessence is never all of Shakespeare’s characters ‘become free artists of them- to be wholly committed to any stance or attitude, any mis- selves, which means that they are free to write themselves, sion, or indeed to anything at all. His language reveals this to will changes in the self. Overhearing their own speeches throughout, no other character in all of literature changes and pondering those expressions, they change and go on to his verbal decorum so rapidly. He has no center: [...] Hamlet contemplate an otherness in the self, or the possibility of is too intelligent to be at one with any role’ (Bloom 1998: such otherness’ (Bloom 1994: 70). This is the expansiveness 406). Hamlet’s character is ‘a dance of contraries’ (o.c. 407). of Shakespearean character that makes the Bard, in Bloom’s To him, ‘the self is an abyss, the chaos of virtual nothing- view, the author of modern man. ‘Shakespeare so opens ness’ (o.c. 5). Bloom argues that Shakespeare, in inventing his characters to multiple perspectives that they become Hamlet, ‘invented the human as we continue to know it’ (o.c. analytical instruments for judging you. If you are a moral- xx). But the argument should not be limited to the gloomy ist, Falstaff outrages you; if you are rancid, Rosalind exposes prince of Elsinore. All of Shakespeare’s great characters are you; if you are dogmatic, Hamlet evades you forever. And if constructed from ‘seeming contradictions’ that give them you are an explainer, the great Shakespearean villains will cause you to despair. Iago, Edmund, and MacBeth are not opaque philosophy of human reflection in his Fichte-Studien motiveless; they overflow with motives, most of which they (1795/96). Novalis (1772-1801) asks how knowledge of the elu- invent or imagine for themselves. [...] The most bewildering sive Absolute, and of our truest self, is possible. As starting of Shakespearean achievements is to have suggested more point he takes the notion of “reflection” and takes it literally contexts for explaining us than we are capable of supplying to mean a mirror image. If we look in a mirror, we see every- for explaining his characters’ (o.c. 64). Shakespeare robs us thing reversed: left becomes right and everything is turned. of the possibility to think ourselves original in our concept But we also think of our self-consciousness as reflection, of our self. Shakespeare, as Camille Paglia has pointed out, namely as self-reflection, a reflection upon our own thoughts ‘is the first to reflect upon the fluid nature of modern gender and actions. So Novalis asks if a similar reversal of images and identity’ (Paglia 1991: 197) and many of his comedies also applies there. And it does. If we try to fathom the Ab- evolve around mistaken identities with characters dressing solute (or ourselves) through reflection, and this obviously up as persons of the opposite sex. This fluidity, blurring the means through the activity of philosophy, we constantly feel lines of fixed personality, infects Shakespeare’s language, that we are missing the Absolute. It eludes us and cannot teeming with mercurial metaphors that ‘spill from line to be attained. We have a feeling (‘Gefühl’) of what the Absolute 118 line, abundant, florid, illogical. [...] Shakespeare’s metaphors, might be, but when we try to capture this feeling in (discur- 119 like his sexual personae, flicker through a rolling stream of sive) thought, ‘der Geist des Gefühls ist da heraus’ (Frank 1997: development and process. Nothing in Shakespeare stays the 817). As Nietzsche would later write in Die fröhliche Wissen- same for long. [...] Shakespeare is an alchemist. In his treat- schaft (1882), thoughts are mere shadows of our perceptions, ment of sex and personality, Shakespeare is a shape-shifter darker, emptier and simpler (‘Gedanken sind die Schatten un- and master of transformations’ (o.c. 197-198). serer Empfindungen, – immer dunkler, leerer, einfacher, als diese’; The constant change in self, Hamlet’s ‘metamorphic nature’ Nietzsche 1999b: 502). But if rational reflection results in a re- (Bloom 1998: 430), makes it ‘very difficult to generalize about flection, namely a reversal of the true image, then reflection Hamlet, because every observation will have to admit its must also have the ability to reflect this reflection, to turn opposite’ (o.c. 409). This has something of the to and fro that it again and put it right. This would be a double reflection marks the infinite Romantic consciousness that Schelling that might be called self-reflection, namely a reflection upon described as anti-essentialist openness. This becomes espe- and of the reflection that happens in reflection. The inverted cially clear in light of Bloom’s remark that ‘Hamlet’s players image in a mirror is reverted again when reflected in another hold the mirror up to nature, but Shakespeare’s is a mirror mirror. If we seem to lose track of the Absolute in reflection, within a mirror, and both are mirrors with many voices’ because we only get an inverted and therefore unreal image (o.c. 15). The imagery of mirrors, which Bloom borrows from of it, then the reflection of reflection might put the authentic Shakespeare, can serve as a direct link to Novalis’ rather image of the Absolute right again. If reflection is a movement away from the Absolute towards a false image, then double Chapter Two reflection can be experienced as a movement of the Absolute towards us, opening and presenting itself in its true form. But this play of reflections is too easy an answer to our pre- dicament. It would border on sophistry to make things look so easy. Novalis is aware of this and therefore denies that ARTWORLD double reflection can give us insight into the Absolute. What the double reflection does do, however, is make us acutely aware of the falseness of the image captured in reflection INC. (in thought, in philosophy). Our perceived knowledge at- tained through reflection is unmasked as false knowledge. So double reflection does not lead to insight in the Absolute, but to a knowing-of-not-knowing, a docta ignorantia! This is the spirit of Romanticism: there is something within us that 120 is beyond our comprehension and that can only be traced, 121 as Schlegel would say, through fragments. The Absolute is One of the most important relationships in an artist’s life larger than we could ever be. It is the same expansiveness is that between himself and the artworld: the international of the human soul that makes Shakespeare’s characters so network of artists, curators, critics, and collectors who shape much larger than us, but at the same time so close to us. It the public face of the cultural realm. It is the curators, critics, is in Shakespeare that we first find this infinity within that and collectors who decide who’s hot and who’s not, which the Romantics described as the source of our infinite Sehn- works will be shown, and what will be sold. On a deeper level sucht. It has been with us ever since and has shaped the way the artworld probably also decides to a certain degree what we think about ourselves. In fact, the postmodern condition kind of art can be made at a given time. Obviously, this does was invented by Shakespeare and is modelled on Hamlet. So not mean the artworld decides which works of art will or Shakespeare’s is a strong case indeed to show how art can will not be made; it means that the artworld to a large extent shape our emotional and spiritual lives. decides what kind of art will be taken seriously at a given mo- ment. Needless to say, the artworld is not a monolithic thing: there are many subcultures in the artworld. And the artworld is also often wrong in retrospect. The fact that the work of the Impressionists was jeered at and went unrecognised at first shows how wrong the artworld can be. It also shows that a group of artists can form a subcultural artworld that 35) Danto is careful to speak of an interesting perceptual dif- turns out to be more important than the dominant artworld. ference because as he knows there were differences between At least two lessons can be learned from this. First, an artist Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and the real items one could buy in the must always make the kind of art he believes in. No amount supermarket. Not only were Warhol’s boxes handmade, they of contemporary success or lack of it can say anything about were also slightly smaller in size than the real Brillo boxes. the value or importance of your work in the long run. Second, So there are perceptual differences between art and real- whether he likes it or not, every artist will have some kind ity, but for Danto these differences are not “interesting” in a of relationship with the artworld, even if it is simple flat-out perceptual way, although they are of huge importance on a rejection. So it is to the artworld and its dynamics that we conceptual level. In fact, we will see that Danto so overvalues now turn. their conceptual importance that he becomes blind to such perceptual and material differences as are readily at hand in Art Criticism After the End of Art a given work of art. In 1984 Arthur C. Danto made a bizarre claim about what he Danto takes great pains to explain why Warhol’s Brillo Boxes called the end of art. The end of art as Danto saw it has often are a historical watershed. ‘Until the twentieth century it was 122 been misunderstood. Danto did not mean that no more art tacitly believed that works of art were always identifiable as 123 would be made in the future. Nor was his claim about the such. The philosophical problem now is to explain why they end of art meant as a critical judgement on the art of the pe- are works of art. With Warhol it becomes clear that there is riod. Danto did not claim that contemporary art was so abys- no special way a work of art must be’ (ibid.). For centuries mally bad that he was witnessing something like the end of this had been different. Danto believes that the ending nar- art in the sense of the end of good art. Danto’s claim pointed rative about art was begun around 1400, with the dawn of the at an evolution within the narratives about art. Something Renaissance. For centuries afterwards the narrative about about the way we think and talk about art had so profoundly art had to do with mimesis: art was judged on its ability to changed that Danto believed it signalled the end of an era. represent reality. Representational fidelity of some kind was Danto was very specific about the date and place the era the norm and art was felt to progress in its increasing abil- ended: it was in Andy Warhol’s exhibition of his Brillo Boxes ity to represent the world in ever more accurate ways. This at the Stable Gallery in 1964. Warhol’s exhibition made it is ‘the progressive model of art history’ (PDA 86) that starts, clear that henceforth it was no longer possible to distinguish for Danto, with Vasari. In the nineteenth century another works of art from other objects. Warhol’s exhibition raised a narrative developed out of this: the story of artistic Modern- fundamental question: ‘what makes the difference between ism. For Danto, the invention of the cinema, with its ability a work of art and something not a work of art when there is to represent movement with the highest representational no interesting perceptual difference between them?’ (AEA fidelity, was crucial in making artists abandon representa- tion and raise ‘the question of what could be left for them to itself is gained, it becomes pointless to pursue any further do, now that the torch had, as it were, been taken up by other the search for insight into art’s essence. technologies’ (PDA 100). Most art histories put this shift at a For Danto, the end of art ‘lies in the Age of Manifestos being much earlier date, with the invention of photography, but the over because the underlying premiss of manifesto-driven art outcome was the same either way: the practice of painting is philosophically indefensible. A manifesto singles out the changed fundamentally. Now that photography and cinema art it justifies as the true and only art, as if the movement it had taken over the representational function, painting had expresses had made the philosophical discovery of what art to look for something else to do because it simply could not essentially is. But the true philosophical discovery, I think, is compete with the new media’s representational fidelity. With that there really is no art more true than any other, and that Modernism art became self-referential: ‘the whole main point there is no one way art has to be: all art is equally and indif- of art in our century was to pursue the question of its own ferently art’ (AEA 34). With the end of art we have entered a identity while rejecting all available answers as insufficiently new era which Danto calls the Post-Historical era. From 1400 general’ (PDA 110). Modernism was what Danto calls the Age until Modernism we lived in the historical era, at least in of the Manifesto: innumerable manifestos were written about artistic terms, because there was a belief in progress. In the 124 the one true art. Every artistic movement within Modernism Renaissance and afterwards artists believed they were getting 125 believed it held the key to what art really was. And no move- better and better at representing reality. In Modernism, with ment agreed with any other about the nature of art’s essence. its many manifestos, every avant-garde believed it was some- By consequence, ‘the history of art simply seemed to be the how progressing towards aesthetic truth, the ultimate pure history of discontinuities’ (PDA 108), an endless parade of and true essence of art. Such progress is no longer possible in conflicting models without any progressive narrative thread. the Post-Historical era. Therefore we have reached the end of What Warhol showed, was that all these discontinuous ap- history, which ‘means that there can be no historical direc- proaches to art had somehow missed the point: what art was tion art can take from this point on’ (AEA 36). If the historical actually about was the attainment of consciousness of itself as era was about drawing lines between what is and what is art. This is an approach to art and history that Danto borrows not (true or pure) art, no such lines can be drawn in the Post- from Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), which sees Historical era. ‘To say that history is over is to say that there history as the gradual development of Spirit (which is every- is no longer a pale of history for works of art to fall outside of. thing) towards total self-knowledge. In his highly tendentious Everything is possible. Anything can be art. And, because the view of the history of art, which is made to fit the Hegelian present situation is essentially unstructured, one can no lon- model, Danto sees this process at work, culminating in War- ger fit a master narrative to it’ (AEA 114). Since the 1960s we hol, whose art is about nothing more than itself (at least in have learned to accept everything as art. Danto’s eyes). Once the insight that art is really just about For the art critic the Post-Historical condition is somewhat perplexing for he is confronted with a relativism in art that of abstract art this presentation of his ideas is reductive and seems to make any kind of standards-based criticism diffi- highly tendentious. To understand this we must consider the cult. Danto speaks of an ‘unforgiving sort of relativism’ with role of feeling in Kant’s aesthetics. For Kant, all our informa- which ‘the concept of quality became odious and chauvinist. tion about the world comes from our senses. Sensory input [...] In candour, [...] it would be altogether wonderful if one is next processed in the mind, where it is ordered according could turn to aesthetics as a discipline for guidance out of to a set of twelve categories that shape the stream of sensory the chaos’ (AEA 94). However, a theory of art criticism has be- information into coherent wholes. Through this process, come very difficult to obtain since the end of history means which is an interplay between sensory experience and the that ‘a philosophical definition of art must be compatible analytical workings of the mind, an image of the world or with every kind and order of art – with the pure art of Rein- representation (Vorstellung) comes about. This representation hardt, but also with illustrative and decorative, figurative and is not in itself beautiful or ugly, it is simply the way the world abstract, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, primi- is presented to our senses (at this point, the reader might tive and nonprimitive art, much as these may differ from one want to recall Langer’s similar concept of intuition). another. A philosophical definition has to capture everything To determine whether a representation is beautiful or not we 126 and so can exclude nothing’ (AEA 36). According to Danto, the must submit it to our sense of pleasure or displeasure: ‘Hier 127 Kantian paradigm is no longer a suitable candidate for such wird die Vorstellung gänzlich auf das Subjekt, und zwar auf das criticism. ‘The mistake of Kantian art criticism is that it seg- Lebensgefühl desselben, unter dem Namen des Gefühls der Lust regates form from content’ (AEA 98). But this is a wrong read- oder Unlust, bezogen’ (KdU §1). In other words, the aesthetic ing of Kant based on a common misunderstanding of the Kri- judgement is not cognitive, it is about how we feel and expe- tik der Urteilskraft (1790). Danto takes issue with Kant’s notion rience a representation. The aesthetic judgement expresses of disinterestedness, the idea that we should judge beauty ‘ohne how the subject feels itself while perceiving a representation: alles Interesse’ (KdU §2). He takes Kant to mean that disinter- it is an experience ‘in der das Subjekt [...] sich selbst fühlt’ (ibid.). estedness implies that we must void ourselves of feeling and This means that the representation or Vorstellung is submit- become neutered perceivers who simply register forms. Read ted to the felt experience or ‘Lebensgefühl’ of the subject. If the in this way, and the reading is quite common among Kant’s representation kindles a pleasurable felt experience, it may critics, Kant’s aesthetics becomes reductively formalist and is be called beautiful, if not, it may be called ugly. But Kant goes merely about registering relations between shapes and forms. on to say that for such a judgement to be pure it must be dis- In this way, Kant’s work is read as essentially a philosophy of interested. This means that the aesthetic judgement must be abstract art: the sheer play of forms in space or on a plane. wholly aesthetic: it must consider only the way the representa- Something that you can apply to Mondriaan, but to not much tion we perceive engages our felt experience. We must not be else. But while Kant’s philosophy does allow of a philosophy motivated in our judgement by any kind of extra-aesthetic considerations, be they practical, moral, financial, or of any or some abstract graph). It is simply erroneous to think that other kind. The aesthetic judgement must be exclusively Kant reduces all our perceptions to a set of geometric shapes concerned with the aesthetic, namely perception and how this with colours painted in. The things we perceive are not sche- perception makes us feel. Disinterestedness implies that no matic forms but landscapes, birds and birdsong, paintings, non-aesthetic issues may come into play. This does indeed boys and girls, a sunset, and so on. A Kantian perceiver does sound like a formalist aesthetic: it is concerned only with not reduce these objects to abstract geometric schemata, he the way perceived shapes and forms address our sense of judges them as they are. All these things are in themselves felt self. But two observations should be made to qualify this shapes and forms. The whole of their perceptual properties statement. First, Kant does not limit perceived shapes and is what constitutes their form. When looking at a red rose forms to geometrical shapes and forms (as common use of the a Kantian does not see an irregular globe-like mass with words shapes and forms might lead us to suppose); perceived curved lines and frilly borders, all of it dyed in reddish hue; a shapes and forms really encompass all the sensory data we en- Kantian simply sees a rose. The rose is itself the form. Simi- counter. Hence, a sound or a smell is also a perceived shape larly, a Kantian perceiver does not see identical schemata of or form. Second, Kant’s approach may sound distanced and people walk around in the street as if they were a bunch of 128 formalist, but it is by no means void of feeling. On the con- clones; he sees actual individual people. But to judge whether 129 trary, disinterestedness means that there should only be feel- these people are beautiful he must make abstraction of his ing, but feeling about the forms and shapes perceived. Beauty own extra-aesthetic feelings about these people and merely is about what pleases us in perception. judge their perceptual properties as a unitary form. That is But Danto’s claim was not about the segregation of form and to say, for example, that a Kantian will have to make abstrac- feeling in Kantian aesthetics but about the segregation of tion of his personal dislike for his neighbour if he wants to form and content. Danto might well grant the central role of judge whether his neighbour is beautiful. The content of the feeling in Kant’s aesthetics and still hold that any amount of neighbour (“who he is” as an individual) is not segregated feeling in judgement does not bestow content upon form. So from his form, it is simply the perceiver’s personal interest our argument does not really answer Danto’s objection at all, that is segregated from his aesthetic judgement. Kant himself although it does point us in the right direction. The problem states the point very clearly: ‘If someone asks me whether is that Danto presupposes that form itself cannot be content. I find the palace that I see before me beautiful, I may well And this is really the crucial issue, for a Kantian may very say that I don’t like that sort of thing, which is made merely well hold that it is. Kant’s third critique is not a philosophy to be gaped at, or, [...] I might even vilify the vanity of the of art but an extension of Kant’s theory of perception. What great who waste the sweat of the people on such superfluous we perceive is never some abstract shape (except, of course, things [...]. All of this might be conceded to me and approved; if the object under consideration is itself an abstract painting but that is not what is at issue here. One only wants to know whether the mere representation of the object is accompa- sensory experience with the innate categories of the mind. nied with satisfaction in me’ (KdU §2; Guyer 2005: 557). The trouble with this view, however, is the question of how Obviously, Kant’s theory of beauty has many complexities you bring the two together: where do senses and mind meet? and raises many further difficulties that cannot be addressed The third critique tried to bridge the gap in “reflecting judge- here. What is important for us, however, is to make clear that ment,” which comes about when the forms of perception and a Kantian aesthetic does not preclude feeling or content, the categories of the mind are allowed free play among each which renders calling it “formalist” rather tricky and mislead- other in the construction of perception. The power of judge- ing. Kantian philosophy suggests that the feeling experienced ment is the point where mind and body meet. To be sure, this in aesthetic judgement is profoundly linked to the formal is a highly simplified presentation of Kant’s argument. And it properties of the object under consideration. These formal remains open to question whether Kant’s bridging of the gap properties are not some kind of abstraction but a particular is at all successful and could pass the test of philosophical content. But all particular content has a form or shape and scrutiny. But that need not concern us here: what matters for it is this form that must be judged. To see Kantian aesthet- us is the mere fact that Kant had the intent to bridge the gap ics as a disembodied formalist theory is therefore to miss its between body and mind in the third critique, which puts the 130 point entirely, as art historian Amelia Jones does (but many lie to any discussion of Kantian aesthetics that tries to sell it 131 others with her) when she claims that Kantian aesthetics and off as an abstract and somehow “disembodied” enterprise. the art criticism that derives from it ‘are predicated upon the suppression of the particular, embodied, desiring subject; the Skirting Langer artist and the critic must remain transcendent rather than If anything, it is the Hegelian approach to art as we find it in immanent (embodied)’ (Jones 2000: 20). It is true that Kant Danto that appears to be guilty of a lack of embodiment. To would consider a desiring subject a subject with interest, for see this we should return to Danto’s discussion of Warhol’s to desire something is the very definition of interest (KdU Brillo Boxes, which he sees as very pure examples of what he §2). But it is manifestly untrue that a Kantian perceiver must calls “indiscernibles”: real objects and art objects that are so be disembodied and transcendent. For Kant, there is beauty similar that they cannot be told apart on the basis of visual only in the particular because beauty is always grounded in perception alone. But as we saw, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes are very a judgement on subjective perception. The Kantian perceiver easily told apart from the real thing: they are painted on must be wholly embodied for it would be quite impossible wood, handcrafted, and slightly smaller in size than the ac- for him to judge anything if he had to go about without his tual boxes. Nobody has ever approached a Warhol Brillo Box as physical senses. In actual fact, Kant’s aesthetics were part if it were an actual Brillo box. Danto seems to ignore this fact of his attempt to bridge the gap between mind and body. As and claims that with Warhol’s work ‘it becomes clear that we saw, we construct our image of the world by combining there is no special way a work of art must be – it can look like a Brillo box, or it can look like a soup can’ (AEA 35). But this the difference between the real and the counterfeit Napoleon. is not really an issue about what art can be, it is about what Danto seems to claim that the fact that an object is an indi- can become a topic or motif in art. Warhol has never made a vidually crafted and fictional work of art is not sufficient to work of art that looks like a soup can. Warhol has painted im- explain that it is different from the real thing it represents. ages of soup cans, which is rather a different matter. Nobody Danto’s inability to deal with the material facts of art is pain- as yet has tried to open a Warhol painting of a Campbell’s fully clear in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), soup can to try and eat its contents for the very simple rea- which relies almost entirely upon fictional examples of pos- son that Warhol’s work is a painting and not a faux soup can sible or hypothetical works of art. At one point Danto even with misleading three-dimensional properties. A painting of discusses a work that Picasso could have made (but obviously a soup can is not a work of art that resembles a soup can: it didn’t) at elaborate length. There is in fact very little actual is an image that represents a soup can. That Danto overlooks art under discussion in Danto’s book, which is devoted al- the difference between an actual object and its representa- most entirely to showing that art is now about philosophy. tion in a two-dimensional image is rather alarming in a phi- Danto’s main claim is that everyday or commonplace objects losopher and critic. It clearly shows that his own theory of art are turned into art (transfigured, so to speak) because of the 132 is so focused on the conceptual level, namely the idea that meanings the artist or the critic attaches to them. But the 133 art has now become totally self-reflexive and hence a kind transfigured object remains outwardly indiscernible from its of philosophy about art, that he is totally blind to the material non-artistic counterpart. As such, Danto’s book is an apol- properties of the art under discussion. ‘It is true,’ he admits of ogy for conceptual art. At one point in the discussion Danto the Brillo Boxes, ‘that Warhol’s boxes were made of plywood, brings up Nelson Goodman’s reasonable suggestion that total stencilled by hand by Warhol and his assistants, and the indiscernability between similar objects is highly unlikely commercial cartons were made of printed cardboard on huge and that close scrutiny of pairs of similar objects is almost industrial presses. But that, surely, could not explain the dif- logically determined to show up some difference between ference between art and reality’ (Danto 2005: xi). But if that them, especially if we are dealing with sets of objects one of cannot explain the difference, I should like to know what can. which is a work of art and one of which is not. Danto has a To claim that the difference between the real thing and an hard time refuting Goodman and reverts to the claim that ‘it imitation cannot explain the difference between art and real- is striking as a matter of concealed bias on Goodman’s part ity is special pleading with a vengeance. In fact, I would say it that he should spontaneously have assumed that all aesthetic is simply stupid for by the same token one might claim that differences are perceptual differences’ (CT 43). I fail to see the the fact that the historical Napoleon Bonaparte was a physi- bias in this: it is plain common sense. The only way to make cal human being and David’s painting of Napoleon Bonaparte Danto’s claim that aesthetic differences could be non-per- is an image of the man in paint does not sufficiently explain ceptual legitimate would be to assume that ideas or concepts attached to objects are part of their aesthetic properties. As The truth of the matter is that, contrary to Danto’s claims, we will see, this is exactly what Danto assumes, but it ren- most contemporary art is very clearly discernible as art. ders the whole issue rather sterile. Since ideas and concepts Most contemporary artists do not even try to make their are not visible in themselves it is straining the meaning of work look indistinguishably like an object in the real world. “aesthetic” to categorise them in that rubric: to be percep- It is certainly true that any object or any image can now be tible (aesthetic in the etymological sense of “present to the appropriated into art and that artists can now freely move senses”) ideas and concepts must be expressed in material between media and kinds of art, making a painting today, a containers, not simply attached to them as some invisible sculpture tomorrow, and maybe write a book or direct a film Platonic Idea. But Danto is systematic in his madness for next year. It is true that most of what we now happily con- in the same paragraph he claims that ‘future investigation cede is art could only become art in our Post-Historical age may reveal differences between two objects which are not of pluralism. But that does not mean that all those works are perceptual differences’ (ibid.) but, we may now assume, dif- not distinguishable from ordinary objects. Or, to paraphrase ferences in meaning. The problem with this (apart from the the title of Danto’s own book, the commonplace has not fact that an appeal to hypothetical results of possible future simply or even primarily been transformed in a conceptual 134 research is a council of despair even in the most speculative way: when artists work with commonplace objects they usu- 135 of metaphysics) is of course that the presence of some idea ally change a lot about their material conditions and hence or concept in or around an object can be neither proved nor their form, their presentation, their context, their stylistic disproved, which makes the entire argument facile or void or, features. Most art that deals with the commonplace does not at least, uninteresting. Hence, Danto’s entire claim is (in Witt- transform the commonplace rather than depict it or use it as a genstein’s sense) senseless. material. A Wolfgang Tillmans photograph of the Concorde is But let us return to the indiscernibles. Danto’s claim that it not the Concorde itself, just as David’s portrait of Napoleon is now impossible to tell art objects apart from “real” objects Bonaparte is not the actual chieftain of the French. And a because anything can be art has only ever been true of a very Sarah Lucas sculpture made of cigarettes is itself hardly an limited class of conceptual art objects. It certainly does not object for smoking (I was going to add that so far nobody has hold of Duchamp’s urinal, which is often the prime exhibit of tried to shove Paul McCarthy’s giant butt-plugs up his be- Hegelian conceptual theories, but of which Elizabeth Frank hind as if they were real all-kinds-of-anal-pleasure-inducing has rightly pointed out that it ‘was turned upside down butt-plugs, but I refrain). What these artists do, and what in when first shown in New York in 1917; it had a signature, fact artists have done through most of art history, is to take “R. Mutt” and, however much it scandalised people, nobody objects or people that are present in the real world and use peed in it, at least not to my knowledge; had it been placed them as a motif, a topic, a model, a tool, an ingredient, a in a real men’s room, nobody would have’ (Frank 1996: 279). material. They represent or alter the commonplace object. Hence, the object is no longer a commonplace object, just seems problematic to me, especially since her work offers so like the paint applied to a canvas by a painter is no longer many valid answers to the questions Danto poses. Further- the commonplace object it was while it was still inside the more, in a criticism of Langer in Art After the End of Art (1997), tube. The artist does not transform the commonplace paint Danto claims that feeling and form (the title of Langer’s great itself into art but uses it as a material for art. Danto does not work) ‘have tended overall to rule one another out’ (AEA get this. For example, he refers to 1960s ‘avant-garde dance, 112). But to say that feeling and form rule each other out one where dance movements, outwardly indistinguishable from must hold a naive traditional view of feelings as irrational simple bodily movements, began to be performed. What was and shapeless and therefore opposed to the rational clarity the difference between walking and performing a dance of forms. But as Langer points out, feelings and emotions movement that consisted in walking?’ (Danto 2005: xi-xii) only seem irrational ‘because language does not help to make The difference is very simply that in the dance the walking them conceivable, and most people cannot conceive any- movement has become a motif that is used within the pri- thing without the logical scaffolding of words’ (PS 88). To be mary illusion of the dance. more precise, it is discursive language that fails to adequately This takes us right into the work of Susanne K. Langer, who express emotions because it ‘does not reflect the material 136 claims that anything, even the most commonplace object or form of feeling’ (PS 89). This is why man develops art, ritual, 137 movement, can become a motif in art if it is integrated in an religion, and metaphor: their symbolism offers logical forms expressive form. For Langer the formal properties of a work that do express the forms of feeling. Danto’s claim that feel- of art are related to the feeling or content they are meant to ing and form are at odds becomes even more bizarre in light convey. In this sense her work is a fine example of how one of passages in his own work that have a decidedly Langerian can develop an aesthetic theory that is Kantian in inspiration ring. For instance, Danto uses (late) Wittgenstein’s notion (but developed via Ernst Cassirer and John Dewey, amongst of “forms of life” to illustrate that every style of painting is others) without segregating form and content or form and embedded in a form of life and cannot simply be transposed feeling. Langer manages to evade the segregation through her to another period. Such a period ‘is not simply an interval of keen insight into symbolism and language. But Danto rarely time, but rather such an interval in which the forms of life mentions Langer. This is odd, for when he does mention lived by men and women have a complex philosophical iden- her, he refers to her as ‘my teacher, and my friend’ (AB 2; cfr. tity, as something lived and known about in the way we know AEA 112). I do not know the details of Danto’s relationship to about things by living them’ (AEA 201). When Danto claims Langer, whether he studied under her or simply sat in on her that the way art is made, including its style, is closely related lectures. But I do assume that you may be taken to be conver- to a form of life as it is experienced by the people living it, he sant with a philosopher’s ideas if you label that philosopher is really suggesting that there is link between subjective feel- your teacher and friend. So Langer’s absence in Danto’s work ing (of which daily experience is a part) and the forms that may be used to express it. any object, any gesture, any motif, no matter how common- There are probably several reasons why Danto skirts Langer. place. Judging by the brief Foreword Danto fabricated for the It is not uncommon for thinkers to develop a blind spot for abridged edition of Langer’s three-volume Mind, published in other thinkers by whom they have been profoundly influ- 1988, it certainly seems as if Langer’s hovering intellectual enced or whose ideas they perceive as a philosophical threat presence was in need of exorcism for Danto calls Mind ‘a to their own theories because they get too close for comfort. work inadequate in its original execution’ and ‘an unwieldy So Langer beat Danto to the idea of the Post-Historical era book’ in which ‘the supporting material obscures the philo- by at least a decade (Danto first formulated his views in a sophical architecture’ (Danto 1988: vi). Coming from the au- paper published in 1964). But there may be a strategic reason thor of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, which is one of behind Danto’s tiptoeing around Langer. Danto has the clear recent philosophy’s most plodding books, comments about intention of promoting himself as a key historical figure. In obscured philosophical architecture are somewhat ironic. the Introduction to Unnatural Wonders (2005) Danto writes More importantly, Danto completely disregards the custom about his own experience after publishing his essay about that a Foreword, especially the Foreword to a book by a friend the end of art in 1984. ‘Though it took awhile for the fact to who had died only a brief few years before and was therefore 138 dawn on me, I was in a sense the first posthistorical critic of no longer around to defend herself, is supposed to be lauda- 139 art. There were of course plenty of art critics in the period we tory. That Danto uses such a Foreword to disparage Langer’s had now entered. What was special about me was that I was work is in very poor taste to say the least. But whatever Dan- the only one whose writing was inflected by the belief that to’s (obviously conflicted) relation to Langer may be, I believe we were not just in a new era of art, but in a new kind of era’ that Langer’s theory of art is exactly what Danto needs to (Danto 2005b: 3). Danto’s inflated sense of his own impor- get out of the chaos the art critic in the Post-Historical era tance is illustrated when he next claims that he only has one finds himself in. Langer’s view of art as expressive form is real forerunner: Hegel. Danto does put himself in rather lofty sufficiently general to take in all the arts. She discusses all company, although a more sober-minded critic might argue the major forms of art that were about when she was writ- that what made Danto special was the way he developed a ing. She obviously does not address performance or video art sense of his own towering historical importance from getting or other more recent kinds of art that have developed in the his Kant all backwards. pluralist era. But as we will see in the next chapter, her ideas The one thing that could deflate Danto’s self-promotion is can very easily be expanded to include newer forms of art in to find another thinker who had already proposed similar a meaningful way. But at the same time Langer’s ideas are claims in the recent past. To be sure, Langer never suggests sufficiently specific to make criticism possible. This is in fact we have entered a new era, but she did suggest already in the great strength of her concept of “primary illusion,” which Feeling and Form that anything could be integrated in art: defines in a clear but general way what is the basic structure of every kind of art. Langer tells us what art is, what it does, forever seeking out anything that is new and has a radical and how it does that in its several forms. The implications of ring to it, so we may be sure that they have done the Danto her theory therefore make it ideally suited to deal with art in thing). Or maybe Danto was right when he said that art had the Post-Historical era. ended in 1964 but his theory no longer applies to more recent art because history has moved on after all. That would mean A Short History of the Avant-Garde that art after art has not necessarily been made in the mode Let us return to Danto’s claim that the Post-Historical era of the end of history. Possibly, something entirely different means the end of the Age of Manifestos. This claim is clearly may be going on. But whatever it is, we shall make it the related to the claim that we have witnessed, in recent times, business of the present section to try and see more clearly the end of the avant-garde. The avant-garde, after all, was a into the matter of what has happened to the avant-garde in Modernist idea that expressed many artists’ sense that they the current pluralistic age. were in the vanguard of history. But if there are no more The first thing to consider is that several noted authors of- master narratives there can be no more avant-gardes. In fer readings of the history of the avant-garde that seem to reality, however, the rhetoric of avant-garde has never left discredit several aspects of Danto’s presentation. In his clas- 140 the artworld. In fact, with the advent of postmodern Theory sic theory of the avant-garde Peter Bürger distinguishes the 141 imported from France since the late 1960s, great progress into historical avant-garde from the neo-avant-garde (Bürger 1974: ever new areas of profound new theoretical insight has been 44-45). The historical avant-garde emerged at the end of the announced with numbing regularity. It sometimes sounds nineteenth century and is exemplified by Dadaism and Surre- as if every new book by every famous critic were rewriting alism. Its core project was to dissolve art into life. The histori- the whole of history from the point of view of new theoreti- cal avant-garde was a reaction to bourgeois culture. Bourgeois cal insights that are invariably shaking the foundations of culture saw a gradual division of society into several autono- Western culture. Despite the widespread belief in historical mous areas, similar to the division of labour in the industrial relativism and the end of the master narratives talk of prog- area. This means that art also gradually developed into an ress towards new insights has continually poured forth from autonomous practice, with the artist emerging as a “special- people, mostly theorists, who seem to firmly believe they are ist” in the same way that any other craftsman or labourer at the vanguard of the very history presumed dead. This is could be a specialist in some specific activity (o.c. 42). This odd, to say the least, and several explanations come to mind. emancipation of art culminated in Aestheticism, which is the Maybe Danto was simply wrong in talking of the end of art final consolidation of art as a separate institution within soci- and the dawn of the Post-Historical era. Maybe he was right ety. As art grew more independent from other areas of society but the trendies of Theory are simply still having to catch up it also lost its influence in society and ceased to play a defin- with the fact (but this seems unlikely since the trendies are ing social role. In earlier times, especially in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, art had been closely linked to the needs avant-garde art had been more or less limited in its expres- and demands of the church or the aristocratic classes. In the sive possibilities by an epochal style that determined more Renaissance the evolution towards emancipation started or less what ways of making art were available to artists. In with the emergence of highly idiosyncratic personal styles. contrast, the avant-garde never developed a canonical style. In the Middle Ages most artistic production had been anony- Not only were there many strands within the avant-garde, mous, in the Renaissance the individual genius took centre but even within every strand there was no canon for creation. stage. With the triumph of bourgeois culture over aristocratic No two Dadaist works look alike and neither do two Surreal- culture art’s function within society changed dramatically: ist works. With the avant-garde everything becomes possible: the artist now became a merchant trying to sell his goods on every style and every means of expression suddenly comes at the art market. Individual style and excellence became all- the artist’s disposal (o.c. 23-24). This means that Bürger situ- important whereas traditional social or moral messages de- ates the switch to what Danto would call the Post-Historical creased in importance because the average collector was now era, where everything is possible, in the era of the historical a bourgeois individual who did not seek political statements avant-garde. Its prime exhibit is, obviously, Duchamp’s urinal. but art that would enhance his own conception of himself as In this work Duchamp questions several core tenets of art in 142 a citizen and bourgeois. In the bourgeois period the classical the bourgeois period, first and foremost the institution of art 143 tension in art between form and message was eliminated in itself. By placing a urinal in a museum Duchamp questions a decisive shift towards the dominance of form (or a signa- the position of the artist as the unique creator of the work. ture style). It is this shift that would help make Modernism He also questions the institutions that were linked to the possible, the series of artistic movements that question the bourgeois conception of art: the museum and the exhibition. nature of artistic representation itself. The prime tactic of the historical avant-garde was provoca- Aestheticism is the end point of the evolution of bourgeois tion, a kind of shock tactics that was aimed at taunting the art. It clearly shows the dual nature of art in bourgeois soci- public and making it reflect on art and life. A favoured prin- ety. On the one hand Aestheticism shows the full autonomy ciple in this project was estrangement (‘Verfremdung’; o.c. 24). of art: it is only about itself, it is sheer form. But by implica- However, the avant-garde never really exploded the au- tion it also shows the full emancipation of art from society in tonomy of art. It simply subverted its categories. The reason the sense that such an Aestheticist art has lost all influence for this is quite simply that any art that merges entirely with in society. It is socially impotent and at worst (from the point life would cease to be art at all. The success of Duchamp’s of view of social influence) merely decorative. For Bürger the provocation is entirely dependent upon the existence of the historical avant-garde was a reaction against the impotent category of the artist as the autonomous maker of the work autonomy of art. It rejected bourgeois art in a radical way and of art. Without such a framing theory the urinal becomes sought to re-integrate art into life. Until the emergence of the simply a urinal and loses all its subversive power. This is what makes the neo-avant-garde an impossibility. For Bürger if it wants to have any kind of critical or subversive effect in the neo-avant-garde comprises the conceptual, minimalist, society, i.e. if art wants to be some kind of protest, it needs to and performance movements emerging since the late 1950s. be autonomous, which means that art must be separate from The problem with art such as Duchamp’s urinal lies in its the practice of everyday life (o.c. 73). This certainly raises nature as a unique event. One cannot repeat it. ‘Duchamp’s many questions about community art or any kind of activity ready-mades are not works of art,’ Bürger writes, ‘but mani- aimed at the strengthening of the social fabric that is pre- festations’ (o.c. 71). Contrary to Danto, Bürger claims that sented as art. Despite the many claims of conceptual art and the power of the urinal has nothing to do with the classical other kinds of “critical” art since the 1960s, Bürger’s analysis tension between form and content (or meaning), but with suggests that all this recent art is not really critical at all be- the tension between a factory-made serial object on the one cause it simply repeats gestures that were critical only when hand and the fact that the artist has signed it and thus in- they first emerged in the historical avant-garde. scribes it into the bourgeois narrative of the artist as the au- tonomous maker of art. Once the idea that the individual is Kondylian Combinations necessarily the creator of the work has been dispensed with Bürger’s history of the avant-garde is corroborated in an 144 within the artworld such gestures lose all force. Art after Duch- interesting way in Panajotis Kondylis’ history of the decay 145 amp has been very willing to accept ready-mades (or indis- of the bourgeois way of life and the emergence of mass de- cernibles) as “real” works of art. This means that the idea of mocracy. Kondylis argues that every culture looks at reality the artist as individual creator has been abandoned and that from a specific perspective or worldview. Such a worldview the category of “the work of art,” which the historical avant- is created to cope with the world: it is a means of survival in garde sought to dismantle, has been restored (o.c. 78). So all a hostile environment. By imposing a certain view upon the such provocation after Duchamp simply falls flat because the world, a culture establishes an identity that allows it to con- avant-garde has been institutionalised: in the 1960s nobody trol the world. Through this control a culture and its inhabit- was shocked when commonplace objects were presented ants are able to keep themselves alive (Kondylis 1984: 14). as art. We had seen it before and the thrill was gone. This, This means that every worldview is designed in relation to according to Bürger, was the problem facing the neo-avant- whatever may threaten a culture’s survival. These threats are garde of the 1950s and 1960s. The ideas of the historical the culture’s enemies. In primitive cultures the enemy may avant-garde have become common currency in the artworld be wild animals or poisonous plants, but in our more devel- of the late twentieth century, ‘so the gestures of protest of the oped societies the worldview is usually designed to identify neo-avant-garde become prey to inauthenticity. Their claim and do battle with ideological enemies, namely groups of to protest can no longer be sustained because it cannot be people or cultures that live by another and usually conflicting made good on’ (ibid.). This leads Bürger to conclude that art, worldview. This means that for Kondylis ‘es gibt keinen anderen methodischen Zugang zur Erfassung des Charakters einer Epoche oder einer Gesellschaftsformation als ihre Abgrenzung gegen eine frühere oder eine andere’ (Kondylis 1991: 287). To understand a culture or epoch one must understand against what or whom it was constructed. For instance, the worldview of the Enlight- enment was developed as a strategic answer to the christian worldview of the Middle Ages. The christian worldview saw everything from the perspective of religion and salvation, with the main focus of attention lying in the afterworld. It was a world of disembodiment and spirituality. The Enlight- enment was a strategic answer to the challenge of gaining victory over this worldview by trying to rethink the relation- ship between mind and body (Kondylis 2002: 19). A specific way in which this strategic answer took form can 146 be seen in modern aesthetics, notably in the works of Schil- 147 ler and Kant. As we saw before, Kant’s aesthetic theory was an attempt to bridge the gap between body and mind. This means that he was trying to undo the bifurcation of body and mind that was at the heart of Christianity, where the body had to be mortified and only the immortal soul would be saved. A similar tactic is at work in Schiller’s work, where the arts, and notably the theatre, are engaged in a didactic process: the theatre can be used as a stage for attractively packaged moral messages. However, Schiller argued for the autonomy of art: whatever moral message a work of art may present, it could only be successfully conveyed if the work of art was not subservient to morality. There had to be harmony of form and content and neither of the two should domi- nate the other. Kondylis has called the mechanism at work in modern aesthetics ‘the rehabilitation of the sensual’ (‘die Panajotis Kondylis Rehabilitation der Sinnlichkeit’; ibid.): both Kant’s and Schiller’s works (but the works of many others too, and not merely in according to Kondylis, is therefore time: there is a trend to- aesthetics) can be seen as attempts to re-enfranchise the wards harmony that develops through time. Modernity is the physical realm in view of the traditional hostility towards it. culture of perfectibility. History is a process of progress. In One way of doing this was to stress the moral potential of art: the arts bourgeois culture is expressed in Classicism, where aesthetic enjoyment (which is sinful in a christian perspec- there is a symmetrical relation between the whole and its tive) could serve higher moral ends. But both Kant and Schil- parts and a perfect union of form and content, as in Schiller’s ler stress the autonomy of art in this process, which chimes proposals for the theatre. In the modern view, art is included with Bürger’s claim that bourgeois culture evolved towards in the history of organic progress for it is usually seen as the an emancipation of the aesthetic into an autonomous realm. highest triumph of nature: it is in art that mankind achieves In Kant this trend towards autonomy of the aesthetic is most the highest expression of himself. It is no coincidence that clear in the element of disinterestedness which we have al- this idea was also at the heart of Schiller’s aesthetics, where ready discussed. it is art that allows man to bind together his sensual and his Kondylis has sketched bourgeois culture as ‘synthetic- moral self (Kant’s body and mind) in a greater harmony that harmonising’ (‘synthetisch-harmonisierend’; Kondylis 1991: is his highest human calling. 148 15): it is a worldview that is well-ordered and scientific and Bourgeois culture in its pure form only existed for a very 149 aims at a harmonic synthesis of opposites. It tries to bring brief period of time. It soon started to erode from within. everything together in what can be called le juste milieu. This This process becomes especially visible in the second half of term is borrowed from the arts, but we find it equally at work the nineteenth century, when the emancipation of the sev- in the other aspects of culture. For example, deism seeks to eral spheres of action becomes clearly visible. The decline of harmonise the existence of a superior being with the find- bourgeois culture is in many ways a parallel process to the ings of modern science, thus saving both traditional moral- division of labour, as Bürger also claimed. The nineteenth ity and modern science from mutual embarrassment (and century saw the gradual emancipation of the labourer in the philosophical writers from possible prosecution by church or emergence of social movements. This started a process of at- state). In the case of Kant, the harmonising middle ground omisation of society: as the twentieth century progresses, the lies in his attempt to bridge the gap between body and mind, individual comes more and more to the fore and egalitarian whereas Schiller epitomised the rehabilitation of the sensual ideals gain ground. This is an effect of the process of emanci- in his moral mission for the theatre. But apart from harmo- pation of bourgeois culture. Artistically, this process came to nising, the modern bourgeois worldview is also organic in an end with Aestheticism, art for art’s sake. This means that structure. This is expressed in the idea of Bildung: man has the autonomy of art, which we saw emerge in Kant’s idea of an essential nature which must be nurtured to bring it to disinterestedness, had finally run its course. On this point, fruition. The prime metaphor to understand modern culture, Kondylis’ analysis merges with Bürger’s: the avant-garde (or what Bürger calls the historical avant-garde) demands space in which all individuals, lifestyles, values, or objects are the end of art in the sense that art and life must merge. On simply at hand. There is no hierarchy. There is no individual a more general level, the synthetic-harmonising culture of more valuable than any other, no lifestyle more favourable bourgeois modernity makes way for a new culture that will than any other. Everything is equal. Which means that things evolve into the postmodern. The postmodern is no longer are simply at hand in space as in a huge window display or aimed at synthesis or harmony and is described by Kondylis on a counter. This is the analytical aspect: everything is bro- as ‘analytical-combinatory’ (‘analytisch-kombinatorisch’; ibid.). ken down into its most basic constituents. The combinatory Society is no longer harmonised but analysed into its con- aspect next says that all these elements can be combined in stituent parts. This means that the process of emancipation whatever combinations we please. This means that personal- started in bourgeois culture is taken to its logical extreme: ity is no longer seen as a temporal thing, as in the ideal of Bil- every individual becomes important in its unique individual- dung. People construct their personality: they make choices, ity. This is the emergence of the atomised society that we call identify themselves as belonging to specific subcultures, they mass democracy. In a 1961 lecture Langer has referred to this choose their gender roles, their jobs, their dress, everything. as a process of individuation; a process that she felt had ‘all And no choice is ever final: there are no essences and every 150 but reached its limit. Society is breaking up into its ultimate choice can always be traded for another styling of the self 151 units – single individuals, persons’ (PS 140). Langer looked at and its mercurial identities. We no longer accumulate our this process with some concern because ‘the fact is that in personality through time but assemble it as a work of art. For our Western culture [...] each individual really stands alone’ the arts this means that artists can use whatever they want (ibid.) and many people ‘feel, but cannot understand, their in whatever combination they want. The prime example of loss of the sense of involvement, which makes the world postmodern or analytical-combinatory art is the collage, or seem like a meaningless rat race in which they are reduced the collection of perspectives in a Cubist painting. In fact, to nothingness, alone in life and in death’ (PS 141). A parallel Bürger maintains that montage should be considered ‘the process can be seen in the arts of what we now call Mod- basic principle of avant-garde art’ (Bürger 1974: 97), partly ernism: artists seek the primary elements of art, be it pure because its explicitly constructed nature is the exact oppo- colours or shapes, basic forms, or the basic elements of per- site of the organic concept of art found in bourgeois culture ception (Kondylis points out that modernism in history and (Robert Rauschenberg tellingly referred to some of his works Modernism in the arts do not coincide: artistic Modernism is as “combines”). This again means that what Danto has called in fact the kind of art developed in the postmodern era). This the Post-Historical condition in art, namely the fact that is what Danto calls the Age of Manifestos. anything can become art or be integrated in art, is in fact a The guiding metaphor of postmodernity is not time but feature of artistic Modernism. Both Bürger and Kondylis show space. Mass democracy can be represented as a huge plane or that Danto is at least fifty years behind when he defines 1964 as the point in time where the Post-Historical era emerges. gardless of its intent, was an actual urinal, whereas Warhol’s If we hold that Danto errs when he sees 1964 as a watershed Brillo Boxes, for all their resemblance to the real thing, were in the history of art we must ask why he preferred Warhol’s fictional representations of the actual boxes. In fact, since Brillo Boxes over Duchamp’s upturned urinal as the crucial Warhol’s boxes were handmade and smaller than the real turning point in art. This choice was motivated in part by thing they had far less formal similarities to reality than Du- his concept of Pop Art, which, according to Danto, ‘set itself champ’s urinal, which was (we must repeat) an actual urinal. against art as a whole in favour of real life’. In fact, Pop Art Because he never looks at the materiality of art, Danto simply answered to a ‘universal sense that people wanted to en- gets his Duchamp and his Warhol mixed up. Warhol’s faux joy their lives now, as they were, and not on some different boxes are much more in the tradition of the imitation of real- plane or in some different world or in some later stage of ity than Duchamp’s ready-mades because they are fictional history for which the present was a preparation’ (AEA 131). representations of the real world. If Warhol feels free to take There is certainly truth in this: Pop Art did celebrate the or- ordinary boxes as a motif in his art, Duchamp had already dinary world and often had a decidedly upbeat feel. On the gone one step further and simply used real objects as art in other hand, much of Warhol’s and Rauschenberg’s work is themselves. So from Danto’s point of view Duchamp’s act is 152 concerned with death, disaster, or neurosis, and much Pop much more telling than Warhol’s. 153 is highly ironic or critical towards the reality it depicts. Nev- But in order to see this, one must take the materiality of the ertheless, Danto feels that what happened in Pop was pro- works into consideration, which Danto simply does not do. So foundly different from what happened in Duchamp. ‘What- the fact that Danto is about fifty years behind in situating the ever he achieved, Duchamp was not celebrating the ordinary. turn towards the Post-Historical in 1964 is much more than He was, perhaps, diminishing the aesthetic and testing the an error in chronology: it points towards a deficient grasp of boundaries of art.’ But the resemblances between Duchamp’s what happens in art. Danto has simply magnified his own ready-mades and Pop Art ‘are far less striking than those be- misguided response to Warhol’s boxes to historic propor- tween Brillo Box and ordinary Brillo cartons. What makes the tions. Danto should have realised by now that it was his own difference between Duchamp and Warhol is similarly far less lack of knowledge about the recent history of art that made difficult to state than what is the difference between art and Warhol’s Brillo Boxes such an overwhelming experience. His reality’ (AEA 132). Again, there is some truth in this. We can instincts about a shift in what art was about was correct, but agree that Duchamp’s gestures were primarily an attempt to he should have realised that the shift had already occurred test the boundaries of art. But then we again meet Danto’s much earlier. Danto has simply taken the moment when he claim that Warhol’s Brillo Boxes are much more profoundly became aware of the shift, namely 1964, as the moment that indiscernible from reality than a Duchamp urinal. And this, I the actual shift took place. But that is of course a fatal error. believe, is not the case. For one thing, Duchamp’s urinal, re- In Danto’s case the error leads to an interpretation that is further discredited by his highly tendentious reading, or lack Commonplace (1981) is the best place to start. Danto here ar- of reading, of works of art as material objects. For instance, gues his claim that ‘the philosophical question of its status commenting on Warhol’s early paintings of comic strips and has almost become the very essence of art itself, so that the advertisements, Danto writes that ‘in 1961 no one would have philosophy of art, instead of standing outside the subject and seriously considered either the comic strip images or the addressing it from an alien and external perspective, became pictures used in the advertisements as art, but the Pop move- instead the articulation of the internal energies of the sub- ment assigned artistic value to the images of everyday life’ ject. It would today require a special kind of effort at times to (Danto 2005b: xi). But we should not accept too readily that distinguish art from its own philosophy. It has seemed almost Pop Art did that. Pop artists certainly felt justified in using the case that the entirety of the artwork has been condensed such images as motifs in art, but that is something quite dif- to that portion of the artwork which has always been of phil- ferent from attributing artistic value to the everyday images osophical interest, so that little if anything is left for the plea- themselves. The fact that I paint a Campbell’s soup can or a sure of artlovers. Art [...] has turned into self-consciousness, hot-dog does not necessarily imply that I believe the soup the consciousness of art being art in a reflexive way that bears can or hot-dog itself to be a work of art. Here we once again comparison with philosophy, which itself is consciousness 154 see Danto’s inability or unwillingness to discriminate be- of philosophy; and the question now remains as to what in 155 tween an object and its artistic representation. That a paint- fact distinguishes art from its own philosophy.’ According to ing of a comic strip is art does not imply that the comic strip Danto, ‘artworks have been transfigured into exercises in the itself is art (although it might well be argued that it is if it can philosophy of art’ and ‘the definition of art has become part be shown to have artistic import). This is exactly what makes of the nature of art in a very explicit way’ (TC 56). This shift Danto an exasperating critic to argue with, for how do you means that the Kantian-formalist approach to art has lost its argue with a critic who claims that the fact that a painting is relevance because the element of aesthetic pleasure is now a painted representation is not relevant to distinguish it from its outmoded. Art is about meanings. Danto compares art to the model in real life? philosophy of science, ‘which holds that there is no observa- tion without interpretation’ and claims ‘that something of Art and Philosophy the same order is true in art. To seek a neutral description is Let us return to the suggestion that the end of a master nar- to see the work as a thing and hence not as an artwork: it is rative about art also signals (or should logically signal) the analytical to the concept of an artwork that there has to be end of the avant-garde. To understand how the artworld an interpretation’ (TC 124). This is fair enough, and Langer has reacted to the end of the avant-garde we must first get would certainly not dispute this since her definition of art as a clearer understanding of what Danto sees as the special expressive form immediately entails that there is meaning in nature of art after the end of art. The Transfiguration of the art, which in turn always entails the possibility of and pos- sible need for interpretation of some kind. meaning of “aesthetic” presupposes the first, which means But then Danto does something interesting. He claims that that our perception of objects cannot change in the sense ‘seeing an object, and seeing an object that interpretation of “pertaining to beauty” either. A possible third meaning of transforms into a work, are clearly distinct things, even when “aesthetic” is “pertaining to whether something is or is not in fact the interpretation gives the object back to itself, as a work of art”. This means that to judge aesthetically is to it were, by saying the work is the object’ (TC 125). This sug- make an ontological differentiation between objects that are gests that an ordinary object is somehow transformed or and objects that are not works of art. But this third meaning transfigured in our perception (‘seeing’) by our interpretation of “aesthetic” renders Danto’s claim about our changed per- of it as art. ‘As a transformative procedure, interpretation is ception circular because he holds that there are two orders something like baptism, not in the sense of giving a name of aesthetic response depending on whether something is but a new identity, participation in the community of the a work of art or not. This means that the first two mean- elect’ (TC 126). Taken together, these two claims suggest that ings of “aesthetic” can only become operative after an object the same object will be perceived differently before and after has been evaluated under the third. But how we perceive an “baptism” because of the interpretation attached to it. I look object (and whether it is beautiful in perception) is hardly 156 at a urinal and I see a urinal. Then along comes Duchamp, a function of its being a work of art or not. In fact, only the 157 who declares the urinal a work of art, and suddenly, the uri- question of whether we will attach an interpretation to it is nal is changed in my perception. This leads Danto to claim that a function of its being art or not. Artworks may be declared ‘there are two orders of aesthetic response, depending upon different kinds of objects thanks to some inaugural transfigu- whether the response is to an artwork or to a mere real thing rative magic, but that does not make them differently percep- that cannot be told apart from it’ (TC 94). But this is nonsense tible kinds of objects in comparison to ordinary things, a fact for several reasons. First, the meaning of the word “aesthetic” Danto will again dispute in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement in Danto’s claim is not at all clear. Since he is discussing the of Art, where he claims that ‘the fact that something is an act of “seeing” indiscernible works, aesthetic could mean, as artwork makes an aesthetic difference, even if the artwork it it etymologically means, “pertaining to perception”. But since is is not to be told apart from a mere thing’ (PDA 26). interpretations are in themselves invisible, the claim that It is an indisputable and rather unsurprising fact that works their presence changes our perception of objects is untenable of art become works of art because they are presented as in this sense of “aesthetic”. But “aesthetic” could also mean, works of art. But we must be clear about what we mean by and is most commonly used to mean, “pertaining to beauty”. this. I am not defending an Institutional Theory of Art by An “aesthetic” object is then simply a “beautiful” object. But which an object is a work of art because you or I or the art- since an object’s beauty is a function of its sensory qualities (I world in general say so, although I do not want to deny that must see, touch, or hear it before I can judge it beautiful) this the Institutional Theory has a point either: an object must be recognised as art by someone (but that could be anyone) The symbolic nature of art offers an important clue to an- before it becomes a candidate for the considerations usu- other deficiency in Danto’s meaning-centred theory of art. To ally bestowed upon art. This is not a great postmodern or say that a work of art is a symbol with total reference (as we Post-Historical insight but a truth of cultural relativism that claimed earlier) is to say that a work of art is more than the sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have been aware sum of its parts: the elements must come together in a uni- of for quite some time now. Several philosophers have known fied symbol. To say that a commonplace object and a set of it at least since Nietzsche, and a few others might even have meanings or theoretical musings about the nature of art can gleaned this relativist insight in Plato’s Republic. It is, in fact, be combined to transfigure an everyday object into a work of common sense, and has been since the modern era opened art is to say that the sum of the parts does make up the work up the world to New Worlds with different cultural practices. of art. The word “transfiguration” is simply used to hide this The problem with the claims of the Institutional Theory, or fact, for when object and meanings meet there is never any with Danto’s claim that it is an interpretation that turns an fusion of the two into a greater organic whole. In fact, with a object into art, is therefore not that it is wrong, but that it is gullible public (or an audience greedy for a sense of trendy banal; it teaches us nothing new, and, most damning, it tells insiderness) you can attach just about any meaning to any 158 us nothing at all about what art actually is. And if we do want everyday object. Take a chair, any chair, and theorise about 159 to learn something about the nature of art, I feel we should how it expresses anguish, and sooner or later people will see once again turn to Langer, who has shown that what turns an anguish in it because they project anguish onto it. But they object into art is something in the work itself, namely what we need to be instructed to project anguish, for very few chairs have called its framed or fictional or symbolic nature, which exude anguish of their own accord. This is made clear when presents it as not coextensive with the real world and an- we consider that another critic or artist might just as easily nounces its utter practical uselessness. The fictional nature of make us see the chair as expressive of joy. Really good art a work means that it is offered merely for our contemplation. may have many meanings for many different people, but it is The fictional, framed, or symbolic character of the work is in- rarely that extensive or contradictory in its possible meanings herent in the work itself: a painting, a novel, or a play are not because good art does not simply have meanings attached fictional symbols because you or I say so but because they to it, the meanings inhere in it and emerge form the symbol; were created that way. Works of art are created to be fictional not by some kind of semantic magic, but because the artist symbolic representations with no practical use: that is their has inscribed the meanings into the form (in fact, it is Dan- purpose (a purpose without practical purpose!). To be sure, I to’s idea of transfiguration as a kind of creative baptism that could make practical use of a book to kindle a fire, but every- smacks of magic). Take for example Munch’s The Scream. This one would immediately see that this is not the appropriate painting is not simply an expression of anguish because you use of a book, which is made for reading. or I say so but because the anguish is there, in the material conditions of the work, in its form, in the colours, in the han- sort of way) that the mere fact that one shovel is isolated, dling of the brushwork. Similarly, a performance of Waiting for given a title, and presented as a work of art “baptises” it as a Godot is not about nothingness because we so decree it but if work of art (whether it is also good or even interesting art is and only if the performance gives us a persuasive impression a different matter entirely). But, Danto continues, if naming of life in the mode of nothingness. And no amount of mean- an object can transform it into art, ‘then, surely, appreciation ing-pandering will ever convince me or you that The Scream of these works must in part consist in feeling the philosophi- is all about life-enhancing joy and that Beckett’s play is about cal tensions they must give rise to, rather than, as it were, the responsiveness of the natural world to our deeper emo- mooning over their Significant Forms or whatever’ (PDA 31- tional yearnings. In fact, even Duchamp’s urinal and Warhol’s 32). The cheap slur against Clive Bell aside (whose notion of Brillo Boxes will not suffer just any meaning attached to them. “significant form” Langer developed into “expressive form”) Meanings and interpretations do not determine whether this is true: the whole point of such works would seem to be something is art; let alone that they would transfigure an philosophical. But the case again remains that we can attach object into a different kind of object. any manner of title or meaning to any manner of common- These issues are so complicated, and so confusingly handled place object and philosophise about it all we like and none 160 in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, that Danto felt com- of this will make any kind of aesthetic difference, unless you 161 pelled to return to them in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement take “aesthetic” to mean “pertaining to whether something of Art (1986) to try and state his case more clearly, which he is or is not art”. This meaning, of which Danto seems to be did in some measure (and with greater wit), but to no avail rather fond, certainly lies behind Danto’s statement that ‘my since his case remains unpersuasive. To illustrate his argu- view, philosophically, is that interpretations constitute works ment Danto now introduces another set of indiscernibles, of art’ (PDA 23), thereby shifting the question of what deter- which in this case happen to be Duchamp’s snow shovel and mines whether something is art to the inaugural moment an indiscernible counterpart. One of the shovels is given a when some applier of interpretation bestows artness upon it; title and turned into a work of art, the other is not. Danto which, despite Danto’s protestations to the contrary, sounds claims of the shovel that is “also” a work of art that ‘its pro- suspiciously like something akin to the Institutional Theory motion to the status of art lifts it above, or at any rate outside of Art. And regardless of the fact that Danto now speaks of the domain of the mere utensil, and so there is a tension af- a “tension” between works of art and commonplace objects, ter all between work of art and tool’ (PDA 31). I have no more this “tension” soon evolves back into ‘an aesthetic difference, quarrel with this, for a “tension” is surely something different even if the artwork it is is not to be told apart from a mere from a perceptual difference. But we now see that there is thing like a snow shovel’ (PDA 26); so our quarrel appears to really nothing especially remarkable about Danto’s claims, remain after all and Danto’s text is still a muddle of confused for it is obviously true (in a banal, Institutional Theory of Art meanings. A final point. If Danto argues that ‘interpretation is in effect quality was to be found in the interpretations attached to the lever with which an object is lifted out of the real world them, I might well wonder why I should bother to visit it at and into the artworld’ (PDA 39) this claim really only holds in all. Surely someone could tell me all about those meanings a relevant way for a very specific set of works which we com- without my having to make the excursion to a room full of monly call conceptual works of art. Put differently, Danto’s objects adorned with nothing but bare meanings. theory would only hold for works of art that are well and truly indiscernibles. But as we saw, such indiscernibles are Beauty and Ugliness very rare indeed. Even some of Danto’s prime exhibits like Both Danto’s inability to really look at art and his dire need Duchamp’s urinal and Warhol’s Brillo Boxes can be convinc- for some Langerian insight are put in perspective if we look ingly shown not to be indiscernibles after all; which leaves at some cases of practical criticism in his work. In his book Danto building a theory on a gallery of fictional or hypotheti- The Abuse of Beauty (2003) Danto is puzzled by the fact that cal works of art fashioned by such luminaries as the fictional some people describe ugly art as beautiful. He addresses this artists J and M, who are featured throughout The Transfigura- problem in relation to Roger Fry’s important exhibitions of tion of the Commonplace. Danto’s theory will not withstand “Post-Impressionist” art at the Grafton Gallery in London in 162 scrutiny as a general principle, for as was shown above, it is 1910 and 1912. Fry argued that such works were experienced 163 the fictional character, the framing of the work, that makes by many as ugly but that people would learn to appreciate an object a work of art; if only because the recognition of its their beauty once they had grown accustomed to their visual artistic nature so often precedes interpretation. I would hardly language: ‘every work of creative design is ugly until it be- be induced to reflect upon a snow shovel’s metaphysical or comes beautiful,’ Fry claims (Danto 2003: 34). But Danto dis- other meanings had I not been told beforehand that this is agrees with Fry and claims that the works in the shows were not a mere snow shovel but a work of art and hence must not beautiful and that one could never learn to perceive them have some kind of surplus meaning beyond its practical func- as beautiful. This does not diminish the works’ importance tion in the Zeugzusammenhang of the everyday world. Danto or their artistic import and value. It just means that not all might now reasonably claim that interpreting and naming an good art is beautiful (and that not all beautiful art is good art). object and thus lifting it into the artworld is the very act of Danto claims that ‘Matisse’s Blue Nude [1907] is a good, even framing it and making it fictional. If this is his meaning, we a great painting – but someone who claims it is beautiful is can heartily agree and we probably have no quarrel after all. talking through his or her hat’ (o.c. 36-37). In fact, ‘when one But even though this may be a legitimate way of turning a says that Blue Nude is beautiful, one is merely expressing ad- commonplace object into art, it is surely the least interesting miration for its strength and power’ (o.c. 88). For Danto, this (and it is certainly not a “transfiguration”). In fact, if I were is one of the central problems with Modernism: henceforth invited to visit an exhibition of objects whose sole artistic there was no longer a necessary link between beauty and ar- tistic import. Great art could be, and would be, unmistakably objects that are manifestly ugly. It is, on the contrary, to wield ugly. ‘But Fry made it sound as if they were going to look aes- a concept of beauty that is more well-defined and precise, thetically beautiful once they were understood. But [...] works and certainly more helpful, than the traditional “aesthetic” might still be perceived as ugly even when we have come to one. But there is a deeper problem still, because Matisse’s see their “artistic excellence.” The recognition of excellence Blue Nude is not at all ‘unmistakably ugly,’ as Danto would need not entail a transformation in aesthetic perception. have it. The work is supremely sensual and wonderfully ex- They don’t change before one’s eyes, like frogs into princes. pressive. Just look at the way the breasts of the woman are [...] The ugly does not become beautiful just because the ugly voluptuously rendered. Look at the curves of her left leg, the art is good. My sense is that artistic excellence is connected slight dent in her buttocks. Although it lacks representational with what the art is supposed to do, what effect it is intended fidelity, this image has the look and the feel of real human to have’ (o.c. 107). flesh. It seems that Danto’s judgement of Matisse’s painting One problem with this argument (besides the fact that he still is prejudiced by Danto’s own preconceptions about what art believes artistic import cannot lie in a work’s formal prop- should be and how it functions. If he cannot see the stunning erties) once again lies in the fact that Danto never defines beauty of Matisse’s Blue Nude, Danto has no business being an 164 “beauty” or “aesthetic”. He here seems to use the terms in a art critic. He is blind. 165 common way, referring to things that are pleasing to the eye. But maybe we should use Danto’s arguments against him. He uses beauty in the sense of something being beautiful to We can do this by referring to his discussion of another look at, in the way one might say of a person that he or she body of work in which he does address the tension between is beautiful. Danto does claim at one point that ‘the meaning feeling and form and comes closer to the kind of reading of a work of art is an intellectual product, which is grasped that he should have applied to Matisse and Modernism. I through interpretation by someone other than the artist, and am referring to his discussion of Robert Mapplethorpe in the beauty of the work, if indeed it is beautiful, is seen as en- Playing with the Edge (1996), where Danto explains how Map- tailed by that meaning’ (o.c. 13). But this complicates matters plethorpe could make beautiful art out of a source material even further because it seems to suggest that even beauty (extreme sexual behaviour) that many would call ugly or in the aesthetic/perceptual sense is a product of first having disgusting. For a long time, Mapplethorpe was mostly known seen a meaning attached to the art object. However, Danto’s for his rather tepid classicising nudes and formulaic flower problem, and especially his problem with Matisse’s Blue Nude, photographs. But as several critics, Danto among them, have disappears once we adopt a Langerian view of beauty. If pointed out, Mapplethorpe’s greatest artistic achievement beauty is expressiveness, then it is indeed the ‘strength and were his infamous sex pictures, the so-called X Portfolio and power’ of the work that we call beautiful. This is not simply a related images that caused the uproar over the Perfect Mo- matter of semantics, expanding the term “beauty” to include ment exhibition. Danto argues that Mapplethorpe’s sex photos display an unflinchingly honesty, both in the sense that they twentieth century. For instance, when discussing the triptych do not hypocritically seek to soften their subject matter and Jim and Tom, Sausalito (1977), which shows a man pissing in in the sense that Mapplethorpe himself never tried to hide another man’s mouth, Danto claims that ‘nothing in my ex- his deep personal involvement with this subject. The sado- perience or fantasy had prepared me for an image of that sort masochists that appear in these images were friends of the of act’ (o.c. 8). I wonder how any educated, worldly-wise in- artist. Moreover, Mapplethorpe shared their sexuality and tellectual of the 1990s could not have been aware of the fact their fetishes and probably engaged in sexual rituals with that some people like to engage in that kind of sexual play? them on more than one occasion. So Mapplethorpe has cre- For someone who has built his career on the work of Andy ated these pictures as a kind of intimate record of a subcul- Warhol, whose films and artwork very often address issues ture to which he belonged. The fact that his photographs are of sexual edge-play, not to mention pissing, Danto seems to often very stylishly composed can cloud the fact that these be striking a very coy pose here. But regardless of the undeni- are intensely personal images. But Danto argues, persua- able brutality of some of the images, such as those of a blood- sively, that it is their stylisation that allows them to succeed scattered penis trapped in what looks like a kind of mouse- as art. For Danto, Mapplethorpe’s personal engagement with trap, it was not Mapplethorpe’s primary intent to shock. 166 his subject sets him apart from other photographers, such as Rather, as he himself liked to point out, he was “playing with 167 Diane Arbus. ‘With Arbus, one feels, over and over again, that the edge”. For Danto, this means that Mapplethorpe’s work she found ways of betraying the trust that permitted her to was a balancing act between art and porn, an attempt ‘to get the pictures we see. There is something vaguely exploit- achieve “smut that is also art”’ (o.c. 76). To argue this point, ative about her work’ (Danto 1996: 43). Mapplethorpe, on the Danto uses Hegel’s concept of Aufhebung, which is a process contrary, ‘was remorselessly sincere’ as an artist. ‘In a video in which two radical opposites are brought together and made for Spanish television, Sam Wagstaff [Mapplethorpe’s lifted up on a higher plane, where they coexist in a new unity benefactor, collector, and lover] said that Mapplethorpe was that somehow neutralises their opposition. For Mappletho- the most honest person he had ever known. This is borne out rpe’s work, Aufhebung means two things. First, the subject in the interviews. Mapplethorpe is unflinching. One cannot matter of the photographs should be frankly acknowledged: read very many of them without being struck by his absolute it is a sometimes brutally explicit rendering of extreme sex- candour. He never dodges a question. It is this honesty that ual acts. But second, the images are composed in a way that characterises the self-portraits as well. Even when he got often makes them strangely beautiful. This is how Aufhebung himself up as a devil or a girl, or a punk, it was in the interest comes about in Mapplethorpe’s pictures. ‘There is the energy of discovery and personal truth’ (o.c. 55). of the displayed sex, and there is its containment, its absorp- The sex pictures are sometimes disturbing, depending on tion, into the work of art. It is preserved and negated at the one’s naiveté about the sexual realities of life in the late same moment’ (Danto 1996: 82). But we need not make a detour trough Hegel to make this (such as offal) in their art. But it does show that people who point for the dynamic of Mapplethorpe’s sex pictures is a claim that seemingly ugly works of art are beautiful are not fine example of the coming together of feeling and form in talking trough their hats. Langer’s sense. Perusing Mapplethorpe’s sex pictures, one is struck by the tension between form and content. This tension Killing Art is especially noticeable in the fact that the subjects of the pic- When art strives towards the condition of philosophy it be- tures always retain their humanity. Mapplethorpe makes the comes conceptual art. According to Danto the path towards trust between the men, and between them and him as a pho- this transfiguration starts in the eighteenth century, with the tographer, almost palpably present. The stylised features of invention of the discipline of aesthetics as a way of keep- these photographs do not seek to embellish what would oth- ing art separate from what really matters in the shaping of erwise be brutally shocking or “merely” pornographic; they human life and society: politics. This is Danto’s objection express the calm dedication and trust with which these men to Kantian disinterestedness: just like Plato kept art at bay explore the limits of their bodies and their sexuality. And it because it was too distant from the real reality (of the realm is in this sense, and not in the more superficial “aesthetic” of Ideas) the element of disinterestedness assured that art 168 sense, that form fits feeling in these works. Obviously, Map- would not get involved with the things that ‘normally move 169 plethorpe’s photographs exhibit a classical composition that men and women – money, power, sex, love’ (PDA 9). So Danto makes them eligible for “beauty” in the traditional “aesthetic” reads disinterestedness in a political way, and an interesting sense. But what makes them great art is not this composi- political way in view of our earlier historical survey, which tional feature, but the way feeling and form are welded to- showed that bourgeois culture developed towards the au- gether in their features. I would argue that this same welding tonomy of art (its disinterestedness) with a concomitant in- of feeling and form occurs in Matisse’s Blue Nude and in many efficiency of art. Aesthetics thus becomes part, for Danto, of other works of art that Danto would judge “unmistakably something politically oppressive. That is probably why Danto ugly (although great art)”. What we gain from this approach somewhat sarcastically (and not quite correctly) describes is not only a relevant increase of beautiful objects (things Kantian disinterestedness as ‘a tepid gratification since un- that are called ugly turn out not to be ugly at all) but also connected with the satisfaction of real needs or the achieve- increased insight in our own reasons for finding such objects ment of real goals. So it is a kind of narcoleptic pleasure, the beautiful (we now know that their welding of feeling and pleasure which consists in the absence of pain’ (PDA 11). form appeals to a sense of beauty that is more complex than Danto next claims that this modern aesthetics has left ‘seri- the traditional aesthetic one). This does not deny the fact that ous artists to suppose it their task to make beauty’ (PDA 12), there is indeed a lot of art that is (meant to be) manifestly which seems to me wholly unpersuasive in view of both the ugly, as when artists consciously use disgusting materials political charge of Romanticism and Realism and the formal investigations of the many kinds of Modernism, not to men- have become indiscernibles: everyday objects with no signifi- tion the provocations of the historical avant-garde; none of cant aesthetic properties to mark their difference from other which were concerned with anything so “parochial” as mak- everyday objects. What turns them into art is the theory at- ing beauty. Even Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism was considered tached to them. And to top it all off, Danto obviously sees a such a subversive affront to polite society that the man was historical necessity in this late condition of art. ‘If something brutally destroyed by genteel backwardness. like this view has the remotest chance of being plausible, it But we might save our dispute over Danto’s historical survey is possible to suppose that art had come to an end. Of course, for another occasion and look at what was the philosophical there will go on to be art-making. But art-makers, living in present for Danto when he was writing down these ideas in what I like to call the post-historical period of art, will bring The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986). At that point into existence works which lack the historical importance or (which for Danto had begun in 1964) the central question had meaning we have for a very long time come to expect. The become ‘what should art be if it throws off the bondage to historical stage of art is done with when it is known what art prettiness?’ (PDA 13) We started our discussion with Danto’s is and means. The artists have made the way open for phi- claim about the end of art in the sense that art had become losophy, and the moment has arrived at which the task must 170 essentially self-reflexive, and self-reflection now unsurpris- be transferred finally into the hands of philosophers’ (ibid.). 171 ingly turns out to be exactly the sort of thing that art without All of this may well make one wonder if art should really prettiness should be: ‘if we look at the art of our recent past continue to be made at all. If art is really about philosophy in these terms, grandiose as they are, what we see is some- and not about crafting expressive forms then why not simply thing which depends more and more upon theory for its do away with art schools and academies and recognise that existence as art, so that theory is not something external to philosophers, or people with an MA in philosophy, are the a world it seeks to understand, so that in understanding its real artists now? What could conceivably be taught at an art object it has to understand itself. But there is another feature school that is not already and better taught at the philosophy exhibited by these late productions which is that the objects departments of universities? By the same token we might approach zero as their theory approaches infinity, so that now suggest that all philosophers are really simply artists virtually all there is at the end is theory, art having finally and that they have failed to understand their own identity in become vaporised in a dazzle of pure thought about itself, thinking themselves to be only philosophers (as distinct from and remaining, as it were, solely as the object of its own theo- artists). In any case, the suggestion that art is now philoso- retical consciousness’ (PDA 111). Behold, then, o reader, the phy is both elucidating and problematic for several reasons. birth of conceptual art from the mind of the Hegelian theorist First, it offers us a clue to the lamentable state of art itself in as the Great Transfigurator of the Commonplace Object. Ap- the wake of the big turn towards the conceptual. In the 1970s proaching zero in the arts simply means that works of art art schools all but acted upon the suggestion to do away with themselves in the sense that many academies simply ience of matter. But most of all, it will give him something to stopped training their students in elementary draughtsman- revolt against. The idea of artists who cannot and were never ship and painting because such skills had become outmoded taught to draw rejecting or revolting against the idea of draw- and had been superseded by the conceptual and the mini- ing is preposterous: it is mere posturing because there is no malist modes. In lieu of academic technique students got true knowledge of what one is rebelling against. The attitude Theory. In Unnatural Wonders (2005) Danto has described this is simply facile, if only because it insults other artists who did evolution: ‘The institutions of the art world began to change submit to the discipline of the hand and emerged with mean- radically in response to the radical pluralism that overtook ingful art. It also overlooks the fact that many of the artists it in what I spoke of in the “posthistorical” period we had who lead the way towards the Post-Historical era, including entered. In art schools, for example, skills were no longer Warhol, were accomplished craftsmen in their chosen art taught. The student was treated from the beginning as an who could draw and paint well and whose swerve away from artist, and the faculty existed to help the students realise the classical approaches to the visual arts was motivated by their ideas. The attitude was that the student would learn a sincere search for new ways of expression. But the dam- whatever he or she needed in order to make what he or she age was done and few seemed to care. In fact, young artists 172 wanted. Everyone used everything and anything – audio, vid- (or rather: young people who for many reasons believed they 173 eo, photography, performance, installation. Students could be were, could, or should be artists) were now being tutored in painters or sculptors if they liked, but the main thing was to the resentment of skill by artists who no longer mastered or find the means to embody the meanings they were interested cared about those skills. Today, many instructors are very bad in conveying’ (Danto 2005b: xiv-xv). craftsmen themselves. They are ill-placed to teach younger You see the folly of this approach: an artist, let alone a young artists their craft. The damage done in one generation will student, cannot suddenly decide to sojourn for a while in a take several generations to undo as artists who are interested new branch of the arts for which he or she neither has train- in skill will have to find out on their own what had previously ing nor talent or inclination. There is a difference between a been transmitted from master to student for centuries. The pluralist and a lacklustre approach to art, and what we were scandal of art education in the so-called pluralist era shows getting here was definitely not any kind of focused art-mak- how easy it is to destroy a tradition. The results of this hor- ing. To check in on what’s happening and help students em- ribly misguided evolution are everywhere on display in the body their ideas du jour hardly amounts to what I would call dismal art that has poured forth since the 1970s: mediocre (or an education. To begin with, it is at odds with the very psy- worse) painting where the artist’s inability to master form is chology of education: even if one disapproves of a classical sold as a conscious rejection, a revolt, a highly moral gesture, training in the arts, at least it will hone a budding artist’s skill or what you will. Ineptitude was now being paraded around and perseverance, it will teach him patience and the resil- as expressiveness. But in order to deconstruct a technique you have to know it from the inside. Artists like Picasso had make good films if one has (developed) the cinematic sensi- earned the moral right to subvert form because they had bility that this requires. Some of the great masters of modern submitted to its discipline and knew exactly what they were cinema, such as Pasolini or Derek Jarman, came to the film doing when they distorted shapes in their work. In fact, their without one iota of technical know-how, for which they relied distortions often testify to superior craftsmanship where on trained technicians. But they had vision and were able to most of the latter-day work is not even convincing as distor- translate that vision to the screen. Obviously, an artist should tion to begin with. carefully consider in which medium he or she wants to work. Obviously, I applaud the artist’s freedom to tackle any me- Nobody is forced to draw or paint, but if you insist on doing dium in the pluralist era and nobody would want to condemn so, you had better learn something about the skills you are the contemporary artist to so pedestrian a practice as to draw addressing. It is all very well to speak of expressiveness to accurately from life (God forbid!). But it would be nice if an cover up your inability, and no doubt you will find some critic artist could consider, before venturing into any new medium, willing to rave about your expressiveness, but the discerning whether he or she has any inclination or gift for that particu- eye of the true art-lover can often tell at a glance whether a lar branch of the Muse. I do not think I am asking for much. painting is a deliberate distortion by a gifted hand or a mere 174 In fact, I am asking for very little for I do not even believe symptom of ineptitude. Again, to distort form you must first 175 one needs to have any particular technical knowledge of cer- master it. For the same reason, being a dyslectic will not help tain media to create superior work in them. Surely, to draw you write the next Finnegans Wake. It takes intimate knowl- or paint one needs to master some technique. But consider edge of how language works in order to subvert it in a mean- experimental film-making. In the 1960s first 16mm and then ingful way. It takes much deliberation and a firm purpose of 8mm equipment became affordable for the average person, gesture to do anything well in the arts. In the final reckoning, allowing literally anyone to become a filmmaker. And for a it even takes a lot of very good thought to produce a convinc- brief time it seemed that everyone actually did. But the great ing work of conceptual art, although we should consider very masters who finally emerged as the leaders of the move- carefully whether a thought and nothing but a thought (ad- ment, such as Warhol, Brakhage, and Markopoulos, were not mittedly with a commonplace object attached to it) is a work necessarily the greatest technicians. In fact, filming equip- of art at all or mere pedantry. ment became so user-friendly that sometimes all you had to All of this leaves us with the obvious question of what con- do was literally aim the camera and press a button to record, ceptual art is, whether it is art at all and when, if it is, it as Warhol did. These days, with digital video technology, we should be considered good art. In view of our severe criticism are witnessing a similar revival. But despite the enormous of the conceptual mode of artistic interpretation, I feel an simplicity of the technology, very few filmmakers achieved answer to these questions is certainly not too much to ask. great works for the very simple reason that one can only And my answer is brief. I suggest we agree that conceptual art is not art at all. Since interpretations do not add anything Avant-Garde After the End of Avant-Garde aesthetic to a commonplace object, or at least nothing in an A second problem with art as philosophy has to do with interesting sense of aesthetic (which would be the first two of the philosophy itself and leads us straight into the complex the possible three listed before), and since all this talk about problem of the avant-garde after the end of the avant-garde. transfiguration through interpretation is very much rhetori- If conceptual art, and Post-Historical art in general, ap- cal because no transformative fusion of object and interpre- proaches zero it also becomes more and more cerebral. This tation ever takes place (in opposition, for example, to the way trend found a parallel movement in the world of philosophy, forms, colours, and canvas are fused to create a painting that, where postmodern Theory became all the rage in the 1960s. as a prime symbol, is more than the sum of those constituent Gradually, several kinds of structuralist and post-structuralist parts), conceptual art really offers us two things: a piece of French philosophy became the leading school of thought. philosophy or theory on the one hand, and on the other hand This kind of postmodern philosophy is so idiosyncratic that an object that is supposed to convince us of the artistic and it is often simply called “theory” instead of philosophy and creative nature of the person ushering it in. I do not dispute I shall continue to refer to it as “Theory,” capitalised to refer that conceptual art has often raised very interesting issues, to its status as a kind of movement. To understand the sud- 176 even issues of the greatest importance. But an issue is not a den rise of this very cerebral branch of philosophy we must 177 work of art and a commonplace object is not turned into art understand the dire straits the humanities found themselves because it comes, reportedly, with an issue attached to it. If in in the late 1960s. It was a crisis that is still not over today the issues raised by conceptual art are interesting and rel- and that revolved around the justification of the humanities. evant, they are interesting philosophy. But philosophy is not In a world obsessed with economy, growth, progress, and art, unless it happens to be expressed in a book or an essay productivity it is very difficult to argue for the legitimacy of that displays remarkable literary qualities (for the essay, we the humanities, which seem to be going nowhere and usu- should remember, is a literary genre and hence belongs in the ally produce nothing remotely marketable. They tend to be as realm of art). All the conceptual object serves is the supposed useless as the arts they study. The advent of Theory suddenly artist’s ego. Conceptual art now offers even the person void of allowed professors and critics in the humanities to pretend any talent except a talent for sophistry to present herself as they were involved in something scientific and progressive. an artist. “Conceptual artist” is the chosen profession for any The jargon involved in Theory created and arcane aura of art-hack who would like to have his cookie and eat it: to have cutting edge concepts that were constantly yielding new in- an opinion about art is now a work of art in itself. What bet- sights into power, social structures, sexuality, or what not. It ter way to boost your ego and create an inflated sense of your suddenly appeared that the humanities might yield knowl- own importance? edge as verifiable and quantifiable as the knowledge gener- ated by physics and biology. And the jargon involved certainly sounded as if this new Theory was just as state of the art and umbrella of male authority and one-man rule: the French big- just as fine-tuned as the theories that were used in physics. wigs offered to their disciples a soothing esoteric code and a For such reasons the appeal of postmodern Theory was very sense of belonging to an elite, an intellectually superior unit, strong. Suddenly people in the humanities started practising at a time when the market told academics they were useless all manner of “deconstruction” if they happened to be follow- and dispensable’ (Paglia 1992: 220). In an Open Letter to the ers of Derrida while those in thrall with Foucault decided en students of Harvard, published in the February 17, 1994 issue masse that they should apply themselves to sex, or sexuality, of the Harvard Crimson, Paglia added that ‘the bottom fell out and set about hunting for phalluses and androcentrism in of the Harvard literature departments in the Seventies. They works of art previously innocent of any kind of political in- had failed to find new blood to continue Harvard’s reputa- correctness. tion into the next generation [...]. The English department The results of all this activity were often disastrous because nearly went into receivership. [...]. Desperate, the Harvard the people who ventured into these new areas were not very administration went on a fast shopping expedition and filled well-prepared to deal with the issues at hand. To begin with, the faculty with the current hot property, theorists, many of their knowledge of philosophy was usually too limited to see them women, as an affirmative action sop. Now you’re stuck 178 the philosophical tradition that had shaped the postmodern with them. [...] Harvard, which sacrificed scholarly standards 179 mode. For example, there is little point in discussing decen- for expedience, has condemned itself to at least two genera- tredness without having a clue that decentredness was not a tions of mediocrity in the humanities, since these people are new invention by Lacan but something that had already been certain to hire only those who will prop up their decaying analysed very well by the Romantics, especially Friedrich reputations’ (Paglia 1995: 119-120). Schlegel, Novalis, Hölderlin, and the much-neglected Lud- But even among the critics who did manage to get things wig Tieck (see Chapter One). Furthermore, much of Lacan’s right there arose a problem. This problem is linked to the pro- theories of language had already been formulated in the fessionalisation of the arts. We have recently witnessed the dialectics and hermeneutics of Friedrich Schleiermacher. But introduction of PhD programmes in the arts. This innovation academics were simply blinded by the wordplay of the French was sold as an initiative beneficial to artists when it was in philosophes and the mileage their careers could get from quot- fact only beneficial to a specific group of artists: those whose ing them. Referring specifically to the situation at American work had close links with the kind of Theory that emerged universities, Camille Paglia writes that ‘the collapse of the job in the Post-Historical era. If art is about philosophy, and phi- market, due to recession and university retrenchment after losophy is about Theory, it is not difficult to guess what kind the baby-boom era, caused economic hysteria. As faculties of art would now become the very image of PhD-worthy art. were cut, commercial self-packaging became a priority. Aca- It is clear that the PhD in the arts entails the very grave risk demics, never renowned for courage, fled beneath the safe of splitting the already rivalry-ridden art community even further into the haves and the have-nots. If sufficient artists uses the PhD as a tool to hold the profession in what William attain a PhD to make this a substantial group within the art James has compared, in an indictment of the PhD system community a difference is bound to arise sooner or later be- written in 1903, with the stranglehold of an octopus (James tween those who did get it and those who didn’t, with those 1987: 1111-1118). I think that the PhD in the arts serves at who did enjoying greater stature because they are obviously least three highly interconnected purposes in the artworld, the more clever ones and therefore the more profound or bet- where it is used as a strategic device in the struggle for power ter artists. Obviously, art is never that easy. But markets usu- (in the kondylian sense). By giving art the aura of scientific ally are. And the sad thing about art is that really good art has legitimacy the PhD in the arts shows administrators and really nothing in common with a real art market: their aims politicians that art is not simply about subjective expression and methods are completely at odds. Advocates of the PhD but about something analysable, something positive, tangible, in the arts usually speak of art as a form of research, which and somehow measurable; or at least measurable in the sounds innocent enough because art obviously does entail a sense that a committee of “experts” is able to discriminate kind of research, as we saw in our discussion of David Hock- between art that is worthy of a PhD-label and art that regret- ney. Unfortunately, artistic research has little in common tably is not. But in the careerist world of academe and the 180 with the kind of research involved in science, even in the greedy world of the art market one scores no points for try- 181 humanities, and is first and foremost an inner exploration, ing, so not winning the PhD race means something like losing a process of thought and reflection, and finally an attempt the art race: you become something like what Katlijne Van to shape matter (paint, wood, words, clay, sound) into an der Stighelen, one of my teachers at Louvain University, liked expressive form. This is research all right, but only in a very to call the zweite Garnitur: the secondary artists whose names specific and non-objective sense. After all, we saw that a work are known only to specialists and not to the general public. of art is one indivisible symbol that cannot be analysed into These artists are the filler of history because their work, its constituent parts. This should make us suspicious of any while often popular in their own time, is second-rate. In this kind of programme that looks at art from what is basically a sense, the PhD in the arts signals the icing on the cake of the discursive point of view: art as PhD-oriented research means yuppification of the arts that started with the surge of the art that the process of creation can be tracked and analysed, market in the 1980s: sooner or later it will become a career- resulting in a manual or PhD thesis to accompany whatever making or -breaking certificate that determines whether your work is presented as a PhD project. art will sink or swim, or, more importantly, sell or not. The I would suggest that the introduction of the PhD in the arts is second purpose served by the PhD in the arts is a direct con- mainly a very clever marketing tool in artworld politics that sequence of the first. Since the PhD-programme is a direct has been created for the benefit of a group or school of critics consequence of the Post-Historical condition of art in its nar- and artists with high stakes in the marketplace. This group row sense of conceptual art (art striving to the condition of philosophy), it creates a false sense of progressiveness in the artists-as-researchers mutually sustain each other’s reputa- arts and in the humanities. Researchers, artists-as-research- tions. Obviously, such mechanisms have always been at work ers, and critics are now explorers of new frontiers of thought in the artworld. The finest and probably most tragic example where no man hath thought before, making ever new prog- is without doubt the huge influence of Clement Greenberg in ress into the vast and as yet unclaimed fields of theoretical the 1950s and his slow withdrawal into total silence as the insight. The history of art-as-research is then portrayed as 1960s progressed and the Bright Young Things of the Concep- an epic history of artistic exploration, phrased in Theory. It is tual Era took over. What is different from the past, however, is very easy to see how this can lead to a renewed sense of the that the very people who maintain a power elite in the art- avant-garde: there is now a small elite of insiders, Those Who world are also the people who are constantly babbling about Know And Speak Theory, who are at the vanguard of art and multiculturalism, diversity, and open discourse, which are philosophy, urging history on even after its much-publicised reportedly central concerns in their high-minded theoreti- and even more elaborately theorised demise. Those of us who cal endeavours. But these are false claims to diversity. What do not think or write Theory are the poor sods who missed these careerist theorists have really done is create theoretical the gravy-train of history, the silly naifs who still cling to an enclaves that effectively bar many dissident voices from be- 182 outdated belief in form, matter, or aesthetics. We are the dull ing heard or included in the debate. In many circles a critic, 183 duds, whereas the international magnates of Theory are the artist, or hanger-on is only allowed to join the party if he or shining sophisticates. she either speaks theoretical newspeak or is willing to wor- The third purpose of the PhD in the arts is again a function of ship at the feet of those who do. Gullibility and sycophantism the previous two, for the dynamics of false progressiveness seem to be the prime characteristics of The Person Sure To and neo-avant-garde sensibilities allows collectors, curators, Rise Fast In The Cultural Realm. The system of Theory in- and critics (what Danto calls the three C’s of the artworld) to cludes a network of academics, curators, journal editors, and determine just where the really hot stuff is happening. Here critics who have created a power zone that determines who’s another layer of insidious insiderness is added to the game, in and who’s not. for many of the curators and critics involved are themselves Finally, it is worth pointing out that the problems with the the product of an academic education drenched in Theory. PhD in the arts are similar to the problems we found in So they have a lot at stake: their intellectual credibility de- Danto’s idea of embodied meanings. We said earlier that the pends on the continuing reign of Theory as the One True meanings attached to a commonplace object do not become Form of Criticism. Writing about cerebral art allows these embodied in it by fiat; which is to say that if you claim that critics to flex their theoretical muscles, display their astute- certain meanings are embodied in an object, they should be ness in selecting the Art That Matters, and hence forward there for our perception and we should be able to see those their upwardly mobile careers. This way, critics, theorists, and meanings inscribed into the object itself. Similarly, if a PhD in the arts results in an object (or a performance or whatever) called street art. Obviously, street art is not entirely new. Its with an accompanying explanatory thesis, I feel we should inclusion in the world of high art started with the inflated say that it has failed as art. If the art object (or performance reputations of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in the or whatever) requires a text on the side to explain its mean- 1980s. But since the turn of the millennium the artworld has ings, then the art work in itself lacks expressive force. It been especially receptive to street art, street photography and needs crutches to tell us what it is about. So what you get, is similar forms of artistic expression that have emerged from bad art with a theoretical statement attached to it. Neither youth cultures. The exhibition and catalogue Beautiful Losers the work nor the text are successful art or philosophy on (2004) were something of a watershed in this development, their own. What has been achieved is not a PhD in the arts but arguably the critical success of Larry Clark’s film Kids but, at best, a PhD in philosophy of the arts, in theory, in so- (1995) was equally a tell-tale sign that there was a growing ciology, or whatever, but with an object attached. The PhD in awareness within the broader artworld of what was happen- the arts is only justified if the research is expressed and com- ing in the street. If we look, ever so briefly, at the precedents municated in the work itself. Recalling David Hockney’s re- for this development, it could be argued that the tradition of search into our perception of space, it is clear that his works street photography harks back to the 1960s and 1970s, when 184 do not need texts to explain them (although good criticism photographers like Lee Friedlander, Danny Lyons, and espe- 185 can often be illuminating, good art should not depend on cially Dian Arbus took to the streets to photograph the grim it). The research and its findings are there in the works if you realities of everyday life. This eased the way for Larry Clark, only know how to look. Similarly, Matisse once said that if you whose seminal book Tulsa (1971) collected photographs of his want to be a painter, ‘then begin by cutting off your tongue. friends on the fringes of society. Clark in turn proved a huge Henceforth, your expression will be left to your brushes’ influence on a generation of photographers who emerged at (Parry 2004: 4). This brings us full circle back to Langer, whose the end of the 1970s. Nan Goldin is the most remarkable pho- concept of living form is of course the very definition of em- tographer of this generation. Her work, which we shall dis- bodiment of meaning in a work of art. In Hockney’s work, as cuss in more detail in Chapter Five, is decidedly narrative in in all good art, the meanings he expresses are truly embodied tone, often autobiographical, draws on human sexuality and because his meanings, and his research, are there for us to emotions, and casts a critical eye upon society through its fo- see. They shape the very works that express them. cus on the lives of society’s rejects and minorities (transves- tites, drug addicts, people with aids). Goldin’s signature work Radical Chic for Chic Radicals was The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1982), a feature-length But the new sense of avant-gardism is not only apparent in narrative slide presentation of her photographs which was the use of Theory. I believe it is equally at work in the way influenced by the work of the underground filmmaker Jack the artworld has dealt with a relatively recent phenomenon Smith who, through lack of funding, had largely abandoned film-making at the beginning of the 1970s and turned to cre- the screenplay for Clark’s film Kids before turning to directing ating outrageous slide presentations with exotic imagery that himself. often featured, beside himself and several underground per- Several trends within the artworld helped to smoothen the sonalities, a toy penguin. way for street art into the gallery. To see this we must again The critical success of Goldin and Clark paved the way for return to the 1980s and the emergence of issue-based and another generation of street photographers. Ari Marcopoulos, identity art. This was a highly politicised form of art in which for instance, originally heralded from the Netherlands and victimhood and identity often took precedence over aesthetic worked for a while as an assistant to Warhol before produc- issues. Certain artists such as David Wojnarowicz, whose ing his own body of work for which he often gets inside spe- writing is especially persuasive, managed to transcend the cific subcultures such as the world of skaters or snowboard- merely political and personal claims of this movement, but ers. In Transitions and Exits (2000), his book on snowboard much of the work created within its framework was of dis- culture, Marcopoulos explains that he sees his work as a form mal quality. The work of such luminaries as Judy Chicago, of artistic anthropology, ‘investigating who these people were, Karen Finley, and Barbara Kruger has dated badly and seems how they were connected to each other, what their rituals to have lost much of its relevance with the passing of the 186 were, how they constituted themselves’. Probably the most time-bound political issues it addressed. This is indeed a sign 187 gifted photographer of this new generation is Ed Templeton, a of bad art, because there is no intrinsic reason why politi- former skateboard champion whose reputation as an athlete cal art could not also be good or great art (let us not forget, has secured his privileged access to this particular subcul- for example, that Michelangelo’s David was also a work of ture. But Templeton also documents his personal life and propaganda art, a warning against the Medici tyrants who often presents very intimate imagery of his wife and himself. had been expelled from Florence; Hibbard 1992: 58). Whether Templeton has also produced a considerable body of work as political and issue-based art will prove enduring depends on a painter, but this is considerably less accomplished than his whether it will be art first or political first. A second influence work in photography. The Beautiful Losers exhibition of 2004 within the artworld was the explosion of the art-market in brought together the work of Templeton with that of many the wake of Reaganomics. In the 1980s prices for often me- of his contemporaries, including Mark Gonzalez, Harmony diocre contemporary art soared beyond belief, leading to the Korine, Cheryl Dunn, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Ryan inevitable burst of the bubble by the end of the decade. Since McGinley, Mike Mills, Terry Richardson, and many others. then the situation has hardly changed, as Saatchi’s pushing Several of these artists, notably Jonze and Richardson, have of the YBA’s (Young British Artists) clearly showed: if an art- since acquired considerable fame and artistic reputations. It ist’s reputation can be made or unmade by the buy-and-sell is interesting to note that Larry Clark has actively sought to policies of an influential collector (who might not even be an engage this new generation. In fact, Harmony Korine wrote actual connoisseur of art, but simply an entrepreneur) then there is nothing left to distinguish the artworld from the free always been rejected by the dominant culture, including the market at large. artistic establishment. But they erroneously infer from this In fact, capitalist logic now controls the art-market. Markets that what is misunderstood by the mainstream cultural press are in constant need of input of fresh faces, fresh work, fresh must necessarily be the next great avant-garde. But some- reputations, and the next hot thing. Every new season and times art is overlooked or dismissed because it just isn’t good every new opening is supposed to bring us new revelations enough. It is true that much and perhaps even most great and revolutions. In this sense, the artworld has come to re- modern art was initially rejected, sometimes even for years semble the porn industry, where careers are brief and new and decades on end, but that obviously does not imply that faces appear with deadening regularity. The artworld is now to be neglected is to be great by definition. constantly on the lookout for the next big thing, living from Much of the art that is reproduced in the Beautiful Losers hype to hype. This explains the hugely inflated reputations catalogue is not very sophisticated. And I do not mean so- of such middling talents as Haring, Basquiat, or Jeff Koons. phisticated on a theoretical or conceptual level, but simply Interestingly, Koons once claimed that his then-wife, Ilona on a stylistic or even painterly level. It often looks bland and Staller, better known as the Italian porn star La Cicciolina, ‘is sometimes even amateurish. One gets the impression that 188 one of the greatest artists in the world. She is a great com- the basic artistic and iconographical language that underlies 189 municator, a great liberator. Other artists use a paintbrush. such street art has not notably developed since the time of Ilona uses her genitalia’ (Muthesius 1992: 142). Koons did not Haring and Basquiat. There is a reason for this. Street art half know how right he was, for La Cicciolina’s work in erotic works within specific codes and has a very distinctive aes- cinema is probably much more interesting than anything thetic. It ranges from skateboard and surf design through Koons ever did. In any case, since the 1980s high-profile art- graffiti art and tagging. I think this suggests that we are deal- ists have often presented themselves as entrepreneurs and ing here with a form of folk art, a subcultural phenomenon careerists, working for the market rather than working from that is comparable to biker culture, surf culture, and maybe necessity or compulsion. Today there are artists who do not even sports culture and the iconography that it inspires. Per- work if they do not get paid. But the fear of missing the next haps an exhibition of such work, which is very valuable in big thing also informs the Beautiful Losers catalogue, and this itself, would be more honestly at home in an institution such is especially revealing of the way the artworld operates today. as the Smithsonian than in a museum for contemporary art. In an instructive piece of artworld marketing strategy, the There is still a difference between design, folk art, and what authors of the catalogue compare the neglect that street art we might call, for better or for worse, high art or fine art. In had previously suffered to the neglect the artworld initially this sense it is very telling that Ed Templeton has kept his ac- lavished upon such important movements as the Beat poets tivities as a designer of skateboards strictly separate from his and Pop Art. The authors point out that the avant-garde has work as a visual artist. The design shop is a job, the photogra- phy and the painting are his art. Similarly, graffiti has proved ence life on the fringe is possibly a reason why explicit sexual to be a highly intelligent and subversive means of expression, photography such as that of Larry Clark has become so popu- especially in the hands of gifted artists such as Banksy. But lar: it feeds a voyeuristic need to boldly go and see where no we must ask ourselves if we are really doing these artists a proper artworld person has ever gone or seen before. Similar- favour by bringing them into museums for contemporary ly, the wave of porn chic we have seen in the artworld is clad art. Does this not undermine the purpose of their work? This in the same hypocritical garb. The curators who set up porn kind of work has been described as non-commissioned pub- in their galleries or who commission artists to produce tepid lic art (a great euphemism to describe the fact that graffiti pieces for portmanteau film projects such as Destricted would is often simply illegal from the point of view of the powers probably not be caught dead in an actual sex shop or perus- that be), and this shows that much of it is intimately linked ing the adult section of their local video store. Yes, we want to contemporary forms of activism, such as the Reclaim The images of whores and call-boys in our gallery, but would you Streets manifestations that seek to oppose oppressive domi- sit down with them for dinner? Would you go out into the nant culture. But to treat such subversive work as high art is streets at night and spend an hour with them on a bench, often to aestheticise and hence defuse it. discussing the hardships of life on the street? I don’t think 190 However, the political charge of much street art is possibly so. All of this is not a criticism of the art involved. As with all 191 the reason why the artworld is so eager to bring it into its art, there is a lot of very bad street art, a considerable amount museums. This has everything to do with radical chic. Since of good street art, and some of it will no doubt turn out to be the avant-garde is officially dead, it has become difficult for great. What I am critical of is the way the artworld deals with artists and art institutions to prove their edge merely on the this kind of art. There is a lingering feeling that the easy ac- basis of aesthetic or formal properties. So the edge must be ceptance of street art in the artworld has less to do with the sought elsewhere. To flaunt street art in one’s gallery or mu- artistic merits of the work itself than with the desire of the seum is to bask in the light of the streetwise. It is to dress artworld to maintain a sense of the avant-garde after the end oneself up in an air of hipness. It is to live the life of the of avant-garde. street vicariously. The new avant-garde is an avant-garde of radical chic and lifestyle. You prove how open-minded and radical you are by embracing the marginal, the transsexual, the criminal, the radical. If art itself has become obsolete, attitude is everything. No matter that the artist cannot paint, he is a drug fiend and this makes him cool. And we, showing his work, share in his coolness. It is the facade of daring, it is playing at being radical. This desire to vicariously experi- Chapter Three was purchased, which died within two days and again had to be replaced. In this bizarre anecdote of an artist braving ridiculously unnecessary dangers, not to mention sacrific- ing the life of several innocent goats, for the sake of painting GETTING a picture, we sense something of the dedication that artists often feel towards their work. Artists have starved, fought, and even braved death for their art. Some actors, for ex- PHYSICALS ample, submit their bodies to terrific alterations for the sake of a part. For American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000) Christian Bale honed his flesh to what a skilled observer of the male While sojourning in the Holy Land in 1854 William Holman physique has called an ‘exquisitely cut-glass body’ (Reuter Hunt painted one of the nineteenth century’s most fasci- 2000: 140), only to starve its skeletal remains for the haunt- nating paintings: The Scapegoat (1855). The picture shows a ing The Machinist (Brad Anderson, 2004). But the artist who vicious-looking goat on the desolate shores of the Dead Sea. most clearly puts his body in jeopardy today is undoubtedly 192 It is based on an image found in Leviticus, where, as Hunt the performance artist or body artist, who will often put his 193 wrote to his friend John Everett Millais, ‘you will read an ac- physical well-being on the line for the sake of art. count of the scapegoat sent into the wilderness, bearing all the sins of the children of Israel, which, of course, was insti- A Body of Art tuted as a type of Christ’ (Amor 1989: 125). Hunt had bought Performance art is difficult to define. It seems to be so wide a white goat to serve as his model for the painting. Led by a concept, and so often draws on materials and techniques a group of Arabs, Hunt set out into the wilderness, braving that are usually considered kinds of art in themselves (such desolation and the lurking presence of armed brigands (not as video, painting, film, theatre, poetry, and many others) to mention the artist at one point sinking into a pit of slime that it cannot be defined. In fact, if we consult surveys of and nearly perishing), until he found a suitable spot on the performance art or of the related topic of body art, such shores of the Dead Sea that proved a suitable scene for the books rarely offer insight into what is the specific nature of picture. Every morning, Hunt would venture out to the shores performance art. In a classic survey, RoseLee Goldberg claims of the ‘pestilential lake’ (o.c. 128), set up his easel and paint that ‘by its very nature, performance art defies precise or easy while the armed enemy looming in the hills stared at him in definition beyond the simple declaration that it is live art by baffled amazement. In the end, the Arab soldiers accompany- artists’ (Goldberg 2001: 9). In the introduction to her book she ing him wanted to return and Hunt had to finish the painting suggests that ‘tribal ritual, medieval passion play, Renais- in Jerusalem, by which time the goat had died and a new one sance spectacle or the “soirées” arranged by artists in the 1920s in their Paris studios’ are all examples of performance performance art; and he is certainly not the only critic to do art (o.c. 8). But Goldberg’s description is too general and so. But there is really a marked difference between the two. wildly inaccurate, for I would claim that the medieval pas- In the case of Oppenheim’s piece, for instance, one should sion play is an example of the theatre and that a tribal ritual wonder how two photographs could constitute a performance. is not even art at all but, as is clear from the description, an They document the results of an action on Oppenheim’s part example of ritual. It would seem that with performance art that may or may not have been a performance depending on things are very much as they are with pornography: we all whether the exposure to sunburn was in itself a public event know what it is, especially when we see it, but don’t ask us (a performance) or something Oppenheim engaged in in pri- to define it. Such an approach, however, will not do. We can- vate for the sole purpose of creating the photographs, which not engage in any kind of profitable discussion of anything if are then the actual works of art (getting sunburnt would then we do not have clearly defined terms. So we will have to en- be the preparation for the creation of the work, much like deavour to find a more satisfying description of what makes a painter buying tubes of paint, grinding pigment to make performance art a specific form of art that is distinct from paint, or preparing a canvas). In the latter case, Reading Posi- the other arts. Since performance art was still in its infancy tion would be a work of photographic art, not performance 194 when Langer wrote Feeling and Form that book does not offer art, and should be judged as such. So Lucie-Smith’s descrip- 195 a discussion of the primary illusion created in performance. tion is a muddle, but not an uncommon one in writing on Our first task should therefore be to try and define this pri- body and performance art. mary illusion so that we may understand what happens in a In her classic 1974 essay on body art Lea Vergine offers an performance. Once we have insight in the primary illusion of interesting clue towards the distinction between body art and performance art we will also be able to argue why some kinds performance art. She observes that in body art the body ‘is of performance art are successful and others not. being used as an art language’ (Vergine 2000: 7). Body art is First, we shall have to distinguish between body art and art in which the body is crucially and actually involved: the performance art. The two are often discussed together, and body itself becomes an art language. Body art happens to or both categories do seem to flow naturally into each other. with the body or intrinsically concerns the body. It has the Consider Edward Lucie-Smith’s comment on Dennis Op- body physical as its locus of expression: what is relevant in penheim’s Reading Position (1970), a work that ‘consists of such art is expressed through or impressed upon the body. two photographs which record the effects of sunburn on the As Tracey Warr has noted, in body art the body is ‘used not artist’s own torso – part of it sheltered by an open book, and simply as the “content” of the work, but also as canvas, brush, part left exposed. This kind of expression is often classified as frame and platform’ (Warr 2000: 11). In The Artist’s Body (2000) body art or performance art’ (Lucie-Smith 2001: 159). Lucie- Amelia Jones offers an overview of body art that considers Smith clearly suggests an equivalence between body art and ‘the histrionically virile action painting body’ of Jackson Pol- lock a crucial point of reference for body art (Jones 2000: 21, achieve a performance in a way similar to the agency of the 23). After action painting the history of body art is taken to body in achieving a painting: the body is, so to speak, the tool include the ‘strategic banality’ (o.c. 26) of everyday gestures required to create the actual work of art. For instance, when used in the dance of Merce Cunningham or the Judson Dance Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers emptied a bottle of lemonade Theater; a 1962 Happening in which ‘Wolf Vostell instructed into the ocean he was clearly performing a performance. the audience to board a city bus, ride around Paris and take But this performance was not body art: the artist’s body was note of their aural and visual experiences’ (o.c. 28); Laurie not intrinsically relevant to the proceedings, except as the Anderson’s ‘large scale theatrical productions performed at necessary agent for emptying the bottle of lemonade. The large-capacity venues’ (o.c. 32); Yves Klein’s Anthropometries; performance was not about the body physical but about an the mechanical body extensions of Stelarc; the photographs action undertaken by the artist as a person. The locus of sig- of Cindy Sherman; Piero Manzoni’s canned Merda d’artista nificance in this performance was not the body physical but (1961); Duchamp’s masquerading as Rrose Sélavy; Niki de the action itself. So a work can be performance art regardless Saint-Phalle’s ‘bleeding’ Tir à Volonté-paintings; Warhol’s ‘piss’ of whether it is also body art. What seems to be crucial to or Oxidation Paintings (1978); Marcel Duchamp’s small Paysage performance art is the spectacle of action. Performance art 196 fautif (1946) which was in 1989 revealed to consist of semen would then be a work of art in which taking action is itself 197 on black satin; the work of the Viennese Actionists; and even presented as the work of art. In this sense it is related to Han- ‘the antics of the Spice Girls’ (o.c. 32). But if body art covers nah Arendt’s notion of action. The creation of artefacts such such a diverse range of artistic practices then body art as a as works of art is what Arendt calls “work”. In “action,” on the term becomes merely descriptive and has very little, if any, other hand, no final product is created. The clearest example critical power. Body art sounds like a kind of art (like paint- of action is politics, where people act for the common good ing or sculpture) but it is really just a genre within the arts. but where every act (a law or “act” passed, a decision made, Hence, we may assume that much performance art will also a stand taken) can always be undone or overturned by future be a kind of body art because it usually presupposes the use acts. In this sense, action is open-ended: its results are never of the body. But that is all the insight to be gleaned from such certain and always temporary. If one sets out to act, one nev- a general approach. After all, most art, even writing, presup- er knows where one is going to end up. poses the use of the body. But performance art is not identical with action. There are I would suggest that not all performance art is body art in two reasons for this. First, performance art may leave behind the sense described here. Not all performance art involves a final object as end result, be it an artefact created in the the body in its physicality. Sometimes the body is merely the performance, some relic of the performance (as when Her- agent that performs an action which is the actual focus of mann Nitsch exhibits the paint-splattered and bloodstained the performance. In this sense the body is sometimes used to robes he wore during his performances), or a photographic or other audio-visual record of the performance which may perceived as politically charged acts of resistance, which come to substitute for the actual performance in exhibitions. makes them eligible as examples of actual political action. In Second, insofar as it is art, performance art is not action as Happenings the line between art and reality, between action such, but the illusion of action. This becomes especially clear and illusion, becomes blurred and our definitions flounder. if we consider that performance art is usually limited in time. It starts and it ends and in that sense it is not open-ended: From Performance to Concept when one starts a performance one has some idea of where Trying to define performance art in terms of action seems one is going and where one wants to end up. This means that logical but has proved to be a conceptual dead end. So we the performance is scripted, or at least outlined, and that it is must try and find a better definition. But before we attempt a not in its overall structure improvised or spontaneous (which more satisfactory definition of performance art we might do really simply means that there must be some kind of com- well to dwell awhile on the reasons why the present defini- manding form at work). All improvisation that does occur tion of performance as action is insufficient. To do this we must be framed within a pre-established pattern that should might approach the problem from a different vantage point. at least be known to all the participants involved in the per- As we said, a performance must have some element of pre- 198 formance. Therefore a performance is never open-ended in meditation to be art: there must be commanding form. But 199 the sense that (political) action is: it has a form and the act from this an interesting issue emerges. Suppose that an art- of performing is the presentation or elaboration of this form. ist has planned a performance and sends out invitations to But this description of performance art immediately raises artworld people to be present at the performance. For the several grave problems. For we might legitimately ask what it benefit of the press and other attendants a brief statement is about performance art that makes it an illusion of action? has been prepared in which the artist outlines what he will How can we distinguish between action per se (in the sense do and what will be its meaning. An interesting way to deter- of Arendt) and an illusion of action? If performance art is art, mine the artistic value of the performance might be to ask if it must have some formal quality that makes it so. Clearly, the actual performance will add anything of an aesthetic nature our definition of performance art as the illusion of action is to the brief outline presented in prose. If the actual perfor- not sufficiently specific and soon becomes a conceptual mud- mance does indeed not add anything of an aesthetic nature dle because it is too difficult to determine when an action to the work (which means that it really does not matter very should be perceived as actual or illusory. This issue becomes much whether you are actually present at the performance especially vexing in relation to a kind of performance art that to grasp its meaning and intent), we might judge the per- was particularly popular in the late 1960s, the Happening. formance non-artistic, or at least failed or bad art. If the full As Allan Kaprow pointed out, ‘a Happening cannot be repro- import of the performance can be grasped in a set of instruc- duced’ (Jones 2000: 28). In this way Happenings were often tions or a detailed description to which the actual perfor- mance as event has little or nothing to add, the work would definition about ideas and not about form. It is very facile to seem to be merely discursive: the performance-as-event has place an object (which can then be called a “ready-made,” as no aesthetic value in itself and simply serves as a vehicle for if such renaming of everyday objects magically turns them an idea or an argument that remains just as valid in an es- into something other than what they are) in a museum and say or any other discursive presentation. In fact, the value of then elaborate on the many critical or political meanings that the work seems to lie in the description and not at all in the are attached to it. action itself. When this redundancy of the performance-as- But we must ask ourselves, after having read an essay about event occurs, we might say that the performance is not art the meanings of a certain conceptual artist’s work, if it is but illustration. really necessary to our understanding of the work to actu- This approach to the problem of the artistic stature of per- ally go to the museum and see with our own eyes the objects formance art opens interesting perspectives on other fields displayed as the carriers of such lofty meanings and radi- of controversy in recent art, such as the doctorate in the arts. cal sentiments. I dare suggest that a urinal, regardless of its As we saw in the previous chapter, several academies and geographical location, is still very much a urinal after such universities now offer PhD programmes in art. Such pro- meanings have been attached to it and that Duchamp’s ac- 200 grammes usually require the artist to create a work with an tual urinal as installed in a museum has very little to add 201 accompanying treatise on the work’s meanings and the cre- to the idea of Duchamp’s urinal as installed in a museum. So the ative process involved. This sets the stage for much bad art, urinal is probably not very great art, although we must grant for any work of art worth its salt should be able to communi- that Duchamp, being the first to create such ready-mades, did cate with its audience in a relevant way without the require- make a radical gesture and was too intelligent an artist not to ment of the previous perusal of a theoretical manual. If art be aware of the ironies and conceptual complexities involved needs theory to make itself understood, the artist has simply in it. It is mostly his followers who are flukes. This does not failed to make a successful work of art. Much such work mean that the ideas at work behind conceptual art cannot in tries to redeem itself by being presented as a form of “artis- themselves be legitimate and interesting. Much conceptual tic research”. But this, we claimed, is bad faith. Not because art raises very interesting questions. But the nature of the artistic research does not exist, but because all good artists questions or their tentative answers is not in any way en- do their research in their work. The work is the research, not hanced by calling them art. A question is not a work of art. the commentary. David Hockney once mentioned ‘a wonder- And a non-aesthetic object does not become art because a ful quote of Picasso’s, which I keep referring to, where he question is attached to it. It simply gives the whole operation says he never made a painting as a work of art; it was always some artistic cachet. In fact, it now becomes clear that much research’ (Weschler 2008: 61). From this perspective we can performance art and conceptual art, in setting forth critical also take a fresh look at conceptual art, which is almost by statements about the world and the objects in it, are much nearer to what Arendt called action than to art. People who seen, for a brief period of time, as a counter-force to the com- do performances or who raise interesting questions through mercialisation of the art market: here, at last, were works of conceptual art do something more akin to politics, journal- art that could not be bought or sold. But the artworld cynics ism, and civil action than to art. soon changed that: if you can’t sell the work, market the at- The political component of performance art, its breaking of titude. Hence the introduction of a new cultural currency: the taboos and challenging of social norms, can also be seen as avant-garde identity rather than the avant-garde work of art. another way in which the artworld has tried to regain the al- Finally, the link between performance art and political action lure of avant-gardism after it had fashionably declared avant- becomes especially salient if we keep in mind that the rise of gardes dead: by subscribing to supposedly radical political, performance art and conceptual art was closely linked to the social, or sexual ideas they substitute an avant-garde of the rise of issue-based and identity art in the 1970s and 1980s. political and the sexual for an avant-garde of the formal or In all these kinds of art content matters more than form the aesthetic. The mechanism at work in the sudden popu- and the content is often overtly political. In this respect, Lea larity of street art is also at work in the radical posturing of Vergine’s early theoretical statement is especially instructive performance art and its politically charged discourse. Thus, when it claims that performance and body artists ‘want an 202 street art and performance art both function along similar intimate acquaintance with all of the possibilities of self- 203 lines: they provide the artworld with a new sense of hip knowledge that can stem from the body and the investigation avant-gardism, a trendy with-it attitude that recreates the of the body. The body is stripped bare in an extreme attempt exclusive sense of an inner circle that was once generated to acquire the right to a rebirth back into the world. Most of through formal aesthetic experiments within the actual work the time, the experiences we are dealing with are authentic, of art. The result is an artworld that is not really interested and they are consequently cruel and painful. Those who are in art anymore but in a politics of the personal. And it might in pain will tell you that they have the right to be taken seriously. certainly be true that the personal is the political (for every- These artists do not “take a long look at life,” and their forms thing political has repercussions for the way we live our per- of expression are not genteel. They make no a priori exclu- sonal lives), but art is not politics. Even politically engaged art sions and in most of them suffering is not transformed into is not politics (at worst it is propaganda). And politics, apart mysticism. This is particularly true when they are involved in from not being art, cares very little about art to begin with, the investigation of our infirmities and the monstrous organi- unless when art can serve political purposes (by becoming sation of the real. It’s a question of facing up to death through propaganda) or offers an opportunity to sound moral alarms life, rummaging around in the under and seamy sides of life, that will generate votes (as in the culture wars). What is es- bringing to light the secret and the hidden’ (Vergine 2000: 8-9). pecially ironic about this evolution within the artworld is the This passage shows how the rhetoric of victimhood was in- fact that performance art, along with land art, was actually troduced into discussions of performance and issue-based art almost from the start. The italics in the passage are Vergine’s death, since the vomit would have no place to go. And should and they stress the inalienable right of the victim to be taken any one of us vomit, we might trigger him to do likewise”’ seriously, even when she is not creating any artistic form but (Warr 2000: 104). From this description it is clear that to wit- simply acting out her victimhood. It is surely no coincidence ness McCarthy’s performance is a perplexing experience. To that much issue-based art subsequently took the form of act in such a provocative and disgusting way clearly affects performances, as in the work of such feminist luminaries the audience. Who would not become nauseous while watch- as Karen Finley or the self-dramatisations of Bob Flanagan. ing such a spectacle? But the question is of course why this As Amelia Jones breathlessly points out, the ‘leaky bodies’ performance should be a work of art. Similar gross acts are of Ron Athey, Gina Pane, and Orlan ‘violently recorporealise perpetrated in such pseudo-reality television shows as Jack- the subjects of culture who spew, shit, piss and vomit their ass and Dirty Sanchez, and yet nobody has made claims for woundedness (as female, gay, sick)’ (Jones 2000: 33). But is the superior artistic quality of such shows. So there must be there artistic achievement or aesthetic merit in displaying something about McCarthy’s performance that sets it apart one’s woundedness? from mere provocation. As we saw earlier, the presence of all kinds of “subversive or critical meanings” hardly qualifies 204 Engaging the Audience as such a difference, for we might well argue that any act of 205 We must now try again to find the primary illusion created gross indecency, by virtue of its offensive nature, challenges in performance art. Several classic instances of performance established moral codes and should therefore be considered art offer clues towards such a definition. Our first exhibit is of artistic merit. And yet such acts, when perpetrated in pub- a description of Paul McCarthy’s Hot Dog (1974), one of the lic without prior consent of government officials, are usually artist’s ‘earliest performances enacting masochistic culinary condemned as indecent exposure and not celebrated as ma- rituals. McCarthy stripped and shaved his body in front of a jor feats of artistic achievement. small group of friends in his basement studio. Artist Barbara Let us look at two further examples. Gina Pane’s seminal Smith, present at the event, reported: “He [then] stuffs his performance Le Lait Chaud (1972) showed the artist cutting penis into a hotdog bun and tapes it on, then smears his ass herself with a razor blade. Pane herself describes what hap- with mustard... He approaches the tables and sits nearby, pened: ‘Suddenly I turned to face my public and approached drinking ketchup and stuffing his mouth with hot dogs... the razor blade to my face. The tension was explosive and Binding his head with gauze and adding more hot dogs, he broke when I cut my face on either cheek. They yelled “No, finally tapes his bulging mouth closed so that the protruding no, not the face, no!” So I touched an essential problem – the mouth looks like a snout... He stands alone struggling with aestheticism in every person. The face is taboo, it’s the core himself, trying to prevent his own retching. It is apparent that of human aesthetics’ (o.c. 121). A more extreme form of au- he is about to vomit... Should he vomit he might choke to tomutilation is performed in the “performance-surgery” of French artist Orlan. Tracey Warr describes such an operation art, where audience response and even audience participa- as it was broadcast live to fifteen sites worldwide: ‘Specta- tion are often made part of the work itself. To clarify this tors around the world could ask the artist questions both we might compare performance art with the theatrical arts, before and during the operation, to which she responded as where the presence of an audience is also highly desirable (if the procedure permitted. Elaborately staging the events with only to prevent the act of performing a play from being a pro- colourful drapery, costumes created by famous designers, foundly depressing experience for the actors involved). But and extra personnel to translate into English and sign for the in theatre, as in dance, the fictional space of the work is al- deaf, Orlan transformed the operating theatre into her studio, ways demarcated from the space of the audience. Langer has while her operation provided the material for the production written incisively about this feature, especially in relation to of film, video, photographs and objects to be exhibited later. dance. Langer suggests that ‘all dance motion is gesture [...]. The operation was performed by a feminist plastic surgeon, Gesture is the basic abstraction whereby the dance illusion is Dr Marjorie Cramer, who inserted implants above Orlan’s made and organised’ (FF 174). But gesture is not gesticulation. eyes and in her cheeks and chin. The artist was conscious but ‘Gesticulation, as part of our actual behaviour, is not art. It is locally anaesthetised, and it is therefore the spectator who simply vital movement’ (FF 175). Gesticulation, bodily move- 206 suffers as a result of the discomfort produced by images of ments brought about by the hustle and bustle of daily exis- 207 the operation. The artist retains ultimate (conscious) control tence, is not art. It is a symptom of our being actively alive in of the process of her facial remoulding and thus the repre- the world. ‘Virtual gestures,’ on the other hand, namely the sentation of her (female) face and body in art’ (o.c. 185). The gestures created in the illusion of dance, ‘are symbols of will. case of Orlan is especially instructive. It is clearly a perfor- The spontaneous gestic character of dance motions is illu- mance in the sense that it is elaborately staged as an event sory, and the vital force they express is illusory; the “powers” that is limited in time. It produces a series of artefacts com- (i.e. centers of vital force) in dance are created beings – cre- memorating the event. By having it performed by a feminist ated by the semblance of gesture’ (FF 175). The dance turns surgeon, the performance raises (admittedly rather trite and gesture into fiction, an illusion. ‘The primary illusion of dance unexciting) political issues. And by remoulding a woman’s is a virtual realm of Power – not actual, physically exerted face it confronts issues of canons of beauty and how ideas of power, but appearances of influence and agency created by the body beautiful are projected onto women’s bodies. virtual gesture. In watching a collective dance – say, an ar- But the really salient issue which is present in all three cases tistically successful ballet – one does not see people running discussed, is the issue of audience involvement and audience around; one sees the dance driving this way, drawn that way, response. Obviously, all art addresses an audience. But a paint- gathering here, spreading there – fleeing, resting, rising, and ing, a film, a sculpture, or a novel is offered the audience as a so forth; and all the motion seems to spring from powers be- finished product. This is not usually the case in performance yond the performers. In a pas de deux the two dancers appear to magnetise each other; the relation between them is more magnetising the dancers, is not coextensive with the space than a spatial one, it is a relation of forces; but the forces they of the audience. The dance illusion is given the audience as a exercise, that seem to be as physical as those which orient spectacle, an illusory world, to look at. In this, it differs from the compass needle toward its pole, really do not exist physi- sculpture and architecture. As Langer notes, sculpture often cally at all. They are dance forces, virtual powers’ (FF 175-176). kindles in people a desire to touch it because ‘volume is real- But these virtual powers immediately generate another effect ly given originally to touch, [...] and the business of sculpture which is crucial to their success. ‘Every dancer sees the dance is to translate its data into entirely visual terms, i.e. to make sufficiently to let his imagination grasp it as a whole; and tactual space visible’ (FF 89-90). With architecture, we actually with his own body-feeling he understands the gestic forms inhabit its ethnic domain. This does not diminish the fact that are its interwoven, basic elements. He cannot see his that such virtual spaces are given primarily to our perception, own form as such, but he knows his appearance – the lines but it does mean that the self-contained world created in described by his body are implied in the shifts of his vision, these arts functions in a way different from the field of Power even if he is dancing alone, and are guaranteed but the rhyth- in dance gestures. With dance, as with the theatre, the spec- mic play of his muscles, the freedom with which his impuls- tator is usually kept at a further distance from the work than 208 es spend themselves in complete and intended movements. in sculpture or architecture. 209 He sees the world in which his body dances, and that is the I believe that Langer’s notion of a magnetic field of powers primary illusion of his work; in this closed realm he develops between dancers in a dance is a crucial clue to the primary his ideas’ (FF 197). This last observation is crucial: the dance illusion of performance art, where the audience itself be- creates a closed realm, a world on its own. ‘The dance cre- comes involved in the force-field created in the work. It is the ates an image of nameless and even bodiless Powers filling a incorporation of audience response or participation into the complete, autonomous realm, a “world”’ (FF 190). ‘The dance, work rather than the action-like nature of the event that is or dancers,’ Langer continues, ‘must transform the stage for crucial to the primary illusion of performance art (which sub- the audience as well as for themselves into an autonomous, sequently may or may not also be body art, depending on the complete, virtual realm, and all motions into a play of visible role of the body physical in the proceedings). Performance forces in unbroken, virtual time’ (FF 204). This recalls, to some art can never be complete as a work without the audience. extent, the primary illusion of the visual arts, the creation We must understand this well. As we said before, all art re- of virtual space in painting, sculpture, and architecture. Es- quires an audience. But most art is finished as a work before pecially the way sculpture inhabits and organises the empty the audience becomes involved. In temporal terms, the work space around it seems to be akin to the way the realm of of art is usually completed before the audience comes in (in Power of dance generates a world of its own. This means that the case of the theatre or the dance, where the individual the space of the world of the dance, its virtual field of powers performance only starts when the audience is present in the theatre, the work was actually completed during rehearsals, form of art that differs crucially from all other forms of art: and what is presented to the audience is the accomplished it breaks open its virtual world to include the audience and living symbol of the play or the dance as it was conceived, in that sense becomes somehow world-encompassing. Since achieved, and perfected through rehearsal: the play or the performance art emerged as a full-fledged art form in the dance that the audience will see is already finished in the 1960s, when it was charged with political and emancipatory minds and bodies of the performers, who are ready to perform intentions, such breaking-open towards the world should it again, and again, and again, usually without much adjust- not surprise us. By encompassing the audience, and hence ment of the original form). In performance art the work cannot the entire phenomenologically present environment, perfor- be complete before the audience comes in. As a matter of fact, mance art generates a sense of claustrophobia that is crucial the audience becomes instrumental in the completion of the to its success: the magnetic force-field that ties dancers in a work because its response to or participation in it is crucial to pas de deux here includes the audience, which is given a sense the accomplishment of the work. Clearly, McCarthy’s Hot Dog of being locked in. To be present at a performance is to have includes the audience response (the felt experience of nausea the feeling that one cannot get away. One is part of the event. and the simultaneous knowledge that to give way to nausea This means that it is far more difficult for the spectator to 210 might endanger the artist) as part of the work. Take away the remain a disinterested spectator. Because one is involved in 211 tension between the performer and his audience and there is the force-field, one is drawn almost physically into the per- simply no work, only the masochistic shenanigans of a man formance. This dynamic is especially clear in Barbara Smith’s involved in a highly inventive form of sexual adventurous- response to McCarthy’s Hot Dog: it is as if the audience is tak- ness. The acts performed by McCarthy might still be mean- en hostage by the work and is made to feel McCarthy’s nausea ingful or (sexually, masochistically) exciting to the artist as a instead of simply watching it. Obviously, the examples we private person, but they would no longer be art (although we have used here are extreme forms of performance and much should allow for the fact that the presence of a camera docu- performance art is far less confrontational or aggressive menting the solitary performance might substitute for an towards the audience. But even in more demure cases the audience). Similarly, what would be the use of Gina Pane cut- audience becomes directly involved because the performance ting her face if there were no audience present to be shocked engages both its response and, it should by now be clear, its by her action? In performance the audience becomes part of reflection. Given the politically charged nature of much per- the fabric of the work itself. formance art, which is further illustrated in its popularity We can now endeavour a new definition of performance art. I among artists engaged in issue-based art, the performance suggest that the primary illusion created in performance art often has the specific goal of triggering a political or critical is the illusion of action within a virtual realm of power that insight in the audience. It wants to make the audience aware includes both the performer and the audience. In this, it is a of some injustice. But in a good performance, this triggering of insight in the audience is part of the fabric of the work (as merely an illusion: the real world is still out there, beyond the it would also be in conceptual art). boundaries of the virtual realm of the performance. But the But the political charge of much performance art also circles effect of this coup is that the experience of watching a per- back to action in the sense of Arendt. Therefore our defini- formance becomes part of the performance itself. Hence a tion once again states that the primary illusion created in performance is a kind of art in which consciousness-raising performance art is an illusion of action. This is the very aspect can become an integral part of the virtual world because it is that we earlier identified as profoundly problematic: it lead integrated into the artistic fabric. us straight into a conceptual muddle. But I believe we can It should be clear that our definition of the primary illusion evade the muddle this time because we situate the illusion of performance art does not solve all our problems. But the of action within a virtual realm of power that includes both primary illusion does offer us a clue as to what performance performer(s) and audience. This addition is crucial. Our ear- art is good art. In fact, insofar as much performance art takes lier problems with the illusion of action as a definition of the on a decidedly discursive form by letting ideological or po- primary illusion of performance art stemmed mainly from litical intentions prevail over formal concerns, an unusually the fact that it was impossible to determine whether any high degree of performance art may be rather mediocre. It 212 action was real or illusory. But if we situate the illusion of ac- is surely the challenge of the performance artist to create 213 tion within a power-field that is itself already a virtual world a form that does something considerably more ambitious on its own, this problem disappears: all action performed in than provoke a visceral reaction in the audience (as in the the performance pertains not to the real world, but only to nausea experienced while watching Hot Dog), denounce some the virtual world created in the work. The audience present social injustice (as in the work of Karen Finley), or engage at a performance is never really an audience and is never re- in an exhibitionism of the ailing body (as in the work of Bob ally in front of the stage: it is on the stage, part of the action, Flanagan). All the objections against performance and con- and part of the virtual realm created. In this sense we might ceptual art that were raised earlier remain valid now that we say that performance art has something of the ideal, which have determined the primary illusion of the performance. was very popular in the 1960s and 1970s, of turning one’s life But the primary illusion should help us explain why so much into a work of art. By creating a virtual realm that encom- performance art is failed art, bad art, or maybe not even art passes a realm that is not usually supposed to be part of the at all. It is one thing to say that performance art includes the virtual world, namely the realm of the spectator, the artist audience in its primary illusion, it is another thing to say that is actually performing a coup on the world: he obliterates any work that includes the audience in its primary illusion the world (insofar as it is phenomenologically present to the is therefore by definition good (performance) art. It offers us performers and the audience) by including it in his action. So a criterion for distinguishing true works of performance art the real and the fictional are conflated. But this is obviously from works that are falsely seen as performance art. For in- stance, it might be argued that works such as Chris Burden’s single most notorious piece of performance art in which the Oh, Dracula (1974), which had the artist sleep in a chrysalis- artist put her own life in jeopardy was Marina Abramovic’s like sheet attached to the wall of the museum, or a Peter Rhythm 0 (1974) in which ‘Abramovic stood by a table and of- Greenaway exhibit of a naked woman (The Physical Self, 1991) fered herself passively to spectators, who could do what they really belong in a survey of sculpture rather than one of per- liked with a range of objects and her body. A text on the wall formance art. To the extent that there is no explicit illusion of read, “There are seventy-two objects on the table that can be action in these works and that they are primarily presented used on me as desired. I am the object.” The objects included as exhibits rather than audience-inclusive events, such works a gun, a bullet, a saw, an axe, a fork, a comb, a whip, lipstick, seem to be extreme cases of sculpture. a bottle of perfume, paint, knives, matches, a feather, a rose, a candle, water, chains, nails, needles, scissors, honey, grapes, Lethal Objections plaster, sulphur and olive oil. By the end of the performance As noted before, the boundary between performance art and all her clothes had been sliced off her body with razor blades, body art is often blurred. This is especially the case in the she had been cut, painted, cleaned, decorated, crowned with most sensational, and often the most effective, kind of per- thorns and had had the loaded gun pressed against her head. 214 formance art, namely the performance in which the body is After six hours the performance was halted by concerned 215 shown to accomplish immense feats of physical endurance, spectators’ (Warr 2000: 125). often to the point of putting the artist’s physical well-being Rhythm 0 is an extreme case of audience involvement in art at risk. McCarthy’s Hot Dog and Pane’s Le Lait Chaud are clear that develops ideas that can be traced back to Yoko Ono’s examples of such performance art. But other and more noto- Cut Piece (1964) and similar works in which the artist’s body rious instances have become the topic of controversy. Chris becomes the willing passive recipient of aggressive acts. It Burden famously had a friend shoot him in the arm for Shoot is a matter of dispute whether such performances are still (1971), for Trans-fixed (1974) he was nailed to a car in the pos- art. The inclusion of the audience in the virtual world of the ture of the crucified Christ, and for the notorious Deadman action is certainly taken to the limit in Abramovic’s piece (1972) Burden himself explains that ‘at 8 pm I lay down on La since it was up to members of the audience to determine Cienega Boulevard and was covered completely with a canvas when the performance was over; when, in other words, they tarpaulin. Two 15-minute flares were placed near me to alert themselves had had enough. Apart from that, the entire per- cars. Just before the flares extinguished, a police car arrived. I formance smacks of abject nihilism. The fact that a loaded was arrested and booked for causing a false emergency to be gun was held to Abramovic’s head seems to defy all reason: reported. The trial took place in Beverly Hills. After three days why would an artist put her life at risk simply to make some of deliberations, the jury failed to reach a decision and the point? Such nihilistic acts of self-destruction are usually the judge dismissed the case’ (Hoffman 2007: 158). Perhaps the preserve of suicide bombers or political or religious fanat- ics who engage in self-immolation. There is no denying the Or would he simply be deemed a fierce critic of a contentious incredible force such extreme performances have for the work of art? If Abramovic offers the means and the opportu- people present. As Gina Pane remarked of Le Lait Chaud, ‘the nity for her murder as an artistic event, an open invitation tension was explosive,’ and we may be sure that it was even to trigger-pulling, does that entitle me to pull that trigger? more so for the people present at Rhythm 0. The question we I doubt it. To the extent that killing Abramovic would have are faced with is whether such tension has anything artistic very real extra-artistic consequences in the real world (for about it if it involves such reckless risk-taking. For there is a one thing, it would certainly make prices for her works soar very definite line that runs between Pane’s Le Lait Chaud on in the art market) the entire event is decidedly not a work the one hand and Deadman or Rhythm 0 on the other. Pane of art. The fact that I hire someone to kill me does not make is always in charge of the proceedings, as is Orlan when she that hired killer innocent of murder in the eyes of the law (if submits to surgery. But both Burden and Abramovic introduce it did, the whole question of euthanasia would not cause so an element of unpredictability by relinquishing control to much legal and political debate). The fact that I send out invi- coincidence or the wiles of other people. A person with mur- tations to the act does not make it art. So it is clear that any derous intent may well use the occasion of Rhythm 0 to act performance that wants to include its audience in its risk- 216 upon his impulses. A driver passing Deadman may not notice taking must first make sure that the audience is complicit 217 the flares and run over Burden. In both cases the question is and knows exactly what it is in for. Ironically, this would if both artists have not simply behaved in a grossly irrespon- often spoil the shock value of the performance itself. But it sible way rather than created a work of art. Also, the case of need not. That prepping the audience is possible without Deadman raises the question of the participation of people destroying the thrill of risk was shown in Santiago Sierra’s who are not willing members of the audience. If the hypo- performance-slash-installation 300 Tons, created at the Kun- thetical driver runs over Burden, has he not been made an sthaus Bregenz in April 2004. Here is Sierra’s written concept unwilling accomplice to murder/suicide? Does any innocent for the event: ‘292 tons of concrete bricks were carried to the passer-by deserve to be faced with the possible consequences top floor of the Kunsthaus Bregenz and their weight distrib- of Burden’s behaviour? uted on temporary supports over the whole building. That These are troubling questions and the fact that the works will almost result, though with sufficient leeway, in the entire themselves might be intended to raise and debate these building collapsing due to the overload. For this reason the questions hardly seems to redeem them as art. Suppose for number of visitors present at any time may never be more a moment that a person had actually pulled the trigger on than 100, which represents an additional 8 tons’ (Schneider Abramovic. How would the authorities have reacted to that? 2004: 13). Would the trigger-puller be arrested? Charged with murder The Kunsthaus Bregenz is designed to carry a maximum or manslaughter (or woman-slaughter; or person-slaughter)? weight of 300 tons. Above that limit (but, we may assume, even approaching that limit from below) the building might has anything resembling the stunning beauty of Serra’s metal crack. So it is up to the visitor to decide if he or she wants to constructions. If it does, I do not think this redeems the work take the risk of hoisting inside his extra pounds of art fod- as art (a beautiful stupid risk is still a stupid risk), but if it der that will bring the entire construction down, causing all does not, then all we are left with is the thrill. And the idea present to die a gloriously artistic death. I strongly feel that, behind this thrill, including its possible critical meanings, is in a free world, every person has the right to behave the way again sufficiently expressed in the written concept. To actu- they like, no matter how stupid, as long as they don’t hurt ally visit it would be carelessness (and just imagine making it anybody. But this is very stupid behaviour. And I dare sug- a family outing and losing both one’s parents in the event). gest that those engaging in it are fooling themselves no end if they think that what they are doing is artistic or artistically The Meating of Porn and Art on a Dissecting Table relevant. Again, the question we must ask ourselves is if the When feats of physical endurance become enmeshed with is- thrill of risk and of possible death makes for good art. Or, to sues of the sexual body, the question of pornography rears it state it another way, would it not be possible to create the naughty head. Just like much performance art, pornographic thrill of risk without any actual risk involved; which means: films (and we shall restrict ourselves primarily to porno- 218 to create an illusion of risk, which would immediately take graphic films, although it will become instantly clear that the 219 us back into the realm of art, where all realities are virtual. argument we are about to make can easily be expanded to Consider, for example, the imposing installations of Rich- include erotic cabarets and stripping) offer feats of physical ard Serra, huge constructions that loom ominously over the endurance. Even tepidly mainstream porn films often require viewer. Serra’s work is there to be looked at and to be experi- performers to be contortionists: they must bend and stretch enced. I find Serra’s work extremely successful, and part of its their bodies to allow the camera maximum visibility. On top success lies in the fact that it does not count upon the cheap of that, they must be sexually active, perform sometimes thrill of real risk to engage its audience. Serra makes us feel challenging acts of sexual prowess, such as double penetra- uncomfortable without putting our physical integrity at risk tions, all the while trying to look glamorous and aroused. (although, tragically, in the early 1970s one of his installations That porn might be an Olympic discipline becomes especially did collapse during construction, killing a worker; but this clear if we look at a pornographic genre that has remark- was a tragic accident, not something intended as a calculated able affinities with performance and ritual: sadomasochistic possibility). Also, Serra’s work not only deals with the per- porn, which often includes such transgressive acts as fisting, ceived threat of sublime sculpture, he is also concerned with bondage, and urolagnia (it were these kinds of acts that were issues of texture, choice of materials, architecture, and the deemed unacceptably offensive in Robert Mapplethorpe’s geography of space. I did not visit 300 Tons, nor would I feel X Portfolio). Both in the performances of Marina Abramovic inclined to, so I do not know if the sight of 292 tons of bricks and Chris Burden and in the acrobatics of porn stars there is a test of the body and its endurance. If Abramovic cuts her supposed to become art when it is done in an “artistic con- stomach with a razor or if Burden lets a friend shoot a bul- text” (whatever that may be) but cannot be art, or at least not let through his arm, they are submitting themselves to acts as easily be regarded as art, if it takes place in a porn film. An that are painful, potentially dangerous, and that require great obvious answer would be that the two are different in kind. endurance in the performer. The same can be said of porn We might say that art tries to communicate, for want of a performers. It requires considerable endurance to take anoth- better word, deeper meanings or make critical comments on er person’s fist or arm up the ass, submit to several forms of certain topics. The meaning of the sex does not lie in the sex sexual abuse, or endure the soiling of the body, both its skin itself. This is different with pornography, which is really just and its inside, with urine or other bodily secretions. about instant gratification. But this difference rests on sev- This risk-taking with the body is pushed to the limit in un- eral unchallenged and profoundly problematic assumptions. safe sex. In gay porn there is a vogue for what is called bare- First, there is no reason to assume that art does not also offer backing: performers who fuck without condoms, knowingly instant gratification. If a work of art is beautiful, it can give exposing themselves to the risk of contracting hiv/aids. The us a jolt and instantly uplift our mood. Certain genres of film odd thing is that we are apparently very willing to accept that are usually associated with instant gratification, such as 220 death-defying performances by Burden or Abramovic as art, horror films or the thriller, have practitioners who are highly 221 but when porn performers (or indeed any visitor of a kinky regarded as artists, such as Alfred Hitchcock. The thrills and sex club) engage in acrobatic sex without the protection of shocks of these films, although integrated in a fabric of ex- a condom this is regarded as unnecessary risk-taking and quisite expressive form, could be considered instant gratifica- as irresponsible behaviour (in fact, many people who prac- tion and they are undeniably part of the reason we like to see tice an extreme or dangerous sport take similar calculated such films. Obviously, these films also do many other things risks without incurring our moral disapprobation). But surely beyond delivering effects and shocks, but it is an unwar- Abramovic and Burden are putting their bodies’ well-being ranted assumption to suggest that pornography by definition equally at risk as the porn performers. And whatever mes- does not also offer anything more in such a way. sage these performances try to communicate could surely But this defence of pornography is itself guilty of prejudice, be communicated just as clearly and effectively without put- for in making it we are assuming that the supposed instant ting the body at risk. So there is no clear way in which porn gratification of porn could not be valuable in itself and hence is in any sense more “gratuitous” than extreme performance not worthy of being considered art. This is odd. If a tragic art: in both cases, performers willingly and knowingly take novel or play makes us care for its characters and maybe calculated risks with their own bodies in a spectacle. The even shed tears because we are moved by their fate, the work question we are facing is why such behaviour, and especially is considered a success. If the pornographic film succeeds in such extreme or risk-taking behaviour of a sexual nature, is stimulating us to orgasm, it is also considered a success, but of a rather vulgar kind. This is hypocrisy. We should not judge films that have incorporated explicit sexual imagery. Patrice porn on account of the fact that it is pornographic. That porn Chéreau’s remarkable film Intimacy (2000) and Larry Clark’s is not about telling complex psychological stories is hardly unsettling and decidedly horny Ken Park (2002) are exceptions, surprising. We should judge porn as a genre in itself and ap- but usually such films turn out banal or fail both as works ply the same standard that we apply to all other genres or all of art and as works of pornography. They become sterile and other arts: we should simply discriminate between good porn unmoving. It would seem that porn is at its best when it is and bad porn. And it is an undeniable fact that the ability to allowed to be what it is and endeavours to excel at its usual arouse sexual lust in the viewer is a sign that a pornographic business. film is a success. But we should not be naive either. Of all the What kind of art, then, is porn and what kinds of bodies are possible effects a work of art can have on the human organ- represented in it? Pornography is the art of the sexual body ism, sexual arousal is surely among the easiest to achieve. in motion: it creates symbols, forms expressive of the ec- Mother Nature has kindly programmed us to react swiftly static body. It might be objected that it is glib to suggest that and with great dedication to almost any erotic stimulus. It the naked bodies in pornographic films are “expressive of” does not take much artistry to push the buttons of arousal. something else which just happens to be the naked human 222 But then, many other effects such as laughter or emotional body. This formulation seems to introduce a new kind of coy 223 involvement with a fictional character are almost just as eas- prudery: it’s not really dicks and cunts, its “expressive of” ily accomplished in a mediocre way, which accounts for the arousal. And yet the formulation is necessary, for we should many formulaic films and novels that are about. Such works, never allow ourselves to forget that porn, like all art, is an whether films, novels, pornographic films, or any other art, illusion. It is, in fact, a performance in the truest sense of the are simply mediocre art. But in porn as in any other art word. The actors in such films do perform in the sense that form there are outstanding works that deserve our serious what they are showing us is not self-expressive or spontane- consideration. And that means, among other things, to ac- ous. The actors in the scenes do not usually play themselves, knowledge that the success of any kind of erotic art depends the scenes are scripted, and the performers do not usually to a large extent on its ability to provoke in us the desired have the choice as to which sexual acts to perform when and response, which is arousal. As Kenneth Clark justly remarked with whom. Commenting on her starring but sexually ex- in his outstanding study of The Nude (1956), ‘no nude, how- plicit role in Curt McDowell’s cult classic Thundercrack! (1975) ever abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some actress Marion Eaton says that she ‘used an actor’s technique vestige of erotic feeling, even although it be only the faintest to portray sexuality as “erotic realism,” but kept a line there shadow – and if it does not do so, it is bad art and false mor- to prevent it from being my own personal masturbation. I als’ (Clark 1960: 6). In fact, pornographic materials often fail if created a bigger-than-life masturbation so that it would be they try too hard to be “artistic,” as in many recent art-house everybody’s masturbation’ (Stevenson 1996: 241). The porn film is directed. The action in porn films is often filmed from this at length. She claims that ‘pornography without obscen- different angles, there are different takes, scenes are shot ity is sad’ (Guilló et al. 2002: 80). Ovidie gives a very precise several times over, the material is then edited and all kinds definition of pornography as ‘the realistic representation of effects are introduced, from lighting effects during filming in film or video of non-simulated sexual acts’ (o.c. 78). So to sound effects and dubbing on the edited scene. The fact books and paintings or drawings are never pornographic for that there is much bad porn and some good porn and that we Ovidie, although photographs and performance art can be. can very easily tell the difference (because so much bad porn Furthermore, not all pornography is obscene, and not every- is abysmally bad) suggests that it does take talent, or an eye thing that is obscene is also pornographic. In fact, ‘obscenity for the erotic, to be successful at making such films, that not only begins when something upsets us emotionally’ (o.c. 79). anybody can do it well and that some (a very few) people do it This means that pornography, to be obscene, must have an with considerable vision and dedication. The pornographic is emotional impact on the viewer, who must be somewhat in fact a very difficult genre, one of the most difficult, which shaken by what he or she sees. This was not usually the case probably explains why there is so little successful material in the 1990s, when porn became more and more tailor-made around (another obvious reason is that most “legitimate” for a mainstream audience, with predictable and repetitive 224 directors with genuine talent tend to steer clear from mak- action, clinical presentations, and professional actresses fak- 225 ing porn, leaving the field to the hacks and the cynics). So it ing orgasms. The situation is similar in gay porn, where, as is legitimate and necessary to say that the bodies in porno- maverick gay porn director Joe Gage puts it, professional porn graphic films are expressive of something else, even though actors often ‘have that West-Hollywood-escort vibe that to they are very explicitly present. The thing they are expressive a large degree doesn’t interest me. Because with them, the of is the body ecstatic: successful pornographic imagery is meter is always running and they’re into it because they can expressive of the felt experience of the human body in its full do it, they’re not into it because they are compelled to do it’ sexual capacity and at its highest level of sensual alertness. (Rodriguez 2007: 20). In such films, Ovidie explains, ‘there is When its expressive illusion is successful, we are moved by definitely the sexual act, but there is nothing because there is the work and (usually) become aroused, although this is not a only the sexual act, there is no sexual dimension. If you watch necessary outcome: sometimes the sight of bodies in rest and the thing, there is only the sex act itself’ (Guilló et al. 2002: motion is so moving to watch that it transcends arousal. 80). Such pornography has lost its obscenity and therefore To achieve this kind of expressiveness it is probably neces- its power to shock, unsettle, or even arouse the viewer in an sary to take pornography into the realm of the obscene. One exciting or relevant way. This is one of the reasons why some of the failings of much porn is its coldness, its clinical pre- performers have tried to branch out into more challenging sentation of body parts. French porn actress Ovidie, who is a terrain. Virginie Despentes co-directed the film Baise-moi vocal advocate for her chosen profession, has commented on (2000) with porn star Coralie. And male French porn star HPG (Hervé-Pierre Gustave) managed to attract the attention of these first experiments, it would be two years before Bour- an art-house audience with several short subjects, notably don made porn again, after a chance meeting with director Acteur X pour vous servir (2001). Even if we admit that these ef- José Bénazéraf during a private screening of one of his films. forts were not entirely successful, the very fact that they were The director would put her in several of his films, notably La being made is in itself interesting because its shows that the Soubrette perverse (1974) and La Veuve lubrique (1975). Since idea of pornography as a form of art is now quite accepted, such films only included simulated sex, the experience was especially among a younger generation of performers who a disillusionment for Bourdon, who wanted to make porn to see their work as more than simply a kind of videographed further her sexual enjoyment. Her chance to do so came with prostitution. Frédéric Lansac’s classic Le Sexe qui parle (1975) and the highly But this recent wave of art-porn consciousness was not the successful Candice Candy (Pierre Unia, 1976). first. Pornography became widespread in the wake of the sex- In the span of about a year, Bourdon would appear in a host ual revolution of the 1960s and many early performers and of interesting sex and porn films, including Jean Rollin’s gor- directors believed that their work was part of the revolution, geous Lèvres de Sang (1976). Her sexual quest also took her to part of the attempt to break down oppressive moral codes. the furthest edges of sexuality. For Sylvia dans l’extase (1976) 226 Several early porn stars were on a mission, not just on a trip she became the first French porn star to have sex with a dog. 227 down exploitation road. One of the best examples of a porn She saw this scene as an ideological statement: ‘It is time, star whose work was equally the expression of an ideologi- dear cinephiles, to destroy the hypocrisy of loving animals cal belief in sexual liberation was French porn legend Sylvia without giving them the legitimate satisfactions of a real Bourdon. When her memoir L’Amour est une fête (1976) was relationship. But truth compels me to admit that I was royally republished in 2001 Bourdon added a preface in which she paid for this scene: but I did it with pleasure because it was wrote that, for her, pornography, along with her many other one of my fantasies made flesh’ (o.c. 82). She also became sexual exploits, ‘was simply part of my exploration’ (Bourdon the subject of Jean-François Davy’s documentary Exhibition 2 2001: 8). As a sexually liberated and adventurous woman, (1976), which painted a rather one-sided portrait of her as a Bourdon wanted to explore all the aspects of her sexuality. sexually voracious obsessive with dangerous ideas border- And as exhibitionism was part of her sexual character, por- ing on the fascist. Davy had earlier made Exhibition (1975), a nographic films were a logical venture. In 1972 an acquain- fascinating and intelligent portrait-as-exposure of porn star tance brought Bourdon into contact with porn pioneer Lasse Claudine Beccarie. The film on Bourdon included scenes of Braun, who made a set of three 8mm shorts with her, most sadomasochistic torture and culminated in a dinner party famously Cake Orgy (1972), in which a group of people have where Bourdon first gorged herself on food and then sat on sex with each other and six cakes on a beach (this short sub- the table, shat, and ate her own excrement. When the film ject also featured the future star Claudine Beccarie). After was forbidden by the censor (and later released in a heavily truncated form, purged of its scatological finale) Davy all but ity of the performers or characters involved are portrayed distanced himself from his star, whom he called ‘a pathologi- as being profoundly sexual. In a porn film everything, even cal case,’ something for which Bourdon has never forgiven the most commonplace situations or persons, are occasions the man whom she in 2001 still referred to as (in deliciously for sexual adventures. There is nothing in porn that cannot scatological French) ‘ce lâche et ignoble salopard, cet infâme in- become sexual. Most kitchen appliances have by now been dividu,’ a man who grovelled before authority in the hope of called upon to perform sexual services upon some human salvaging his investment rather than defend his work. She orifice. Any kind of fabric, from black lace stockings through calls the film her one regret in life (o.c. 9). In 1977, Bourdon rubber masks and latex briefs, have lifted fetishists up to quit the porn business because it had become repetitive the highest transports of ecstasy. In pornography the whole and unchallenging. Bourdon next opened a gallery for erotic body becomes responsive to sexual impulses, no touch is art where she hosted, among other things, artist Journiac’s ever innocent of sexual meaning, and our sexual desires are performance Action érotico-patriotique (1978), a ritual piece in projected onto everything around us. The whole world is a which Bourdon herself partook and that was documented in sexual cornucopia. It is a world of plenty where pleasure, and a rarely seen 8mm film (Gayet 2002). Clearly, Bourdon’s brief people willing and able to administer it, are amply available. 228 but highly publicised involvement with pornography was Every orgasm is a blast and all desires are fulfilled. In short, 229 first and foremost about achieving her own aims in life: a the world as portrayed in pornography seems like an alto- full development of her sexual experience. She expected the gether more desirable world than the one in which we have projects in which she became involved to rise to the occa- to live out our everyday lives. But it is this all-over-field of sion. When they failed to do so, the challenge was gone and sexual responsiveness that is often singled out as the major she quit the scene. What remains, is a body of work that is a moral issue in porn. Especially feminist criticism of porn has fascinating mixture of politics, pornography, art, and sheer complained that women in porn are portrayed as objects for provocation. sexual use and that their bodies are presented as automata to be used and abused at will. It is bootless to disagree with Do Androids Wank to Electric Wet Dreams? such an observation because it is an undeniable fact that Now that we have agreed to take porn seriously as art we much porn usually presents all bodies (and not just female will have to explore more fully what we mean when we say bodies, for there is also such a thing as gay porn and straight that the image of felt life created in pornography is the rep- porn in which dominant women are seen to objectify men) resentation of the fully sexual body. I suggest that we take as automata for sexual fulfilment. The body in porn is in- this expression very literally for in much porn the body is deed one huge erogenous zone that can be bent, stretched, shown as entirely sexual: not just the sexual organs but the and penetrated at will like an inflatable doll or a mechanical entire surface of the body and in fact the entire personal- bride. And instead of taking issue with this fact (for is it not the very automaton-like quality of pornographic bodies that there saw two androids of young boys who could write entire makes them such a turn-on?) we should accept and applaud sentences and which had first been exhibited in 1774. it and try to understand its importance for the primary illu- One of the most interesting characters in the history of the sion of porn. automaton or android was Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782), A first way to reach such understanding takes us into the who created several such inventions. In 1738 he exhibited world of the mechanical body. Ken Russell’s film Gothic (1986), his life-size Flute Player, who actually played the flute be- an energetic and highly idiosyncratic recounting of the night cause the mechanism Vaucanson had devised was a detailed Mary Shelley allegedly conceived the story for her novel Fran- imitation of human anatomy: ‘There was a mechanism to kenstein (1818), is set in the Villa Diodati on the shores of lake correspond to every muscle. [...] Inside the mouth was a Léman near Geneva, where Lord Byron lived in exile with his moveable metal tongue, which governed the air let through personal physician and sometime lover Dr Polidori. Among and created pauses. There were four levers to operate the the many exotic and outrageous objects that people Byron’s tongue and to modify the wind’ (o.c. 22-23). The only differ- abode is a set of life-size mechanical dolls of women. One ence between this automaton and a human flute player was of these mechanical ladies plays the harpsichord when her that the automaton never grew tired and could go on playing 230 mechanism is cranked up by a handle in the back, while an- indefinitely. A year later, in 1739, Vaucanson improved upon 231 other more exotic looking specimen performs a rudimentary his invention and diverted audiences with the automaton of belly-dance. Such automata were very much en vogue in the a figure that played a pipe and drum. But his most famous eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fact, in 1776 a invention was a mechanical duck, also created in 1739 and “Musical Lady” who played he harpsichord had been exhib- subsequently included in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclo- ited in London. It was the handiwork of the father and son pédie as an example in the entry for “androïde” (o.c. 21). The team of Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droze. ‘As she played mechanical duck was small in stature, but it was a great ac- the five tunes in her repertoire,’ Gaby Wood notes of the complishment because it actually ‘ate food out of the exhibi- Musical Lady, ‘her eyes would move coyly from side to side, tor’s hand, swallowed it, digested it, and excreted it, all before and her bosom would heave lightly, as if she were breathing’ an audience. It became Vaucanson’s most famous creation; (Wood 2002: xiv). The automaton in Russell’s film behaves in without the shitting duck, Voltaire commented wryly, there exactly this way. Interestingly, Gaby Wood suggests that it is would be nothing to remind us of the glory of France. It was possible that Mary Shelley was first inspired with the idea for made of gold-plated copper, but it was the same size as a the novel Frankenstein, which is after all the story of the cre- living duck, and it moved just like one. Aside from its main ation of an artificial man, when she saw another of the Ja- digesting function, it could drink, muddle the water with its quet-Drozes’ inventions. When touring Europe Shelley visited beak, quack, rise, and settle back on its legs, and, spectators Neuchâtel, home of the inventors, and it is possible that she were amazed to see, it swallowed food with a quick, realis- tic gulping action in its flexible neck. In a single wing alone, After Kempelen’s death the Chess Player was sold to Johann it was later revealed, there were more than 400 articulated Nepomuk Maelzel, who is often credited with the invention parts’ (o.c. 27). It was claimed that the digestive process was of the metronome. Maelzel was court mechanician ‘or, as one achieved in a small chemical laboratory Vaucanson had in- evocative translation put it, “philosophical instrument maker,” stalled in the duck’s intestines. However, a later owner of the to the Hapsburgs. He was a close friend of Beethoven, whom duck, the German writer Christian Friedrich Nicolai, ‘found he persuaded to compose what became his “Battle” Sym- that it did not digest its food at all. There was no “chemical phony (Opus 91), for Maelzel’s Panharmonicon, an automated laboratory,” he revealed – the food was simply aspirated into orchestra of forty-two mechanical musicians’ (Wood 2002: 72- the neck with the aid of bellows and tubes, and a separate 73). Somewhat less grand, but just as fascinating, is the fact substance made to look like the digested version was held at that the first mechanised waxwork in Madame Tussaud’s was the ready in another compartment near the bird’s rear end’ to Sleeping Beauty, who was reportedly modelled on Louis XV’s be expelled at the desired time (o.c. 33). mistress, Mme. du Barry. Sleeping Beauty’s ‘sole mechanical There were other such marvels to baffle audiences of the feature was a heaving chest’ (o.c. 25). eighteenth century. In 1769 one Wolfgang von Kempelen cre- In modern philosophy the idea of man as an automaton is 232 ated an Automaton Chess Player, a mechanical man dressed closely linked to the context of libertinism and materialist 233 like a Turk who apparently played chess of his own accord philosophy. The materialist atheists of the eighteenth century and managed to beat even the best chess players at the game launched an assault on the church and its moral dogmas. (Faber 1983). It was later revealed that the Chess Player was They combined this assault with a philosophy of pleasure actually handled by a man hidden in the big box under the and physical enjoyment. Such ideas were hardly new. In fact, chess set on which the games were played. Through an in- they originated in the thought of Epicurus and his Roman genious system of magnets attached to the bottom of the follower Lucretius. The rise of materialist philosophy in the chess board the hidden man could follow the moves of the modern era was closely linked to the rise of science in the opponent. He would then guide the mechanical arm of the Renaissance. Several scientists and thinkers took up ideas automaton to make the desired counter-move. The Chess that belonged to the atomist-materialist tradition. One such Player hardly ever lost a game because the automaton was thinker was Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585-1619), who set forth often operated by several of the century’s greatest chess play- a theory of evolution that predates that of Darwin by several ers. In fact, the secret of the Chess Player was several times centuries. For Vanini the entire world consists of a kind of revealed in the press, but the public was so keen on being primal substance which begins to mutate under the influ- tricked that it simply ignored the common knowledge that ence of the heat of the sun. Through this process of mutation a man was hidden inside the automaton and assumed that objects and creatures take form and finally man arises. This here indeed was an automaton that had the gift of thought. means that man himself is the object and temporary result of evolution. In fact, Vanini claims that man has evolved from primate ancestors, as Darwin would later hold. Man’s mental life is a brain function. Mechanistic materialism subsequently became all the rage in the French Enlightenment, especially in the circle of the Encyclopédistes. Diderot developed a material- istic and mechanistic view of the world that was expressed in the remarkable dialogue Le Rêve de d’Alembert, written in 1769 but not published until 1830. In this dialogue Diderot has his characters expound an evolutionary view of the world that has several fascinating features. Movement is seen as inher- ent in matter. So Diderot does away with the dieu horlogier that the deists had kept handy to set the machinery of nature in motion. No such push was needed anymore for nature could now move of her own accord. Movement is in fact a process 234 of fermentation which causes dead matter to come to life 235 and live matter to die. This means that all change takes place through internal processes that inhere in matter. Second, Diderot sees nature as one huge organism that constantly develops and engenders new life-forms. The key to this evolu- tion can be found in the so-called monstra or monsters: the freaks of nature. Since nature is in constant change, some changes are bound to be unsuccessful and are discarded. That is how freaks of nature come about: they are nature’s failed experiments. Continual experimenting means that nature is in constant flux. Change is the rule, not constancy. No species, not even the human species, has an essence: ‘All things change into and out of each other; consequently all species... everything is a perpetual flux... Every animal is somewhat human; every mineral has something of the plant in it; every plant is partly animal. There is nothing distinct in nature’ (Diderot 2002: 103). This means that mankind as we know it today is probably l’individu’), which is simply ‘a need; and if one weren’t invited merely a transitory phenomenon, a way-station in the con- to do it by need, it would still be a pleasant thing’ (o.c. 173). tinuing process of fermentation, and not something necessary It is a small step from Diderot’s materialistic views to the or final. Man is not the goal or purpose of nature, but a mere idea of the human as an organic machine, a notion that was phenomenon in it: a life-form that has emerged and will dis- quite popular among the libertines and materialists. Pierre appear again. ‘Who can say if fermentation and its products Jean Georges Cabanis (1757-1808), for example, ‘summed up have run their course? Who can say at which point in the suc- his view of man in the words Les nerfs – voilà tout l’homme and cession of animal life-forms we have arrived? Who can say if declared that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes this deformed four foot high biped that is still called a man on bile’ (Copleston 1960: 51). But the writer most readily associ- the North pole, but who will surely loose this name as soon ated with the idea of man as a machine is of course Julien as his deformation advances, is not simply the image of a Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751), whose most famous work passing species? Who can say whether everything isn’t about is entitled L’Homme machine (1747). La Mettrie, who makes to reduce itself to a great inert and immobile sediment? Who explicit mention of Vaucanson in the course of his book, of- can say how long this inertia will last? Who can say which fers a radically materialistic view of the world (Israel 2001: 236 new race could emerge from such a huge mass of sensitive 704-709). He studied with the Dutch medical writer Hermann 237 living points?’ (o.c. 95-96) Such a materialistic view obviously Boerhaave, whose books he translated and edited. The pub- entails radical consequences for morality. Since the organism lication of L’Homme machine caused so much uproar that La is merely a collection of biological and chemical processes, Mettrie had to flee France, seeking refuge in The Netherlands. it is senseless to attach moral values or judgements to the La Mettrie held that there was only one substance and that it organism’s actions. Diderot makes this point in the third part was governed by a force called “Nature”. This means that man of the Rêve, where he applies this logic to sexuality. The organ- is simply a link in a chain of mechanical causes and events. ism has yearnings, desires, needs, drives. These are neither This obviously leaves no room for a spiritual dimension. La good nor bad in themselves: they are simply there. ‘So despite Mettrie further claimed that religion is a political and social the magnificent praise the fanatics have wasted on them, device that is instituted for the benefit of the community and and despite the civic laws that protect them, we will remove to ensure social order. Many of these teachings were Spinozist [chastity and temperance] from the catalogue of virtues. And in origin. As we saw in Chapter One, Spinoza was at that time we shall be agreed that, besides evil acts done on purpose, considered to be one of the most evil thinkers in the history there is nothing so childish, nothing so absurd, nothing so of the world. For that reason, La Mettrie was recalcitrant to detrimental, nothing so contemptible, nothing worse than out himself as a follower of Spinoza. But as Romanticism ap- those two rare qualities’ (o.c. 172). This rejection of morality proached, Spinoza’s fortunes took a turn for the better. If Less- famously leads Diderot to a defense of masturbation (‘plaisir à ing could be a Spinozist, anyone could. And they would. Mathesis Sexualis the spirit to achieve its opposite. He applies reason to a cel- The man whose work most clearly reflects the materialism ebration of crime, debauchery, and licentiousness. Religious of the eighteenth century is of course the divine Donatien sentiments are mocked and the holy host is inserted into Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), who might inappropriate orifices to defile it. Chastity is ravished all over best be typified as the ‘Anti-Rousseau’ because he believed the place. Man is an animal in search of pleasure and lust at that cruelty was man’s deepest nature. Sade rejected the the expense of others, who are objectified and treated like humane pieties of both Christianity and optimistic Enlighten- living automata to be used in the ritual of sexual gratification. ment. He was an atheist and a blasphemer and subsequently The cerebral nature of Sade’s work becomes manifest in the rejected all moral principles based on anything other than inordinate amount of talk his novels contain. Sade’s charac- individual desire. He was a radical materialist for whom there ters are forever discoursing on philosophy, on the pleasures was no essential difference between humans, animals, and of the flesh, or on some parodist version of Enlightenment plants. In this he echoes La Mettrie, who followed his treatise pursuits. They discourse on sex even as they are experiencing on L’homme machine with a further treatise on L’homme plante it. During sex, Sade’s characters speak prose. They continue (1748). Philosophically, Sade’s work represents the triumph of to speak prose as they reach orgasm. The diarrhetic flow of 238 mind over matter: it is the ultimate intellectualisation of the elegantly phrased obscene language that pours forth from 239 body, which is merely used as a medium in which to inscribe these characters is as constant and as abundant as the flow a libertine philosophy of unbridled pleasure. In spite of its of bodily fluids pouring forth from every excreting orifice. obscene and scabrous explicitness Sade’s work is profoundly Sex is not just an occasion for orgasm, but for philosophical cerebral in its attempt to systematically organise bodily plea- discourse on carnality. Sex and talk become interchangeable. sure. His infamous unfinished novel Les cent-vingt journées As Camille Paglia points out, ‘the excretory voiding of one de Sodome (recovered in 1904 and published in 1931-35) was person into the mouth of another is Dionysian monologue, a written on a long roll of paper during his imprisonment in pagan oratory’ (Paglia 1992: 239). Since there are no tradition- the Bastille in 1785 (it appropriately resembles a roll of toilet al values in this universe, and since the body is intellectu- paper). This very fact proves to Camille Paglia that Sade’s ally reduced to a pleasure automaton with sexual functions, work was in the first instance a feat of mental defiance: ‘He every fetish and every perversion or passion is wholeheart- was trying, in prison, to reach the limits of the human sexual edly embraced by Sade’s libertines. Sucking, fucking, coming, imagination, and put it down on paper’ (Paglia 1995: 125). swallowing, shitting, and pissing become intellectual activi- But because Sade uses the freedom of the mind from the ties. Everything about the body is sexualised and fetishised. shackles of the material world to create a libertine paradise Sade’s characters eat and defecate and eat each other’s excre- of sexual crime his entire oeuvre ridicules the very Enlighten- ment as if they lived in a miniature natural universe where ment belief in progress and reason. He uses the freedom of everything dissolves into everything. It is the world as flux as dreamt by d’Alembert, with no clear boundaries between society, economic exploitation, oppression of the masses. species. It is blind nature or, as Freud would say, an infantile The endless sexual combinations and inexhaustible inven- sexuality that rejoices even in its own waste products (which tion of ever new kinds of sexual acrobatics that fill the pages are, after all, fertile manure). Nature is a continuum and the of Sade’s novels read not like Descartes’ mathesis universalis body ecstatic is a link in its chain. Sade shows us nature’s but as a sarcastic mathesis sexualis, a sexual mathematics true face. It has always been an Enlightenment belief that, where enjoyment is calculated to maximum effect. This is without civil society or a social contract, the world would nowhere more clear than in the Sodome, which begins with come to chaos, a jungle where the struggle for life reigns an exposition of the novel’s architecture. Sade introduces supreme. Sade accepts the struggle for life but does not see his characters and describes how their exploits will be struc- it as chaotic. If you do away with morality and social order, tured. He explains the way the number of participants and Sade claims, you are not left with anarchy or chaos, but with the number of possible sexual positions that can be achieved rigid hierarchy, a world in which the stronger kill the weaker in twosomes or in group will be calculated to make sure that and the powerful exploit the powerless. In this respect, Sade’s everyone copulates with everyone in a series of sexual com- work offers a devastating critique of economic liberalism and binations and perversions. Furthermore, there is a sequence 240 capitalism, which are not modes of civilisation: they are or- from day to day, with specific perversions reserved for spe- 241 ganised nature, the well-structured exploitation of the pow- cific days. So if torture or scatology are on the menu for erless by the powerful. The nature we find in Sade is what I Monday one cannot indulge in them on Sunday or Tuesday. would call “une nature claire et distincte,” a Cartesian parody of It is sex like clockwork, as if one were proceeding through the Rousseauist belief in the fundamental goodness of man a sexualised version of Dante’s Inferno, starting with heavy and nature. It is the genius of Sade that he rejects both Rous- petting and ending with the bludgeoning of pregnant women. seau’s naive romantic optimism and the equally preposterous Sade calculates how many combinations of how many sexual optimism of the rationalists. Instead, Sade makes us look at positions are possible with the participants available and and acknowledge the blind materiality of nature. then draws up the graph of debauchery. The novel itself sim- Reason is nature and nature is reason. This is in fact a very ply puts the meat on this skeleton. And when the narration old thought. It is at the heart of the christian belief that na- breaks off because Sade couldn’t finish the work, he takes ture is God’s creation, therefore has order and that science recourse to a simple enumeration of the sexual activities that amounts to reading the book of nature. What Sade rejects, is still had to be executed. At some point he even introduces a the underlying assumption that nature is beautiful and well- note to himself pointing out an error in the numbering. This ordered because it is divine creation. In reality it is no such is the cerebral triumph of Sade’s work: it is pornography with thing. Reason simply reproduces the power relationships the detached coldness of science. It is Enlightenment logic already present in nature in a more sophisticated way: class turned against itself. The structure of the Sodome is also a parody of Boccaccio’s steady resolve towards its logical conclusion. As in the day- Decamerone and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, those neatly or- by-day increase of outrage in Sade’s novel, there is no need to ganised epics of sexual bawdy. But sex is neither bawdy nor hurry the pace for nobody is going anywhere anyway. There fun in Sade, except for the torturers. There is no uplifting is no sensationalism in Pasolini’s film as there is no pas- sense of vitality, as in the delightful shenanigans of Boccac- sion in Sade’s novel. We are simply locked in a self-sufficient cio, there is only the sordid mechanism of jaded debauch- universe where, as in mechanical nature, all moves steadily ery that reaches ever deeper into the abyss of depravity to towards its inevitable end in death. The logic of this universe find yet another more extreme thrill that might trigger the is the logic of the libertine who tries and tests the sexual stumped senses. Sade’s characters go all the way, and then automata at his disposal. The bodies of the victims are me- some. Just like Boccaccio and Chaucer, Sade sets his story chanical dolls to be toyed with, to be opened and scrutinised in a secluded environment. Boccaccio’s narrators flee the and to be submitted to any and every imaginable cruelty, plague-ridden city of Florence and take refuge in a pleasant similar to the way the wanton gods kill flies for their sport. villa in the country. Chaucer’s merry company of pilgrims are The detached frontality and theatricality of Pasolini’s film is gathered in a coach on their way to Canterbury, a pilgrimage a parody of the scientific principles at work in Sade’s novel. It 242 that, as Harold Bloom points out, was the fourteenth cen- is a parody of absolute visibility: all that is obscene is brought 243 tury’s equivalent of our cruises (Bloom 2002: 107). Sade locks on-scene, literally, as the victims are made to parade around his libertines and their victims in a secluded castle on the top in long-shot, filling the screen as if we were looking at a the- of a mountain, where the outside world cannot reach them. atre scene. All is exposed, either in word or in deed (and there There, in sublime isolation, no rules apply but the rules of is much talk in Pasolini’s film, as there is in Sade’s novel). It excess. This excess is presented to our inner eye with all the is a voyeuristic gorge-fest, a visceral indigestion of disinter- clinical detachment of an operating theatre. It is here, in his estedness that either nauseates or leaves us stone cold. It is cold detachment, that Sade mocks modern science and its sexual pleasure as the ultimate parody of the disinterested- quest for total visibility. Autopsy is the visual logic at work in ness of Kantian aesthetics: sexualised murder as a cold, cal- Sade: a theatre of visibility that is the perverse double of the culated, classicist spectacle. In Pasolini’s version it is Art Deco belief that science could and should make visible all that lies murder in bare halls of beige. hidden in the human innards. Sade displays the body and its manifold functions. Pier Paolo Pasolini understood this very Scientia Sexualis well when he translated the cold and distanced theatricality The spectacle of sex is the logic of porn as it is the logic of of Sade to the screen for Saló (1975), his film version of the voyeurism. Linda Williams has tried ‘to define film pornogra- Sodome which is presented as a slow-paced, measured, and phy minimally, and as neutrally as possible, as the visual (and unhurried sequence of theatrical tableaux that moves with sometimes aural) representation of living, moving bodies en- gaged in explicit, usually unfaked, sexual acts with a primary sible reason why so many (especially early) porn films engage intent of arousing viewers’ (Williams 1999: 29-30). For the in scenarios where women are overwhelmed, ravaged, or viewer this material offers the promise of true knowledge. even raped because in such scenes ‘the unwilling victim’s Viewers watch pornography because they want to see the re- eventual manifestations of pleasure are offered as the genre’s ality of sexual pleasure in others. This is why Williams speaks proof of a sincerity that under other conditions might seem of a scientia sexualis, a sexual science: the intent is to know the less sure’ (o.c. 50). body and to penetrate its mysteries with the gaze. Williams The voyeuristic elements in pornography are put to work in explains that ‘I call the visual, hard-core knowledge-pleasure an interesting way in several of the short films that photogra- produced by the scientia sexualis a “frenzy of the visible”’ (o.c. pher and filmmaker Richard Kern made in the 1980s as part 36), which is ‘a voyeurism structured as a coginitive urge’ of the Cinema of Transgression movement. Kern has built a (o.c. 48). Porn strives to ‘maximum visibility’ (ibid.) and ‘ob- career on his (male heterosexual) voyeurism and usually in- sessively seeks knowledge, through a voyeuristic record of vited friends and hangers-on to perform some sexual fantasy confessional, involuntary paroxysm, of the “thing” itself’ (o.c. in front of his camera. This resulted in collage-films such as 49). The involuntary aspect is both the most crucial and the Submit To Me (1985) and Submit To Me Now (1987) and a series 244 most problematic aspect or porn, especially in its most com- of brief films of female stripping routines. As the titles of the 245 mon form: the pornographic film aimed at the heterosexual films suggest, there is an element of dominance in Kern’s male. The involuntary aspect is crucial because it is only films. The voyeur, especially if he is looking at a person with- when action becomes involuntary that we can have any kind out himself being perceived, is in a dominant position: he is of assurance that what we are seeing is real. In the moment gaining intimate knowledge of another body. In Kern’s films of orgasm, there is no holding back: for a brief moment, we this dominating aspect is stressed by the often sadomas- lose control over our body and are surrendered to its spasms. ochistic routines the performers engage in and by the bird’s- To be in orgasm is to exist in an involuntary mode. This is eye point of view that Kern himself often uses to film their an instance of certified reality: it cannot be faked. Except, of performances. But voyeurism also entails a distancing: the course, by women, who apparently fake orgasm all the time looking device, whether it is a camera, binoculars, or a key- to spare their spouses’ feelings. But in porn it is quite impos- hole, keeps the desired object at a distance. This is a defence sible to tell whether a woman, and especially a professional mechanism, allowing the voyeur to look at the world without porn actress, is actually experiencing orgasm or merely fak- having to partake in it. Kern has acknowledged that the voy- ing one. This problem does not pose itself in relation to the euristic element in his films allows him to maintain a safe male body, where the penis is either erect/aroused or not and distance: ‘if there’s something I want to do and I’m nervous where orgasm is a visible event through ejaculation. Williams about doing it, I’ll turn on the camera and do it in front of the suggests that the impenetrability of the female body is a pos- camera and then it’s okay’ (Sargeant 1995: 101). The only risk involved for the voyeur is being caught more or less literally prise us since voyeurism is all about auto-eroticism: it is a fe- with his pants down. This risk is in itself an exhibitionistic tish that uses the person looked at as a canvas on which the thrill that seems to be part and parcel of a voyeur’s delight. voyeur can project all his fantasies. Because no real contact But such exhibitionism is conspicuously absent in voyeuristic is ever made, the person looked at never becomes a specific cinema, where the performers know they are being filmed individual and can therefore never disappoint the fantasies and the filmmaker cannot get “caught” red-handed, or at projected onto him or her. This way voyeurism avoids the least with cum on his fingers. In two films, however, Kern disappointment of mere flesh, as when a body desired from has dramatised his role as voyeur. The first is The Evil Camera- afar turns out, upon closer inspection, to have flaws, a nasty man (1987-1990). The title refers to Kern himself, sneaking body odour, a foul breath, or another unpleasant feature that up on his subjects and cinematically stealing their private renders it at once undesirable. The voyeur’s fantasy is never moments. The evil in the cameraman is the spectre of the shattered and therefore it can go on indefinitely. In this sense male gaze, objectifying and visually raping all females in voyeurism is probably the sexual fetish closest to the arts sight, making Victims of them all. The first part of the film because it seems to exemplify Kant’s principle of purposive- clearly plays on this violence and shows several aggressive ness without purpose: as long as the voyeur is looking, his 246 sexual rituals. The second part of the film was made after an desire goes on and on, turning upon itself, feeding off itself. It 247 interval of several years and is markedly different in tone: is not unusual for the confirmed voyeur to prefer voyeurism it is more ironic and also shows Kern himself displaying his to actual sex. As Kern confides, ‘the best part of anything is penis and a swastika drawn on his stomach. The second film watching’ (o.c. 102). And the best part of watching is the illu- to dramatise Kern’s voyeurism is My Nightmare (1993), which sion of intimate knowledge obtained from watching people is literally presented as a masturbatory fantasy in which Kern who do not know they are being watched and who therefore is overpowered by sexually aggressive women. The explicit have no reason to fake their behaviour. To observe people in dream sequences are interrupted by shots of Kern lying on private without them knowing you are watching is to see his bed naked and masturbating. There is something decid- them as they really are. One is witness to private gestures edly auto-erotic about these scenes. There are several full and intimate movements that seem to contain traces of what shots of his body, but mostly Kern focuses on his penis, film- that person is really like. It suggests deeper, more intimate ing it with the camera positioned at his knees so that his knowledge. This, in essence, is also the illusion that porn body appears extremely foreshortened and his penis fills the tries to create. Speaking of his own use of pornographic vid- screen. When he reaches orgasm, Kern again fills the screen eos, Kern comments that ‘you can use the same tape over with his penis, but now filmed from the chest, so that his and over, and you have to develop relationships with people sperm shoots up at the lens of the camera. in the movie... that’s the whole thing. I think the way most The auto-erotic elements in this short film should not sur- people watch is, you scan the entire movie to find the people that appeal to you and the action that appeals to you and you in the copious couplings and orgasms put on display) it can- watch these scenes over and over. [...] It’s like having little not really deliver for what is shown always remains an illu- relationships’ (o.c. 116). sion. The same thing occurs in voyeurism. The voyeur can The very idea that you might develop a relationship with a only maintain his erotic haze by keeping the desired object person in a pornographic movie presupposes that some kind at bay: he looks from a distance. But the voyeur, very much of intimacy is involved (despite the fact that pornographic like the spectator of porn, has never seen enough or has never films are obviously about performance). But I think that Kern seen what he really wanted to see. Therefore there is always might be too idiosyncratic in his description of the uses of the promise (in porn) or the possibility (in voyeurism) of pornography. One of the cardinal features of the genre is more knowledge the next time. A voyeur may have watched his its endless trotting out of new and fresh faces. Porn careers neighbour a hundred times, but every day there will be the rarely last longer than several years, except where the really anticipation that maybe today he will see something hitherto big stars are concerned. Porn faces get used up and discarded unseen that will reveal “it” truly and fully for the first time. real fast. The reason for this seems obvious: there are limits Obviously, “it” never occurs. And even if something like “it” to the amount of times you can stage the revelation of the does occur, as in an unexpected event that offers unusual in- 248 real in the same body. But paradoxically the fact that the real sight in the object’s privacy, this seeing of something special 249 is staged is also the key to the success of the genre because will not quench the desire to see “it” but will simply make the the staged nature of its content is what makes us come back voyeur thirst for more. This is why voyeurism and pornogra- for more. This calls for an explanation. Porn is probably one phy are so addictive. of the most predictable genres about. Usually the spectator The mechanism of non-fulfilment that is at work in voyeur- knows exactly what he is going to get. Often the number of ism and pornography is a structural component of the so- scenes or sexual encounters is announced on the packaging called soft-sex film: erotic films in which erotic action is not of the film, so that the viewer knows that the fourth or fifth real but only suggested. This genre is built on the public’s encounter is the point for orgasm because no more sex will desire to be led on. If the public did not want to know that be forthcoming after that. But given that porn can never re- the Automaton Chess Player did not really play on its own ally give us a true revelation of the real thing, especially in but was operated by a man inside the box, then the public the female body, and given that the real thing in a male body flocking to see soft-sex films wilfully overlooks the certain (ejaculation) can only ever be watched and never experienced knowledge that they will yet again not see the real thing in the body itself, porn has the mechanism of disillusionment in the film they are about to see. The entire business of the built into it. Porn promises the gratification of the real yet erotic (as opposed to explicit pornographic) film is built on cannot deliver. Even if it tries to deliver by giving us plenty the principle of the tease: you did not get to see it today, but of truth to gape at (and some porn films are very generous come again tomorrow and perhaps you will see it then. Of course, you are not going to see it tomorrow either, but the Pleasure Machines public apparently likes to be lead on. It seems unpersuasive There is a heroics at work in pornography. The performers to me to condemn this tease as a ploy to con the public out in these films descend into the maelstrom of material life: of their money. People who go and see erotic films (or went the sex performer faces the deep material truths about our to see them, for the paying public for cinematic showings of physical bodies and is not afraid of being reduced to them. erotic films is very much a phenomenon that died in the mid- To explain this, we might refer to medical textbooks, where 1980s, when video technology made cinematic screenings of the naked material facts of the human body and its physi- erotic and pornographic films redundant) know exactly what cal functions are displayed. This is not attractive, except for they are in for and it might be argued that the tease that is those for whom the abject is a particular sexual fetish. Just never fulfilled works for them in the same way that the voy- like the pictures and graphs in such manuals, the sex per- eur and the spectator of porn are constantly looking forward former reduces his or her body to the pipes and tubes, the towards a more intimate knowledge. I suggest that this is an- valves and ligaments that constitute it. But this reduction other instance of the Kantian idea of purposiveness without to matter is deliberate. The medical manual shows the body purpose: more than anything else, we want to keep desire, reduced to its material facts despite itself. The sex performer 250 which is the felt experience of the body physical in a state of chooses to display his body as material fact, and to do this 251 sensual alertness, going. To perpetuate this experience by any he or she must transcend materiality: the body is trained to and all means possible is one of the leading pursuits in hu- look fit, it is often decorated (with make-up, with seductive man life. The one thing we sometimes want more than to be clothes that can be shed, with elaborate tattoos), a sexual fulfilled, is to desire. Or, as legendary gay porn director Fred sequence, whether performed for the camera or on stage, is Halsted once said about his sex-life, ‘coming is not the point. scripted, lighted, and perceived from different angles. The The point is revelation – the why. Orgasm is fun, but you can experience of the sexual body on display is an aesthetic do that anytime, anywhere. I am not interested in orgasms. I construct. The body thus displayed is indeed presented to am interested in me. I can jack off better than I can have sex resemble an automaton, but unlike an actual automaton it with anybody. Celibacy is great. I like it. It is more pure, more is not soulless, dead, or mechanical. It has a soul. It wills. It strong, more real than sex’ (Jones 2008: 27). This, in essence, even wills its reduction to matter. Its objectification, which is the dual mechanism of voyeurism and narcissism at work feminists object to, is knowingly engaged in. The performer in pornography: the indefinitely extended dialogue of the descends into materiality. aroused with himself. It is purposiveness without purpose This is the illusion at the heart of pornography, striptease, with a vengeance: all that one desires is to maintain desire, and prostitution: the allure of the performance (for even like an engine running stationary, not going anywhere, but prostitution is a performance: the prostitute must incarnate burning fuel nevertheless. the client’s fantasies) lies in the performer’s ability to present him- or herself as a human android, a human toy. But in doing phy (or the masochist in total submission) is in fact trying to this, the performer does not become a victim or a soulless symbolically resemble just such a digestive tract; a human object. On the contrary, the performer gains enormous power tube in which to insert things. Many porn films include im- for he or she is seen as inhabiting a realm most of us would ages of a man or woman on all fours who is being penetrated not care or dare inhabit, except in fantasy: the realm of sheer from behind while also giving a blow job. Seen from the side, physicality. Since the performance creates the illusion of a this can create a back-and-forth motion: as the penis glides body existing in brutal physicality, physical reduction is not into the mouth, the backside penis glides out of the ass or something that befalls the performer, but something that the vagina; and vice versa: when the body glides over the penis performer actively stages as an illusion, an act, a creation. in the back, the other penis is pulled out of the mouth. This And the illusion created is that of bodily regression. The body way, the body in the middle can be seen as if it were glid- is presented as reduced to its fundamental status of passage- ing back and forth on a string or a pole that penetrates the way for matter. It is a machine or organism where something body from ass to mouth. Something similar can be seen in enters on one end and exits again on the other end. This is an iconic image from the cult film Cannibal Holocaust (Rug- almost literally a regression to the embryonic stage. In one gero Deodato, 1979) in which a woman has been pierced on a 252 of its earliest stages, the human embryo consists of three vertical pole. The pole enters her from behind and reappears 253 primary germ layers that lie on top of each other ‘like a three- from her mouth. Presumably, she will slowly slide down the layered cellular pancake’ (Marieb and Hoehn 2010: 141). The pole until she touches the ground. In many ways, this is the most superficial of these is the ectoderm, the middle is the ultimate objectification of the human body, being reduced to mesoderm, and the third is the endoderm. Out of these three a tube without feelings or thoughts. But obviously, in sexual layers all organs will develop. This process begins with the situations this regression is being enacted as a source of flat three-layered embryo being folded into a tube. The ecto- pleasure. The sex performer creates an illusion of being an derm then becomes the outside of the tube, the endoderm automaton, whereas the masochist revels in the humiliation lines the inside of the tube. The tube of the endoderm is of being treated as nothing more than a digestive tract, some- called the primitive gut. At about four weeks, it extends from thing you can plug, fill, and empty at will. We should also not one end of the small embryo to the other. The top end will underestimate the great liberating power that can be found develop into the mouth, the bottom end will become the anal in such theatre of physicality. We live in a world in which opening. The tube in-between will develop into the digestive almost superhuman demands are being made on our bodies tract, including oesophagus, stomach, and bowels (o.c. 1084- and minds. We are exposed to inordinate amounts of stress. 1085). For those who can stomach it, there is undoubtedly a terrific In presenting himself as a machine for sex or as a receptacle sense of relief to be found in the experience of becoming, for for semen or other bodily fluids, the performer in pornogra- the duration of a sexual ritual, mere body, mere tube, mere sperm spittoon. To be subjected and annihilated into sexual has been suspended from a crane for airborne copulation. nothingness is the dark side of nirvana. It’s emptiness laced One of the most notorious instances of machine sex is J.G. with pheromones. Ballard’s novel Crash (1973), about people who derive erotic The human body as organic machine allows of many modifi- pleasure from car-wrecks (in 1970 Ballard had also organised cations. Prostheses can be added to it, from the strap-on dil- an exhibition of crashed cars). And in Dean R. Koontz’s novel do for everyday use to the electronic extensions attached to Demon Seed (1973) a computer accomplishes sexual congress Stelarc’s body. But it is also possible to create machines that between human and machine when it uses its control over act upon the body, almost as if they were partners in the sex- the computer system that governs a house to imprison and ual game. The photographer Timothy Archibald has produced rape the woman who lives there and impregnate her with its a volume of portraits of ordinary people who are ‘reworking offspring. domestic hardware into complex sex machines’ (Archibald But the first place to look for sexual machines and the 2005: 6). Household appliances, steel boxes, electric drills, and sexual attraction of metal, chrome, and grease, is probably even a dentist’s chair are transformed into sexual automa- the world of gay SM films, whether they be the avant-porn tons designed to provide pleasure. Although several of these of Fred Halsted’s Sex Garage (1972), where a man reportedly 254 inventions have been successfully marketed, most originated fucks the exhaust pipe of his motorcycle (Stevenson 2002: 255 as devices created with a specific body in mind, usually the 113), or Kenneth Anger’s seminal film Scorpio Rising (1963), body of a lover or spouse. Making the machine started out as which evokes a stylised vision of the aggressive eroticism of a labour of love, both in the sense that it was a sexual gift for motorcyclists and the gleaming fetishism of their customised a loved-one and in the sense that it was created with great bikes. Scorpio Rising is a four-part film that consist of thirteen dedication in the privacy of their own home, without any sections linked to pop songs. The film combines new mate- prior intention of marketing the object. The idea of the ma- rial shot by Anger with stock footage and excerpts from older chine as a pleasure-inducing extension of the body is taken films, which are used, along with the pop songs, as ironic to the limit in French porn director John Love’s film Chantier commentary on the action of the film. P. Adams Sitney has interdit au public (1999), which shows the sexual goings on at called Scorpio Rising ‘a mythographic film. It self-consciously a construction site, including a woman being fucked by an creates its own myth of the motorcyclist’ (Sitney 2002: 106). electrically powered drill mounted on a small fork-lift truck The motorcyclist Scorpio presents himself as a kind of pagan (the drill is wearing a condom for safety). Similarly, Matthew demon god who proclaims his godhead in a homosexual orgy Barney has more than once used machinery in sexual con- of sadomasochistic ritual, including the humiliation of the structions, notably in his segment for the portmanteau film male body (by, among other things, smearing hot mustard on Destricted (2006), which shows a naked man rubbing his hard exposed genitals) and the desecration of an altar by pissing dick against the spinning innards of a giant bulldozer that in a helmet and elevating it as if it were a chalice. At the end of the film Scorpio demands the sacrifice of a young motor- films are more akin to the experimental cinema of the under- cyclist who is killed in a race. Throughout the film Anger uses ground than to commercial porn. Where later porn is often low-key lighting that creates ‘a lush pastel view of motorcycle filmed in studio-built sets that are crisp and clean, these cushions, lights, and portions of chrome with stars of light early films were filmed on location with actors who actu- reflecting off them’ (o.c. 104). Significant parts of the film are ally had dirty feet from walking barefoot on the dirty floors. spent looking at the ‘unveiling, greasing, shining, and com- Sex scenes were filmed in actual urinals, not on studio sets. pleting of motorcycles’ (ibid.). But the male bodies in the film The sex acts in such early films often have the intensity of are equally customised. We observe them getting dressed in real abandon. They thrive on the male body as a customised a ritual that is almost equivalent to the finishing of the bikes. organic sex machine. The same gritty and realistic approach As an exercise in highly charged erotic imagery, the film jux- to sex was also visible in the early shorts produced by Falcon taposes ‘slow, sensuous, vertical pans down the toned, rip- Studios. Films like Weekend Lockup (1976), starring gay porn pling chests, navels and crotches of the Brooklyn biker-gang legend Al Parker, Ramcharger (1978), or Biker’s Liberty (1982), to boys as they ceremonially deck their bodies with leather and name but a few, have a sweaty intensity. They are cinematic chains’ with ‘horizontal pans acres the garage floor, motor- miniatures, capsules of living testosterone, executed with 256 cycles, tools and spare parts’ (Hutchison 2004: 133). total focus on the body as fetish-object. Asked in an interview 257 This heady atmosphere of grease and chrome made its way how he would describe himself in a personal ad, director Fred into some of the most interesting gay porn of the 1970s. For Halsted replied: ‘Five feet nine and a half, sixteen-inch biceps, Fred Halsted there was never any question that his films under ten inches, thirty-three years old, smooth skin. Into were works of art and not merely porn. ‘Up to that time, scat, S&M, bondage, water sports, wrestling, Levi’s, jockstraps, porno was always considered something you made money off motorcycles, dirty socks, boots, leather, amyl nitrate, belts, of, but never a thing you were proud of, something you did whips, masks’ (Jones 2008: 26). If you’re talking about the secretly. Well, I just barged into fucking New York and said, body as a customised sex machine, this is the package. “This is film, a work of art.” It also happened to be hard-core In later porn, this gritty approach would often deteriorate gay porno. A sadomasochistic, fistfucking faggot film, but that into a pose, a game of dressing up and playing at thugs. is not the point. No one had ever done this before with a sex Halsted himself remarks that ‘almost all gays are masoch- film. To me sex is the most viable area of human interest, it ists, if not overtly, at least subliminally’ (Jones 2008: 26). This is the most important area, so I was proud of what I was do- is maybe a reason why the straight thug, or rough trade ing’ (Jones 2008: 27). Besides Halsted’s films, there was also (straight men who have sex with other men for money), are the work of Joe Gage, who made the famous trilogy Kansas so much part of gay lore. If real masculinity is hard to find in City Trucking Co. (1975), El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1978), and LA the gay community, the aggressive straight fucker becomes Tool & Die (1979). In the way they are filmed and edited these an object of attraction. Whether it is rape by a gang of sailors, as in Kenneth Anger’s seminal underground film Fireworks It’s like Dr Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in- (1947), or assault by skinheads or scally lads, as in a host of viting us all to come up to the lab and see what’s on the slab. recent porn films from British production company Triga, In the case of the blood-red fisting scene in Deviant Detours your local beer-heaving thug is a gay sex icon. It is interest- the menu reads much like a Matthew Barney performance. ing that recent porn films have attempted to return to the The performers in such films are themselves objets d’art: lean style of early porn, with heavier action and grittier settings. and muscular men, intricately tattooed, going about their A case in point are the films produced by Triga in the United brutal business with the fearful symmetry of a tyger in heat. Kingdom and by Cazzo in Germany. Triga’s trilogy of Lost In- It is obvious that the worlds of porn and performance do nocence films (2007), for example, directed by Maxwell Barber, meat somewhere in the middle ground between a good fuck sometimes seems like a series of performance pieces for star at The Anvil and a mental fuck at the MoMA. Ashley Ryder, whose ass can take anything, turning the per- former’s body into a receptacle for any manner of penetrative Bodice Rest And Motion object or organ. Two other examples of what ambitious porn No artist ever wanted to be a machine more than Andy War- can look like are Cazzo’s films Original Options (2003) and Devi- hol did. In a famous interview with G.R. Swenson for the 258 ant Detours (2003), both directed by Hans Peter Hagen. These November, 1963 issue of ARTnews Warhol famously said that 259 films, shot in crystal clear high definition digital video, use a ‘I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do minimal story to present a series of sexual encounters that machine-like is what I want to do’ (Goldsmith 2004: 18). In involve serious edge-play. In Original Options a man is beaten the same interview he also suggested that ‘everybody should up by skinheads (the beating is quite real, although staged be a machine’. And being a machine is the same as ‘linking for the camera) and another is hung upside down with a things’ because ‘you do the same thing every time. You do gas mask on his face and lowered into a tank of water. Devi- it over and over again’ (o.c. 16). The idea of the human body, ant Detours contains a bizarre scene featuring two heavily the artist’s body, as a machine for the production of art is the tattooed men in white butcher’s aprons and boots. One of prime metaphor for Warhol’s practice. He was, after all, the them is hacking meat while the other is fisting another man. artist who turned his studio into a Factory, cranking out art But instead of using grease to make a smooth entry into in the steady flow of a conveyor belt. Several commentators the man’s rectum, he uses a red goo that literally makes the on Warhol’s work have linked this preoccupation with the whole affair look like a bloody mess. The link between animal mechanical to Warhol’s many traumas. Andy Warhol was a and human meat being manhandled by impressive-looking profoundly injured man who spent most of his life and not a bastards makes clear that the attraction of this kind of porn- little of his art trying to cope with the traumas the world had as-performance relies to a large extent on the presentation bestowed upon him. Warhol’s entire life and art, the way he of human flesh as an object for penetration and pummelling. made them and the style he devised for them, are an attempt to cope with the trauma of living. But that does not mean because it causes uncontrollable spasms in the body. It also that Warhol’s work is in any way self-expressive. Rather, causes the pigmentation of the skin to change, which possi- his work is an extended philosophical quest for insight into bly explains Warhol’s extremely pale complexion. The severe embodiment, which is his prime subject as an artist. Warhol bouts of shaking terrified the young child: he feared he would spent a lifetime coming to terms with the fact that he had a never regain control over his body. Wayne Koestenbaum has body. His work is the symbolic expression of this quest, it is persuasively argued that Warhol’s mature desire to be a ma- the text of his findings. What does it mean to have a body? chine was a response to the trauma of Saint Vitus Dance: to What does it mean to exist in time? These are the questions be a machine is to be automated. Just like Warhol’s shaking that troubled Warhol. But Warhol’s work cannot be reduced body, the machine operates on its own. But uncontrollable to the life, the neuroses, or the anxieties that fuelled it. Four shaking was not the only humiliation Warhol had to suffer. topics are at the heart of Warhol’s work: body, sex, time, and Julia, his mother, who would later come to live with him, was death, and they are intrinsically linked to each other. War- an immigrant from Eastern Europe who had a firm belief hol’s favoured way of dealing with them was through voyeur- that enemas were a certain cure for just about everything. ism, the art of looking; or rather: the art of gazing. A voyeur So she administered enemas to the young Andy, making the 260 maintains a safe distance from the object of his desire, push- intestines and their excretory function a point of obsession 261 ing fulfilment of desire, and hence physical gratification, for the boy. At school, his shaking hand caused the other stu- forward in time. Voyeurism is a disembodied sexuality: it dents to laugh at him and Warhol refused to go back. When thrives on not reaching climax. It keeps the yearning body in he seemed cured of the disease, Warhol still didn’t want to go suspension. back. When he was forcefully dragged to school, the boy had This yearning body, at least in Warhol’s case, was riddled with a nervous breakdown and was bedridden for four weeks. trauma. Warhol’s biographers (David Bockris, David Bourdon, His time in bed was made more pleasurable by Julia, who and Wayne Koestenbaum chief among them) have done a brought him magazines to read with pictures of movie stars. good job of assembling and analysing the sad story of Warhol Warhol wanted to be Shirley Temple and imagined having sex the youthful body, so we need do little more than refer to with Popeye. But then, when he was thirteen, Warhol’s father their insights and check the list of physical humiliations that died after a long illness. Andrew Warhola senior had suffered would haunt Warhol his entire life. At the age of six, young jaundice for which he had had his gallbladder removed. He Andrew Warhola (he would drop the a when he became a fell ill again after drinking soiled water (ironically, Andy War- professional artist) got scarlet fever, which inflames the nose hol would die after routine gallbladder surgery in 1987). The and mouth. It is possible that this inflamation caused the body was laid out in a coffin in the house and Warhol refused disfigurement of his nose. When he was eight, Warhol fell ill to go see his dead father. He was so terrified he hid under with Saint Vitus Dance, a terrifying affliction for the sufferer the bed and went to stay with a friend. But the trauma of his father’s death would instill in the young artist a lifelong sessed with his body and his image. The two are closely obsession with motionlessness and death. The final trauma linked, because one’s image is how one chooses to present came when Andy was sixteen. Julia was diagnosed with colon oneself to the world. It is through our physical bodies that cancer. To save her life a colostomy was performed, a proce- we are present in the world. The body physical is the car- dure that was then still experimental and in which part of rier of both our inner self and our image. Warhol’s response the intestines was removed and replaced with a bag outside to his many traumas was to treat the outward appearance the body. Henceforth, Julia would carry her insides on the of his body like a screen, something to hide behind. In time, outside. It is impossible to comprehend what this dramatic the body itself would become screened by further screens, change in his mother’s physiology did to the young Warhol, usually mechanical in nature. These layers of protective but one thing is clear: intestines, and the threat of having coating became especially prolific after the Solanas shoot- them spill uncontrollably out of the body, would occupy him ing, when Warhol felt extremely vulnerable. One of Warhol’s for the rest of his life and would become a central element in most famous screens was the wig (or the long series of wigs) his work. And again, ironically, Warhol would somehow suffer he started to wear to hide the fact that he started balding through a similar affliction as his mother. If Warhol’s death at a very young age (another instance of his body escaping 262 mimicked his father’s gallbladder ailment, then Warhol’s control). As his reputation grew, Warhol exploited his image 263 first death mimicked his mother’s scarred body. Obviously, as a fey waif by dressing up in a thrift shop style. He affected Warhol’s first death refers to Monday June 3, 1968, when Val- his speech and deliberately cultivated a more feminine way erie Solanas shot Warhol. When he arrived in the emergency of walking and behaving. He tried to disappear behind his room, Warhol was declared dead. Only when the doctors masks. But from behind the screen, Warhol looked at the were informed of the fact that he was rich and famous did world with a keen and often cold eye. In Stargazer (1971), they spend an hour bringing him back to life. But Warhol the first serious study of Warhol’s film work and still one of would carry the scars of Valerie’s attack for the rest of his life, the best and most insightful books about the artist, Stephen both inside and outside. The bullet had pierced just about Koch has argued that Warhol is a classic example of what every vital organ in Warhol’s body. The surgeons had to open Baudelaire called the dandy. ‘The dandy refuses to be moved,’ up his chest and sow it closed again. Warhol’s body was now Koch writes, ‘he will not respond’ (Koch 1991: 114). This is permanently scarred, and just like his mother he had had his Warhol’s affected coldness, his seeming lack of emotional insides taken out to save him. Humiliatingly, he would have involvement. ‘The passions are mute but immanent within to wear a corset for the rest of his life to keep his intestines him’ (ibid.): obviously, Warhol did have feelings; in fact, he in place. Warhol’s body had become a container of insides was almost pathologically sensitive to his surroundings, about to spill, forever under threat of falling apart. to people, and to outward impulses. That is why he had to It should come as no surprise, then, that Warhol was ob- screen this input out and hide behind a mask of distanced coldness. The image that Warhol created for himself ‘looks geous Italian American, to assist him in the process. Warhol isolated and luminous, an image on the silver screen. But would screen pictures over a prepared canvas on which the there is no image of the self that does not entail – invisibly, background colours had already been applied. This means perhaps, out of frame – the image of others. And the dandy’s that the image often does not fit the screened picture. This is narcissistic isolation is haunted by the spectre of others’ (o.c. again ironic, for this supposedly mechanical way of making 114-115). The dandy is mute and betrays no need, no desire, paintings has produced hundreds of canvases that superfi- no sentiment. ‘Need is humiliation,‘ Koch explains, ‘it is loss cially look alike but no two of which are identical. His works of self; it is death’ (o.c. 119). This is what Warhol feared most: are just as unique as every painting of a more traditional art- to lose control of his self again, like a child surrendered to the ist; it’s just that the uniqueness is less obvious. As the 1960s spasms of Saint Vitus Dance. But inside this muted exterior progressed, other machines were placed between Warhol and lived a voracious animal, a man who fed on those around the world, first and foremost the camera he bought in 1962 him. Warhol surrounded himself with weirdos, artists, per- to start making films. In 1964 he added the tape-recorder he formers, and hangers-on through whom he lived vicariously. used, among other things, to tape his telephone conversa- He observed them and urged them on as they performed tions and to write his novel a: a novel (1965), which is the 264 the many physical feats that Warhol did not dare engage in transcript of a twenty-four hour monologue by Ondine, one 265 himself: anonymous sex, dirty sex, drugtaking, self-exposure. of Warhol’s greatest superstars. Finally, after he had been In this sense, Warhol’s entourage was a physical extension shot, the Polaroid camera became one of Warhol’s most trust- of himself. It was part of his world and hence part of who he ed companions. Flashing away at everyone and everything was. Warhol was the sun around whom the entire universe and thrusting the microphone of his tape-recorder into other of his entourage evolved. He was, as Stephen Koch has very people’s faces Warhol maintained a safe distance and man- aptly described him, ‘a star who is in fact a stargazer’ (o.c. aged to screen himself out. A muted presence, he succeeded 122). to get others to open up and expose themselves to his cam- To eliminate his body physical Warhol replaced many of era/microphone while he himself lingered in the shadows. its functions with machinery. The most obvious example is The star as stargazer is a black hole: it never shows itself but the Factory, a studio for industrial art production where, as sucks in everything around it. he explained, ‘we’re turning out a painting every day and a As Wayne Koestenbaum argues, Warhol’s preoccupation with sculpture every day and a movie every day’ (Goldsmith 2004: the body is also of central concern to his most important 89). By silkscreening his works, Warhol deliberately sought to work as a painter. Consider his famous images of Campbell’s make his work less personal, taking out the trace of the hand soup cans. There are many ways to read these paintings, of the artist. Ironically, the silkscreening process is actually although David Bourdon has suggested that they may have very laborious and Warhol hired Gerard Malanga, a gor- been nothing more than a desperate attempt by the artist to do something so outrageous that the artworld would be the world, time is stopped and the chemical balance of the forced to take notice of him (Bourdon 1989: 90). If we look for food remains unchanged. Soup cans are bodies in temporal meaning in these works, as we should with all works of art, suspension. then it certainly seems that these are pastiches of a tradi- Stopping time in the body is tantamount to trying to cheat tional theme: the Baroque still lives of vegetables and other death, another of Warhol’s major concerns. Death is every- food, spread out on a counter in rich and elaborate Dutch where in Warhol, who is probably one of the most morbid paintings. Warhol’s soup cans are also such a banquet, but of the Romantics. One of his most iconic series of images customised and condensed in a tin can. The artist is playing is that of Marilyn Monroe, the first of which, Gold Marilyn a joke on art history. Also, the images are not identical. When (1962), was produced within days of the star’s death on Warhol first exhibited the series of soup cans, every flavour August 5, 1962. This canvas, which shows a small image of of the Campbell’s brand was represented. Warhol would also Marilyn silkscreened onto a gold canvas, was Warhol’s first paint soup cans with torn labels, or crushed and destroyed silkscreen. The gold ground recalls his youth: Warhol grew cans. Big Torn Campbell’s Soup Can (Vegetable Beef) and Big Torn up in a Greek-Orthodox church community where icons with Campbell’s Soup Can (Pepper Pot) (both 1962) are like memento gold ground were very common. Warhol also used gold in his 266 mori, reminders of the hurtability of the body. For that is gorgeous A Gold Book (1957) with drawings of street boys that 267 what they most conspicuously are: bodies. The soup cans are have ‘a rare, contemplative intensity’ (Bastian 1996: 25). After containers holding intestines. In fact, they hold the mixed Gold Marilyn, many more Marilyns would follow, along with foodstuffs of soup, which often looks like half digested food, a series of so-called Death and Disaster Paintings. Violent the stuff one finds in the stomach. The soup can contains this death, whether by food poisoning (Tunafish Disaster, 1963), stuff in the same way that Julia’s and Warhol’s bodies contain car crash (a whole series, in various hues, in 1963), race riot intestines. And just like Julia’s and Warhol’s bodies, the inner (for example, Red Race Riot, 1963) or suicide (several Suicides stuff can fall out if the can is crushed or opened. In the 1970s of 1963), obsessed Warhol. Hal Foster has called Warhol’s Warhol would start another collection of cans with his time method in these works “traumatic realism”: an attempt to capsules: hundreds of cilinder-shaped boxes in which he kept cope with a world experienced as traumatic. In these works all manner of objects, from issues of magazines over film Warhol is trying to understand and master death. Like many tickets and unopened mail to film scripts and personal ob- of his silkscreens, the Death and Disaster paintings contain jects. Each of these boxes contains a part of Warhol’s life, as series. Within one canvas, the same image of violent death is if in an attempt to stop time and hold it there, enclosed. This often repeated several times. But repetition is a way of trying again links to the soup cans, because food can keep a mighty to stop time. Repetition also neutralises the threat of death: long time in a tin can: as long as it is untouched by oxygen, by repeating the same image again and again, it becomes the food will not spoil. In other words: contained away from more and more abstract and less painful or threatening. What is traumatising when first seen, soon becomes a mere good a place to start a discussion of his films as any other. For visual motif, an arrangement of forms on a canvas. As he told several years, but ending somewhere in early 1966, every in- Gretchen Berg in what is probably the most famous interview teresting visitor to Warhol’s silver Factory was required to sit he ever gave, ‘when I read magazines I just look at the pic- for their portrait. This was a moving portrait: the subject was tures and the words, I don’t usually read it. There’s no mean- sat on a chair in front of some nondescript background, lit, ing to the words, I just feel the shapes with my eye and if you and required not to move or blink for the next three minutes, look at something long enough, I’ve discovered, the meaning which was the duration of a reel of film. Once the camera had goes away’ (Goldsmith 2004: 95). To cheat death by casting started filming, Warhol abandoned it and everybody went a cold eye upon it: this is Warhol’s method. And it found its about their business, leaving the sitter to sit. Every sitter in strongest expression in his films, where the impersonal eye this catalogue of moving pictures makes an effort to comply, of the camera strengthened Warhol’s gaze and turned it into but not moving, and especially not blinking, is a strenuous a scalpel with which he could open up the psychical bodies exercise. Sooner or later the subject has to give in. They blink. of the stars that moved in orbit around it. Their eyes begin to water. They look sideways because they are distracted. They become visibly uncomfortable. They 268 Moving Towards Stillness move, often involuntarily and spontaneously. 269 Time and the body: these are the axes around which Warhol’s This is exactly what Warhol hopes to achieve. By leaving his cinema turns. What happens when we gaze at something? subject alone with the camera Warhol forces the person to What do we see or hope to see when we gaze? Warhol’s cine- confront himself. Three minutes is a very long time if one is ma is grounded in the belief that if you wait and look long and waiting for it to elapse. One becomes very self-conscious. One hard enough, something will be revealed. A gift will be given; may ask oneself if one is doing it well, even though one is not a gift of knowledge. Intimate knowledge at that. The reward supposed to be doing anything at all. Many of the sitters have for gazing is illumination. Just like his paintings, Warhol’s testified to the uncomfortable and even traumatic experience films are about the tension between the inside and the out- of having one’s Screen Test made by Warhol. In fact, the Screen side. By staring at things, you can break the shell of the out- Tests were a form of torture. By confronting the sitters with side and see what is within. The gaze waits for a revelation. themselves, Warhol is soliciting a crack in their image. At first, It is a patient way of looking. It is waiting for it to happen, as every sitter tries to maintain some dignity, some image, some Warhol would put it. The “it” he waits for, is the point where facade. But unable to maintain this facade, they sooner or lat- something unexpected, something revealing breaks through er become themselves. Their real personality breaks through. the surface of the ordinary and offers us a glimpse of the hid- It is these glimpses of reality that Warhol is hoping to see. den, the inside, the real. In this sense, Warhol’s hundreds of The camera is the disembodied and cold machine eye that is Screen Tests are the paradigm of his cinematic activity and as preying on the innocent sitter until the inevitable cracks ap- pear, just like a portrait in oil-paint might crack. ‘The screen gaze and thoughts inwards, as it does for the sitters in the tests were explicitly acts of coercion, of psychological torture,’ Screen Tests who have three excruciatingly long minutes of Wayne Koestenbaum explains. ‘The experience of watching time on their hands to contemplate their existence, then and these tests in bulk has permanently changed my attitude there, in front of the peering camera eye. But if extended time toward the human face: I realise that I have never looked with turns us inwards, it is by extension possible to afford insight enough love or forgiveness at the features of strangers. Not into another person. This, too, is the logic of the Screen Tests: that Warhol’s gaze is loving: to judge by their expressions, the moment time becomes unbearable and the sitter retreats the sitters experience the screen test as an ordeal, a punitive into himself is usually also the moment he cracks and his hid- sounding-of-depths, which they resist by not emoting’ (Koes- den inside becomes visible. This desire to see the unseen and tenbaum 2001: 99-100). Until the facade cracks and the victim the hidden is the key to the pornographic gaze. The viewer is provoked ‘into a visible breakdown’ (o.c. 100). This visible of pornography hopes to see a moment of release, of loss of breakdown is the emergence of the invisible interior: some- control, when reality breaks through the surface. This is the thing that was hidden and is therefore more real than what moment of orgasm. Wayne Koestenbaum writes that Warhol can readily be seen on the surface. In spite of themselves the ‘reconfigured the pornographic impulse into a sage, serious 270 sitters reveal themselves, in a way that is similar to the sur- quest for the essence of matter – to approach, more and more 271 render in orgasm: you cannot hold back and are overtaken, closely, the miraculous core of the material world by watch- briefly, by something irrepressible. This is the erotics of the ing (and reproducing) other people’s bodies [...]. The puritani- gaze at work in Warhol’s cinema: to provoke the emergence of cal moralism that surrounds the contemporary debate over the hidden. It is coerced intimacy, cinema as ocular rape. pornography overlooks the honest, near-religious motive for Warhol’s early films were projected at silent speed. Sound sexually explicit images: curiosity, or the laudable hunger to speed is twenty-four frames per second; silent speed can be see more than the eye can hold’ (Koestenbaum 2001: 9). as slow as eighteen or sixteen frames per second. This means The main virtue the pornographic perceiver in this meta- that Warhol’s silent films take longer to show than they took physical sense must have is patience: the willingness to wait to film. Here, Warhol is extending time. This is the ultimate it out, to wait for it to happen, for revelation to come. Warhol preoccupation of Warhol’s cinema. Time is related to embodi- was certainly a master of patience, to such an extent even ment: we experience time because we are physical beings in that Stephen Koch has rightfully dubbed him ‘the tycoon of the world. It is especially when we are bored and nothing is passivity’ (Koch 1991: 23). One of Warhol’s greatest exercises happening that we can almost feel time dragging at our bod- in gazing was one of his earliest films, Sleep (1962). This is ies. Time becomes something viscous, something that stifles an extended portrait of the sleeping body of the poet John and irritates. We become acutely aware of the fact that we are Giorno, who was Warhol’s boyfriend at the time. Contrary to here, a body in space. Awareness of time’s passing turns our popular lore, Sleep is not an unmoving six hour long shot of Giorno’s sleeping body. It is in fact a highly crafted film and is receiving the titular service of the film. We do not know nothing like the primitive document it is often made out to whether the blower is a man or a woman. In fact, we do not be. The film was not even made in one night. Over a period even know whether the blow job actually occurs or whether of six weeks Warhol filmed a series of three-minute reels of the entire film is a put-on, for Warhol’s camera stubbornly Giorno sleeping (the same kind of reels used for the Screen refuses to move and show us anything happening below the Tests). With the help of the British student Sarah Dalton he blowee’s shoulders. Throughout the film the young man goes edited this mass of footage into one extended sleep in which through all the movements that are associated with a blow- the point of view of the camera changes from reel to reel, job: enjoyment, ecstasy, boredom, and, finally, in the eighth with several reels being repeated throughout the film (Watson reel, orgasm. We know this because in the ninth reel he lights 2003: 133-134). Sometimes Giorno is lying on his back, then a cigarette, which is a standard post-coital practice among on his side. Sometimes the camera teasingly reveals the edge nicotine fiends. The “real” orgasm is never shown. Instead, the of his pubic hair, at other times it focuses on the movement film experiences it for us. Every reel (also those used for the of his belly, which slowly rises and falls with the rhythm of Screen Tests and other Warhol films) ends with a leader. This Giorno’s breathing (an extended, slowed-down rise and fall is a stretch of white film. First it is announced in the form of 272 projected at silent speed). This film is a highly charged erotic a white blur that momentarily mists up the screen, notifying 273 document. It offers us something we never again will see for us of the impending end of the film. Moments later, the whit- while Giorno is sleeping, he is unconscious and everything he ing returns to engulf the image entirely and the reel ends. In does is involuntary. So despite the fact that the film contains Blow-Job the leader seems to climax by proxy. It ejaculates in no action or events in the traditional sense, every detail of the place of the young man (and maybe even in the place of Gionro’s body, every movement, even the slightest shift in the the aroused viewer). way the body is present on the screen, is an event. Everything Ironically, these white-outs circle back to the possible put-on that happens is real, and hence meaningful. We see Giorno as of the film, because it is remarkable that reel after reel the he really is, an erotic revelation of the highest order. young man seems to attain some kind of climax as the white- This erotics of the cinema can even be inscribed in the mate- out engulfs the screen. One gets the feeling the young actor rial of the film itself. This happens in another one of Warhol’s was being directed by Warhol, or by someone. In the third reel legendary early films, Blow-Job (1963). This film is composed of the young man briefly nods and smiles to someone off screen. nine three-minute reels. Each reel shows the same thing: the Is he reacting to something Warhol said? Was he not aware head and shoulders of an anonymous young man in a leather that the camera was rolling again? At the end of the fourth jacket (since identified as the actor DeVerne Bookwalter; An- reel his gaze goes ecstatically skyward at the moment the Er- gell 2006: 41) against the brick wall of the Factory. To judge satz ejaculation takes off. This remarkable coincidence repeats from his facial expressions and movements, the young man itself at the end of the fifth reel. And at the end of reel six he opens his eyes in amazement, as if experiencing a vision (like eyes. One of the most disconcerting experiences of watching Bernini’s Theresa of Avila, which is sometimes called the first a Warhol film is that they make time tangible by being any- female orgasm in art). The game is given away at the start of thing but boring. Images remain on the screen for so long that reel eight, the climactic reel. First, the young man can be seen we are able to take in every detail. We can gorge ourselves on saying something to someone off screen (possibly Warhol), the image. And yet, when the image finally does change, one then he looks at that person (his look is clearly the look of is still left with the feeling that one has not yet seen enough. someone looking at another person) and then becomes (starts The longer we stare at a Warhol film, the more intense be- acting?) ecstatic. Shortly after, the unmistakable orgasm is comes the unrest that is kindled within us: we actually start attained. Since Blow-Job is a silent film, we cannot know how fearing the approaching moment when the image will be much of all this is real and how much staged. Some of the taken away from us. The gaze becomes searching, agitated, reaction shots in which we “catch” the young man being active. It is looking for anything, any minute detail, any kind spontaneous towards people off screen may be actual reac- of revelatory aspect that it might have overlooked. It wants to tion shots, but they might just as well have been created in- find it before the image is taken away. This, again, is the black tentionally to confuse the audience. And even if most of the hole of Warhol sucking us in. Warhol creates images that fas- 274 film is staged, this would not preclude the possibility of real cinate beyond the limits of the tolerable. His is a cinema that 275 orgasm at the end or, perversely, in one of the earlier reels (for it is impossible to turn away from. Watching Warhol’s films is who can say with any amount of certainty that the reels have an oddly transformative experience. Afterwards, one can nev- been edited in the actual chronological order in which they er look at moving images again with the same innocence one were filmed or the blowee was blown?). had before Warhol. One becomes acutely aware of the sexual One thing is for sure: Warhol gives us plenty of time to con- nature of every act of looking. To be ocular, to be a creature of template all these questions as the erotic proceedings unfold sight, is to be sexual, sensually in, within, and of the world. in time. Roy Grundmann has commented that Warhol’s obses- The sensory is the sexual in its fullest dimension. ‘Warhol sion with extended looking at people is linked to his desire didn’t sublimate sex,’ Koestenbaum has correctly noted of to create his own miniature Hollywood in the Factory. In his Warhol’s work, ‘he simply extended its jurisdiction, allowing famous interview with Gretchen Berg, Warhol suggests that it to dominate every process and pastime. For Warhol, every- ‘people usually go to the movies to see only the star, to eat thing is sexual. Contemplation is sexual. Movement is sexual. him up, so here at last is a chance to look only at the star for Stillness is sexual. Looking and being looked at are sexual. as long as you like, no matter what he does and to eat him up Time is sexual: that is why it must be stopped’ (Koestenbaum all you want to’ (in Goldsmith 2004: 90). Warhol isolates this 2001: 5). obsessive element of star-worship and makes it into the topic I started this discussion of Warhol’s films with the claim that of his films, which are all about devouring people with our his cinematic work is a conscious philosophical exploration of the problem of embodiment. This claim is supported by The Belly of a Dyslectic the fact that Warhol very consciously chose to be the kind Just like Hollywood before him, Warhol evolved from silent of filmmaker he was. Among his early films we find several films into talkies, films with sound. This forced him to change projects that are decidedly different in style, flirting with the his approach to filmmaking. For one thing, screening films at camp style of film-making that was very influential in the slowed-down silent speed was now out of the question. This early 1960s. The biggest star of the camp film was Jack Smith, meant other means of truth-gathering had to be devised. The director of the legendary Flaming Creatures (1963) but also a introduction of sound meant that Warhol’s films were now gifted performer in front of the camera. One of Warhol’s earli- more involved with plot. At least the semblance of a story or est films is a reel called Andy Warhol Films Jack Smith Filming event had to be created. But narratives were never Warhol’s Normal Love (1963), a record of Smith and his collaborators strong suit. On top of his many other traumas, Warhol had filming Normal Love (1963), a camp film in which Warhol also a severe case of dyslexia. He basically could not write. Para- made an appearance. Warhol made several films in this ex- doxically, he published a great many books, almost entirely cessive camp style. One such film is Tarzan and Jane Regained... ghostwritten by others. For his novel a he simply taped On- Sort Of (1963), featuring the waif-like underground superstar dine’s monologue extérieure and had someone type it up. The 276 Taylor Mead as an unlikely Tarzan and boasting a cameo ap- transcript was published with all the typing errors intact. 277 pearance of a hunky, loin-clothed (actually towel-wrapped) Later, he would dictate his diaries to Pat Hackett. Since con- Dennis Hopper. Another was the epic but uncompleted Bat- structing language was a problem for Warhol, he feigned not man Dracula (1964), featuring Jack Smith in the double lead being able to think, which requires the use of language. Lan- role. Significantly, Warhol soon abandoned this line of film- guage was alien to Warhol. As he told Gretchen Berg, ‘I always making to concentrate on his own minimalist, near-abstract feel that my words are coming from behind me, not from me. way of filming, doing what he did best: stare and wait for it The interviewer should just tell me the words he wants me to happen, but obviously giving “it” a hand by coaxing coin- to say and I’ll repeat them after him. I think that would be cidence out of hiding, as in the torture tactics of the Screen so great because I’m so empty I just can’t think of anything Tests. But gazing was the name of the game. As Warhol him- to say’ (Goldsmith 2004: 96). That Warhol was a dyslectic also self once testified: ‘Everything is interesting. Years ago, people means that he had trouble with the progressive nature of used to sit looking out of their windows at the street. Or on a language, which moves, letter by letter, from one side of the park bench. They would stay for hours without being bored page to the other. Language is another manifestation of time. although nothing much was going on. This is my favourite And it troubled Warhol. So he decided not to have plot in the theme in movie making – just watching something happening talkies. Ronald Tavel, the playwright for the Theatre of the Ri- for two hours or so’ (Bockris 1997: 327). diculous, scripted a series of Warhol’s most important talkies. But Warhol resisted elaborate scripts and demanded ‘No plot, but incident’ (Koch 1991: 63). It was Tavel’s job to devise situa- two scenes. The second reel of the film is a traditional Warhol tions in which the actors would have to perform. Within that talkie with two people confined in a small space for the dura- framework Warhol’s usual torture practices would take over. tion of the film. Paul America and another man, an ageing As a rule, reels for sound film ran for something more than hustler played by Ed McDermott, are in the bathroom of the half an hour. As with the Screen Tests, Warhol would turn the beach house. America has taken a shower and has a towel camera on and let it run until the film ended. The end of the wrapped around his waist. He is combing his hair, primping reel signified the end of the film, regardless of whether the his body, and takes a piss while MacDermott looks on, hoping events evolving in front of the camera had reached any kind to score with America. The tension in the film arises from the of climax or resolution. For the duration of the reel, the actors fact that these two men are circling around each other like had to perform for dear life. There were no pauses, no second animals, trying to fathom each other’s intentions without giv- takes. No matter what happened, the show had to go on. As ing away too much about their own desires. In the confined with the Screen Tests, this process of filming was devised to space of the bathroom, however, they cannot help but touch make the actors crack by confronting them with themselves. each other. Within this erotic huis clos, which (like all Warhol’s But the body and its secrets were still a central concern in best films) is very stylishly and intelligently filmed, making 278 these films. Witness My Hustler (1965), the first Warhol film on the most of the frame of the bathroom door, the bathroom 279 which Paul Morrissey played an important role as Warhol’s mirror, and the cabin of the shower to create a multi-layered assistant. It was Morrissey’s idea to introduce the panning sense of spatial depth, the seemingly banal situation of two movement of the camera in this film: the camera moves back men talking to each other in the bathroom becomes an event and forth horizontally between two scenes: the porch of a of the highest erotico-voyeuristic import. beach house and the beach itself where a young man is sit- The high point of Warhol’s cinematic endeavours in this ting in the sand. On the porch a conversation can be heard second, talking part of his career is undoubtedly The Chelsea between a man, played by Ed Hood, and several of his friends. Girls (1966), more than three hours of double-screen projec- The blond hunk on the beach is played by Paul America. It ap- tion that encompasses a whole series of one-reel films and pears that Hood has rented the stud via a Dial-a-Hustler ser- situations. Two such segments have become deservedly fa- vice. In the first reel of the film Hood’s envious friends make mous and are of the highest importance for our discussion of catty comments on America, who is oblivious to what is be- Warhol. Both are outstanding examples of what Warhol could ing said. During this dialogue the camera pans back and forth accomplish by letting his performers expose themselves. The between the conversationalists and America. Some of these first segment is ‘Eric’s Trip’. This is a monologue by angelic pans are very fast and involve a quick zoom of the camera. blond Eric Emerson, who was required to talk about himself The effect is disorienting: it is difficult for the viewer to es- for half an hour while Warhol projected coloured lights on tablish the exact distance and spatial relation between the him. But Eric is on an LSD-trip. As he slowly disrobes in what must be one of the most gloriously extended stripteases in go, so he decides to give himself a shot of heroin, after which film history, Eric starts grooving on his own body. His im- he rinses his syringe with Coke. The psychological theatre of provised monologue is sheer verbal poetry. Metaphors and this stunning piece of cinéma vérité shows the great strength images seem to come effortlessly to Emerson, who ambles of Warhol’s cinema. It is the finale to The Chelsea Girls, and through expressive language with a relaxed ease that Warhol after the almost three hours of double-projected film that surely must have envied. His speech is a sensual revelation preceded it, it still packs a wallop. But it also shows how of his holistic consciousness of himself as part of the physi- the psychological tactics of the performers can turn against cal world. He speaks of ingesting particles of the world and of them; something Ronald Tavel also experienced while shoot- the connection between body and world. ‘Eric’s Trip’ is glori- ing Screen Test #2 (1964), which is not a screen test as such ous cinema, especially because it was not tortured out of the but a film about a screen test. The star being tested is Mario actor. Rather, it blooms forth from him. As his high rises, War- Montez, a drag queen who named herself after Maria Montez hol trips up the lighting effects until the image explodes into and who had attained underground fame in the films of Jack an abstract pattern of light and darkness that seems to recall Smith, notably in Flaming Creatures. Screen Test #2 is a classic the work of Francis Bacon. As Eric looses himself in himself, exercise in Warholian torture cinema. Tavel, who scripted 280 the image disintegrates into a stroboscopic vision of shooting the film, tests Montez by giving her directions. Tavel himself 281 colours. It is one of the most stunningly beautiful pieces of remains disembodied, off-screen. Only his voice is present. film ever made and it remains profoundly moving even after As the film progresses, Tavel clearly tries to make Montez one has seen it several times. break down in front of the camera by asking prurient and Equally revealing, but driven by an entirely different dynamic, humiliating questions. The film reaches something of a nadir is one of the most famous segments Warhol ever filmed: when the star is asked, as an exercise in diction, to clearly ‘Pope Ondine’. In this segment Ondine, verbal author of a and and repetitively pronounce the word “diarrhoea”. Tavel also proprietor of the Factory’s sharpest tongue, holds court as the forces her to confess that she is not really a woman. When Pope. He hears confession while sipping Coke from a bottle. the completed film was shown to the Factory crowd, Tavel He is clearly high. But events take a turn for the worse when was mortified at how much the film revealed about him, and one of the confessors, a young woman named Rona Page, not about Montez. accuses Ondine of being a “phoney,” a poseur. Ondine looses One of the greatest sites of Warholian revelations, and his temper with her and smacks her in the face. From then also one of Warhol’s greatest but least discussed films, is on, the scene degenerates into a fascinating deconstruction Vinyl (1965), a two-reeler vaguely based on Anthony Bur- of Ondine, who is lost somewhere between his character and gess’ novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) to which Warhol had his real identity. After he has chased Page off the set and has bought the rights (in the event also making a masterpiece calmed down again, he still has about ten minutes of reel to that far outshines the tepid exercise in épater la bourgeoisie that Stanley Kubrick was to concoct from the novel). In Vinyl Malanga really suffers through this film, for the poppers are Gerard Malanga plays Victor, a juvenile delinquent dressed clearly real, as is his helpless high (interestingly, Malanga is Brando-style in a white T-shirt and a fake black leather jacket a heterosexual who performed several homosexual acts in (fake leather is vinyl). As the film starts, the camera shows a front of Warhol’s camera, actually engaging in gay sex in a close-up of Victor as he is training with weights. The camera segment of the 1964 film Couch). then slowly pans back to reveal the other performers who are But all of the above is merely what happens middle and left grouped around Malanga in a composition that will be main- of the foreground of the image. Warhol’s camera is positioned tained more or less throughout the film. This means that very high, creating an extreme bird’s eye point of view that throughout the film the image is actually split up in several creates a very strong sense of depth. So the camera sees areas of action that are highlighted in the darkened space of much more than the scenes involving Victor/Malanga. And the Factory. That way the image is stuffed with visual infor- this is where Warhol’s aesthetic is put to work: the image is mation, for the viewer has several strands of action to follow crowded with information and all manner of incident. While in the several segments of the image. On the foreground the Victor is being tortured in the foreground, Jacques Potin (a main action takes place: a young student (Larry Latreille) is marginal member of Warhol’s crew of performers) is loung- 282 hassled and beaten up by Victor, then dragged to the back- ing in the background, waiting to get involved in some of 283 ground where, in a second area of action, he is subjected to the subsequent action. In the left top corner, in the back of an SM session by Ondine and Tosh Carillo. After this, Victor the space of the film, stands the Factory’s famous mirrorball, himself gets into a fight with Ondine, who roughs him up and sparkling away regardless of the events. The image is cut in hands him over to the police (J.D. MacDermott), who forces half vertically by a slender pole, which is first used by Victor Victor to sign a waiver allowing the police to subject him to to tie the hapless student to. While Victor is being tortured, aversion therapy. This therapy consists in a ‘doctor’ (Carillo) the space to the right of this pole is occupied by another SM strapping Victor to a chair on the left side of the foreground, scene, with Latreille being liberated from the pole only to be where Victor is forced to watch violent films. This is supposed tied to a chair and tortured. This is where Potin gets involved, to make Victor feel so sick that it will cure him of his violent dripping hot wax on Latreille’s chest and whipping him softly behaviour. We do not get to see the films that are projected, with a leather belt. Ondine tears the boy’s pants. And finally, but Victor describes them to us, adding another, merely ver- on the right side of the image but prominently in the fore- bal narrative layer to the film. In the course of this treatment ground, is the only female in the film. This is Edie Sedgewick, Victor is forced to inhale poppers until he gets so high he sitting on a trunk, sipping a drink from a paper cup, having a sinks to his knees, all but catatonic. Completely out of it, Vic- smoke, and pretending none of the above is going on around tor tries to dance with Carillo and clutches the knees of his her. Throughout the entire film, she does not utter a word. torturer. Part of Vinyl’s fascination stems from the fact that She just sits and is fabulous. She sometimes moves. At one point, she exits the screen for a while (she needed to go to closed, while the other actors move around him in the frame. the toilet). Edie would become one of Warhol’s most legend- It is a stunning tableau that comes and goes for a brief mo- ary performers, making a string of films with him in 1965, ment. Just before the second reel runs out, Carillo cuts a lock and Warhol had added her to the cast of Vinyl as a last-min- of Malanga’s hair. Just as abruptly as it started, the film ends. ute decision to balance the all-male cast. Its reel was up. All of this is going on in Vinyl and it is all going on at the The effect of watching Vinyl is quite unlike any other a cine- same time within the cramped space of the film image. It is phile might have experienced in his movie-going career. It simply too much for the viewer to take in. One must see Vinyl is a mesmerising and profoundly disturbing work. It has a several times to register everything that happens in it. One visual intelligence that is rarely seen even in the most so- moment one is following or trying to follow the main story, phisticated of films. Few films I know of are able to squeeze but the next moment something in the background catches so much information into one frame and maintain that nar- the eye. The eye is next pulled towards Edie’s luminous pres- rative tension for more than an hour. But if we stick to analy- ence, losing the thread of the main story, causing it to keep sis, I believe that all Warhol’s concerns as I have sketched on roaming through the events. And Warhol adds even more them come together in this film. I submit that Vinyl, as a film, 284 distracting elements. As was usual for the talkies, there are is a transit-machine: the claustrophobic image, stuffed to 285 no credits. Warhol had the habit of having someone, either the limit with visual information, should be read as a visual on screen or off, read the credits out loud at a moment when equivalent of the digestive system. This digestive system is the action in a film seemed to flag. The actors are not at all literally filled with debris. At the beginning of the film the convincing. Their acting is stilted, and sometimes they are student is carrying a pile of books, which are really issues clearly reading their lines from cue cards. Warhol consciously of magazines. These are ripped, torn, and thrown about by sabotaged Malanga’s performance by taking the actor out on Malanga and Ondine. As the film continues and chaos takes the town on the eve of the filming, so that he would not have over, the film is literally cluttered with actions (the several time to memorise his lines, which outraged Tavel. But this areas of events), violence, torn clothing, and a collage of loud matters very little since the dialogue is hard to follow any- music, sounds, movement, and dialogue. As the film nears its way. The in-camera sound of Warhol’s films is often less than end, Warhol doesn’t even play songs anymore, but fragments, crystal clear, something that is exacerbated near the end of snippets of songs following each other in nervous succes- Vinyl by the fact that Warhol starts playing pop records (vinyl, sion. In this way, Vinyl is a case of cinematic indigestion, a again) at maximum volume. At that point, total chaos erupts. digestive system in which the waste keeps sloshing about Malanga is liberated from his chair, but is so high that he falls without ever being excreted. In this, the film resembles the to the floor, crawls around and then, for one magical mo- Campbell’s soup cans, which contain soup, which resembles ment, sits on his knees, with his back straight and his eyes half-digested food. It also resembles the time capsules, in which Warhol randomly collected all manner of items and and unexpectedly converge in an Andachtsbild. The composi- trash. And in light of these resemblances it is surely no coin- tion is maintained for a moment. Then chaos returns and the cidence that reels of film like Vinyl are usually stored in cans. moment is gone. But the moment, however brief, is not with- A finished scene is often said to be “in the can”. And finally, out importance. It is like those coincidental constellations of the brackish slosh of Vinyl’s visual content resembles the beauty that sometimes come about between elements that inside of Julia’s and Warhol’s bodies with their tortured, mal- are not connected to each other. Every body is moving on its functioning innards. In the final reckoning, Vinyl is an anally own, but for a moment they are configured in a pattern. This retentive film: it derives its pleasures from not excreting. It is is what happens in that tableau in Vinyl. It is sheer coinci- an exercise in controlling one’s bowels. The debris is inside dence, to be sure, but it is Warhol’s art to provoke coincidence the body, and the form of this particular cinematic body is (there are limits to the amount of gorgeous coincidences one pristinely antiseptic and streamlined: it is a can, a cylinder, a can be granted by coincidence; a strong artist can force the frame, a factory. hand of Fate a bit and create a fertile environment for such But this cannot be the end, for if Warhol’s torture tactics coincidences to occur). Warhol’s patience in waiting for it to serve any purpose, it is to bring out the long-awaited revela- happen has been rewarded. Sooner or later, if you wait long 286 tion of the unsuspected miraculous event of “it happening”. enough, chaos will yield harmony. For if bodies are moving 287 And “it” does happen at the end of Vinyl. The “it” of Vinyl is about at random, it is a statistical fact that sooner or later the visual tableau I mentioned earlier. Near the end of the (but possibly later rather than sooner) some ordered constel- second real, chaos erupts and all performers become free lation will occur. Not because the moving bodies are geared radicals, moving about at will, degenerating into licentious- towards harmony, but because that visually pleasing constel- ness and other naughty doings. Latreille tries to impress lation is just one out of the virtually endless series of possible Edie by acting tough and placing his booted foot on helpless constellations that are available with these variables. There Malanga’s behind. SM, indeed. For this final descent into is no order in the bodies: they merely move. Therefore, the disorder even the camera joins in. It leaves its immobile posi- tableau that is the crowning achievement of Vinyl is a gift in tion and, like the eye of the viewer, starts roaming through the true sense of the word. It is a revelation. If anything (and, the visual space, veritably eating up (like the movie-goer’s to be sure, there is much more) Vinyl teaches and urges us to voracious eye) Malanga’s malleable but tortured flesh. The appreciate such gifts of beauty. It teaches us to celebrate the camera joins in the chaos, dancing to Warhol’s tune of dis- beauty of coincidence, the splendour of the unexpected. By connected pop records. Until, suddenly, the image of saintly playing the game of authenticity and improvisation, Warhol Malanga, kneeling centrally in the frame, appears, with the has created a space for real beauty to occur: a beauty that is other performers arranged around him. It is a glorious sight, not classical or academic, but emergent. as if all the variables of the film’s visual universe suddenly Chapter Four Making the World In her book on The Body in Pain (1985) Elaine Scarry asks what the felt experience of pain is like and how this experience affects our physical and mental existence. What does pain ENGAGING do to us? What does it do to our sense of self? Scarry claims that ‘intense pain is world-destroying’ (BP 29). But what does she mean by this? Clearly, it cannot mean that the experi- THE WORLD ence of pain within my body somehow wreaks havoc upon the objects and buildings around me. On the contrary, the world often seems infuriatingly indifferent to our pain or In the new millennium art has swerved away from the philo- the pain of our loved-ones. So the destruction of the world sophical condition and beauty has taken centre stage again. through pain should not be taken literally, in the sense of The next two chapters are devoted to that rediscovered a physical destruction of the material world. It is therefore beauty. But to get to it, we must first go through the mire. our first business to determine what Scarry means by “the 288 Beauty must often be salvaged from chaos. It is often found world”. What world is she talking about? As will become 289 in fragments, in little scraps of reality that seem of no con- clear, the world she writes about is phenomenological: it is sequence whatever in the greater scheme of things. In the the world for me, the environment I inhabit, the whole of ob- case of the American philosopher Elaine Scarry, beauty was jects and structures that is present to my senses and which a topic she came to after she had descended into the worlds establishes the space in which I move and live. World must of pain and torture. We will follow her there and learn that be understood as Lebenswelt: not the whole physical universe to gain beauty we must re-establish contact with the world. but the extent of my sentient extension into that world as it This will lead us into an exploration of the Dionysian, the presents itself to my felt experience. dark undercurrent of reality. Following Scarry and the work According to Scarry, Marx ‘throughout his writings assumes of Hermann Nitsch we will immerse ourselves in the muck that the made world is the human being’s body and that, of brutal nature, only to emerge cleansed on the other side, having projected that body into the made world, men and ready to experience beauty, and possibly in possession of a women are themselves disembodied, spiritualized’ (BP 244). metaphysical foundation for the processes of sadomasoch- This is the basic idea behind Das Kapital (1867): through la- ism that were explored in the previous chapter. bour people invest themselves in the world and make that world human. This, in essence, is the process at work in commodity fetishism. We create artefacts through the la- bour of our bodies. A certain amount of human labour was expended in the production of the commodity and the dura- tion of the labour required to produce it is the measure of value. So two objects will have the same value if the same amount of time was required to produce them. Marx is very acutely aware of the almost magical or alchemical process that this implies and that is surely one of the reasons he called it a fetishism: a perception of value that is projected rather that objectively present in an object. We create the world, and the value we attach to it, by extending ourselves into it, by investing our labour and through our labour a piece of ourselves in the material world. So, in a very real sense, we are part of the world. ‘For Marx, material making is a recreation of the body and the body is itself recreated in that activity’ (BP 256). Through our labour, we are present 290 in the world. This means that it is not sufficient to say that 291 we, being organisms, are part of the world in the sense that we are dependent on the eco-system of our planet or on the cosmos in general. We must add that we are also part of the non-natural and made world of manufactured objects. They too are part of us and we are part of them. Humans and their world are coextensive. In creating objects, we become invest- ed in them. This is one-way magic, for once this investment has been established, the composing parts cannot be sepa- rated again: ‘the human creature is immersed in his interac- tion with the world, far too immersed to extricate himself from it’ (Scarry 1994: 52). Created objects, artefacts, are expressive of who we are. This investment is also expressed in our attachment to the objects around us. Even if an object has very little objective value in itself it can still mean a lot to us because of some Elaine Scarry emotional attachment (this pen is not simply a pen but my late grandfather’s pen) or because it is simply part of the everyday world in which we feel at home, our Lebenswelt. Our investment in the world is most clear in the comforting feeling of being at home in our own living space, the space that we assembled (we picked the furniture, the wall-paper, the paintings on the wall) to express who we are. The world- building ability of humans was of central concern to Hannah Arendt. In The Human Condition (1958) she famously distin- guished three types of human activity: labour, work, and ac- tion. Labour is an activity that is involved in the cycle of life. What is created through labour is immediately consumed again. I bake a bread to eat it, I till the earth to grow veg- etables to feed my family. Labour is the sphere of consump- tion: what is made is immediately reinvested in the digestive 292 cycle of human existence. What is consumed, disappears 293 again from the world. Nothing remains. Work, on the other hand, is the realm of worldliness. This means that the activi- ty of work results in the creation of a shared world. We make things that outlast us. If we build a house, the house is not demolished when we die: other people come to live there and very often this change of inhabitants will repeat itself many times over the generations. Finally, the third and most distinctly human activity Arendt distinguishes is action. Typical of action is the fact that nothing is produced. There is no product, only an endless process that is undertaken for its own sake and because we deem it meaningful. The great- est example of action is politics, where people gather and speak up in public for the common good. To act is to take action in the world, to stand up for something, not because this gives immediate results (because every political deci- Karl Marx sion can always be overturned and every action can always be undone by a counter-action) but because we take upon us disabled because our disability is too widespread or common the burden of responsibility for the world we share. Action to be seen as a disability. Furthermore, nobody is able to get is the realm of the unpredictable: we never know what the to the second floor of any building without the prosthetic effects of our actions will be. use of stairs or an elevator. We are all disabled to some ex- In our present context the activity of work is the most fasci- tent. Imperfection is our nature. And we build the world in a nating because of its lasting effects. It is a kind of production way that helps us overcome our physical shortcomings. That that does not get spent in the digestive cycle of consump- is what tools are for: they are prostheses, extensions of the tion. Through work we change the world, we turn resources body that help us get about in the world. But for the person into lasting artefacts. And we most commonly do this with labelled “disabled” the fact that a tool is an extension of the the help of tools. Marx and Scarry perceive tools as exten- body becomes especially salient. If one needs an artificial leg sions of the self and they are therefore considered to be to walk, the tool is literally an extension of the body. readily at hand. We do not reflect upon the tool-character of As extensions of the body, tools and objects are an attempt a door handle when we use it to open a door. We do not re- to deal with our awareness of the world in a way that is flect upon the tool-character of the hammer when we pick it beneficial to ourselves. The shape of a chair, for example, is 294 up to drive a nail into the wall. We unconsciously treat these designed to alleviate the burden of our spine. It gives rest to 295 tools as a self-evident presence in our world and therefore the body by mimicking the body. So ‘the chair [can] be recog- as part of our own extension into our world. This point be- nised as mimetic of sentient awareness. [...] The shape of comes more clear if we consider that we usually use our the chair is not the shape of the skeleton, the shape of body hands to handle tools. As Scarry notes, Friedrich Engels once weight, nor even the shape of pain-perceived, but the shape pointed out that the human hand ‘is itself an artefact, gradu- of perceived-pain-wished-gone’ (BP 289-90). Chairs exist as ally altered by its own activity of altering the external world’ an expression of the human wish to prevent pain that fol- (BP 253). In Hiding from Humanity (2004) Martha Nussbaum lows from being on our feet too long. But chairs no longer has written about the use we make of prostheses in our come about because of my individual desire to alleviate a everyday existence. We distinguish healthy from disabled back-ache, they are now being industrially manufactured. people, assuming that people are disabled because their And this, to Scarry’s mind, is a positive and world-building body is imperfect in a way that makes it impossible for them aspect of industrial labour that is easily overlooked. ‘It is to have unrestricted access to (everyday human activities in) almost universally the case in everyday life that the most the world. A paralysed person, for example, needs a wheel- cherished object is one that has been hand-made by a friend: chair to get about and blind people need a stick or a dog to [...] the object’s material attributes themselves record and guide them. But Nussbaum points out that we are all dis- memorialize the intensely personal [...] feelings of the maker abled. Many of us need glasses, but we do not call ourselves for just this person [...]. But anonymous, mass-produced objects contain a collective and equally extraordinary mes- goes to the very nature of man. Man is only happy if he is sage: Whoever you are, and whether or not I personally like able to express himself through meaningful activities. If we or even know you, in at least this small way, be well’ (BP introduce Arendt’s distinction between labour and work into 292). So even mass-production is engaged in the building of Marx’s thought, we might say that what Arendt calls labour a communal human world in which we can be at home. The is related to what Marx would call exploitation: bodily activ- most fundamental example of the body-extensiveness of the ity that does not break the body free from the cycle of sub- world is probably the nature of our homes and the rooms sistence. If the worker gets fair earnings that are expressive we inhabit within them. For Scarry ‘the room, the simplest of the value he produces, he will be able to use his earnings form of shelter, expresses the most benign potential of hu- to buy goods for the sole purpose of expressing his human- man life. It is, one the one hand, an enlargement of the body: ity. This means that to become human is to be able to buy it keeps warm and safe the individual it houses [...]; like the luxury goods, namely goods that no longer contribute to our body, its walls put boundaries around the self [...], yet in its subsistence. We have already mentioned Susanne K. Langer’s windows and doors, crude versions of the senses, it enables claim that such expressive action is not at all frivolous or the self to move out into the world and allows that world some kind of surplus activity to indulge in when our more 296 to enter’ (BP 38). Scarry has further elaborated this view in fundamental needs have been met. On the contrary, man has 297 Dreaming by the Book (2001), where she addresses the meta- ‘a primary need’ that she calls ‘the need of symbolisation. The phor of the eyes as the windows of the soul. ‘It is estimated symbol-making function is one of man’s primary activities, that the total skin surface in an adult human being is three like eating, looking, or moving about’ (PNK 40-41). Langer thousand square inches. Compared to that expanse, the writes that ‘the organism yearns to express’ ideas and feel- surface covered by the retinas is a tiny patch of membrane ings ‘without practical purpose’ (o.c. 43). This she sees as [...]. Yet, physiologically, 38 percent of all sensory experience the source of religion, ritual, art, and all kinds of expressive takes place against that tiny surface. Eyes are, according to behaviour in the human. In his anthropological survey of neurobiologists, the direct outcropping of the brain: not con- ancient Greek ritual Walter Burkert explains the sacrifice tent to receive messages by mediation, the brain has moved of food in the form of libations from this perspective. ‘Milk, out to the surface of the skull in order to rub up against the honey, oil, and wine, the precious commodities of a society world directly (no wonder it is overwhelming to look into familiar with dearth and hunger, were poured away irretriev- another person’s eyes; one beholds directly the moist tissue ably; similarly, grain was mashed into pap so it could drain of the person’s brain)’ (DB 68). into the ground. In southern regions, even water is a pre- A final point on world-making must be made. As we saw, cious commodity and hence played a part in some libations. humans build a world that is an extension and a projection [...] No other act of destruction can be expressed by gestures of themselves. It was one of Marx’s assumptions that this so noble and sublime: Achilles pouring wine for his dead friend Patroklos, an unforgettable poetical image. The artful- ing, better food, or medical care. This should not surprise us. ly shaped libation vessels stress the grandeur of the proceed- To feed, clothe, or medicate oneself does not yet make one ings. By renouncing personal profit, man can uplift himself; human. People prefer televisions over food because the tele- by humbling himself in spite of his needs, he displays his vision is a way of expressing who they are. It is also a way wealth or at least his freedom. Alexander the Great acted in of being part of the world, as it is literally a window on that this way in the Gedrosian desert when he emptied into the world. To indulge in expressive deficit spending (or comfort sand a helmet filled with water’ (Burkert 1983: 54-55). shopping) when one is poor is a way of claiming one’s hu- This can help us understand why human beings are so fond manity in the face of dehumanising poverty. It is to say: I am of beautiful things, and especially of useless beauty. Art for not an animal, I am a creature of expression. On this logic, art’s sake or acquiring commodities for commodities’ sake, is to keep social benefits intentionally (too) low as an “incen- not an absurd concept. There is something profoundly hu- tive” to work is to blackmail people with their very human- man and healthy in our quest to gather around us objects we ity. It denies people the means to be expressive. It is to deny value. As Elaine Scarry has pointed out, we have a tendency them access to the world. It is, in effect, to deny them their to ‘verbally disavow and discredit our immersion in materi- humanity. 298 alism, sometimes even scorning the tendency of less materi- 299 ally privileged cultures to aspire to the possession of these Unmaking the World same objects: that blue jeans are cherished in the Soviet Marx’s analysis of the creation of the world through object Union, that a picture from a Sears Roebuck catalogue should fetishism is also the basis of Scarry’s analysis of the unmak- appear on the wall of a hut in Nairobi, that Sony recorders ing of the world. Labour is the basis on which capital is ac- are prized in Iran, are events sometimes greeted by Western cumulated. In the most primitive state of man, labour value populations with bewilderment, as though the universal would be exchanged for labour value: I exchange one hour’s aspiration to such objects [...] were a form of incomprehen- worth of baking bread for your one hour’s worth of knitting sible corruption or an act of senseless imitation rather than sweaters. In this way we all labour and trade the products itself a confirmation and signal that something deep and of our labour. This is the circuit of commodities: created transforming is intuitively felt to happen when one dwells in objects change hands in a constant dynamic of trade. But proximity to such objects’ (BP 243). Humans like beauty for with the emergence of money something changes in the beauty’s sake, they like useless things, gadgets, and decora- circuit of commodities. Originally commodities are traded tive trivialities because of their potential for expressiveness. for commodities, which could be schematically rendered as: This, incidentally, explains why the poor often exasperate C-C. With the introduction of money an intermediate stage other people by spending their limited social benefits or is introduced into this process. One will now exchange an other resources on luxury goods instead of on better hous- amount of goods for an equal amount of money, which in turn can be used to purchase an equal amount of other com- hen wir den Inbegriff der physischen und geistigen Fähigkeiten, die modities. I sell you a loaf of bread for one euro if and only if in der Leiblichkeit, der lebendigen Persönlichkeit eines Menschen it takes me one euro’s worth of labour-time to produce the existieren und die er in Bewegung setzt, sooft er Gebrauchswerte loaf of bread. With the euro I thus acquire I can go and buy irgendeiner Art produziert’; o.c. 181). It is noteworthy that Marx one euro’s worth of vegetables, clothes, or any other com- considers both our physical and our mental abilities to be modity I desire. Schematically, this circuit of metamorphoses part of our physicality (‘Leiblichkeit’), for there is nothing, (for, remembering the magical nature of commodity fetish- not even voice, that man can express without the use of ism, it is apt to speak of a metamorphosis in this regard) his physical being. There is no soul without the brains. But runs as follows: C-M-C, Commodity is exchanged for Money how can this labour power be used to generate capital? The is exchanged for Commodity. But the emergence of money value of labour power is determined the same way all value immediately causes a new circuit to come into play. This is is determined: by the average amount of labour necessary to what Marx calls the circuit of capital. The aim will now no produce it. In the case of labour power this amount of neces- longer be to exchange equivalent values but to generate a sary labour is ‘the time it takes to produce the commodities profit at the end of the circuit. Schematically, the circuit of necessary to sustain the worker for the day. Not only food, 300 capital runs as follows: M-C-M’. Two changes have taken but a contribution to the cost of housing, clothes, and so on’ 301 place. The circuit no longer starts with commodities but (Wolff 2002: 71). In essence, the value of labour is the money with money. Money is used to buy a commodity. The second the worker needs to buy the goods that keep him alive. Let change occurs when that commodity is sold again: it is sold us now suppose that the average amount of time required for profit. That means that it is sold for an amount of money to generate these necessary commodities is four hours of that is higher than the price originally paid for it (hence M’ labour. So the worker must work for four hours to earn the instead of M). wages necessary to sustain himself. However, the capitalist The profit is what Marx calls surplus value: ‘Diese Inkrement employs the worker for a full day’s work, namely (in our rela- oder den Überschuss über den ursprünglichen Wert nenne ich – tively humane times) eight hours. So the worker is required Mehrwert (surplus value)’ (Marx 1962: 165). Surplus value to work the last four hours for free. The worker exchanges generates capital. If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus a day’s labour for a day’s worth of sustenance. However, he value can emerge and by consequence no capital can be need only work half a day to obtain a day’s sustenance. The acquired. The capitalist will therefore have to seek out a four supplementary hours of work generate surplus value for commodity that allows to generate surplus value. Labour the capitalist. This is what Marx calls exploitation. power is this kind of commodity. Labour power is man’s This raises the obvious question why the labourer would be physical and mental ability to create objects that can be sold so stupid as to sell his labour so cheaply; indeed to some- in the market (‘Unter Arbeitskraft oder Arbeitsvermögen verste- times work for an amount of money that barely amounts to subsistence wages. The answer to this question lies, per- force will wear itself out and ultimately die, which is coun- versely, in what Marx calls the labourer’s double freedom. terproductive. Whatever the capitalist does, he will keep la- The labourer is free in the sense that he is an individual in bour force alive. But if at all possible, he will do nothing more free control of his own commodity, namely his labour. He is than that. It is of course not inconceivable that, for some rea- free to trade its value in the market-place. But the labourer son or other, labour force becomes scarce, causing the price is also “free” in the sense that he has no access to what is of labour force to rise. In that case one of the great spectres needed for him to make his labour work for him. That is to of Marxism appears: the replacement of the labourer with say that the labourer has no access to the means of produc- machines. This is the image of poorly paid labourers who are tion or the resources to practice his skills. ‘Zur Verwandlung making the very machines that will make their labour super- von Geld in Kapital muss der Geldbesitzer also den freien Arbeiter fluous. As a consequence of the introduction of machines, auf dem Warenmarkt vorfinden, frei in dem Doppelsinn, dass er als unemployment will rise and this will restock the labour force freie Person über seine Arbeitskraft als seine Ware verfügt, dass er market, enabling the capitalist to cut down labour prices, so andrerseits andre Waren nicht zu verkaufen hat, los und ledig, frei that labourers will be re-hired to work the machines at lower ist von allen zur Verwirklichung seiner Arbeitskraft nötigen Sa- wages than the ones they got before. It is a vicious cycle in 302 chen’ (K 183). So the labourer finds himself with many skills which only the capitalist ever wins because he holds the key 303 and much labour power but with no way or means to put to both resources and means of production. these skills and this force to work. What good is your skill at The overall result of this capitalist system for human beings baking bread if you do not have an oven? This means that is what Marx has famously called alienation. Alienation is the labourer may be free in theory, but to the extent that he not just a subjective perception but an objective state of af- is poor, he will still be forced to submit to the capitalist. The fairs that consists of three factors. First, the worker is alien- labourers ‘must both be able to work for capitalists and need ated from the product he makes. His labour or work produc- to. They acquiesce in their own exploitation only because es a product over which he has no control: once it is made, they have no alternative. They cannot work for themselves it belongs to the capitalist. The worker cannot take it home as they have nothing to work on or with, no land or other with him. He simply invests his labour and is then separated resources. Thus they must hire our their labour power to from it. As a result, we rarely think of the world as created the highest bidder’ (Wolff 2002: 73). Capitalists will take by humans. We fail to see the human labour expended in advantage of the enormous amount of labour force avail- bringing it about because we are not even aware of the way able on the market to keep the prices for labour low. This our own labour has been invested in this world. The second can be maintained as long as the price for labour does not element of alienation is the division of labour which results fall beneath subsistence wages, which is the ‘Minimalgrenze in a de-skilling of the worker, who only needs to mechani- des Werts’ (K 187). If it does fall below this minimum, labour cally repeat the same action over and over. This kind of work is repetitive, numbing, and depressing. It reduces the worker ten find it nearly impossible to verbalise and share their pain to an element in a machine. Finally, there is alienation from with others. ‘Physical pain does not simply resist language our species-being. Here we reach the most fundamental but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate rever- presupposition of Marx’s philosophy: man creates the world sion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries in which he lives. Animals also create a world, but only to a human being makes before language is learned’ (BP 4). This the extent that their instincts incite them to build a nest or reversion is due to the fact that pain ‘has no referential con- other requirements for survival and reproduction. Man goes tent. It is not of or for anything. It is precisely because it takes far beyond the necessary changes required for subsistence. no object that it, more than any other phenomenon, resists For example, humans also embellish the world and make objectification in language’ (BP 5). Pain, Scarry writes, ‘is it- art. These world-changing activities are what makes humans self alone’ (BP 162). Thus to have pain is to be locked inside human. It is Marx’s belief that work under capitalism de- one’s body. This is also a form of alienation from the self stroys this world-making capacity. Capitalism limits our free because ‘the person in great pain experiences his own body ability to shape ourselves and the world because it makes as the agent of his agony. The ceaseless, self-announcing our work subservient to the needs of capital. This way it per- signal of the body in pain [...] contains not only the feeling 304 verts our very humanity. In light of this it should come as no “my body hurts” but the feeling “my body hurts me”’ (BP 47). 305 surprise that Marx claims that ‘many of us feel human only Pain leaves no room for the self because ‘the pain itself is when we are not working’ (Wolff 2002: 36): ‘Der Arbeiter fühlt felt from the inside where, by appropriating all attention, it sich daher erst ausser der Arbeit bei sich und in der Arbeit ausser has become total [...]. Pain sabotages and subverts person- sich. Zu Hause ist er, wenn er nicht arbeitet und wenn er arbeitet, hood.’ That is why Scarry calls pain ‘the monolithic destroyer ist er nicht zu Hause’ (Marx 2005: 59). of persons’ (Scarry 1994: 31): ‘as the body becomes the only world, so pain becomes the only body’ (o.c. 34). The Brutality of Fact The felt experience of pain explains why torture is such a But it is not only exploitation that alienates us. The analysis powerful political tool. By torturing people, one takes away of commodity fetishism and its projection of value can also their world. This is done in many small and less small ways. be extended into an analysis of the way the experience of If a chair is an extension of the spine, relieving it from the pain can destroy our world. Scarry has analysed the world- burden of carrying the body, then kicking a chair from under destroying power of pain in chilling detail. People who suf- a prisoner is an efficient way of undermining the prisoner’s fer extreme pain retreat into themselves and gradually lose trust in the world. What was once comfortable and reliable, interest in the world. According to Scarry, this regression has now becomes a source of pain and uncertainty. Similarly, to do with the “unsharability” of pain, which is linked to “its giving prisoners spoiled food to eat and brackish water to resistance to language”. This means that people in pain of- drink not only makes them sick, which is temporary, but undermines their faith in the essentially beneficial and ternalisation) are wholly self-isolating. Only in the culture life-giving qualities of food and, especially, water. And this of language, ideas, and objects does sharing originate’ (BP is a much less temporary intrusion into a person’s sense of 256). It is through language, through voice, that we com- world. Finally, to actually inflict pain, often debilitating pain, mune with mankind, not through our body. In fact, our body to disorient the victim, or to make them feel as if they are can (be used to) impose limits on this voice if it is made to drowning, or to expose them to extreme changes in temper- feel extreme pain. It is, however, not through our bodies but ature, or to extreme and disturbing sounds: all these actions through our voice that we share the world with other human undermine a person’s ability to extend themselves into the beings, for ‘so long as one is speaking, the self extends out world. They withdraw upon themselves and, sooner or later, beyond the boundaries of the body, occupies a space larger they break. Efficient torture can bring a person on the brink than the body’ (BP 33). So speech is revealed to probably of psychosis in a matter of hours. But we need not even turn be an even more fundamental form of world-making than to torture to see the world-destroying power that people can the collective efforts of work. ‘Through his ability to project wield over others. There is an unsettling Wolfgang Tillmans words and sounds out into his environment, a human being photograph called Anti-homeless device (2000). It shows a inhabits, humanises, and makes his own a space much larg- 306 homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk outside a building. er than that occupied by his body alone’ (BP 49). This neces- 307 But he cannot huddle up against the wall of the building sarily leads us back to Arendt’s claim that it is action, which because the tiles that line the wall are featured with pyra- usually leaves no material trace, that distinguishes humans mid-like spikes that make it impossible to walk, let alone from other animals. The activity of speaking to other people sleep on them. Such features, which are part of the way the and engaging them in debate about the shared world is what system structures our shared environment to induce desired makes us human. By robbing people of this voice, pain de- patterns of behaviour in us, show how viciously easy it is to humanises people in a way that is very similar to, but even turn part of our environment into something uninhabitable; more destructive than, alienated labour: ‘the absence of pain something anti-human. is a presence of world; the presence of pain is the absence of In view of the phenomenological structure of pain we must world’ (BP 37). also rethink the distinction between body and mind, be- The felt experience of being incarcerated within the body by tween public and private. ‘The notion that everyone is alike pain is memorably expressed in the work of Francis Bacon by having a body and that what differentiates one person and Scarry has commented on the way his paintings exhibit from another is the soul or intellect or personality can the debilitating and world-destroying power of pain. Pain mislead one into thinking that the body is “shared” and destroys the boundaries between the inside and the outside the other part is “private” when exactly the opposite is the of the body and so causes ‘an almost obscene conflation of case. The mute facts of sentience (deprived of cultural ex- private and public. It brings with it all the solitude of abso- lute privacy with none of its safety, all the self-exposure of ness in the image that is achieved if one narrows the space the utterly public with none of its possibility for camaraderie around a figure by framing it. Bacon returns to the question or shared experience. Artistic objectifications of pain often while discussing the introduction of a hypodermic syringe concentrate on this combination of isolation and exposure. into the arm of a Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe (1963). [...]. The solitary figure in the typical canvas of Francis Bacon He explains that he painted the syringe ‘as a form of nail- is made emphatically alone by his position on a dais, by an ing the image more strongly into reality or appearance. [...] arbitrary geometric box inserted over him, and by his naked I put the syringe because I want a nailing of the flesh onto presence against a uniform (and in its uniformity, almost the bed’ (o.c. 78). This explanation simply shifts the problem absolute) orange-red background; yet while he is intensely to the area of reality and appearance, two very important separate from the viewer [...] he is simultaneously merciless- notions that Bacon uses in a very specific way. Bacon con- ly exposed to us [...] because his melting body is turned in- sidered his art to be a realistic art, painting images ‘as ac- side out, revealing the most inward and secret parts of him’ curately off my nervous system as I can’ (o.c. 82). This means (BP 53). The sense of extreme alienation that pain entails is that realism for Bacon is related to expressiveness and not also expressed in the motif of the scream: ‘the open mouth to representational fidelity in painting. He illustrates this by 308 with no sound reaching anyone in the sketches, paintings, or contrasting an illustrational style of painting, which ‘tells 309 film stills of Grünewald, Stanzione, Munch, Bacon, Bergman, you through the intelligence immediately what the form is or Eisenstein, a human being so utterly consumed in the act about,’ with a non-illustrational way of painting where ‘form of making a sound that cannot be heard, coincides with the works first upon sensation and then slowly leaks back into way in which pain engulfs the one in pain but remains un- the fact’ (o.c. 56). If this non-illustrational manner is suc- sensed by anyone else’ (BP 52). cessful it gives you more than a mere likeness of a person: it Despite the fact that many critics have read Bacon’s work gives you their appearance, it reveals something about who this way, the artist himself was not very hospitable to such they are and how they experience the world. This is where an interpretation. As early as 1962, talking to David Sylvester, the deformation of the figures comes in because ‘I’m always he dismisses the idea that the frames in his work should be hoping to deform people into appearance; I can’t paint them read as glass boxes in which the figures are imprisoned. ‘I literally. For instance, I think that, of those two paintings of use that frame to see the image,’ Bacon claims, ‘for no other Michel Leiris [Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1976 and 1978 respec- reason. [...] I cut down the scale of the canvas by drawing tively], the one I did which is less literally like him is in fact rectangles which concentrate the image down. Just to see it more poignantly like him’ (o.c. 146). better’ (Sylvester 1987: 22-23). It remains somewhat unclear From a Langerian point of view such remarks are very inter- what Bacon means by “seeing better” but presumably he is esting because they show how close Bacon’s working meth- talking about an enhanced vividness and increased direct- ods and his ideas about them were to Langer’s theory of expressive form. ‘Every form that you make has an implica- have an overall image of what I want to do, but it’s in the tion,’ Bacon explains, ‘so that when you are painting some- working that it develops’. Talking to David Sylvester Bacon body, you know that you are, of course, trying to get near has further explained that ‘I don’t really think my pictures not only to their appearance but also to the way they have out, you know; I think of the disposition of the forms and affected you, because every shape has an implication’ (o.c. then I watch the forms form themselves’ (o.c. 136). In an- 130). Chance plays a considerably part in the process of mak- other interview, discussing his habit of rubbing paint with ing such works. As is well known, Bacon would sometimes pieces of cloth, Bacon remarks that in such gestures he is simply throw paint at a canvas and work from the accidental trying ‘to break the willed articulation of the image, so that patterns that this created. But no matter how much coinci- the image will grow, as it were, spontaneously and within its dence and accidental elements are incorporated into a work, own structure, and not my structure. Afterwards, your sense it is always a moment of conscious deliberation that deter- of what you want comes into play, so that you begin to work mines its success as a work. ‘It’s really a continuous question on the hazard that has been left to you on the canvas. And of the fight between accident and criticism. Because what I out of all that, possibly, a more organic image arises than if it call accident may give you some mark that seems to be more was a willed image’ (o.c. 160). 310 real, truer to the image than another one, but it’s only your The aim of this to and fro between accident and criticism 311 critical sense that can select it. So that your critical faculty is is expressiveness, which Bacon calls appearance. It is also going on at the same time as the sort of half-conscious ma- ‘what I think of as art. One brings the sensation and the nipulation’ (o.c. 121-122). The critical sense, however, is not feeling of life over the only way one can’ (o.c. 43). Foreshad- an objective faculty and it has ‘no defined criteria; it’s a pure- owing the end of artistic narratives as proclaimed by Danto, ly instinctive kind of criticism’ (o.c. 149) which can be justifi- Bacon adds that ‘when you’re outside a tradition, as every ably linked to Langer’s idea of the commanding form, which artist is today, one can only want to record one’s own feel- is a constant measure for the work being created without ings about certain situations as closely to one’s own nervous being an objective standard that exists outside the creative system as one possibly can’ (ibid.). Such suggestions are very process. This means, in fact, that the critical function that close to Langer’s philosophy of living form. Expressiveness Bacon talks about is simply the fact that the creative process in art is the creation of a symbolic form that represents the is continually self-reflexive, holding up everything it brings felt experience of life. This would seem to be exactly what about to the standard of the commanding form that draws Bacon was aiming at in bringing together accident and criti- the lines beyond which the form would loose its expressive cism. And although Bacon seemed keen on minimising the power. This is further corroborated by Bacon’s own descrip- anxiety expressed through his distortions, undoubtedly tion of the creative process. In an interview with Melvyn wanting to stress their formal properties, it is clear that their Bragg for the South Bank Show (1988) Bacon explains that ‘I precarious position between form and feeling is an effect of their immense success as forms. It is because they are so says that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand well-achieved through criticism that they become expressive wants to draw it. Beauty brings copies of itself into being’ of the person represented and become this person’s appear- (BBJ 3). This experience can give rise to ‘the idea of eternity, ance. This all becomes quite clear in Bacon’s own description the perpetual duplicating of a moment that never stops. But of the difficulty inherent in painting portraits: ‘The living it also sponsors the idea of terrestrial plenitude and distri- quality is what you have to get. In painting a portrait the bution, the will to make “more and more” so that there will problem is to find a technique by which you can give over eventually be “enough”’ (BBJ 5). The urge to produce beautiful all the pulsations of a person. It’s why portrait painting is things (and not just soulless commodities) is a fundamental so fascinating and so difficult. Most people go to the most human need, as Marx and Langer also suggested. And once academic painters when they want to have their portraits beauty is in the world it sponsors a continual reproduction made because for some reason they prefer a sort of colour of itself. ‘The simplest manifestation of this phenomenon photograph of themselves instead of thinking of having is the everyday fact of staring’ (ibid.). As an example, Scarry themselves really trapped and caught. The sitter is someone cites Leonardo da Vinci’s habit of following beautiful people of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their ema- through the streets of Florence. Another example is the 312 nation. [...] There is the appearance and there is the energy desire of people in love to have children together because 313 within the appearance. And that is an extremely difficult ‘when the eye sees someone beautiful, the whole body wants thing to trap’ (o.c. 174-175). to reproduce the person’ (BBJ 4). Lovers are forever seeking each other’s distinctive facial features in the face of their The Quickening child, which is the physical continuation of what they love in Elaine Scarry has followed her philosophical investigations their partner. into pain with reflections on aesthetics. This is not as big a It is interesting to note that Scarry’s suggestion about the leap as it might seem. Especially in her beautiful little book unceasing repetition of the beautiful can be linked to Kant’s On Beauty and Being Just (1999) Scarry explains how beauty idea of purposiveness without purpose. This is the third mo- makes us aware of the preciousness and vulnerability of the ment in the aesthetic judgement, where Kant writes that world and all things in it. Through this awareness beauty the experience of beauty, as felt experience, has no goal or invites us to extend human sympathy to lifeless things that purpose other than to perpetuate itself. When we experience suddenly appear to us as “hurtable” as human beings. Let beauty we want to make that moment last. A good example us track this argument step by step. ‘What,’ Scarry asks, ‘is is the difficulty we often have to tear ourselves away from the felt experience of cognition at the moment one stands a beautiful work of art in an exhibition. We compulsively in the presence of a beautiful boy or flower or bird? It seems return to it, unable to satiate our desire to be in its presence. to incite, even require, the act of replication. Wittgenstein It is here that I believe the root of obsession can be found, especially with regard to voyeurism, the obsession with look- become aware of an object’s vulnerability and to experience ing at things that quicken us. The urge to repeat or maintain an urge to protect the object perceived as vulnerable. ‘A vase the sensation of being engulfed by sensual rapture is noth- crafted by Gallé [...] can, although nonsentient, be harmed by ing other than an attempt to maintain this purposiveness being mishandled. Noticing its beauty increases the possibil- without purpose. The voyeur, or any other fetishist, will often ity that it will be carefully handled’ (BBJ 65). This increased collect a library of images and experiences that he may draw awareness of the ease with which things can be hurt and the upon in future fantasies. That is why such fetishes become demand for care that this awareness entails are the effect addictive: they are in need of constant new input, as in of all experiences of beauty, which leads Scarry to conclude pornography’s constant flow of new faces and new starlets, that ‘the concern demanded by the perfect vase or god or which is reminiscent of beauty’s capacity for bringing copies poem [introduces] a standard of care that [is then extended] of itself into the world. The fetishist never reaches a point to more ordinary objects’ (BBJ 66). By noticing beauty we where he feels fulfilled: there is always the possibility of a notice vulnerability and start noticing it everywhere and not more exciting, more profound experience to collect. For the just in the objects traditionally categorised as beautiful. ‘It is fetishist, as for the aesthete who loves to surround himself as though beautiful things have been placed here and there 314 with beauty, there can never be enough beauty. Even a world throughout the world to serve as small wake-up calls to 315 of plenty is never enough. But there is no perversion in this perception, spurring lapsed alertness back to its most acute obsession: it is the very dynamic of creation, the same dy- level. Through its beauty, the world continually recommits us namic that propels the continual production of new goods to a rigorous standard of perceptual care: if we do not search that continue to find new purchasers in the market. As long it out, it comes and finds us’ (BBJ 81). That is why beauty as there are beautiful things to look at or to buy, there will be can be found anywhere and everywhere. Beauty is not an people wanting to look or buy. abstract Idea, it is everywhere apparent, in ‘the moon, the One of Scarry’s aims in her book is to deflate the politically Milky Way, individual stars, the daylit sky, birds, birdsongs, correct claim that it is aggressive, demeaning, or otherwise musical instruments, meadows, dances, woven cloth, stones, hurtful or simply wrong to look at beautiful people or things staircases, good prose certainly, airplanes of course, math- because to look or stare at them is (among other evil things) ematical proofs, the sea, its surf, its spray’ (BBJ 72). to objectify them. This is the spectre of the infamous “male Beauty is the world’s way of reaching out to us. And by gaze,” a rapacious ocular predator that ravages all it lays its making us aware of the vulnerability of people and things, greedy little eyes on. ‘Beauty, according to its critics, causes beauty ‘assists us in our attention to justice’ (BBJ 86) because us to gape and suspend all thought. This complaint is mani- it makes clear to us that it is important to treat all people, festly true’ (BBJ 29). But there is nothing wrong with this all creatures, and all objects with care and fairness. ‘Beauty because to notice beauty and to stare at it in admiration is to seems to place requirements on us for attending to the alive- ness or (in the case of objects) quasi-aliveness of our world, cess should really be extended to include the entire human and for entering into its protection’ (BBJ 90). The importance world. As extensions of ourselves the objects in the world of this quasi-aliveness for our argument is dual. On the one come to share in our humanity and in our emotions. This is hand, it refers us back to Scarry’s own argument, made in made very clear in Alexander Kluge’s mammoth cinematic The Body in Pain, that the world we make is an extension of essay Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike (2008), which our own body and therefore shares in its aliveness. But it is investigates Sergei Eisenstein’s failed attempt to film Marx’s quasi- or only seeming aliveness because paintings, books, Kapital in 1927. The second part of Kluge’s film is called Alle and other objects of beauty are not, as a rule, actual living Dinge sind bezauberte Menschen, which expresses the idea entities (but flowers, birds, and beautiful boys are). On the that the line between subject and object is blurred because other hand the quasi-aliveness of beautiful objects (which is we invest part of our humanity in the things we make. At in fact a pleonasm as it is their quasi-aliveness that renders several points in his film Kluge shows that objects can also objects beautiful) is simply a restating of the principle of liv- project their humanity back at us. In the chapter Lamento der ing form proposed by Langer. As we remember, living form is liegengebliebenen Ware he describes how the composer Wolf- expressive of the felt experience of life. Beauty is intrinsical- gang Rihm was struck by the sight of a bottle left behind on 316 ly linked to aliveness. Through these two meanings of quasi- the shelves of a supermarket. It made him notice the sad- 317 aliveness, a dual dynamic lights up: the perceiver and the ness of unsold goods that are sent back to the manufacturer object of beauty perceived mutually bestow life upon each to be destroyed. Many goods remain unsold, loved by no other. The perceiver is a human being, who takes part in one, and are therefore deemed useless and dispensable. This the continual making of the world, which invests the world continual destruction of perfectly good goods is a daily holo- with quasi-aliveness and therefore the potential for beauty. caust, for with each object a piece of humanity is destroyed. The beautiful object perceived in turn reflects the projected There is a profound sadness in waste. This melancholy of aliveness and its concomitant beauty back at us as a symbol the objects is expressed and given voice in Rihm’s Lamento. of the felt experience of life that is the stuff of beauty. If this Even more clear is Kluge’s chapter on Max Brand’s industrial process seems circular, its circularity is not a weakness but opera Maschinist Hopkins (1929), which has the abandoned its essence: all meaning is created by human beings, there- machines in a nocturnal factory lament their servile exis- fore there is no meaning, and no beauty, in the world which tence as slaves to the production process. By giving voice to is not in our consciousness, in our mind. Man is constitutive the machines, Brand’s opera brings their spirit back to life, of beauty. The world is how we reflect this beauty back at extending it into the world to appeal to our human compas- each other. To destroy beauty is to destroy mankind. sion. But if Brand’s opera tries to give voice to objects in their Children are very happy to bestow aliveness on inanimate quasi-aliveness, then German band Einstürzende Neubauten objects. They do it all the time with their toys. But the pro- go one better: they actually extract voice from the objects themselves. As they put it in their song ‘NNNAAAMMM’, gut in a knot and makes us tremble with anxious or grateful songs simply lie dormant in machines (‘das Lied schläft in anticipation. It quickens the pulse and wreaks havoc upon der Maschine’) and it is up to us to wake them up and make our bodily functions. Reflexes become uncontrollable, people them sing. The music of the Neubauten is like an extended tremble, some shudder or shiver, others break out in hyster- urban symphony conjured up from the inanimate waste of ics of tears or laughter, our eyes go blurry, and we gener- so-called civilisation and its destructive industry. Especially ally feel our mind contracting like a sponge, with a strange, their early music was often extremely aggressive and atonal, stinging sensation in the lower neck: the control over our an explosion of anger at the world, an aural manifesto of re- body eludes us and yet the sensation is vaguely pleasurable. jection, isolation, and alienation. Many of these soundscapes Obviously, not all experiences of sudden aliveness have such were created by relentless banging or scraping on scrap an intensity; it would in fact be most detrimental to the metal or debris, or simply by drilling into concrete. But mak- orderly practice of everyday life if they were. But it is clear ing art out of refuse, as the Neubaten do, implies a cyclical that apart from forms of beauty that have a very general view of the world: to appropriate the rejected and turn it into attraction (the beauty of roses, say) there is for each person poetry is to salvage humanity from destruction and bring it a realm of quickening which is highly idiosyncratic, deeply 318 back into the shared world. personal, and profoundly private. 319 We are now sufficiently prepared to answer the question These private sensations are entirely legitimate as the stuff what exactly triggers the experience of beauty in us: it is that of beauty and art. As we saw in our discussion of Langer, which quickens, which gives us a jolt of life. To experience such private interests are legitimate and often even neces- beauty is to experience a quickening, a sudden uplifting and sary as motifs in art: they are transformed into something invigorating gust of aliveness and its concomitant assent artistic if they are integrated into the fabric of an expressive to the world. For a brief moment (or, if we are lucky and the form, lifted up from a symptom of experience to a symbol of sensation is particularly intense, an extended period of time) life. That is why the private role-play of mistress and slave we feel reconciled to the world. Obviously, what quickens in the bedroom is usually not considered to be a work of art, one person is not necessarily what quickens another. Many whereas Sacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Furs (1869) or Hans things may give many people a sense of enhanced aliveness, Bellmer’s obsessively lurid photographs of his obscenely but some such jolts are bound to be highly personal. One twisted sex-doll are: they are not (or not primarily) about of the most intimate experiences of enhanced aliveness is private gratification for the artist. In creating such images the electrifying effect of a sexual fetish, which is more than the artist is not seeking sexual release. On the contrary, the mere arousal: the sudden presence of the object of our deep- creation of the image might even require the artist not to est fetish (be it a piece of clothing, a shoe, the exposure of a release any tension, so that he may work in a mood of hight- body-part, a scent, a situation, or a word whispered) ties the ened alertness bordering on the feverish. But if he is not releasing or gratifying his sexual desire, he is expressing it ever level of intensity it operates, it is a fuse that is being lit in a symbolic way, which is to say that he is articulating it: and that gets, as is said colloquially, our juices flowing. But presenting its many moments and aspects in a unified image the colloquialism is very apt, for the quickening is indeed that aims to express the felt experience of the actual fetish- a biological process: at the very least, it is a mild release of istic sensation. As I argued in the previous chapter, the pres- adrenaline or some other chemical into the bloodstream. ence of actually aroused performers in pornographic films And once the jolt is delivered it is the hand, as Wittgenstein (or, we might add, in theatrical presentations in an erotic noted, or the imagination that takes over. That this dyna- cabaret) has often blinded critics to the artistic potential of mism is sometimes born from our most private sentiments such films. There is nothing inartistic about pornography, it and desires is no blight: all art arises from felt experience. is simply a sad fact that most pornography is abysmally bad. What lifts it up into the realm of art is the genius of concep- But in good pornography the aroused bodies are integrated tion: the artist’s ability to translate something personal into into the greater work of the film (which may be a success- a symbol of potentially universal appeal. And this, inciden- ful work of art or, as is often the sad case, a dismal failure). tally, again chimes with what Kant wrote in his critique of Similarly, the erotic dancers performing as strippers are not aesthetic judgement: that our judgement on beauty is at 320 as a rule aroused while performing: it is work to them. The the same time subjective and universal. The paradox was 321 stripper must control her own desires to achieve the erotic resolved, for Kant, by pointing out that the subjectivity of our dance as a work of art, which is a performance. judgement was impartial, not tainted by any personal inter- This, then, I would argue to be the nature of fascination: the est, and therefore immediately entailed the illusion (and it is sustained gripping force of an object or form that delivers a an illusion for Kant, who calls it an als ob) of universality. In jolt of aliveness to our physical or psychical system. Fascina- our view, which builds on the Kantian tradition, the personal tion is a quickening that sets the mind and the imagination and the universal are linked through the genius of concep- on their way on a journey of endless repetition of and varia- tion: the work of art that lifts the particular up to make it tions on the particular motif or form that triggers our most into a potentially universal symbol of life vitally felt. profound sense of vitality and thus enhances our felt experi- ence of aliveness. It can be modest, as when we notice the The Order of Things first flowers of spring or the scent of rain on a hot summer With fascination we have entered a part of our being that is night, but it can also be a fierce and terrific jolt, as when we often experienced as dark and unruly. It is linked to sexual- are suddenly in the presence of our deepest sexual fetish or ity and its hidden urges. We have entered the realm of the an object of overwhelming beauty. Whether beauty is over- uncontrollable. There are many things in life that we cannot whelming is simply a function of the intensity of the sense control. To be surrendered to events or forces that are be- of aliveness it triggers in us. But whatever it is and on what- yond our grasp often feels like submission to some kind of violence. The uncontrollable is a force that manifests itself, work in it. So to be kosmos is to be logos, to be orderly is to it exerts power over us and we are unable to get away from be governed by some rule, and the rule is the order (Peters it. Anything that affects our being in a profound way with- 1967: 111). But that there is such a rule does not mean that out our being able to master or direct it is a manifestation we, mere mortals, can grasp it. That is the rupture we ex- of the uncontrollable. In this sense the uncontrollable is not perience in the intrusion of the unruly into our lives: there simply an act of violence that disrupts our life or the order of is something out there, a kosmos, that does not operate ac- society, it is often perceived as a meaningless interruption: cording to our human logos. There is alter-logos at work in it is an act or an event that literally has no place in the order the world. It is the function of rituals to remedy the rupture that we have created for ourselves. That is why the uncon- of kosmos by the violence of the uncontrollable. Whenever trollable is often situated in those aspects of human life that we experience such a rupture, we feel as if the logos of the are particularly difficult to contain. The Greeks called it Fate, kosmos is suddenly in retreat, beyond our grasp. We fail to others call it destiny. In our mass democracies there is much see the logic or order of events in the broader whole of our talk of the threat of random violence. It is exactly its unpre- meaningful existence. Rituals are ways to try and represent dictable nature and the fact that it can strike at any time and that violence as something that we can comprehend after 322 that any of us can be its victim that makes random violence all. They give violence a controllable place in the order of 323 such a fearful thing. In the aftermath of the attacks of Sep- things. Rituals represent violence to make it containable and tember 11, 2001, it sometimes seemed as if a mass psychosis imaginable as part of the larger whole of existence or kosmos. had overtaken the world: we were all in danger, all possibly That way it seeks to tame the violence of the uncontrol- under attack, but nobody could be sure when or where or lable. This means that rituals are a form of symbolic action: against whom violence would strike. However, the locus clas- they are actions that have a symbolic function. As we saw sicus of the uncontrollable is obviously human sexuality. Sex already in the first chapter, a symbol is ‘any device whereby is an urge that manifests itself in our body without invita- we are enabled to make an abstraction’ (FF xi). So rituals are tion. And once it is there, it is very difficult to resist. schematised actions that are expressive of meaning, they are People introduce rituals to try and give the violence of the abstract representations of our felt experience of life. The felt unexpected, the unpredictable, and the uncontrollable some experience expressed in ritual is the irruption of the violence place within the social order. Another way of putting this is of the uncontrollable and our desire to restore the kosmos. In to say that rituals are attempts to give violence a place in the this sense rituals are expressive of what we feel is our place kosmos. For the ancient Greeks the kosmos was not simply the in the universe and our relationship to the kosmos. They entirety of all existence, the word also referred to order or express our relationship to a higher order that eludes our logos. The kosmos as the system of the entire existing world control. By expressing that relationship the ritual helps us was perceived to be logos, reasonable. There was a logic at to accept it and integrate it into the fabric of our lives. This, in essence, is the root meaning of “religious,” which refers to that of communication’ (Burkert 1983: 23). He returns to this the Latin religio or bondage to a higher Power. point several times and his discussion is very corroborative Rituals serve absolutely no practical use. Rituals, and by ex- of Langer’s approach. ‘Ritual is a pattern of action redirected tension all symbolic actions (including art), do not contribute to serve for communication, and this means that the terms to the survival of the species, although we have suggested of expression are open to substitution, i.e., symbolisation. that they are inscribed into the very nature of the human [...] Every communication is symbolic inasmuch as it does animal, which is a creature of expression. Nor do rituals not use the real object it wants to communicate, but sub- have any real impact on the world. Offerings to the gods, stitutes a sign that is familiar to and, hence, understood by ritual dance, magic charms, works of art: all these are expres- the addressee. The object serving as sign is exchangeable. sions of our felt experience and our desires, but they have no If the sender and the receiver are sufficiently familiar with practical value whatsoever. As Langer has correctly pointed one another, the complex of signs can be greatly reduced. On out, ‘no savage tries to induce a snowstorm in midsummer, the other hand, when in competition with rival communi- nor prays for the ripening of fruits entirely out of season, cations, the sign is exaggerated and heightened. Substitute as he certainly would if he considered his dance and prayer signs thus used – whether consisting of natural or artificial 324 the physical causes of such events. He dances with the rain, objects, pictures, cries, or words – may be called symbols in 325 he invites the elements to do their part, as they are thought a pregnant sense’ (o.c. 41). So ritual is a symbolic action and to be somewhere about and merely unresponsive. This ac- ‘its function is to dramatise the order of life, expressing itself counts for the fact that no evidence of past failures discour- in basic modes of behaviour, especially aggression’ (o.c. 33). ages his practices; for if heaven and earth do not answer There are three elements that are almost universal ingredi- him, the rite is simply unconsummated; it was not therefore ents of ritual: killing, eating, and sex (o.c. 58). This is hardly a “mistake”’ (PNK 158-159). The Indian performing the rain surprising since the triad goes to the core of human survival: dance is not so naive to think that he can induce the rain we must kill in order not to be killed, we must kill to eat, and to fall, he simply expresses his own dependence upon the we must procreate. Violence is inherent in all three elements rain for his survival. So the purpose of rituals is not to attain and is especially important in ritual because ‘a sense of com- practical goals but ‘to symbolise great conceptions’ and ‘to munity arises from collective aggression’ ( o.c. 35). But the aid in the formulation of a religious universe’ (PNK 49). In his ritual contains the violence (or the killing, or the sexuality) anthropological study of ancient Greek ritual Walter Burk- because it is made discontinuous with the ordinary world. ert used a similar concept of ritual and symbolism. Burkert ‘In a sacrifice the circle of participants is segregated from the explains that ‘biology has defined ritual as a behavioural outside world. Complicated social structures find expression pattern that has lost its primary function – present in its in the diverse roles the participants assume in the course unritualised model – but which persists in a new function, of the ritual, from the various “beginnings,” through prayer, slaughter, skinning, and cutting up, to roasting and, above Similarly, a monk in his cell or an artist working in the se- all, distributing the meat. There is a “lord of the sacrifice” clusion of his studio may be profoundly isolated from the who demonstrates his vitae necisque potestas [...]. And as for outside world and yet not feel the least bit lonely. Isolation the rest, each participant has a set function and acts ac- is simply a physical circumstance, a situation in which we cording to a precisely fixed order. The sacrificial community find ourselves, usually only temporarily. Loneliness, on the is thus a model of society as a whole’ (o.c. 37). In this sense other hand, is an existential condition. To be lonely is to feel rituals have a “cosmic” meaning: they express the order or cast out of the company of mankind. When there is no-one logos/kosmos of things. But despite their cosmic nature rituals to turn to (despite the possible presence of a great many often consist of very commonplace actions. Usually everyday people), when one is entirely thrown back upon oneself, one gestures and actions such as washing, preparing foods, eat- feels lonely. That is why Arendt writes that loneliness ‘is ing and drinking, the slaughter of an animal or even forms closely connected with uprootedness and superfluousness of sexual communion are chosen to figure in ritual. It is the [...]. To be uprooted means to have no place in the world, intimate familiarity of these actions that makes them eli- recognised and guaranteed by others; to be superfluous gible for ritual. But in ritual these actions lose their prosaic means not to belong to the world at all’ (Arendt 1968: 475). 326 nature and acquire a new symbolic meaning. ‘Before a be- Panajotis Kondylis has claimed that such an experience 327 haviour-pattern can become imbued with secondary mean- of loneliness is part of the existential condition of man in ings, it must be definite, and to the smallest detail familiar. postmodern mass society. If we recall his master metaphor Such forms are naturally evolved only in activities that are for postmodernity, which is characterised by an analytical- often repeated. An act that is habitually performed acquires an combinatory mode of being, it was the image of an infinite almost mechanical form, a sequence of motions that prac- space, a plane on which all humans, all values, all ideas, and tice makes quite invariable’ (PNK 160). It is only what is most all objects are simultaneously present in total equality. It is intimately known that can carry the force of new meanings the condition of ultimate relativism. Every individual has the without disintegrating. fundamental right, but by extension also the fundamental Rituals are used to symbolically heal a rupture between man duty, to construct his own identity from the myriad choices and his kosmos. This rupture is most acutely experienced as available. However, there are no more master narratives (as a form of profound loneliness. In The Origins of Totalitarian- Danto would call them) to fall back upon for guidance in this ism (1951) Hannah Arendt distinguished between loneliness project. The individual is an atom left to its own devices in and isolation. It is quite possible for us to be isolated without the construction of his identity. Those of us who cannot cope being lonely, just as we can be lonely without being isolated. with the pressures of self-creation will perish. They are des- We can experience abject loneliness in a crowd, where we tined to loneliness, an existence without any kind of anchor- are anything but isolated from our fellow human beings. age in the world. Self-creation is a freedom that often entails cruelty, for not only is it challenging and often paralysing to is not a coincidence: as she would argue in her Lectures on try and construct one’s identity, there is a veritable pressure Kant’s Political Philosophy, which were published posthumous- to do so, because everywhere in society we are constantly ly, it is only our ability to share our experiences of the world urged to identify ourselves and say who and what we are. with others that makes our experiences, and therefore the From our sexual identity to our tastes in music and furni- world, real. This was also Kant’s belief in the first and third ture: everything is now supposed to be highly individual and critiques, where he suggests that the only reason we can articulated. We must define ourselves. This is the burden and even talk with each other is that we must have some kind of terror of identity. Gemeinsinn or common sense. For Kant this meant that the Obviously, for Arendt it was the experience of the extermina- structure of perception was the same in all humans. Because tion camps that signified more than anything else the pro- our minds all share the same categories to structure our sen- foundly dissociative experience of the atomised individual. sory experience, we all see the same world and can therefore The people transported to the extermination camps were talk to each other about that world. That is the source of literally erased from the world, they were taken out of the our companionship. Incidentally, it is also the source for his communal world and placed in a non-place of which many claim that a disinterested and universally valid judgement 328 Germans would later claim that they “had not even known” on beauty was possible: if we look at the world disinterest- 329 such a place existed (or could exist). For the people in the edly, and if we all perceive the world in the same way, then camps the experience was dissociative because their world it follows that we should all experience beauty in relation to had been taken away from them, an existential condition the same objects. Of course, Kant knew that this was false that was exacerbated by the fact that they were also physi- logic because it is our subjective felt experience of perception cally tortured: their bodies were starved and humiliated, that makes us claim beauty for an object. Therefore Kant riddled with parasites; they were not allowed to keep their said that the objective or universally valid nature of judge- bodies clean; they were subjected to gruesome medical ex- ments on beauty was only an “as if”-objectivity, an “als ob”. periments; they were subjected to forced labour; and finally they were terminated like vermin. If we recall the discussion Dionysian Mysteries of The Body in Pain, it is clear that the extermination camps The memory of the holocaust was still fresh in the German- epitomise the strategies available to man to destroy another speaking world when a group of young Viennese artists person’s world entirely. As Arendt points out, only because around 1960 began a series of controversial performances. we share the world with others, ‘because we have common Their actions were partly meant as a violent reaction against sense, that is only because not one man, but men in the the all-too-comfortable and constrained conformism of the plural inhabit the earth can we trust our immediate sensual 1950s, when bourgeois Europe tried very hard to bounce experience’ (o.c. 476). Arendt’s reference to common sense through the atomic age as if there wasn’t a care, let alone a Cold War, in the world. All was bliss in the new era of the ful. For example, earlier scholars often too eagerly accepted shiny nuclear family. Everyone was doing his utmost to for- mythological accounts of Dionysian ritual found in literary get there had ever been such a thing as a Second World War. sources as reliable guides to actual ritual practice. More re- But for many young people growing up in that stifled air of cent scholarship has corrected this view, but many of the old enforced optimism the violence of the holocaust was felt misunderstandings about Dionysos and his revels remain to be seething under the thin veneer of preppy brightness. popular and are often repeated in non-academic books. The Viennese actionists wanted, among other things, to let Similarly, working in the 1960s and 1970s, some of the earlier this violence erupt so that it might be faced and dealt with. scholarship has found its way into Nitsch’s thinking about The most well-known artists from this circle were Günter Dionysian ritual. And since Nitsch’s project is artistic rather Brus, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Otto Mühl, and Hermann Nitsch. than anthropological the artist is entitled to appropriate any Since Schwarzkogler tragically took his own life in 1969 and interpretation or motif he likes, regardless of whether it is Mühl degenerated into sexually obsessed debauchery that still anthropologically sound. Similarly, a scientific “debunk- ultimately landed him in jail for sexual assault of a minor, it ing” of Nitsch’s concept of Dionysian ritual would be quite was left to Brus and Nitsch to represent what was best and pointless and would merely illustrate a critic’s less than suf- 330 most enduring about Viennese Actionism. It is Nitsch who ficient grasp of the difference between art and science. The 331 has in fact been the most visible and controversial artist of main purpose of the present section is therefore to sketch the group. His actions were often enacted in a ritual way, a portrait of Dionysos and his ritual that helps to elucidate including the slaughter of animals and the rubbing of naked Nitsch’s art. While some references to recent scholarship will human bodies with blood and entrails. The apparently ob- point to common misinterpretations, such an anthropologi- scene nature of his work often brought him to the attention cal critique is not the point or purpose of this discussion. In of the police, who raided several of his performances. In 1971 this sense the present discussion is necessarily and to a con- Nitsch bought Prinzendorf, a large estate that enabled him to siderable extent complicit with Nitsch’s interpretative eclec- perform his large-scale works on his own private property. ticism, if only because it is his vision that we seek to under- Prinzendorf henceforth became the home of what Nitsch stand and not the scientifically correct historical record. calls his Orgien Mysterien Theater, a clear reference to the Dionysos’ origins are cloaked in mystery. For a long time, mystery cults of ancient Greece, notably the cult of Dio- scholars thought he must have been a non-Greek god whose nysos. But before we look at Dionysian ritual and the way cult originated in what W.K.C. Guthrie calls ‘the homeland it operates in Nitsch’s work, we should make clear that no of orgiastic religion, Asia Minor’ (Guthrie 1954: 150). He was such discussion of Dionysos could ever be straightforward. therefore a barbarian god who had to be naturalised into Since the mid-nineteenth century scholarship on Dionysos the Hellenic pantheon, a process that was supposed to have has taken many forms, several of which were rather fanci- been accomplished by the fifth century BCE, when Eurip- ides’ Bacchai offers us the fullest literary source of informa- brought to life again, Dionysos was the god of rebirth, which tion available about the Dionysian cults. However, Linear B made him eligible as a fertility god, linked to the cycle of the tablets found in Mycenaean palaces suggest that the cult of seasons that shows nature dying and coming to life again. Dionysos is probably as old as that of the other gods (Burk- In this sense earth both brings forth life (which grows from ert 1985: 162; Bowden 2010: 106). The mythological facts it) and swallows it (the dead return to the earth). ‘Greatest about Dionysos’ birth are somewhat obscure and two ma- of Dionysian feasts was the Anthesteria, held in the month jor accounts are known. In both the Iliad and the Theogony of Anthesterion or January-February; it united Dionysos and Dionysos is presented as the child of Zeus and Semele, the the dead and expressed the dual function of the earth. It daughter of Kadmos, king of Thebes. This makes Dionysos also celebrated the opening of the new wine, for on the first the only Olympian god to be born from a mortal (Gantz 1993: day the huge jars were unsealed and on the second the par- 112). ‘According to the story, not wholly explained, of his ticipants gathered to try it, each with his own pitcher (from birth, Semele when pregnant with him was blasted by the which the day was known as Choes, ‘Pitchers’). On the third lightning. [...] Zeus saved his son by snatching him from her day they cooked a panspermia, a mixture of seeds and fruits womb and thrusting him into his own thigh until the time of the earth, in pots that gave the day its special name of 332 came for his birth’ (Guthrie 1954: 153). The second version Chytroi’ (Kirk 1974: 230). Among the many other Dionysian 333 of the events surrounding Dionysos’ birth belongs to an Or- festivals the most well-known are undoubtedly the ‘Oscho- phic tradition and claims that Dionysos was the son of Zeus phoria, the “Branch-carrying”: a procession set out from one and his own daughter Persephone. This version entails a of Dionysos’ sanctuaries in Athens and made its way to a myth about the origin of mankind that is linked to ‘the kill- shrine of Athena by the sea; it was led by two boys dressed ing of Dionysos by the Titans, the old giants who were the as girls and carrying vine-branches and grapes’ (o.c. 232). enemies of the gods of Zeus’ generation. They gave toys to Dionysos, and later his Roman counterpart Bacchus, was ex- the infant god, and while his attention was thus distracted pressly known as the god of wine and Caravaggio famously set on him, killed him and feasted on his flesh. Zeus hurled painted the god as a sickly jaundiced young man crowned a thunderbolt to burn them up, and from the soot arose the with vine-branches. In Homer and Hesiod the references race of men. [...] The heart of Dionysos was saved by Athena. to Dionysos as the god of wine are scarce (Gantz 1993: 114; She brought it to Zeus, and from it he caused Dionysos to be Guthrie 1954: 164). But it has been suggested that Dionysos reborn’ (o.c. 319-320). Another version of this tradition claims brought the gift of wine with him from his many wanderings that it was Demeter who put the pieces of the boy back to- in the East (Graves 1960: I, 27.b, p. 104). gether (Gantz 1993: 113). The two most characteristic and sensational aspects associ- The story of Dionysos’ birth and childhood misadventures ated with Dionysian cult are undoubtedly sparagmos and explains much about his rituals. For, having died and been omophagia, respectively ‘the tearing to pieces, and swallowing raw, of an animal body’ (Dodds 1951: 276). Sparagmos means captured in free-standing sculpture by the fourth century that the worshippers tore sacrificial animals from limb to artist Scopas. limb, often scattering the pieces around. Several myths tes- The practice of omophagia, the eating of the raw sacrificial tify to the way Dionysos took terrific vengeance upon cities flesh, was a logical consequence of enthusiasm, which is or peoples who rejected his worship. Usually, ‘the god’s ven- the experience of the god entering the worshipper’s body. geance takes the form of visiting with madness the women According to Professor Guthrie ‘the culminating point of the of the land where he has been spurned. This usually leads to rite was often the eating of a newly slain animal who was their tearing a victim in pieces, either the king who has been thought to embody the god. By imbibing the fresh life-blood, the god’s opponent, or, when the women themselves have the visible, physical form or symbol of deity, the worship- been the offenders, one of their own children’ (Guthrie 1954: per believed himself to acquire the spirit, strength, holiness 165-166). The chief participants in Dionysian ritual appear to or whatever of the divine characteristics was most desired’ have been women because ‘the greatest gift of Dionysos was (Guthrie 1954: 45). In this sense the practice expresses what the sense of utter freedom, and in Greece it was the women, professor Dodds calls ‘a very simple piece of savage logic. with their normally confined and straitened lives, to whom The homeopathic effects of a flesh diet are known all over 334 the temptation of release made the strongest appeal’ (o.c. the world. If you want to be lion-hearted, you must eat lion; 335 148). This release was taken to excessive extremes, culminat- if you want to be subtle, you must eat snake [...]. By parity of ing in ekstasis, which literally means ‘standing outside one- reasoning, if you want to be like god you must eat god [...]. self,’ and enthousiasmos or possession by the god. This pos- And you must eat him quick and raw, before the blood has session is expressed in uncontrolled raving (baccheia). In their oozed from him: only so can you add his life to yours, for ravings women would dance frantically in movements that “the blood is the life”’ (Dodds 1951: 277). But this is a roman- express what Camille Paglia has called ‘a rupturing extremi- ticised vision of Dionysian ritual. Recent scholarship sug- ty of torsion’ (Paglia 1991: 94), tossing their heads and expos- gests that the eating of raw sacrifical meat was mainly the ing their throats as if trying to extend their bodies to the full- stuff of myth and that it occurred only very rarely in actual est. The head would also be jerked forwards and backwards. ritual, where the meat was usually boiled or roasted before In his magisterial study of the nude in art, Kenneth Clark its distribution among the participants (Burkert 1983: 139; discusses the maenad or ‘the nude of ecstasy’ (Clark 1960: Christopher and Parker 2004: 628). As Walter Burkert ex- 264) at considerable length, describing in detail how the ec- plains, Greek sacrificial ritual was in fact ‘a straightforward static body ‘twists and leaps, and flings itself backwards, as and far from miraculous process: the slaughter and con- if trying to escape from the inexorable, ever-present laws of sumption of a domestic animal for a god’ (Burkert 1985: 55). gravity’ (o.c. 264). The twisting of the maenadic body is what If myth tells us that Dionysos took his vengeance by tearing Clark calls ‘the Scopaic twist’ (o.c. 270) because it was first people apart, the Dionysian ritual replaced these unfortu- nate people with sacrificial animals, which in turn had to governs everything that happens to us while we are unable be cooked before they could be eaten in the sacrificial meal. to control it in any way. To explain this, Nietzsche contrasted Burkert further notes that ‘in the Dionysian realm, as else- Dionysos with his opposite, Apollo, who was the god of light where, animal-sacrifice guarantees that the ritual functions and reason. Dionysos embodies the will-to-life and the cycle sensibly’ and illustrates the point with ‘our one securely of life and death. He refers to the primal realm of nature, attested instance of human sacrifice’. This was the case of where everything is moist and damp and where all life be- Zoilus, the priest of the Dionysian cult in Orchomenos of gins. Camille Paglia explains that ‘Dionysos rules what Plu- whom Plutarch claims that he actually killed a young wom- tarch calls the hygra physis, wet or liquid nature. [...] Diony- an during a ritual of flight and pursuit. The community was sian liquidity is the invisible sea of organic life’ (Paglia 1991: so shocked by this fanatical breach of sacrificial decorum 91), it is ‘the blind grinding of subterranean force, the long that Zoilus was put to death and the ritual was reformed slow suck, the muck and ooze’ (o.c. 5-6) of primal matter. In (Burkert 1983: 175). This shows that the violence enacted in this sense Dionysos symbolises the primal force of the kos- ritual was clearly distinguished from the violence narrated mos or of Being. Apollo, in contrast, is the rational principle in myth. Ritual is symbolic action and must therefore remain of order. Because of its shapeless and incomprehensible na- 336 firmly fictional. ture, Being (or the kosmos, or Fate) can never be expressed in 337 All these aspects of Dionysian ritual help us ‘to find out what a rational form. What governs the kosmos is what constantly effect [Dionysos] had on the Greek conception of man’s re- eludes us. This means that the Dionysian can take no form. lation to the divine powers’ (Guthrie 1954: 147). Dionysos’ Tragedy was an attempt to give it some form after all. It puts role had everything to do with the way the uncontrollable the tragic story of our dependence on a higher order on the invades our well-ordered human kosmos and shatters its stage in the form of a story. That is why Nietzsche says that logos. Dionysian ritual expresses ‘a deep and abiding truth Dionysos never appears naked on the stage: he is always about human nature [...]. No man can submit without a masked, clothed in some Apollonian guise. This means that struggle to the experience of having his distinctively human the unruliness of his primal power is clothed in the structure faculty of reason, and all that connects him with the normal of a story that makes his workings more comprehensible world, overwhelmed and submerged by those animal ele- to us. But while it illuminates the Dionysian, tragedy at the ments which, normally dormant or at least in subjection, same time shrouds it: it does not and cannot ever really re- are released and made dominant by the irresistible surge veal what it wants to reveal because the Dionysian is elusive of Dionysian power’ (o.c. 172). According to Nietzsche in Die on principle. Therefore tragedy symbolises the primary dy- Geburt der Tragödie (1872) Greek tragedy played an important namic of Being. role in making present this truth: tragedy helped the Greeks But ‘the impressive antithesis which [...] Nietzsche had to accept the fact that man is dependent upon Fate, which drawn between the “rational” religion of Apollo and the “ir- rational” religion of Dionysos’ (Dodds 1951: 68-69) might be normal everyday life, can free himself in the orgies from too strong, for the opposition between the two deities is less all that is oppressive and develop his true self. Raving be- radical than is often suggested. In fact, both Dionysos and comes divine revelation, a centre of meaning in the midst Apollo had rituals concerning enthousiasmos and ecstasy. But of a world that is increasingly profane and rational’ (Burkert there was a different kind of ecstasy involved. The ecstasy 1985: 292). But this invasion by the god was only a temporary in the rituals of Apollo is what professor Dodds has called experience. ‘While it lasted there was nothing on earth to ‘prophetic madness’ ( o.c. 64) or a ‘shamanistic’ (o.c. 71) type compare with it, but it left them as they were before [...]. The of ecstasy where the god speaks through a human vessel ekstasis was temporary, [...] and as it receded they felt that to reveal himself. The ecstasy or enthousiasmos offered by the god had left them and that they were human [...] once Dionysian ritual was quite a different matter: ‘its social func- more’ (Guthrie 1954: 180). To partake in Dionysian ritual was tion was essentially cathartic, in the psychological sense: it to be engulfed by brutal Being and to be brought back to the purged the individual of those infectious irrational impulses kosmos of societal life. which, if dammed up, had given rise, as they have done in other cultures, to outbreaks of dancing mania and similar Cleansing Cleanliness 338 manifestations of collective hysteria; it relieved them by The movement of immersion in the Dionysian and subse- 339 providing them with a ritual outlet. If that is so, Dionysos quent return to the human realm is structurally at work was in the Archaic Age as much a social necessity as Apollo; in the performances of Hermann Nitsch. Nitsch’s perfor- each ministered in his own way to the anxieties charac- mances contain so many elements that it would require a teristic of [Greek culture]. Apollo promised security [while] book-length study to discuss them all in detail. To sketch a Dionysos offered freedom [and] was essentially a god of joy’ general overview of his intentions we shall therefore take (o.c. 76). But Dionysian ritual had a profoundly altering ef- as starting-point the manifesto for the Orgien Mysterien The- fect on its participants. If Apollo simply used his ecstatic ater that Nitsch wrote in 1962. From that programmatic text priestesses as a medium through which he could reveal his we shall expand the discussion to take in later statements. wisdom, the Dionysian revellers actually came to partake of Nitsch starts by explaining his own role in the actions. ‘In the god’s divinity. ‘The Dionysian worshipper, at the height my artwork (a form of mysticism of being) I take the seem- of his ecstasy, was one with his god. Divinity had entered ingly negative, the unappealing, the perverse, the obscene, into him, he was entheos, and the one name Bacchos covered rut, and the sacrificial hysteria that results from these upon both deity and devotee’ (Guthrie 1954: 174). Walter Burkert me so that YOU can be spared the soiled, shameless descent further explains that ‘this state of frenzy is blessedness [...]. into the extreme. I am the expression of the entire creation. An atavistic spring of vital energy breaks through the crust I have dissolved myself in it and identified myself with it. of refined urban culture. Man, humbled and intimidated by All pain and lust, mixed together into one single expressive condition of rush, will penetrate me and therefore you’ (OMT intensely in the rush of orgiastic ritual, where ‘we identify 8). In a gesture that has earned him the derision of many a with the entire universe, with the entirety of all that exists’ sober-minded critic Nitsch clearly posits himself as a kind of (OMT 115-116). The Dionysian orgia achieves this level of artist-priest carrying the burden of sacrifice and absolution consciousness because all our senses are activated in it. In of mankind: ‘I want to deliver humanity from the bestial’ Nitsch’s ritual, there is touch, smell, taste, sight, and sound: (OMT 10). But behind this claim there is a complex meta- the ritual is experienced through the senses just like ‘life physical view of being that closely resembles the ecstatic is experienced through all five senses at once’ (OMT 118). worldview that we find in Dionysian ritual, but also in pan- Hence the Orgien Mysterien Theater is ‘a feast of all senses’ theism and Neoplatonism. (ibid.) and through its sensory intensity ‘the true experience For Nitsch Dionysos represents the realm of the repressed. of our universe, the embodiment of the universe, comes Society civilises us at the cost of restraining many of our into being. We recognise the universe as our own body. [...] biological and animalistic urges, primarily the desire to kill, The fully grasped and lived through moment (drunkenness but obviously also sexual lust. The Dionysian expresses the of being) brings identity with the essence of creation, with need for abreaction, for acting out what is repressed: ‘Das its moving, its changing, its never-ending realisation, in the 340 Dionysische ist ein anderes Wort für Abreaktionsbedürfnis’ (OMT infinity of eternity’ (OMT 119). 341 12). To be Dionysian is to live and experience life to the full- To break the chains of civilised repression the Dionysian est, including all the desires and urges that society seeks to cult ‘wakes up anal sensuality. The prohibition against lust- cancel out. In a 1978 manifesto Nitsch formulates a vision fully touching the genitals, the prohibition against smearing that is somewhat reminiscent of Neoplatonic emanation excrement, connects the anal to the sexual realm’ (OMT 36). from the One. He sees the entire material universe as one Children are taught not to play with themselves, with their all-encompassing and self-creating organism in search of excrement or with any bodily secretion. They are taught to self-awareness. It is an atheist pantheism, a materialistic feel shame about their bodies’ most natural and pleasure-in- religion of the earth. Everything in the universe is intercon- ducing functions and to submit to strict rules of cleanliness. nected: ‘creation (all that is and that comes about) strives This robs them of some of the most elementary sensual towards experience of itself through the living. The course experiences available to man and makes it impossible for of the worlds, the whole of everything, creates itself through them (or for any socialised mature person) to fully under- the living, through all living creatures, all organisms, to know stand the existential import of the surrounding world, which itself’ (OMT 115). We, as organisms, are part of that system, is thoroughly organic. We are no longer part of the universe. so that Nitsch can claim that ‘I believe that the universe is We have cut ourselves off from it. And because this cutting my true body’ (OMT 116). This cosmic expansiveness, this off occurs at a very young age the damage is lasting. It also belonging to the organism of the all, is experienced most accounts for much violence, such as hatred against the body, especially bodies that remind us of the organic nature of all and partridges. It is sad when a bullet tears apart the heart being: the female body (with its connections to the bloody of a doe, a deer, or a boar. But it is beautiful to eat game and mess of childbirth) and the homosexual body (with its sym- drink red wine with it’ (OMT 120). The problem is not with bolic connection to passive anal pleasure, which the domi- eating meat but with the way that meat is obtained. The nant heterosexual male must edit out of his sexual being). meat we buy in the supermarket is prepared and packaged Because these cultural restrictions must be breached Nitsch’s in a way that allows us to forget the bloody slaughter that ritual attaches great importance to the ritual soiling of the preceded it. Our societies have placed a major taboo on kill- body, which is covered in blood and intestines while fluids ing, but Nitsch claims it is ‘a fake taboo, for killing goes on such as wine, milk, honey, and egg-yolk are smeared on it. on a daily basis. We just don’t want to get our hands dirty. There is a strong sadomasochistic current at work in these [...] We are the strongest, most insatiable and most relent- acts. But sadomasochism simply expresses the reversed less killing predator’ (OMT 130). It is therefore necessary to violence of breaking the shackles of violent repression. To acknowledge the bloody facts of murder and slaughter to submit to the sadomasochistic soiling of oneself is to regain fully achieve our humanity, not because cruelty and slaugh- contact with one’s true physical and therefore essential self. ter are good, but because one must pass through the darkest 342 In the loud and hysterical explosion of ritual man seeks to knowledge of oneself to be able to truly civilise oneself. We 343 reconnect with what is at once most intimate and most for- must face what and who we really are. Ritual is our opportu- eign within him: the body physical, which is the universe of nity to embrace this dark knowledge without causing actual all nature, with all its urges, desires, and functions. The body harm to our fellow beings. Obviously, this argument also and its manifold desires exist, as all of nature exists, beyond entails a profound indictment of capitalism, which is really good and evil: it is simply there. And its existence must be no mode of civilisation at all. Capitalism is merely barba- fully and honestly acknowledged. rism masquerading as civilisation, for it is the culture of the This does not mean that Nitsch endorses violence. On the benefit of the few at the cost of the destruction of the many. contrary, he points out that no animal is slaughtered in his Our supposedly civilised democracies prate much of equality actions that would not otherwise have been slaughtered as and human rights, but at the same time there is inequality well: ‘No animal should be killed on my account’ (OMT 10). and exploitation everywhere. Our societies choose money All the animals that are disembowelled in the Orgien Mys- over people on principle. But we flinch at the sight of blood terien Theater have either died of old age or had to be killed and feign to abhor violence. It is therefore necessary to live of necessity (because of illness or injury). ‘Pain and torture and experience our extremes intensely. In his most frenzied of animals are fundamentally avoided in my actions’ (OMT moments, which are reminiscent of Sade’s Sodome, Nitsch 32). In the 1978 manifesto Nitsch returns to this point and even writes that actual human corpses, preferably corpses of writes that ‘it is sad when shot rips apart hares, pheasants, young boys, should be butchered, cut up, and fucked in the ritual (OMT 38). Obviously, these passages are not meant as ing unartistic can work in art, only those things which lead incitements to actual crimes: they are merely provocative to art can work through it’ (OMT 40). Hence Nitsch is very expressions of the deep necessity of facing our most violent sceptical about contemporary political art because it ‘confus- impulses. ‘Through the theatre we can make our abreaction es art with a politically-historical mode of sharing informa- conscious and achieve catharsis. I show flesh and blood, tion; the possibility to penetrate into the depth of the actual things to which people react very strongly, they avoid them; dimension of art, namely form, is not acted upon’ (ibid.). So but those who look and experience intensely achieve a con- Nitsch would probably agree with Langer that art is not and scious abreaction and catharsis through aesthetics’ (OMT should not be discursive, for that puts the goal of art outside 22). the work of art itself. Nitsch also points out that ‘form is Nitsch often stresses that the line between art and life is not usually something external, not something superficially obliterated in his work: everything in his actions is real. ‘The aesthetic, but it is that essential thing that makes art art. most important thing about my theatre – which I perform It is false to speak of formalism very often: it is a complete together with the spectator – is that all that happens is real. misunderstanding of form. Formalism usually refers to an In the old, conventional theatre, the actor “plays” his part. art that uses only form and lacks all content. Of all that art 344 That is not reality. In contrast, in my theatre everything is has to offer, form is the most profound. [...] The actual depth 345 real. The objects I use, such as animals, blood, sugar, are real. of art lies in the extreme penetration into the ever unfath- They are not symbols for something else, as was the case in omable and inexhaustible possibilities of form. Art expresses the old theatre’ (OMT 20-21). But all these real elements are nothing but itself. Art is embedded in form’ (OMT 41). By not there for their own sake: they are motifs integrated into consequence, ‘the form-content problem does not exist for a Gesammtkunstwerk which expresses Nitsch’s philosophy. me, the most significant and only content of art is its form’ And if the individual motifs do not symbolically represent (OMT 42). In fact, the whole form-content issue is simply a anything else, the action in its entirety is very much a sym- result of our Christian heritage, which spurns the material bol or, as Nitsch puts it, a form. In fact, Nitsch is very insis- (form), bifurcates body and mind, and urges us to find deeper tent about the importance of form in all art, including his spiritual meanings in the physical, which becomes illegiti- own. ‘The most important goal of my work is form. [...] Art mate if no such meanings can be found. must be beautiful. And that means that it is formal. With- The strong formal element guarantees that Nitsch’s actions, out form there is no art. Form is the real message that art no matter how much reality they incorporate, remain fiction- can bring people. Art is form’ (OMT 23). In a lecture of 1970 al. The excess of his actions ‘is restrained in the theatre, it is Nitsch has discussed his ideas about form extensively. He achieved within the orders of play, rules, it is safeguarded, claims that ‘the specific nature of art lies in purely formal it becomes visible as an aesthetic phenomenon [...]. Pain is elaboration. Form represents the deepest nature of art. Noth- avoided. As pointed out before, all my actions are supported by the principle of form, they all really take place, but their is eliminated, the inclusion of the spectator is never in the meaning lies in the form, in the retrieval of new aesthetic least coercive. values’ (OMT 39). Hence the sacrifice in the ritualistic action If loneliness is indeed at the heart of the postmodern hu- ‘is performed bloodless, symbolic, abstractly spiritualised, man condition, as Kondylis claims, and if Arendt is correct to but it is not therefore less real’ (OMT 9). This tension be- suggest that loneliness was cultivated in the most perverse tween fiction and reality makes Nitsch’s actions an ideal way in the extermination camps of nazism, then the work of test-case for our definition of the primary illusion of perfor- Nitsch tries to undo this violence and re-establish a connec- mance. All the art forms and real elements that Nitsch uses tion with the world. Nitsch’s rituals allow their participants are incorporated into the Gesammtkunstwerk that is the ac- to enter into contact with the kosmos or nature or Being. Be- tion, the ritual as work. But it is a work that also includes the ing is a kosmos the logos of which eludes us. For Nitsch the audience. In fact, since Nitsch wants to obliterate the bound- ritual is the place where Being can be experienced without aries between life and art within the ritual, his work fits our the interface of language or reason. We are immersed in it. definition perfectly. By making the estate of Prinzendorf in Instead of trying to explain Being, and hence explain it away its entirety the scene of his theatre, it becomes an enclosure. or circle around it without touching its essence, we can get 346 It is a magic circle. All who enter, enter the forcefield of the into unmediated contact with Being through ritual. This al- 347 performance and become part of its transformative ritual. lows man to feel grounded again in the world because he To enter the estate is to become a participant. And because is brought into direct contact with what is at once most the idea that underlies the entire performance is the idea intimate and most foreign in him: Being. It is obvious that of fundamental connectedness within the universe, what Nitsch’s work here echoes Martin Heidegger’s remarkable happens to Nitsch or the participants in the performance, claim that Western culture suffers from what he calls Seins- also happens to the spectators who are in communion with vergessenheit or forgetfulness of Being. This means that the them. This is similar to Aristotle’s concept of katharsis, where Western philosophical tradition since Plato has objectified the audience finds release through empathy with what is Being into some kind of Highest Being, whether a Platonic enacted. But there is a difference because in Nitsch’s work Idea of the Good or an almighty god. By objectifying Being there is no distance between the spectators and the partici- the sense of it as an unruly, invisible and impenetrable force pants. Such a distance is part of the “old” theatre. But unlike is somehow lost. Being is given clear Apollonian form, it is the unwitting participants (the passers-by) in Burden’s Dead a benign Father or a transcendent Idea, and it can be ad- Man, all spectators at the Orgien Mysterien Theater are free to dressed through prayer or penetrated through philosophical come and go as they please and can decide for themselves to reflection. Heidegger urges us to see Being again as it really what extent (if at all) they want to get involved in the ritual. is. And its true nature is what the Greeks called Fate. The So although the distance between spectator and participant German word for Fate is Schicksal, which has the same root as Geschick, something which is sent us. And this, Heidegger of pain (the sadism of Sade) with the lustful experience of remarks, is exactly what Being actually is: it is not an object, inflicted pain (the submission of baron Von Sacher-Masoch). not a person or person-like instance, but it is “what hap- The instrument of the ritual is pain. As we saw, pain destroys pens” or “what befalls us”. Geschick is visited upon us in the the world. But since the pain is restrained within the rules same way the Greeks were visited by Fate. It comes from of the sexual game, its world-destroying power is curtailed. nowhere and nobody is responsible for it. It is again the vio- This is a paradoxical process that requires explanation. If a lent intrusion of the unruly kosmos into the neatly rational person is tortured, the combination of physical distress and human world, ‘an incursion from the fathomless depths psychological terror encloses her in her body. Pain is inflicted beyond the limits of sane and conscious human personal- as a way of destroying the world. Although many practices ity’ (Guthrie 1954: 173). Our brutal animality is part of our known to torturers are also used in sadomasochism, their Fate, our Geschick, which we must work through and come to role and meaning there are fundamentally different. The terms with if we are ever to achieve any kind of authentically most important difference lies in the relationship between full humanity. the participants. In torture, there is an aggressor who vio- lates a victim. In sadomasochism there is an equal relation 348 Irreligious Rituals between sexual partners. There are firmly set rules about 349 Eroticism is the formalising of unruly sexuality. It is lust cap- what is and what is not allowed. Hence, the submissive tured in the ritualised form of the spectacle. And the most partner does retain control at all times, even if she submits ritualistic form of eroticism is sadomasochism. In its theatri- to a ritual in which many of the events visited upon her are cal enactment of brutal violence the sadomasochistic ritual unexpected. The submissive person chooses to play the part, comes very close to Dionysian ritual, both in structure and in derives enjoyment from it, and normally has a way of ending meaning. In essence, sadomasochism is a ritual of surrender: the ritual at any time by giving a prescribed sign. This means the passive partner submits to the dominant partner, who that the sexual ritual of sadomasochism is never arbitrary in gains control over another person’s body. The submissive the way that torture is. This links sadomasochism to Diony- partner surrenders himself. In games of bondage he or she sian ritual with its many rules and prescriptions. It is a the- is literally tied up and sometimes even gagged, preventing atre of excess, and hence a measure of control and restraint them from speaking or screaming. In certain extreme games is exercised. Between the sexual partners there is not an full sensory deprivation is applied, as when the submis- aggressive relation but a relation of trust: both partners sur- sive partner’s body is wrapped in cellophane or dressed in render to each other. a rubber body-suit. The most well-known version of the This reciprocity is very important. It is a common mistake sadomasochistic ritual, however, is the one from which it to assume that it is merely the passive partner who sur- takes its double name: a combination of the lustful infliction renders. But by accepting the token of the submissive body, the dominant partner gains not only power over that body, nant partner. Once the passive partner is pulled back into but also responsibility; not simply the responsibility of play- the real world, the ritual ends. So the sexual ritual has the ing by the rules as they are set, and hence not inflict actual structure of a passage: just like Dionysos (or Christ) the pas- violence, but also the responsibility of providing enjoyment sive partner descends into the underworld but returns (rises for the passive partner. To dominate is an exhausting task: if from the dead) unscathed, or at least relatively so, and usual- the passive partner does not experience ecstasy (but rather ly not scathed beyond what measure he or she had declared boredom or, worse still, non-pleasurable discomfort) the desirable at the beginning of the ritual. dominant partner has failed miserably. In this sense there This structure of descent-release-return is not only a game certainly is a dialectic of master and slave: by surrender- of trust between partners, one of its possible effects is a ing, the passive partner surrenders his ego; by accepting the growing trust in the world. By embracing the Dionysian, one body of the passive partner, the dominant partner invests can learn not to fear it, or to fear it less. Hence, sadomasoch- his ego. If the ritual fails, it is the dominant partner who is ism, and especially masochism, is probably one of the surest to blame. It is he or she who stands to lose face, no matter cures for neurosis available. To face one’s fears and anxieties, how much he or she humiliates the passive partner. The to wallow in the excrement that society forbids us to seek 350 passive partner chooses and embraces humiliation, which is pleasure in, is to master them and put them to rest. To be 351 a source of tremendous relief. It is also a gesture of tremen- a masochist is to commune with both the cosmos and the dous trust and courage. It is a leap into the void. The passive kosmos: one becomes part of both universal materialist na- partner descends into the Dionysian realm of the formless: ture and unruly Fate that disinterestedly governs our ways. by giving up identity he or she returns to the primal unity The sense of surrender and its concomitant release can be with the universe. By losing or giving up, temporarily, the exceptionally forceful. There is an astonishing chapter in Pier sense of self, one is reduced to one’s physical being, a part of Paolo Pasolini’s last and unfinished novel Petrolio in which a cosmic nature. One becomes organism. To be dominant is to man drives to the outskirts of Rome, ventures out to a der- cling to Apollonian form: one must act upon the other, and elict stretch of urban wasteland, and lets himself be fucked action requires determination and deliberation. The release by a group of riff-raff. He (for the man is himself the narra- experienced by the passive partner is to a large extent due tor of the chapter) describes his masochistic submission in to the ritualistic nature of the sexual game. In this respect almost mystical terms. This is no coincidence: to be anally it resembles performance art: it is known more or less from penetrated is to be exceptionally vulnerable. One is literally the start what the ritual will be like and how long it will take. open; witness the remarkable shots in porn films of assholes This means that the passive partner knows that he will be that stay spread open even after the penis has been pulled pulled back from the Dionysian abyss, which makes it easier out. To have one’s ass opened to that extent, and maintain for him or her to surrender in trust to the power of the domi- this openness even when there is no intrusive foreign body squeezing it open, is to invite everything and anything to should probably simply speak of a masochistic ritual rather enter. It is small wonder that most cultures have morally than a sadomasochistic one. Anita Phillips explains that ‘the condemned anal sex, especially between men; not because two species are anything but complementary [...]. Sadism is such intercourse is somehow unnatural, but because the characterised by a sullen, resentful apathy punctuated by symbolical link with total submission and shameful loss of bursts of self-pitying rage, in Sade’s case directed at god and self is obvious. In fact, it is the whole point of the practice. his mother-in-law. My sense of Sade’s driving impulse is of Interestingly, this again shows how the power-relations in violence fantasised as compensation for the feeling of being sadomasochism are inverted. It is usually the dominant weighed down by an oppressive figure. [...] Sadism is a story partner who is depicted as masculine, forceful, and virile. But of great pathos and even failure, in that the violence never in actual fact, it is the passive partner who engages in hero- accomplishes its goal of clearing a free space for action, for ics for it is he or she who performs the role that really takes intervention into history. Highly autonomous, the masoch- heroic guts. To be anally submissive is to be at once superbly ist’s faults are vanity and posturing. While the sadist seeks heroic and inexcusably slutty. It is no doubt this paradoxical a victim, and is repelled by the masochist’s capacity for feature of masochism and sexual submission that accounts pleasure, which diminishes his own, the masochist wants to 352 for its enormous rush. It is a short-circuit that results in loss find a playmate. The opposite number is someone who can 353 of self. And as Anita Phillips remarks in her lucid defence be convinced or charmed into acting the role of torturer, not of masochism, ‘there is nothing so unusual about wanting a brutal heavyweight [...]. No sadist is any good for a mas- to leave one’s identity behind. Any kind of real enjoyment ochist, since each is disqualified from dancing to the other’s enables a temporary forgetting of the self, whether it is gaz- tune, with the result that both are wrong-footed. The perfect ing at a Giotto fresco or betting on the dogs. There is nothing choice may be another masochist’ (o.c. 12). The key to this so helpful and invigorating as excessive enjoyment. [...] The paradox probably lies in the fact that there is a sadist in ev- reason that boredom is so miserable is because it means ery masochist. Sadomasochism is an ambivalent fetish, not being continually conscious of oneself. The same applies to in the sense that it needs two different kinds of people to be the jaded person who is unable to make use of the resources realised (namely a sadist and a masochist), but in the sense around them because a sense of surfeit allows no space in- that what we call a masochist is probably a sadomasochist side, no hunger to draw on external stimuli’ (Phillips 1998: (and vice versa) while a sadist is quite something else. Part of 105). The masochist is mystically cleansed of the burden of the enjoyment of the dominant partner in sadomasochism is identity through immersion in the muck. undoubtedly an experience of projection: he or she is inflict- In a very real sense, sadomasochism is a misleading term be- ing upon the submissive partner what they would probably cause it suggests that in the sadomasochistic ritual a sadist like to have inflicted upon themselves but are too chicken and a masochist meet to their mutual contentment. But we to submit to. Sadism, on the other hand, is a rage that rises, as Phillips suggests, from frustration. It is a rage against the function of the physical: there is nothing in heaven that was world. Which is not to suggest that the masochist is at peace not first experienced in the body. If we may paraphrase Aris- with the world: he has simply found an entirely opposite totle, it is unnecessary to create a superfluous order of supe- way of dealing with his frustration. What the masochist rior beings. We do not need god if we are willing and able to needs, is someone who is willing to slow down time with listen to nature; not in some corny New Age way, but in the him or her, someone who will make it their own desire and sense of beginning to think and feel about ourselves as an enjoyment to see the submissive partner experience ex- organism. ‘That man is an animal I certainly believe,’ writes tended pleasure. To torture a masochist, one needs empathy, Langer, ‘and also, that he has no supernatural essence, “soul” not sadism. or “entelechy” or “mind-stuff,” enclosed in his skin. He is an organism, his substance is chemical’ (PNK 40). Hence, god Lost in the Stars: A Materialist Manifesto is an unnecessary, or at best an aesthetic, hypothesis. We In masochism, as in all Dionysian ecstasy, we temporarily should not kneel down for gods of our own (or others’) mak- give up the world to have it given back to us; or to have our- ing. One should only ever kneel down to give a blow-job. selves be reborn into it. As Phillips points out, ‘the achieve- Immanuel Kant once remarked that there were two things 354 ment of the masochist is to attempt to grasp, with the imagi- that filled him with awe: the infinite sky above him and the 355 nation, to suffer passively, with the body and will, the transi- infinite moral law within him. In both instances we are con- tion between life and death’ (o.c. 154). To hover between life fronted with our own insignificance. There is nothing quite and death is to hover on the threshold of kosmos, it is to gaze so dizzying as to put one’s head back in the night and stare into its abyss and not be annihilated by it. It is to sense its at the star-lit sky, which seems to tilt and turn above us and pull and then be pulled away from it again. It is playing with which seems to suck us in if we look long enough. When the the edge. In this sense it is a truly religious experience, far night is especially clear, it may even seem as if the stars or more so than any of the traditional monotheistic religions. It the moon are moving towards us, or we towards them. We is often claimed by religious people that atheists do not re- are indeed lost in the stars, hidden away on a speck of dirt in ally have any kind of profound spiritual life, as if to dismiss the cosmos. There is no sense in the universe. It simply ex- the transcendent is to be void of the spiritual. But there is ists. It changes according to several physical, chemical, and great spirit in the material world. In fact, it is probably far biological principles, but to no purpose and with no intent. more authentically profound to worship the earth and the There is simply infinity gaping at us. What both Nitsch and body than to worship any kind of fictional superior being. As the masochist attempt to achieve is an intensified experi- we saw in our discussion of Langer, man is by nature sym- ence of that void, that emptiness, and the great havoc it bolic. It is a yearning of the organism to express itself sym- makes of our certainties, our sense of self and purpose. The bolically. Religions are symbolic systems. Hence, they are a point of ecstasy is to come into contact with that void and to accept it. There is release in accepting one’s futility. And the undoing what should be an unsettling transcendence. To odd thing is that suddenly, when one accepts one’s futility, have an almighty Father or other superior being is to shut nothing is futile anymore, for one suddenly sees the things the door on any real transcendence before you have even that really matter in life, in the world. Our passage in this life started. To have a god is a clever way of having your infin- is brief at best. And there is no other life. So all we can do is ity and eating it, too. What transcendence is possible in a live our life in constant awareness of its finite nature. This universe where one man has already died to save us all? To attitude makes a mockery of our vanities, of the bustle of ev- have religious convictions is to be cuddled to death. It is life eryday business. It shows the obscenity of capitalism, career- made easy, with a never-faltering moral compass to tell you ism, and crude materialism while highlighting the blessings what the universe is like and what your particular place in it of small pleasures, beauty, art, human companionship, and should be. It’s the Rough Guide to Creation, telling you what is the appeal of the sensual (and sexual) world. It is a release natural and what is not, what is orderly and what is not, and to be able to accept insignificance on a cosmic scale (and is hence which parts of creation you may oppress or destroy there, could there be, any other scale?). without sinning against the great immortal code of the cre- This acceptance is true religion. And it is a truth that or- ator. It separates the chosen or the pure from the rejects and 356 ganised religion rarely yields. To the extent that traditional the impure. Metaphysically, it is an Apollonian mask slapped 357 religions identify Being with a god, and usually a benign over Dionysian truth, but not to allow Dionysos to appear, god at that, they simply stunt our sensitivity for the infinite, but to hide him, to make him invisible. Religions tell us that the meaningless, the annihilating void that stares back at the mask is all the reality there is. For all their talk of deeper us from Kant’s starlit heaven. The mortification of the flesh, and ever deepening dimensions of meaning, religions are the denial of the physical, the belief in the transcendent, the shockingly one-dimensional, for there is no place in them for rejection of the organism and its manifold functions: these either the infinite or the material. This is as true of Islam and are the bad faith of religion. There is no real spirituality in Judaism as it is of Christianity. The true way to ecstasy is the any belief system that has a benign god as guarantor that way of all flesh. This is what sex, and particularly masoch- all is or will be well. There is only fake transcendence if one ism, does: it takes us to the threshold of death and brings us transcends into the secure knowledge that there is a benign into contact with the great void into which we will one day, logos governing both the temporary and the eternal worlds. inevitably, collapse. As the highest instance, the god is literally the lid on the universe: he contains and makes pleasant all that is incom- Demonic Time prehensible, material, and unruly. Life is a mystery, religion The sense of cosmic and existential unrest is nowhere more proclaims, but happily there is a god at hand to explain away tangible than in the films of Béla Tarr. Tilda Swinton, who our perplexity with tales of creation and a cozy afterlife, worked with Tarr on The Man from London (2009), has justifi- ably described his cinema as a ‘medieval space programme’ including the little Estikes of this world. To make his dream (Quandt 2009: 11). The description sounds iconoclastic but come true, he invites the villagers to give him their money evokes very well the coming together of the ancient and the to start up the community. Then they must wait for him in contemporary in Tarr’s work. Tarr’s films speak of our pres- a ruined house outside the village, where he will come to ent times, but they do it by using a symbolism and a visual collect them. Most villagers are so wrecked with guilt over language that seem to speak to us from some dark backward Estike’s death that they willingly hand over their money and in the abysm of time. ‘We have some ontological problems,’ leave the village behind to follow Irimias, who takes them to the director has claimed with some understatement, ‘and the nearest city and splits them up in several houses and ap- now I think a whole pile of shit is coming from the cosmos’ partments, where they are to wait for further instructions. It (Daly and Le Cain 2001). Tarr has filmed this cosmic excre- is forbidden for them to seek contact with one another. Once ment most impressively in his trilogy of films based on the the group of villagers has been split up in this miniature work of novelist László Krasznahorkai: Damnation (Kárhozat, diaspora, Irimias alerts the police to their presence, accusing 1988), Sátántangó (1994) and Werckmeister Harmóniák (2000). them of being an organisation of immoral anarchists, and If anything, Tarr’s films deal in cosmic entropy, showing the bolts with the money. 358 gradual disintegration of communities in the wake of some An important key to understanding Sátántangó is the mys- 359 intrusive event. This is the basic structure of Sátántangó, terious figure of Irimias, who shares his name with the Tarr’s most important and most ambitious film with a run- prophet of the Old Testament Jeremiah, who foretold the ning time of over seven hours. The film is set in a small rural destruction in 587 BC of Jerusalem and of the Temple. Hence, community in Hungary where the farmers drink away their he is the prophet of doom. In the film, it is never made en- meagre income in the local pub. Until they hear of the im- tirely clear who he is and what his secret might be. But it minent return of one Irimias (Míhály Víg) and his companion is clear that he is driven by greed. He also seems to know a Petrina (István Horváth). For some reason, which is never lot about the villagers, things that they would prefer to keep made clear, the news of their return causes a lot of commo- hidden, and that he wields a lot of power over them through tion among the villagers. Apparently both men had disap- this knowledge. In this, Irimias resembles Karrer (Míklos B. peared more than a year before and were presumed dead. Székely), the main figure in Damnation. Karrer is a nihilistic The unrest in the village reaches its peak with the death of loner who wastes his days away sitting around his appart- the young girl Estike (Erika Bók), who commits suicide with ment. His only diversion are his visits to the local bar, wittily rat poison. Irimias arrives in time to act upon Estike’s death. called the Titanik Bar, and his liaison with his mistress, who He gathers the villagers around her body and tells them is the singer in the bar. One day, the proprietor of the bar his dream: to create a collective farm, a harmonious living offers him the job of picking up a package in another town. It environment where the world would be safe for everyone, is clear that this is a shady and illegal business. Karrer ac- cepts the job, but gets his mistress’ husband to do it for him, wreaks havoc upon the community. The morning after, some after which he goes to the police and denounces the propri- calm has returned, but this calm lacks the innocence which etor of the bar and the husband, so that they will be arrested. seemed to be present before the cataclysmic events of the Both Irimias and Karrer have some knowledge about others night before. In theory, the sun structures the universe again, that allows them to move them about like pawns on a chess but in reality the damage of chaos cannot be entirely un- board. Their actions bring about a dissolution of the estab- done. It is like the story of the Fall: once we have eaten from lished order in the community, whether it is the relation- the tree of knowledge of good and bad, there is no way back. ships between a very small group of people, as in Damnation, We cannot pretend it never happened, we cannot pretend or an entire community, as in Sátántangó. we do not know, or, in the film, we cannot go on living as if In Werckmeister Harmóniák this theme is taken up again. The the outbreak of violence had never occurred. The community quiet life in a small town is suddenly disrupted when a car- has been ruptured and ravaged and life from now on will nival moves into town, sporting as its main attraction a huge have to be lived and rebuilt on the ruins of that violence. stuffed whale and a mysterious “Prince” who speaks of the Sátántangó has a figure similar to Janos in the Doctor (Peter end of time and soon gathers around him a great number of Berling). This burly man is a drunk who spends his time 360 followers. One night, these people march through town and looking through his window, observing the villagers and 361 beat up everything and everyone they can find in a terrifying recording their actions in drawings and notebooks (there is explosion of violence. Just like the other two films, Werck- a notebook for each villager). The voice of the Doctor is the meister Harmóniák has a central figure who seems to know voice of the narrator, so we cannot exclude the possibility everything about everyone, but he is much more benevolent that he is somehow orchestrating the events in the film, or than in the other films. It is Janos Valuska (Lars Rudolph), the even conjuring them up. His position as a possible demiurge mailman who also functions as the town dunce. Janos’ privi- or god-like figure is attested by the fact that a picture of the leged status as one who knows about others is symbolised in solar system hangs next to his window. It is possible that his a map of the universe that hangs above his bed. At the be- record-keeping activities are a way of imposing some kind of ginning of the film there is a magnificent scene where Janos order on the events in the village. It would seem he is writ- choreographs some men in the pub into playing the earth, ing and recording against chaos and against dissolution. But the sun, and the moon who circle around each other until on the night of Estike’s death, the Doctor runs out of alcohol they achieve the constellation of a solar eclipse. When the and heads out into the night to buy some more. Wandering eclipse occurs, Janos explains, chaos breaks loose on earth. through the darkness, he happens upon Estike, who has run When the sun reappears, order is established again. This, in away from home. He tries to follow her through the pouring essence, is also the structure of events in the film, where the rain, but he collapses and she gets away. At this point, events appearance of an unusual event, the arrival of the carnival, take a turn for the chaotic. The next morning, Estike is dead and the Doctor is taken away to hospital, leaving the scene of ritual. It is an event we must schedule into our lives. We open for Irimias to start his demonic operations, undoing must take time to withdraw from the everyday world, shut the work the Doctor has done by sowing schism among the the world out and engage these films. Obviously, we have to villagers and breaking up their community. When the Doctor do this every time we watch a film, read a book, or go see a returns to the village at the end of the film, it lies deserted. play, but we are rarely asked to do it with such commitment, There is nothing left to record, nothing left to orchestrate. and to such overwhelming effect, as in Tarr’s films (but I am The kosmos, which was the Greek word for both the cos- writing as one who has never been made to sit through an mos and the order that kept it together, has disappeared. So entire cycle of Wagner’s Ring). His films engulf you and draw the Doctor nails shut his window, slowly creating the black you into their own universe. In the end, time takes over. This screen on which the film ends: there is no more world to is very important, for usually watching a film is still a very look at, no more world to record. structured event. Most narrative films, and even quite a few One of the key features of Tarr’s films is their length. The experimental films, adhere to some kind of basic structure long running time, usually filmed in real time and with only that allows us to stay oriented in time. We have a gut sense the barest minimum of cuts, is often associated in the film of how far the film has developed, and we usually sense 362 with the act of walking or running. But the people who walk when the final act has begun. Most films, but also most nov- 363 in Tarr’s films do not seem to be going anywhere. They walk els and plays, have a curve of action that we can follow and through fields or wander through the night or through rain, that tells us how much film is still left (reading a book, turn- but their actions often seem to lack any clear goal. When ing page after page, the amount of remaining pages visibly there is a goal, it is often negative, as when Janos runs away diminishes, like the time remaining on a film diminishes). from the village along a railway track at the end of Werck- Tarr’s films do not allow us to do this. This is especially true meister Harmóniák. Another negative or meaningless goal of Sátántangó. If one is watching a film that runs for about is the endless walking of the villagers in Sátántangó, deter- seven hours, there is really no point in anticipating the mid- minedly marching towards their own doom in a city they dle, the end, or anything. Even the film’s individual chapters do not know. We are also made to watch Irimias and Petrina sometimes run longer than an average feature film. And yet walking towards the village in the rain, which gives us the film is not meant to be seen on several occasions, like a plenty of time to contemplate their identity and intentions; television mini-series: ideally, it must be submitted to in one questions that mostly go unanswered. But there is a very extended sitting. But to do so is to surrender to time. And important formal point to these extended scenes. The mas- in surrendering to time, one breaks away from everyday life sive length of these films forces us to submit to them. You and sojourns, for the duration of the film, in a parallel uni- cannot casually watch a Tarr film, you have to make time verse. for it and commit to it. This gives the act of watching an air Comes Undone the same time. Similarly, Sátántangó is structured in twelve If we take an even closer look at time in Tarr’s films, it would chapters, but they are not of equal length and especially in appear that time, or maybe we should now speak of Time, the first half of the film they are not presented chronologi- is the true protagonist of these films. And time in Tarr’s uni- cally. The expanses of time that Tarr presents overlap and verse, and especially in the universe of Sátántangó, is firmly change perspectives. This way, time is shown not only out out of joint. The centre cannot hold and kosmos or order of joint but unfolded, deconstructed from the inside (Tarr’s comes undone. One of the basic structuring devices for order film walks through time and space in a way similar to Da- in the world is time. But there is something exceedingly odd vid Hockney’s Visit with Christopher and Don). In such an un- about time as a unit for measuring anything. Phenomeno- hinged universe the folds of time become visible as demonic logically, time is an absurd thing. To measure space we have openings: black holes in time through which decay seeps in. metric systems which, although culturally relative and even And before long the universe starts to rot. variable (centimetres and metres are not feet and inches), Sátántangó contains several elements that point towards are linked to tangible standards in the material world. But such a demonic unhinging of time. First, objective time is where can one find the standard second? How can it be mea- revealed to be unreliable. In the first chapter, that is set in 364 sured or circumscribed? If a clock goes tic-toc, where does the home of an adulterous couple, a ticking clock is insis- 365 the second begin or end? Is the second the space of time tently present on the soundtrack. The ticking is unnerving between the tics? Are the tics included? And if the second tic because it seems to be going slightly too fast. In the second ends the second, does the second second begin after the end chapter, titled “The resurrection of the dead,” Irimias and of the tic? To which second does any given tic belong? These Petrina arrive in the city where they will later take the vil- questions of course hark back to Zeno, who showed that any lagers. They go to the police office for some administrative unit of time or space is in itself infinite. With regard to time business. As they sit waiting in the hallway, Irimias notices these problems are especially vexing because there is no way that the two clocks in the hall both give a different time for us to perceive and thus verify time. The only reasonable and that neither gives the correct time. This could be an material measures for temporal rhythms at our disposal are example of the carelessness of civil servants in a decay- the heartbeat and the cycle of day and night. By disrupting ing social system (we might call it “civil servant fatigue” or, our normal experience of time, Tarr’s films question not only worse, the first onset of the banality of evil), but on another standard time but any sense of order, for without time every- level it could also suggest that this community has lost thing falls apart. If the universe (the kosmos or order) is un- track of time or has come to find time irrelevant. We could hooked from time, all events begin to drift apart like islands. also interpret these insurgent clocks as symptoms of the This brings to mind again Kondylis’ concept of the postmod- isolated world in which Sátántangó is set. Then the clocks ern as an extensive space in which everything is available at might suggest that time itself simply disregards this part of the world and does not bother to make itself known there. In traditional motif: the earth breaks open and pushes the dead any case, this community seems to exist outside of ordinary back to the surface. All these signs foretell that apocalypse is time and therefore seems to no longer be part of the greater upon us. world. Later, when Irimias and Petrina are having a drink But no discussion of evil in Sátántangó can be complete with- in a café, there is a humming sound on the soundtrack. But out addressing the innocent body that lies at the heart of when Irimias draws attention to it, it becomes clear that this this apocalypse: the corpse of Estike. This young girl is the sound is not a mood-enhancing feature of the soundtrack. central character of the central chapter of the movie, namely It is part of the material universe of the film. It is difficult to the fifth chapter that is titled “Comes Unstitched” and in point out the source of this humming, but we might inter- which the young girl seems to become possessed by the dev- pret it as the opening of time, in a metaphysical sense. If il. Estike is the diminutive form of the Hungarian word for shit is indeed coming from the cosmos, then the sphincter evening. So Estike might be taken to symbolise the twilight of the cosmos must be opening. The humming that breathes of this world: she is the evening on which the apocalypse through Sátántangó could be interpreted as the draught blow- begins towards which the world is already tilting. When we ing through this opening of time. Something wicked this first meet Estike, she is shut out of the house by her mother. 366 way comes and this cosmic humming heralds its imminent She seeks solace in the granary, where she tortures her pet 367 arrival. In Werckmeister Harmóniák its arrival is announced by cat. She looks the animal straight in the eyes and tells it she equally insubstantial means. When the car carrying the huge can do with it whatever she wants because she is the stron- stuffed whale drives into town, crawling through the dark gest of the two. This recalls a scene in Damnation where Kar- (and evil often comes under the cloak of night), its arrival is rer is addressed by an old lady guarding the wardrobe at the announced by the ominous humming of its engine. The first Titanik Bar. At one point she refers to a passage in the Old thing we see, is not the car itself but something immaterial: Testament where God foretells how Israel will rise against the bright headlights that sneak up on the houses that line him but that he will squash its resistance, ‘and then they the street. Next the shadow cast by the car creeps across the will know that I am the Lord’. This avenging and angry god houses. Only in the last instance does the car itself appear. seems to have taken possession of Estike: banished from her So the source of evil in this film almost literally appears out own home she continues the chain of repression by venting of a tear in the darkness of night, materialising out of sound her anger on a weaker creature. The endlessly protracted and light. A final motif that heralds the arrival of evil, partic- scene in which the girl tortures and finally poisons the cat is ularly in Sátántangó, is the stench of the earth. In the fourth brutal cinema, not in the least because the entire sequence, chapter of the film several of the villagers are sitting in the which runs for over three quarters of an hour, consist of a pub at night when a woman notices the stench and crawls minimal number of unblinking shots so that there can be under the table to find out where it is coming from. This is a no doubt about the fact that the cat is actually suffering through this excruciating calvary. Tarr is exceedingly per- in Tarr’s films, and especially in Sátántangó, which seems to verse here, getting a young girl to enact in real time the cruel come full circle only to start the same story again. But in its and merciless torture of a helpless animal, beating it around detached cruelty, showing us the workings of evil in excru- and poisoning it (or, we might hope, simply sedating it for ciating real time, unhurried and confident that everything fictional effect). After this demonic act of violence, Estike needs must take its fatal course, the film is also stoic in takes the cat’s dead body under her arm and begins her long tone. The ancient Stoa saw history as a constant repetition wandering through the village; a journey that will last an of the same process. In Stoic cosmology a cosmic fire brings entire day and night. First, she is sent away by her brother, about order in the universe. Once this order is created, things dismissed again. Next, she is outside the pub at night, look- move with logical regularity to their predestined conclusion. ing in through the steamy windows and contemplating the Then everything is destroyed again in a cosmic fire out of tired revels inside. Finally, she tries to accost the Doctor, but which the same process starts again. The same fatalism is in vain. He, too, dismisses her. We see the pain of rejection at work in Tarr’s films. It also typifies his characters, who are crawl over her face like the shadow of death. And then she depressed and dejected, always on their way to nowhere, runs. The Doctor tries in vain to keep up with her. And the endlessly walking without a goal. There is no hope in their 368 next morning, drenched and cold to the bone, she is still lives, only absurdity and resignation. This makes sense: if ev- 369 walking. Finally, she reaches an abandoned ruin of a house, erything that happens has been orchestrated by some malin lies down on the ground, and swallows the rest of the rat génie then hope is a pointless sentiment. And if everything poison she used on the cat. constantly repeats itself, time becomes irrelevant. Lost in After Estike has committed suicide the narrator’s voice re- the stars, man has nothing to look forward to except his own counts her final thoughts. The last thing Estike experiences pointlessness. What makes Karrer stare out of his window is a sense of calm and acceptance, a profound confidence in and betray his rival, what makes the villagers in Werckmeister the ultimate connectedness of everything in the universe. Harmóniák turn to violence, and what makes Estike take her Nothing happens in vain, the voice tells us, and there is a own life is the one certainty we all have in life: the eternal reason for everything. The great architect has planned every- return of doom. thing and everyone has his or her role to play in this plan, including Estike. But as the film makes clear, this great cho- reographer in the sky is an architect of evil. People are like flies to this wanton god, who kills them for his sport. And at the end, when the tale is told and destruction wrought upon the world, he shuts the window on this theatre of Fate and starts his story all over again. There is a fatalistic circularity Chapter Five a return to Langer. At the end of Feeling and Form Langer in- troduces a brief note on cinema in which she claims that the primary illusion of the film is what she calls ‘the dream mode’ because the film ‘creates a virtual present, an order of FRAIL direct apparition. That is the mode of dream’ (FF 412). It is a fascinating suggestion that she does not very much elaborate. Taking our cue from Elaine Scarry, we will take the cinema as GAZING dream mode and explore it from within, conjuring up images from imagination and memory. Lie with them awhile.

We started this book with the spectre of the male gaze. We Pathetic Fallacies have argued with Elaine Scarry that this supposedly hurtful If one wanted to summarise Langer’s philosophy of art, one gaze is not at all malicious by definition and that there is no could say, as she does in the first volume of Mind, that ‘art evil in looking at beauty. In this long concluding chapter we is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of 370 will look at beauty and several of the many meanings it can nature’ (MI 87). Art objectifies feeling because it is a presenta- 371 have for us. In looking at beauty we will replace the male tional symbolism that presents us with a prime symbol of the gaze with what I would like to call the “frail gaze”: a way of felt experience of life. But in doing so, art gradually subjecti- looking that revels in beauty and is moved by its frailty. It fies nature because ‘in developing our intuition, teaching eye is a gaze that is capable of being moved by beauty because and ear to perceive expressive form, it makes form expressive it recognises itself, its own projection, in objects of beauty. for us wherever we confront it, in actuality as well as in art. Scarry suggests that the experience of beauty can teach us Natural forms become articulate and seem like projections to find beauty where we previously thought no beauty could of the “inner forms” of feeling’ (ibid.). Anything can become be found. Such an expansive way of looking could ideally a material or an element in art because anything and every- culminate in a gaze that finds beauty everywhere and in thing can be seen as expressive of human feeling and mean- everything. In its search for beauty this chapter is a kind of ing. All meaning and all beauty are projections of the human indulgence, an invitation to dwell on beauty longer than is mind onto the surrounding world. But if art is the projection strictly necessary. It is a rhizome, a patchwork of intercon- of feeling onto the world, it soon allows us to see expression nected discussions of works of art. It is a brief for beauty and in objects that are not man-made. The entire world then an invitation to its indulgence. It is a walk through a garden becomes expressive and meaningful. Most images ‘fit more of delights, and as such it comes with an invitation for the than one actual experience. We [...] impose them on new per- reader to stop at will to take in the sights. Finally, it is also ceptions, constantly, without intent or effort [...]. Consequent- ly we tend to see the form of one thing in another, which is inanimate things as animate, or at least imbued with feeling, the most essential factor in making the maelstrom of events is not immature or childish. In other words, a distanced, cool, and things pressing upon our sense organs a single world’ disaffected approach of the material world surrounding us is (MI 60). This is how our symbolic intuition works, effortlessly truly an inhuman approach. In the human world, meanings perceiving Gestalten in the constant flow of sensory input that are everywhere. Some such meanings may be extremely fan- reaches our organism. As Langer points out, ‘the abstraction ciful, but no part of the human world is ever without mean- of gestalt from an actually given object by seeing it as an ing and to look upon it as devoid of meaning or feeling is to image of some entirely different thing [...] is a very ancient look upon it as if one were not human oneself. This, as we source of representational art’ (MI 169). She illustrates this suggested with Marx and Scarry, is what makes liberal capi- with a quote from Leonardo da Vinci, describing how we can talism a fundamentally inhuman world order: it reduces the see many objects in ‘the texture and crack of old walls’ (ibid.). world to quantifiable economic entities. There is nothing hu- This does not mean, however, that Langer would like us to man about efficiency, because to be efficient one must deny embrace an animistic view of life. She never allows us to all the meanings that we find in the world and to deny those forget, nor should she, that these operations of our symbolic meanings is to deny our very humanity. 372 intuition are acts of projection: the cracked texture of a wall So, in a sense, we should become like children. Not, to be 373 is never actually a face or a bird or a plant. Nor is a cloud sure, in the sense that our behavioural patterns should now ever a whale or a face, even if it seems to resemble one. But become childish, but in the sense that we should become the constant seeing of familiar forms in new patterns of childlike in our perceptual engagement with the world. In perception is the way our symbolic intuition makes sense of other words, we should not deny ourselves or others the our perceptual input and enables us to construct a coherent pleasure of seeing the entire world as imbued with beauty world out of the many sensory stimuli that reach us. Asso- and meaning. And, as we saw in our discussion of Scarry, the ciating familiar meanings with new impressions is simply entire world is not limited to nature and art but also includes the way we get about in the world. But it also opens the door the beauty of airplanes and cars, buildings and freeways, to many aesthetic and artistic possibilities. In fact, the pro- windmills and industrial ruins – in short, anything that al- cess of perceiving Gestalten in the constant flow of sensory lows us to experience beauty in the sense of expressiveness. input should remind us of the quasi-aliveness of inanimate There is beauty in all things human. If we fail to see the im- objects that Elaine Scarry made us aware of. Objects become port of beauty, it is because we choose to ignore it. There are quasi-alive when we project life into or onto them. It was indeed people who value the economic potential of a stretch Scarry’s claim that this projection broadens the scope of our of land over the wild flowers growing there. They might pre- care in going about in the world. This has several important fer to bulldoze and exploit the land. We, on the other hand, implications. It now appears that the childlike habit of seeing may feel free to doubt whether these economic busybodies are human at all (don’t these people know that life is just a salad took on an air of crisis’ (Hollinghurst 2005: 332). Apart bowl of cherries and that you can’t take your dow when you from the way this observation manages to balance irony and go?). Obviously, we need industry and its benefits. But to ac- tragedy by noticing the specifics of the interrupted dinner, knowledge this need is a far cry from sacrificing anything and Hollinghurst (or the narrator) projects the feelings the ab- everything on the altar of economic expansion. Sometimes sent woman is experiencing, namely a sense of crisis at the a shrub should come first, especially if it is a particularly news of a dear friend’s death, onto her food. This would be beautiful shrub. Factories can be built almost anywhere. A unacceptable to Ruskin because side plates of salad simply beautiful stretch of land, a green pasture, or a picturesque do not experience crises. Ruskin himself offers the example moor cannot usually be transported for exhibition in another of a line in a poem that speaks of “the cruel, crawling foam” locale. So let us make the industry fit the landscape and not on the waves of the sea; an observation Ruskin dryly rebuts the other way around. by pointing out that ‘foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl’ The importance of projected meanings in the realm of hu- (Ruskin 2000: 369). man experience was somewhat lost on John Ruskin (1819- However, Ruskin does not disapprove of the use of compari- 1900). It is odd that a critic and expert draughtsman with sons. He gives the example of Dante, who describes spirits 374 such a splendidly lucid eye for the beauty of nature should falling “as dead leaves flutter from a bough”. In this compari- 375 have disapproved so thoroughly of the projection of human son Dante never loses ‘his own clear perception that these meanings onto that beauty. But this process is in fact what are souls, and those are leaves; he makes no confusion of one he famously dismissed, in volume III (1856) of Modern Paint- with the other’ (o.c. 369-370). For Ruskin, the superior artist ers, as the “pathetic fallacy”. The pathetic fallacy occurs when will always ‘keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact’ (o.c. ‘violent feelings [...] produce in us a falseness in all our im- 372). But since many artists are not very partial to record- pressions of external things’ (Ruskin 2000: 369). This means ing pure facts, Ruskin famously decimated the pantheon of that the pathetic fallacy is a “fallacy of sight” that consists in great artists, both in the visual arts and in literature. Besides perceiving the world differently than it really is by project- Coleridge, Ruskin berates both Keats and Pope for indulging ing our feelings or ideas upon it. Let me give an example in the pathetic fallacy, marking them as ‘poets of the second from a passage in Alan Hollinghurst’s exquisitely beautiful order’ (ibid.). Reading this, one cannot help but wonder how novel The Line of Beauty (2004), which is about style and how Ruskin would have judged Shakespeare’s disingenuous de- it both hides and betrays feelings. The main characters are cision to let churchyards yawn at Hamlet in the night. But gathered for dinner when the phone rings and the lady of Ruskin’s disapproval of the pathetic fallacy does not simply the house leaves the room to hear of the death of a very dear stem from a boorish insensitivity to metaphor or from a friend. During her extended absence the narrator observes simplistic kind of realism; it is also, and more interestingly, that ‘her half-eaten grilled trout and untouched side plate of related to truthfulness in expression. It is his feeling that many instances of the pathetic fallacy are introduced to ex- time maintains a critical distance towards them. Like the press strong feelings but end up sounding trite, formulaic, ironist we must maintain our awareness of the fact that what and contrived in their symbolism. Ruskin feels that poetry meanings we perceive are projected by us. This is one of the that indulges in the pathetic fallacy is often hypocritical things that makes fiction work: we know that the events seen about the feelings it purports to express. Such poetry does so in a film, acted out on a stage, or described in a novel are much hard work looking for interesting images to use that not actual events, but that does not stop us from becoming it loses sight of the actual emotion or feeling that needs to involved with them, crying about them, laughing with them, be expressed, which ultimately leads to poetic posturing. In or being upset by them. In other words, if the world is the this sense the pathetic fallacy ‘is a sign of the incapacity of projection of our meanings, then the world will certainly be [the poet’s] human sight or thought to bear what has been pathetic to our experience (which is not exactly the same as revealed to it’ (o.c. 373). our perception of it). And as Simon Shama has shown in his But we need not accept Ruskin’s severe criticism of the remarkable book on Landscape and Memory (1995), even the pathetic fallacy. In fact, it is probably not a fallacy at all. Re- natural world has ceased to be merely natural but now bears membering arguments from Marx and Scarry we might sug- traces of human meanings, even at the heart of supposedly 376 gest that Ruskin has a wrong take on the pathetic fallacy: he primeval forests. There is really nothing on this planet un- 377 identifies the phenomenon but fails to see its true import. In touched by human hand. So there is nothing void of mean- reality, people do not, as a rule, misperceive reality in such a ing. And hence the entire world may appear to us as pathetic. way that they think all kinds of feelings are actually present Of course, projected meanings are not limited to practical in objects. We are very much aware of the fact that we project interventions. A deforested area clearly bears the stamp of such feelings and meanings onto these objects. But once they human meaning, as does a freeway, a skyscraper, or an air- have been projected, it is very difficult to withdraw them and plane. But meanings also include symbols and the metaphors pretend they are not there. In this sense, artists who commit of myth and religion. They even include a child’s habit of the pathetic fallacy are really being responsive to the way seeing the inanimate world as animate, as when they con- the human world is structured. All meanings are projections, verse with dolls (or imaginary friends) as if they were actual and without such projection there simply is no human world people. If the human world is thus alive with meanings, we to speak of. If the whole of the human world is the world of come very near an animistic concept of the world. And that, human meanings, and if all such meanings are projected by I believe, is the beauty of our “Marxist-phenomenological” us upon the world, then it would be quite inhuman to see approach of meaning: our discussion of Marx, Scarry, and, (or want to see) the world without such meanings in it. In of course, Langer allows us to envisage a re-enchantment of this sense, we really must become a little like Richard Rorty’s the world without seeking recourse to the esoteric, airy-fairy ironist, who is attached to his convictions but at the same nonsense that this often entails. In fact, the re-enchantment that lies before us is really thoroughly realistic. It is grounded explain this we must deal with Ruskin in relation to the work in cold hard facts about the world. It relies on our organic of the Pre-Raphaelites. Ruskin is often portrayed as their link to the organisms around us. It relies on our biological great advocate and we must briefly investigate how this came nature and on our ability to generate meanings, which are about. In his history of the Pre-Raphaelite movement Timo- then projected onto the world. It relies, in fact, on our ability thy Hilton claims that with Ruskin, ‘natural history was to for imagination, which is not something esoteric but a matter become natural art history’ because Ruskin had a firm belief of neurology. The re-enchantment we have been developing in ‘the ability of man to reproduce and interpret the world does not mean we submit to New Age fashions; nor does it through pictorial art’ (Hilton 1970: 11). As is well known, entail any kind of belief in gods, spirits, or other supernatural Ruskin valued representational fidelity in art more than beings; it is simply to accept that meaning and (of course) anything else. He could easily be claimed as a forerunner of beauty are wherever we may find them. We can embrace photorealism in painting. But we should be cautious, because meaning and beauty in the world and accept them as part Ruskin’s adherence to realistic representation was linked of reality because reality, and especially reality’s value and both to his religious beliefs and to his very specific concept of meaning, are our own creations. To dismiss projection is to Truth. Ruskin’s religious fervour can be glimpsed in several 378 dismiss human nature. The meanings and feelings we find in passages in Modern Painters, for example when he writes that 379 the external world are not put there by some superior force; ‘true criticism of art never can consist in the mere applica- it is we who put them there and they are ours to enjoy as tion of rules; it can be just only when it is founded on quick reflections of ourselves. And as reflections, they offer insight sympathy with the innumerable instincts and changeful ef- (an idea, I imagine, that would not have been foreign to No- forts of human nature, chastened and guided by unchanging valis). There is no magic here, no mysticism, and no esoteric love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, and belief. This is simply what being human is about. pronounced to be good’ (Ruskin 2000: 310). Ruskin quite sim- ply believed that all of creation was beautiful and deserved Having the World to be scrutinised with aesthetic generosity because it was the So let us have the world. Let us see its manifold beauty and creation of a benevolent God. Empirical science, for Ruskin, revel in it. In the following sections of this chapter we shall was simply the way to read the book of creation most faith- embrace this world of plenty through the work of several fully. ‘Rocks, stones, and water, winds and clouds, leaves and outstanding artists who will provide us with new insights grasses and flowers,’ Hilton writes, ‘all these, the various ma- in our own nature as beings of meaning. But first we must terials of the natural world, came under an intensely empiri- redress an injustice, for the previous section might very well cal scrutiny. [...] He recorded, analysed, and classified, and did have given the reader the impression that John Ruskin was so, ultimately, to glorify’ (Hilton 1970: 13). immune to beauty. In reality, he was quite the opposite. To Against such a religious background it is obvious that faithful pictorial representation was never simply about disinterested great artist to faithfully represent both. This means that the science. Ruskin was an expert draughtsman of great sensi- visual artist must be able to faithfully express spiritual truths tivity, but he ‘is not interested in making pictures; he hardly with the means of material truth that painting offers him. ever framed and hung his own work. He never alters what he This means that the artist must be able to see and represent sees in front of him and he hardly ever draws from memory. the deeper meaning of the natural elements that he is rep- He is concerned only with the precise recording of natural resenting. In his discussion of Truth, Ruskin makes several appearances. And yet he is not dispassionate, for everything claims that put him in an interesting proximity to Susanne K. he draws seems now to proclaim that he has indeed exam- Langer. For example, Ruskin writes that ‘Truth may be stated ined the natural world with the eyes of love’ (o.c. 17). For by any signs or symbols which have a definite signification Ruskin, faithfully recording natural appearances is only the in the minds of those to whom they are addressed, although beginning of a great artist’s work. Young artists should only such signs be themselves no image nor likeness of anything. draw from nature, but as they mature, they should use their Whatever can excite in the mind the conception of certain ability to reproduce nature faithfully to paint images that facts, can give ideas of truth, though it be in no degree the express what Ruskin called great ideas. As Ruskin explains imitation or resemblance of those facts’ (ibid.). This, by and 380 at the beginning of Modern Painters, painting, but by exten- large, is a theory of metaphor and could be put alongside 381 sion all art, ‘is nothing but a noble and expressive language’ Langer’s claim that anything can become expressive of an (Ruskin 2000: 49). To draw faithfully from nature is to master idea of feeling if it is expressively included in the fabric of a that language; but it is not the language that matters in the work of art. end, but rather the ideas that are expressed through its use. Ruskin’s involvement with the Pre-Raphaelites came about ‘It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what somewhat by chance when Coventry Patmore prevailed upon is represented and said, that the respective greatness either the critic to write something in defence of the much-reviled of the painter or the writer is to be finally determined’ (ibid.). Brotherhood. In response, Ruskin wrote a letter to The Times To explain this, it is important to understand the two differ- which is usually taken to be a turning point in the Brother- ent meanings that Ruskin attached to the word Truth. ‘Truth,’ hood’s fortunes. Initially, however, Ruskin was not overly he proclaims, ‘signifies the faithful statement, either to the enthusiastic about the Brotherhood, writing that he had ‘only mind or senses, of any fact of nature’ (o.c. 56). But Truth is not a very imperfect sympathy with them’ (Hilton 1970: 66). But the same as imitation; imitation is but a small part of it. ‘Imi- he did very much approve of their naturalism and attention tation can only be of something material, but truth has refer- to representational detail. This would lead, eventually, to a ence to statements both of the qualities of material things, very close involvement with the movement and especially and of emotions, impressions, and thoughts. There is a moral with John Everett Millais, who would rob Ruskin of a wife. as well as a material truth’ (ibid.) and it is the business of the Like Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites felt that art after Raphael had degenerated into mannerisms and they wanted to return see if suddenly gifted with sight’ (o.c. 135). The innocent eye is a to the purity of early Renaissance painting. When Pre-Rapha- way of looking that is free from preconceptions and therefore elite art was first exhibited in 1849 and 1850, critics were very receptive to the manifold wonders of the world. This may dismissive. Two elements in the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic sound rather excessively Romantic, but the experience of were found especially unappealing. First, the critics rejected the innocent eye is still available to us. In fact, Elaine Scarry the Pre-Raphaelite habit of painting the entire canvas in great introduces something quite like it when she discusses what detail. Second, they objected to the fact that everything in she calls errors in beauty. An error in beauty occurs when the paintings was bathed in equal light, so that there was no we claim that something is beautiful when it is not, or claim visual focus. There was no point of interest that was liter- that something is not beautiful when it actually is. We be- ally highlighted by being surrounded with a glow or by being come aware of the error when we are suddenly struck by the painted in more detail than the murkier surroundings. In insight that our judgement was wrong: the beautiful thing fact, the Pre-Raphaelites painted like a camera would make is suddenly revealed to be ugly, or what was considered not a picture: even the smallest and most insignificant detail will beautiful at all is suddenly revealed to be beautiful after all. still come out sharp because the camera has a disinterested Scarry offers an example from her own life: ‘I had ruled out 382 mechanical eye. It simply and democratically registers every- palm trees as objects of beauty and then one day discovered 383 thing and anything that is reflected through its lense in equal I had made a mistake’ (BBJ 12). The mistake dawned on her measure of clarity and sharpness. The fully detailed picture when she was suddenly confronted with the swaying leaves and the evenness of light were the signature traits of Pre- of a palm tree next to the balcony of her hotel room. The Raphaelite painting. And they were exactly what critics ob- revelation of the beauty of an object previously deemed not jected to. But the obvious answer to this objection, which was beautiful is disconcerting and overwhelming because ‘a beau- given by Ruskin in their defence, ‘was that their system of tiful object is suddenly present, not because a new object lighting was that of the sun. The sun illuminates everything, has entered the sensory horizon bringing its beauty with it and they painted what they saw’ (o.c. 57). [...] but because an object, already within the horizon, has its But in order to paint what one sees, one must look and know beauty, like late luggage, suddenly placed in your hands’ (BBJ how to look. In a public lecture at the opening of the Cam- 16). What is especially interesting is that the revelation of the bridge School of Art, where he would teach drawing classes error in beauty is almost always linked to a particular experi- for the working classes, Ruskin explained that the artist ence. ‘When I used to say the sentence (softly and to myself) must be taught Sight. Attempting to explain what he meant, “I hate palms” or “Palms are not beautiful; possibly they are Ruskin said that ‘the whole technical power of painting de- not even trees,” it was a composite palm that I had somehow pends on the recovery of what may be called the innocence of succeeded in making without even ever having seen, close the eye... a sort of childish perception... as a blind man would up, many particular instances. Conversely, when I now say, “Palms are beautiful,” or “I love palms,” it is really individual feeling onto the world. This obviously brings us back to the palms that I have in mind” (BBJ 19). main theme of the present book: all meaning, all expressive- What Scarry illustrates here, is that ‘beauty always takes ness, and hence all beauty, are created by man. ‘Indeed,’ Read place in the particular’ (BBJ 18), a point also stressed by Kant. continues, ‘the primacy of feeling is the bracket in which we Composite ideas, and by extension idealised concepts of a can include the whole romantic movement’ (ibid.). class of things, can mislead us into formulating erroneous Let us retrace our steps before we open up this discussion to aesthetic (but obviously also ethical or moral) judgements introduce a host of beautiful works of art. It all starts with about these objects. Beauty is particular and it is always an careful attention to the world, which leads us to a feeling of individual object or experience that alerts one to the beauty beauty. This sense of beauty may prompt us to copy the world of an object or a class of objects. So if any conclusion can be in a work of art, but it may also (and simultaneously) prompt drawn from Scarry’s palms, then it surely is that we must us to project values and feelings onto the object. In fact, find- be alive to the world and always exercise a generosity of ing beauty and projecting meaning are really two sides of a perception while moving through it. As a rule, everything is constantly revolving coin. This is what Ruskin would call the beautiful until proved ugly. Scarry writes that falsely reject- pathetic fallacy. But as was pointed out before, we are usually 384 ing objects as not beautiful is an error ‘on the side of a failed aware of the fact that such meanings and feelings are merely 385 generosity’ (BBJ 14) and that this error is much graver than projected. They will surely prompt us, as Scarry claimed, to claiming beauty for something that turns out to not be beau- care for the world, but we will not as a rule forget that we tiful after all; in the second case, one had been overly gener- are the creators of the world’s beauty. I believe that this is an ous, which one can never really seriously be. This attitude important insight for contemporary art, for we have a great was also expressed by Constable, who once said that ‘there is number of artists working today who make works that show nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the how commonplace objects can reveal deeper meanings. This form of an object be what it may, light, shade, and perspec- I believe to be the real transfiguration of the commonplace tive will always make it beautiful’. But Herbert Read, who at work in contemporary art: it is not the attachment of criti- uses this quote in The Philosophy of Modern Art (1952), warns cal meanings to objects in the way that Danto describes but us that we should not take this claim at face value because rather the ability to see beauty in the commonplace because Constable ‘is making an ethical judgement. It is not light, the commonplace is infused with meanings and feelings shade, and perspective which in themselves transform or- that matter to us. Commonplace objects are today being seen dinary or even ugly objects into works of art; they are rather again as what they really are: carriers of meaning. It is one of transformed by the artist’s feeling’ (Read 1952: 79). So beauty Marx’s great achievements as a philosopher that he was very (for I believe it would be better to substitute beauty for art in keenly aware of this capacity of objects to embody the hu- Read’s statement) is the effect of a projection of the artist’s man world. And it is a capacity that is being exploited to the full in the works of a number of important contemporary art- ing is the mother of all the visual arts: it always comes first. ists. Several of these will take the limelight in the following Along with dancing, singing, and writing it is the art form sections, notably Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Derek Jarman, that requires the least instruments and the least financial and Wolfgang Tillmans; but our discussion of their work will investment: almost anyone can do it almost anywhere. The in turn prompt us to look at other, equally wonderful bodies hand, as Marx and Scarry would remind us, is our primary of work. These discussions are meant to further illuminate tool to explore, alter, and copy the world. If children with a our philosophical claims, although I hope the reader will also talent for the visual arts start making creative works, drawing enjoy them as a kind of indulgence (we are, after all, dealing is often the first thing they do. But even in the developed arts, with beauty, not long division). the drawing often comes first. There is little sculpture with- out a preliminary sketch, there is no building built without Doubling a previous drawing being made, and few figurative paintings If the eye sees something that is beautiful, the hand wants are ever painted without a preliminary pencil sketch. Even to draw it. What better place to start this extended stroll artists who seek release from form and work in an abstract through a gallery of beautiful things? But beauty, as we recall, manner must first master form before they can deconstruct 386 is expressiveness. And expressive is that which has a form it. It will not do to simply apply paint randomly to a surface. 387 evocative of life entirely felt. Beauty is living form. But beauty To undermine form in a relevant way, one must know it in- is not only found in art, it is also alive in the everyday world timately, and many of the great abstract painters or ravish- and in nature. And for us, human beings, the greatest seat of ers of classical form were expert draughtsmen themselves, beauty has always been the human body itself. What form whether they were Picasso or Andy Warhol. could be more expressive of life than the vital human body There is great artistic honesty in the drawing. It provides no in all its splendour? Whether it is the beautiful youth who refuge for the mediocre artist. We live in a society that likes guides Plato to the realm of Ideas or the youth who steps to think that everything can be taught and that everything forth as William Blake’s vision of Albion, whether it is Sally is socially constructed, but it is not. No amount of schooling Mann’s sensual eye cast upon her children or Courbet’s rivet- will turn someone with no or only middling talent for draw- ing portrait of the origin of the world, art never ceases to sing ing into the next Michelangelo. When pencil and paper are all the body electric, representing it again and again in its many there is, the artist cannot hide. No amount of precious theo- vital manifestations. It is the body beautiful that we most rising can erase the blemish of a bad drawing. No amount of revel in. And the medium that is most ready to hand to ex- theory can convince us that what looks bad on paper is in press this beauty in art is the human hand. To have the hand fact a great work of art. Similarly, the fact that no critical or draw the beautiful body is an amazingly intimate and exhila- theoretical meanings can be found in a stunningly successful rating experience. But this should not surprise us since draw- drawing will never dissuade us from valuing that drawing as a wonderful work of art. With drawing you can either do it, can do what a painting or drawing does. Since a painting or a or you cannot (in fact, David Hockney has argued that paint- drawing is always the result of a search, it incorporates many ing in watercolours requires even greater skill, because no different moments of looking at the model. Many artists have mark can be erased; Weschler 2008: 197). Nothing can undo started to use photographs as source material for their paint- the immediate effect that good draughtsmanship has on the ings. And, conversely, photographers have started organising viewer. But to draw is also an extremely intimate experience. their portraits like paintings, either modelling their subjects When the draughtsman puts pencil to paper to draw a beau- in a specific way or putting them in carefully organised set- tiful body from life, his hand is following the lines of the body tings, or simply altering the image afterwards by manipulat- to repeat them on paper. Drawing is a form of touching: it is ing the image or, in the case of digital photography, by using to caress from afar. The eye must sound the depths of every computer technology to alter the original image or bring blemish of the body, it must stroke every curve, feel the run elements from several images together in a new composite of every line, unfold every fold, and gauge the weight of ev- image. Either way, whether one paints, draws, or photographs ery mass. To draw a body is to get to know it intimately. The a subject, the result will only ever be successful if the art- draughtman’s primary virtue is attentiveness. He must be ist succeeds in capturing what Francis Bacon has called a 388 attentive to the body, both in the sense that he must pay the person’s emanation or energy. And there are ways in which 389 closest possible attention to its every detail and in the reli- drawings or paintings can do this that are not readily avail- gious sense of Andacht, which approaches the object observed able to the photographer, and vice versa. with respectful reservation. To draw is to engage in a profane form of worship. Body Doubles As photography became more and more widespread in the But the doubling of subjects can become especially interest- nineteenth century, it was widely felt that this new technol- ing if it does not stop at mere doubling but multiplies the ogy endangered the art of painting. Photographs could ac- doubles. This is what the American artist Anthony Goicolea complish in mere seconds what it took painters much longer has been doing in his photographs. Goicolea creates bizarre to do. If painters had spent centuries painting likenesses of and surrealistic images that are peopled with identical look- people, their services suddenly seemed to become obsolete ing boys and girls that seem to have been cloned from one in view of the photograph’s ability to really capture the mo- source specimen. This source specimen is the artist himself. ment. As we know, the advent of photography was one of In his work, Goicolea is constantly doubling his own image, the factors that motivated Modernism in its turn away from but in manipulated and altered ways. In Porn (2000) a bunch representational art. But in the long run, photography has of randy teenage Goicolea lookalikes are gorging themselves not been the undoing of painting or drawing. No photograph, on junk food while gaping at a porn video. In Premature (2002) no matter how realistically representational of its subject, they are having a collective wank as spilt milk drips from their hands and onto the floor as if it were sperm. Parochial these images also evoke a context that lies further back in (2000) takes us into the dorm of an exclusive Catholic school time. In Greek mythology there is talk of a very early period where the boys are defiling the host, the cross, and a bottle that is called the Golden Age (Kirk 1974: 132-136). Sources of holy water. In Stigmata (2000) Goicolea has organised three are unclear about how we should imagine this period, but of his clones in a mock version of Titian’s Ascension with a it was clearly a paradisaical period when the land bore fruit boy clad in candy-coloured sportswear ecstatically casting without the need for tilling. It was an age of purity, which is his eyes to heaven while stigmata bleed from his hands. expressed through ‘parthogenesis, just as Christian salvation Sanitary towels and tampons lie about in abundance as if later imagines beginnings in immaculate conception and they are meant to stop the bleeding. To the side of the image, virgin birth: flowers blossom sine semine, without seed, with- a Goicolea clone is taking a shower in a position that seems out semen, without sexual congress, emissions, and organs’ reminiscent of either the immaculate conception or, more (Warner 2002: 62). Goicolea has also evoked such a garden likely, Zeus entering Danaë in a shower of golden rain. Most of delight in a series of photographs. Cherry Island (2002) is a of Goicolea’s images are critiques of the American capital- pleasure garden filled with birds of paradise; until, looking a ist system, but they are highly ironic and seem to have been second time, one notices that these gorgeous creatures are 390 orchestrated by the producers of gay porn films, revelling in birds of less lofty plumage: peacocks, ducks, pigeons, and 391 assorted Adidasboys and Scally Lads. Offering up his own even rabbits people this landscape which, it now also tran- body as an endlessly repeated altar for our horny libations spires, is ironically furnished with white plastic garden furni- Goicolea practices Creation Through Masturbation, which is ture. Similarly, the idyllic Nesting (2002) shows us the cabin of a deliciously new way of playing with one’s self. He wanks a postmodern family Robinson, living among colourful flow- in the house of mirrors and we are all invited to look on and ers that have been draped with toilet paper. By peopling his share in the rubbings. pictures with clones of himself, Goicolea obviously invokes Goicolea’s photographs are obviously reminiscent of Fernand parthogenesis, but in many of his pictures he takes this pro- Khnopff’s Symbolist paintings in which the ghost-like figure cess one step further and also reproduces himself as a series of his sister Marguerite appears simultaneously as several of girls. In Pregnant (2001) sexual dimorphism is complete: figures within one image. Similar clones can be seen in the sporting white socks and a sleaveless undershirt to accentu- work of Edward Burne-Jones, either in the knights tied to The ate his smoothly shaved prick, Goicolea looks like the ulti- Wheel of Fortune (1883) or in the endless row of musical ladies mate ephebophile’s pin-up; except for his very pregnant belly. descending The Golden Stairs (1880). Camille Paglia has called Goicolea’s pictures are luscious, sensual, ironic, narcissistic, this kind of self-replenishing imagery “allegorical repletion” and shamelessly sexy. His is truly a world that is constantly or ‘the filling up of fictive space with a single identity appear- self-replenishing and self-regenerating. In the video Nail Biter ing simultaneously in different forms’ (Paglia 1991: 447). But (2002) he sits up in his bed, anxiously biting his nails which seem to grow back instantly until a revolting stream of saliva, ning L’homme blessé (1983). Next, he showed us the plague-rid- sticky with masses of bitten nails, drips from his chin onto den flesh of La reine Margot (1994) and proceeded to Intimacy the bedclothes. Linked to such fantasies of the self-regen- (2000), a film about sex without love, and Son Frère (2002), erating body are the revolutions in gender-bending body- which displays the frail body invaded by a mysterious dis- alteration that new developments in medicine have made ease. The latter film contains a concussively unsettling scene possible. Orlan’s auto-mutilation through surgery is no longer in which the protagonist’s naked body is entirely shaved in the limit of physical metamorphosis in art. Modern surgery preparation for surgery. The procedure is shown matter-of- allows the genders to blend together and come apart again. factly in real time and is almost unbearable to watch. Other For instance, the porn performer Buck Angel is a hunky, bald- filmmakers have followed down this path of explicit carnal headed, and tattooed truck driver who used to be a woman. imagery, but not always with comparable artistic success. But he has kept his vagina. Questions of whether his work as Cathérine Breillat usually casts a cold analytical eye on the a performer should be labelled gay, straight, or bisexual seem naked body, most violently in the disturbing À ma soeur rather beside the point, especially since Buck will bed it all. (2001). Ulrich Seidl is relentlessly humanist in his disclosures Sexuality has become polymorphous again. In fact, auto-mu- of the flesh, particularly in the harsh light he shines on the 392 tation without a genetic trigger, which is basically what such inflated fleshy ego of degenerated bourgeois in Hundstage 393 gender-bending surgery accomplishes, is not even neces- (2001) and in the unflinching way he confronts us with the sarily linked to questions of sexual identity anymore. Singer marginalised body in Tierische Liebe (1995), a stylised docu- and performance artist Genesis P-Orridge has submitted to mentary about people and the intimacies they share with surgery which is meant to make him look like his wife, Jaye their pets, and Import/Export (2007), his harrowing account Breyer, whom he married in 1995. P-Orridge is not a transsex- of the human body as trafficable commodity in contempo- ual. His desire to change his body to incorporate elements of rary Europe. Other notable films dealing with the body in its the opposite sex is triggered by an ideological desire to erase frail beauty are Sébastien Lifshitz’s melancholy and moving the boundaries of gender, bring the sexes together within one Presque rien (2000), the same director’s sensitive exploration body and hence do away with the politics of sexual oppres- of transgender bodies in Wild Side (2004), or Jean-Marc Barr’s sion and objectification that still taint our culture. bizarre but intensely erotic Too Much Flesh (2000), which is a film about the fuss about foreskin (it is also a film about Pictures Imperfect Barr’s own body, which, given Barr’s body, is entirely justifi- Let us dwell somewhat longer on the human body. In con- able narcissism). temporary cinema it has become a primary site of visual What is striking about all of these films, compared to Goico- interest. The work of Patrice Chéreau is a wonderful example. lea’s playfulness, is the fact that the display of the human The director first made us feel masochistic flesh in the stun- body is rarely simply about sensuality. The body is shown as frail, in pain, diseased, restrained, or hysterical. It is rarely our own body. This makes us uneasy. The unease is born from simply erotic. One might well wonder why these filmmakers the sudden awareness that internal processes might elude feel they have not adequately expressed their characters’ un- our control at any time. It takes shockingly little to make the ease and suffering unless they have shown it inscribed in the body break, not just literally in the sense of physically break- characters’ flesh. Why does the body’s surface become the ing its limbs or back, but also figuratively in the sense that mirror of the soul and its ailments? Why must the body’s fail- our intestines and bodily fluids can escape our control at any ing be shown in such unsettlingly explicit detail? The answer time and confront us with our debilitating and humiliating to this question was at least partly given in our earlier dis- dependency upon the imperfect organic machinery of that cussion of voyeurism. What is read upon the body contains soiled interior. What scares us the most is the possibility that the stuff of truth. The abject body, the body overcome by it- the inside might come out; that pain or illness might literally self, is a body surrendered. To show the body in explicit detail tear us inside out, ripping our body apart with the horrors of is a mark of authenticity, even in a work of fiction. By con- vomiting, diarrhoea, and uncontrollable bloodshed through fronting us with the naked truth about our physical body and any and every orifice. The body is a vessel, neat and tidy like its failings these films confront us with our shared humanity. a Warhol painting of a Campbell’s soup can. But as Wayne 394 In this respect the bodies they display are comparable to the Koestenbaum pointed out, inside the can there is the chaos 395 Andachtsbild in religious art: they are not in the first place of half-digested foodstuffs. Wanting to keep the lid firmly objects for the erotic gaze (although they can become that) shut, we are shocked and upset by films that open up the but objects for contemplation. This is most clear when the body physical to our gaze. body is taken to extremes of suffering because this often also But the flesh can also be the parchment on which the po- requires the actor playing the part to submit his own body etry of our solitude and psychological distress is written. to punishing alterations. We have already mentioned Chris- Chéreau’s Intimacy and the series of novellas by Hanif Kurei- tian Bale’s shocking transformation in The Machinist (2001). A shi on which it is based offer a fine example of this. Kureishi’s similar unsettling confrontation with the body takes place in novella Intimacy (1998) is a relentlessly tender account of the Steve McQueen’s film Hunger (2008), which is ostensibly about night in which fortysomething Jay decides to leave his wife a hunger strike by a group of IRA activists in a British prison and child. The themes of the novella are further developed in but which is really an attempt to show us the way the suffer- a series of associated short stories, as if Kureishi were explor- ing body comes undone. By taking us into close proximity to ing the same theme from different angles. All the characters the frail body of its protagonist (Michael Fassbaender), Hunger in these stories lack a sense of fulfilment. According to the traps the viewer in a pavlovian commitment to its subject. story Nightlight (1997) they are ‘on the move from wife to wife, Watching the painful torture and undoing of the body on the husband to husband, lover to lover. A city of love vampires, screen makes us acutely aware of similar processes inside turning from person to person, hunting the one who will make the difference’ (o.c. 101). The nameless male protago- reason the sex scenes are unusual is that we rehearsed them nist of this story seeks solace in weekly Wednesday meetings in the same way as dialogue scenes.’ For him, ‘the point was with an anonymous woman in his basement flat. They do not to show something in particular, but also not to hide not talk, they have sex, she leaves. ‘He dismisses the idea of anything. [...] The actors didn’t improvise in these scenes: speaking, because he can’t take any more disappointment. each gesture was discussed and they knew exactly where Nothing must disturb their perfect evenings’ (ibid.). Anony- the camera was – a matter of respect – so they could hide mous lust is safe: ‘desiring other women kept me from the parts of their bodies if they wanted to’ (Falcon 2001: 24). So exposure and susceptibility of loving just the one. There are the revelation of the body and its intimate secrets is staged perils in deep knowledge’ (o.c. 12-13). But carnal knowledge, in the film. Even though the actors are naked, it is not their displaying and caressing the intimacies of the flesh, inadver- nakedness that we see but their characters’ nakedness. This tently becomes deep knowledge, especially when the ritual might sound like a facile denial of the actor’s nudity, but it is is repeated and the body becomes familiar. ‘After a certain nevertheless an important distinction to make. Just like the age sex can never be casual. I couldn’t ask for so little. To lay body in dance, the naked body in film is engaged in creating your hand on another’s body, or to put your mouth against living form. It is part of a greater whole, which is the living 396 another’s – what a commitment that is! To choose someone symbol of the film. The paradoxical fact that it is not really 397 is to uncover a whole life. And it is to invite them to uncover the actors we are watching is in fact often suggested by our you!’ (o.c. 13) response to a film. It is very difficult to watch Intimacy as a This commitment is tied to the fact that the naked body is a porn film. Although the sex in the film is real and explicit, it story that involuntarily reveals itself. You cannot have carnal never addresses us on an exclusively or even primarily sexual knowledge of another body without being intimate with it. level. Although explicit, the film’s sex scenes do not turn us This is the shattering lesson learned by Kureishi’s characters. on. This is because the naked bodies are vehicles of expres- But to translate this insight to the screen for the film Intimacy sion. To use an old distinction: the actors are nude to express the involuntary revelation of the body had to be undone. Pre- nakedness. What we see is the characters’ nakedness, not the paring the film, Kureishi and Chéreau ‘talked about bodies, actors’. The actors are nude rather than naked because their about death and decay; about Lucian Freud and Bacon, and bodies are covered by the form of expression, the fact that the hyper-realism of some recent photography. [...] We talked the nakedness they are expressing is not their own. about what bodies do and what they tell us’ (o.c. xiii). And Issues of the body as expressive in its nudity are very im- it very soon became clear that mere exposure of the actors’ portant in contemporary photography. This is especially the bodies would not do as a means of expressing the characters’ case in the work of the photographers that make up the so- distress. To attain expressiveness in the film the explicit sex called “Boston School”. The central figure in this group, who scenes had to be choreographed. Chéreau explains that ‘the were also personal friends, is Nan Goldin. The group further includes David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe, Jack Pierson, and a small blot, a little cut’ (Bathes 1980: 49). It unsettles the Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Especially the work of Goldin, Morris- studium because it is unintended, unexpected, and yet sud- roe, and Pierson seems to be focused on a generous respon- denly all-important, to the point of becoming, for the viewer, siveness to people and to the world. But to understand the the very reason why he or she feels drawn to the photograph. formal ways in which they create works of emotional inten- Obviously, this means that the punctum, unlike the studium, is sity and beauty we must look at Roland Barthes’ beautiful often intensely personal. It is something that seems to come book on photography, La chambre claire (1980), where Barthes out of the picture itself, and yet it is very much something makes a famous distinction between studium and punctum in that only becomes visible in the picture through the gaze of a photography. The studium, as the word itself implies, is about specific person. the photographer’s intentions in making a photograph. It is In many cases the punctum is the real reason why we like a what he or she wants to show us. The enjoyment derived photograph. It could be argued that many of the classicis- from appreciating a photograph’s studium is intellectual or ing nudes of, say, Herbert List, George Platt-Lines, or Robert academic: it is about “getting” the message and reading all Mapplethorpe are very successful in an academic sense but the signs correctly. As Margaret Iversen explains, ‘a photo- not very exciting in a sensual way. It would be interesting to 398 graph with only a studium stays put within the confines of ask oneself, while perusing their work, whether we like the 399 the picture – its coherence is entirely internal. In contrast, the pictures we especially like because they are better than the punctum breaks up that coherence bursting through the frame others stylistically (because of their studium) or because we and plane’ (Iversen 1994: 456). The punctum shatters the well- are personally more attracted to the body or the face of the organised surface (or discourse) of the picture. It disturbs the men who are portrayed. The same question seems relevant to photograph’s coherence because it is an element in the pho- all erotic art: do we like an image because it is a good image tograph that was not meant to be there, but it is there never- or because we find the bodies in it attractive? And hot on the theless and suddenly draws all our attention to it. The punc- heels of this question should come another question, namely tum can be many things. In a photograph that is a portrait of whether liking an image because the bodies in it are attrac- a sports team our attention can be drawn by a figure in the tive is not at least part of the point of erotic art. In any case, background; and suddenly the picture becomes all about that it is clear that punctum will often play a large part in deciding person and not about the team. It can be a detail in clothing, whether we like an image; and it is certainly instrumental in a fascinating element in a body, something taking place in deciding whether we will become obsessed with a certain im- the background; in fact, it can be anything that grasps our at- age. The most powerful images in our experience are usually tention but that was not meant to be part of the photograph’s not experienced as powerful on the strength of their studium studium or subject when the photographer made the picture. alone. This means that it can be to the benefit of a photog- In this sense, says Barthes, punctum is ‘a prick, a puncture, rapher to have a punctum-effect in photography. This would mean, in a very general way, that a photographer might at- 137). Goldin’s attitude was profoundly influenced by the New tempt to consciously introduce elements in his or her work York underground scene of the 1960s, and especially Warhol’s that have a considerable chance of being experienced as a Factory with its glamorous transvestites, and the work of kind of punctum. In this way, and somewhat perversely, punc- Larry Clark. ‘I was documenting my life,’ Goldin explains. ‘The tum would become part of the studium, something one at- only person who was documenting his own experience was tempts to achieve. To be sure, this is not a simple thing to do Larry Clark. His work gave me some sense of a precedent’ and is often a good recipe for certain failure: by wanting the (ibid.). The basis of Goldin’s work is therefore the snapshot, punctum too much, the photograph might very well end up ‘the form of photography that is most defined by love’ (o.c. looking contrived. 450) because it captures an intimate moment in an image. For But there is a way around this problem. The solution might Goldin, ‘it’s not a detachment to take a picture. It’s a way of be to engage in a kind of photography that is essentially touching somebody – it’s a caress. I’m looking with a warm about the kinds of themes and motifs that are intimately as- eye, not a cold eye’ (o.c. 452). sociated with punctum. This would mean a very personal and Making a photograph of the human body, then, need not be intimate kind of photography that would be related to the di- about “objectification” at all. In fact, Goldin claims that ‘it’s 400 ary format in literature. The “Boston School” to a large extent about trying to feel what another person is feeling. There’s a 401 fits such an approach of photography, although they were not glass wall between people, and I want to break it’ (o.c. 448). the first photographers to attempt it. It could be argued that But to attain such intimacy in a photographic image it is of- the invention of “street photography” in the 1960s (which we ten not sufficient to simply record the intimate. Creating the discussed in Chapter Two) set the tone for images that were punctum, not as a willed detail in an image but as the overall not academically perfect and that actively sought out themes feel of a body of photographic work, often involves consider- and motifs that related to the casual, the incidental, the per- able skill and craft. This becomes especially clear in the work sonal, and the individual. One of the first artists to actively of Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989). Where Goldin’s photographs turn the diary-like photography of his life and the life of his often have the feel of the documentary approach, including friends into photographic art was Larry Clark, notably in his the fact that she often works in series and has produced an book Tulsa (1971). A similar approach, but much less focused immense amount of images for semi-narrative books like on the seamy side of life, is to be found in the underrated The Devil’s Playground (2003), Morrisroe’s works is much more work of Will McBride. As Nan Goldin explains, ‘when I started obviously technically manipulated. Jack Pierson once claimed photographing seriously in ’71, ’72, ’73, art photography was that ‘Mark’s work is like Caspar David Friedrich in a donut basically rocks and trees and perfect printing and, right from shop’ (Heinrich 1998: 109), a claim that goes some way to the beginning, David [Armstrong] and I were the dust-and- describing the texture of Morrisroe’s work. Morrisroe’s photo- scratch school. We only cared about content’ (Goldin 1996: graphs often look grainy and sensual. They seem to have the texture of oil painting. To achieve this effect, the artist would simply express or record intimate occasions. In order for it to use two negatives, one in colour and one in black and white, be art, it must be processed into an object given for our aes- put one on top of the other and then print the image. He thetic consideration; something more than a page torn from would further add all kinds of blemishes and errors, such as a diary. Jack Pierson, for example, also achieves a very intense scratches and fingerprints, to enhance a sense of found pho- overall punctum in his work, but in contrast to Goldin and tography, as if these grainy, slightly discoloured images had Morrisroe he achieves it through a form of hightened reality. only recently been retrieved from someone’s attic: relics from He emphasises the momentary and the melancholy through other lives and other voices in other rooms. To match this ef- under- or over-exposure and especially through painting over fect, the content of Morrisroe’s images is often melancholy. In his printed images in sometimes very vivid colours. Just like Self-Portrait with Broken Finger, Christmas 1984 (1984) Morrisroe the other artists of the “Boston School” his aim is to create a turned his camera on his own body, and not for the last time, personal record of people and places. ‘What I primarily want crouching naked in front of a mirror, his right hand bandaged is an emotional reaction,’ he explains. But he adds that ‘it and his lean naked body cloaked in the half-light. Fascination was easier to evoke feelings if things were not perfect. The (1983) is one of his most striking self-portraits, lying in bed, pictures are simply more real then’ (Heinrich 1998: 141). Peter 402 looking vaguely like Rimbaud, but with his arm outstretched Weiermair has written that in Pierson’s work ‘photography 403 above him and a small bird perched on top of it. Much of his becomes a medium for escape from the world, for stylisation work is devoted to chronicling his own physical decline as he and also for lies’. He also claims that photography for Pierson battled aids, a theme that is also a major thread in Goldin’s is ‘a means of transforming real circumstances into a state of work. glamour’ (in Pierson 1997: 6). But such a glamorised version It is clear that artists such as Clark, Goldin, and Morrisroe of a melancholy reality need not be a place of lies. It can just practice a highly stylised form of photographic autobiogra- as easily be read as a vision infused with dream reality. It is phy. Although their work is intensely personal, it is so in two the hyperreality of dreams, where events take on a slightly ways. First, and most obviously, in the choice of subject mat- exaggerated feel which makes them even more evocative of ter. But second, and less obviously, in several kinds of formal reality. To heighten an image’s intensity through glamour can procedures that clearly mark these photographs as works also result in a heightened emotional impact, in Pierson’s of art. These formal procedures are also intensely personal case a sense of melancholy sensuality, a world of lovers in in the sense that they are highly individual. Lovers of their motel rooms, abandoned fairgrounds, and kitchen sinks scat- work can spot a Goldin picture or a Morrisroe from afar: these tered with the colour patterns of plastic flowers and bottles photographers have a signature style that is all their own. of detergent. This again underscores the intimate link between feeling and form that Langer never tired of stressing. It is not sufficient to Scattergorising the World look, rules formed by others. Instead one can create a perso- The most generous photographic outlook on the world can na and identity of one’s own beyond all commercial interests’ be found in the work of Wolfgang Tillmans, whose engage- (Birnbaum 2006: 28). This attitude has remained central to ment with the world is adequately summarised in the title Tillmans’ work and should remind us of Kondylis’ notion of of his 2003 exhibition at the Tate in London: if one thing mat- the spatial expanse of equality that is foundational for post- ters, everything matters. In a conscious swerve away from what modern culture. The belief that one’s identity is something he calls the “language of importance” (Birnbaum 2006: 18) that one can largely piece together without guidance from Tillmans’ art is radically anti-hierarchical. Contrary to what any kind of authority is intrinsically linked to the idea that is a widespread assumption Tillmans did not start his career any kind of choice or combination, except those harmful to as a photographer for fashion magazines. In fact, Russell others, is legitimate. The patchwork concept of postmodern Ferguson points out that ‘Tillmans has never had anything identity necessarily implies the principle of equality in diver- resembling a conventional career as a fashion photographer. sity. He has never shot for any advertising campaign, and he Tillmans has introduced this principle into his work, which does not allow his work to be used for advertising. His sub- centres on a wide array of topics. There are portraits of 404 jects are rarely wearing high-profile logos or brands, except friends and lovers, there is landscape photography, urban 405 perhaps the ubiquitous and inescapable Levis and Adidas. landscapes, still lives, and even abstract work. Tillmans [...] His recurrent themes – quiet observation of nature and treats every subject with the same kind of love and atten- everyday things; hanging out with friends; sex; political activ- tion, whether it is Damon Albarn taking a shower or a piece ism; dancing – are all free. None of them involves buying or of fruit on the window sill. His choice of subjects and style selling’ (Ferguson 2006: 76). But Tillmans did use magazine of photography has proved immensely influential, not only spreads, and especially the works he published in i-D in the among other artists but among the larger populace. ‘Life early 1990s, as a way of finding new, less elitist ways of com- imitates art,’ Daniel Birnbaum has noted, ‘and thanks to the municating with the world; a world that would be consider- “Tillmans effect” many of us recognise our own Tillmans pic- ably larger than the artworld in-crowd. In fact, Tillmans came tures or situations right in front of us, out there in the world’ to prominence as the most important photographer of the (o.c. 18). In this sense Tillmans’ work clearly illustrates how Love Generation of the 1990s, the culture of house music and art can alter the way we look at the world. His way of look- Berlin Love Parades that seemed to herald a new era that ing often fundamentally alters the way his audience looks at would be less materialistic and less capitalist than the 1980s the world through what Paul Flynn has called ‘his signature of Reaganomics and Thatcherist oppression. When Tillmans ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary through his was publishing in i-D the magazine ‘made clear that nobody camera’ (Flynn 2010: 96). But it should be clear that Tillmans has to subscribe to official rules of how to behave and how to does not simply stumble upon the extraordinary by chance, as if he were somehow prone to uncovering it. He seeks it photographs, too. Paradoxically, they seem all the more im- out. Mark Wigley has quoted Tillmans as saying ‘that “photog- mediate’ (ibid.). But Tillmans’ style does not stop at lighting. raphy always lies about what it is in front of the camera but His sense of space is stunning and extremely precise. Mark never lies about what is behind.” It captures the experience, Wigley has pointed out that Tillmans’ kind of ‘architectural the thinking, behind the image. Photography is a psychologi- space is not simply found in the world. The majority of Till- cal rather than a technological medium. It is a way of pro- mans’ images are in some way staged. [...] In each case, all jecting thinking into the world and sharing that experience’ evidence of rearrangement is removed so that the staged (Wigley 2006: 150-154). This implies that Tillmans is anything scenes are experienced as found, and the found scenes are but a snapshot photographer. He is an artist who takes great experienced as precisely staged. [...] No clue is offered as to care in creating his images; but he creates them in a way that the choreographing of each scene, preserving the sense of a makes them look casual. rich found world. So each image appears halfway between The fact that Tillmans’ images are very deliberately authored the world and the photographer’ (Wigley 2006: 150). As a con- is especially obvious in one of the genres for which he initial- sequence, fact and fiction merge, as do feeling and form, in ly became recognised: portraiture. What sets Tillmans’ photo- the way Tillmans guides the world into appearance. 406 graphic portraits apart from others is the way they are light- One of the double layers in Tillmans’ work is the way his 407 ed. As Tillmans himself explains, ‘I got rid of everything that’s loving looks at the world imply an unobtrusive but very radi- artistic in portraiture [...]. I found a way of indirect lighting cal political statement that is exactly about his belief that that looks like the absence of artificial light. That’s often everything in the world is deserving of equal consideration. been misunderstood as a lack of formality, and dismissed as As Tillmans himself puts it, ‘the eyes are a great subversive the dreaded “snapshot aesthetic”’ (Ferguson 2006: 81). What tool because they technically don’t underlie any control, they looks least formal in Tillmans is in fact the most deliberately are free when used freely’ (Birnbaum 2006: 16). Tillmans sug- formalised aspect of his work. But his lighting technique is gests that our ability to see for ourselves and to use our gaze so firmly welded to the content of his images that it is barely consciously is a strong subversive tool because it allows us noticed by the viewer. As Russell Ferguson has said, ‘it is all to deconstruct and undermine the stories that are told about but invisible, but it is very important. He generally keeps it the world and that are presented us as truth, as inescapable flat, most often by bouncing a hand flashgun intuitively into realities, or as economic, political, or cultural necessities. the room, preferably off a white wall somewhere. This tech- By looking at the world with a generous eye that spreads its nique largely eliminates shadows, thus giving the picture a attention equally among all things we can develop a sense clarity and a directness that is understated but unmistakable. of reality that is at odds with the requirements and needs of We tend to edit out shadows from our consciousness of what global capitalism. Like Baudelaire’s painter of modern life, we see in daily life. Tillmans keeps them mostly out of his Tillmans’ roving eye seeks out the eternal in the everyday, not in the sense of reading the world as metaphysical scrip- Klein has called “disaster capitalism,” which sees natural and ture, but by finding value, and lasting and profound value, in social tragedies and disasters as opportunities for lucrative everything, even in that which the dominant culture wants moneymaking (Klein 2008: 6). Along with this new and ag- to discard. This sense of equality also lies at the heart of gressive capitalist culture a new world order has come about Tillmans’ exhibition practices. When showing his works, he that was given fuel by the attacks on the World Trade Center often hangs them with binder clips or tape. He also hangs on September 11, 2001. Since then the world is often repre- original works next to magazine spreads. Although it is com- sented as bifurcated along the lines of Them and Us. But the mon for artists to present their works in new combinations fault-lines that divide us do not simply run along continents at every exhibition it is far less common for every presenta- or cultures, they are within every community, where differ- tion of the work to consciously display this openness to new ences in race, religion, class, and gender cause communities combinations. By using binder clips or tape Tillmans always to disintegrate from within. Tillmans has said that ‘I believe shows that whatever the presentation is, it could always have that the greatest problem of our time are people who claim to been different. Every combination of images is temporary and possess absolute truths’ (Jäger 2008: 35). The truth study center everything is constantly being rearranged, both in the exhibi- started as a reflection on the nature of truth. But instead of 408 tion and in the world that is represented in it. hanging his images on walls, Tillmans now presented them 409 The fundamental importance of these ever-changing com- on cheap-looking, vitrine-like tables, where he would often binations in Tillmans’ exhibitions should again remind us combine them with newspaper clippings and advertisements. of Kondylis’ analysis of the postmodern. We build our world, By presenting the images on tables the relative nature of the and project our meanings onto the world, by continually combinations is even more in evidence, producing serendipi- combining new elements, undoing existing combinations tous associations of all kinds of imagery and texts. As Russell and initiating new ones. This approach has become especially Ferguson has observed, the images in truth study center are clear in Tillmans’ exhibition project truth study center, which categorised in a non-systematic way through ‘undeclared was also made into a book. If the world is the result of our categories, non-categories. The flow from one to another is combinations of meanings and objects, the entire concept continuous’ (Ferguson 2006: 66). As a result, Truth is held in of truth becomes problematic. But where our continual con- abeyance. But this does not entail a facile kind of relativism. frontation with the relative value of truths should make us Rather, Tillmans would hold that truth is always in the par- more tolerant of diversity, the opposite is happening in the ticular, created by and for human beings in the here and now world. The change in culture that Tillmans’ generation of the of lived experience. early 1990s expected has not come about. On the contrary, the new millennium has brought a new upsurge of capitalist greed, notably in the relentless destruction of what Naomi Optics of Desire there is something in the image that renders it inexhaustible. Tillman’s generosity in looking at the world is particularly in It takes possession of us and of our gaze. It makes the image evidence in the way he looks at people. His portraits, but also irresistible. his male nudes, are a continuation of the punctum-centred In Tillmans’ erotic imagery, this punctum is linked to pieces of photography we found in the work of Nan Goldin. Whether clothing. This requires us to further elaborate our discussion he photographs bodies or the clothes that have been shed by of fetishism and voyeurism. For a fetishist, pieces of cloth- those bodies, whether he photographs individual bodies or ing, and especially items of clothing that are associated with groups of dancing bodies in ecstasy, Tillmans’ work always intimate parts of the body or with bodily secretions such as has the feel of immediate experience. They hover on the sweat, become carriers of meaning. They are infused with verge of becoming tangible. Helen Molesworth claims that the wearer’s essence, drenched in what is hidden inside the she cannot find any punctum in Tillmans’ work, no moments body and carried outside in minute particles. This concept of of desire or longing (Tillmans 1996: x). This is true only in the fetishism is brilliantly illustrated in Tillmans’ Genome (2002), sense that his images, and especially his early portraits, are a duotone photograph of a hallway that is littered with dis- so consciously staged as to leave nothing to coincidence. But carded black socks. The socks look like short strands of the 410 what is created through this highly stylised approach is an human DNA-string, which is the map of our bodies’ inner 411 image that is all-over-punctum: what is created, is the illusion structure. But at the same time the socks are obvious objects of something spontaneous. I would say that many of Till- of fetishistic attention: worn for sports, they are imbued mans’ pictures express nothing but desire and longing. Except with sweat, they carry skin flakes and randy smells. By call- that this longing and this desire are not to be found in the ing them genomes Tillmans makes us see in them the shape details that usually carry the punctum-effect. Longing and de- of genomes, which in turn recalls the profound biological sire are the very fabric of the images. ‘Confronted by a wall of foundation of fetishism, which is about possessing the body’s his photographs,’ David Deitcher observes in Tillmans’ mono- interior. By stuffing the sock in his mouth, a masochist might graph Burg (1998), ‘I am possessed by a powerful desire to very well suck up (or might very well imagine he were suck- know things. [...] I look for the links between them. [...] I look ing up) a person’s most intimate biological body chart along for the significant detail, as if it might provide me with ac- with the sweat. But despite this strong fetishistic charge the cess to domestic places and private rituals.’ Daniel Birnbaum image retains a sense of fun, recalling that fetishism is also a has commented that many of Tillmans’ photographs, and kind of game, and a form of edge-play. It is a roundabout way not simply the erotic images, ‘seem inexhaustible. [...] I can of dealing with the body. But it is crucial to Tillmans’ sense return to some of his pictures over and over again and every of eroticism for, as David Deitcher observes in Burg, ‘when time experience the same sense of something fundamentally Tillmans wants to project sexual longing, he focuses on the inscrutable’ (Birnbaum 2006: 16). This is the effect of punctum: fetish instead of the man’. Tillmans has an entire wardrobe of fetishist imagery, most us feel the erotic tension, the thrill of the forbidden and of famously, and also most beautifully, his Faltenwurf-series, maybe getting caught, that must have guided Tillmans’ hand which shows pieces of clothing draped or casually thrown as he took the photograph. (staged or found) on pieces of furniture or on a staircase. ‘I had this desire for many years to capture what I see in front Another series shows glistening close-up shots of Adidas of my eyes during rush hour,’ Tillmans once explained in an shorts in glorious red or blue. One of his most iconic erotic interview. ‘This public intimacy, this closeness is only pos- images is Sportflecken (1996), a white T-shirt that is stained sible or workable because we accept that it’s taboo’ (Eshun yellow with an abundance of sweat. ‘To look at Sportflecken,’ 2000: 105). We know that people packed on trains and buses Deitcher correctly notes, ‘is to imagine the body of the person are in fact engaged in a possibly explosive sexual exchange. who once filled that T-shirt.’ Although the body is gone and They invade each other’s private space with their smells, the T-shirt discarded, it can almost make us feel the pres- their clothes, their bags and cases, and with their bodies. To ence of warm flesh, heated by the exertions of sports (When keep public life manageable we often deny the erotic charge Robert Mapplethorpe used pieces of clothing in his fetishistic of such situations. The voyeur takes advantage of this small early sculptures, Patti Smith would sometimes ask him: ‘Can rupture between what we know and what we acknowledge 412 I wear this? Or is it art?’; Morrisroe 1995: 75). But as his erotic we know and peers in through the edges. Public intimacy 413 imagery developed, Tillmans sometimes skipped the fetish is at the heart of a series of photographs Tillmans made of and went straight for the man, albeit still in a furtive man- people, or rather fragments of people, on the London subway, ner. When they look at men with a desiring eye, Tillmans’ simply naming the photographs after the line on which the photographs often operate along the lines of the voyeur’s picture was made. Again, it is not at all clear to what extent gaze. Jeremy (1993), for instance, shows us the bare torso of a these pictures were staged and lighted or simply made with- young man, the tough looking buckle of his belt, and the can out their subjects’ knowledge. One of Tillmans’ most power- of beer he is holding in his hand. This image brings us into ful erotic images is Bakerloo Line (2000), a black and white close proximity to a man who looks like the type who would photograph that looks into the short sleeve of a man’s T-shirt not welcome this kind of homosexual attention in real life. as he steadies himself on the subway. The photograph’s and Similar furtive glances can be found in the book Soldiers: the our gaze are directed straight at the young man’s armpit. nineties (1999), a collage of found photographs of soldiers and Armpits have a very high erotic charge in gay fetishism. This some of Tillmans’ own photographs. Among his own works, should not surprise us since it is one of the places where the Tillmans included two shots of a soldier seen from the rear as human body is apt to sweat and smell the most. By peeping he leans against a door in a train (Soldat I and Soldat II, 1996). into the young man’s armpit Bakerloo Line allows us to share It is unclear whether the soldier knew his picture was be- the furtive erotic charge of secretly looking at other people’s ing taken, but the photograph suggests he didn’t and makes bodies in public. The title of the photograph, as indeed the titles of all the photographs in the series, stresses the ano- and no doubt a coincidence subsequently exploited by Till- nymity and fleeting nature of such visual encounters, noting mans, that the patterns that these experiments brought into the geographical location where it occurred rather than the being should have both cosmic and fleshly connections. By person’s name (which is presumably unknown anyway). taking on the texture and structure of the human body seen But this was not Tillmans’ first photograph of an armpit. He up close, and especially the texture of muscle tissue, these had earlier portrayed one in the aptly titled armpit (1992; Fer- abstract images seem to take us into the moist inner space of guson and Molon 2006: 85). This was a close-up of an armpit the human body, moving among and feeling the soft tissues sticky with sweat, retrieved from the club scene. But I feel it and pulsating masses that generate the movements that in has an uncanny resemblance to one of Tillmans’ abstract im- turn cause sweat to be excreted. Journeying inside the body, ages, Freischwimmer 40 (2004). The latter picture is part of a se- these abstract images fall back into cosmic surrender. ries of abstract images that Tillmans started to create in 1998. This ties together many strands of Tillmans’ work. As the These are pictures created without a camera, simply by dis- artist himself once said, ‘paradise is maybe when you dis- persing or scattering photosensitive materials on paper and solve your ego – a loss of self, being in a bundle of other bod- exposing them to light. The series have luscious names like ies’ (Birnbaum 2006: 28). But it were such bundles of bodies 414 Freischwimmer, Blushes, or Peaches and the texture of the pat- that filled the clubs where Tillmans started his career. In fact, 415 terns created by the crystals on the paper has a curvacious the photograph Knotenmutter (1994) shows a knot of two bod- sensuality that often resembles body parts or the texture of ies intertwined, making it difficult to tell at first sight which muscles. Daniel Birnbaum has called these works ‘ecstatic arms and legs belong to which of the two bodies. It is as if pages of cosmic flesh’ (Birnbaum 2006: 24) and ‘a pure writ- these boys were melting together to form one new entity. ing of light’ (Birnbaum 2008b: 7), which recalls the language Taking this erotic loss of self even further, we might connect of alchemy. But Birnbaum also links these images to August back to Hermann Nitsch and his Dionysian revels. Camille Strindberg’s so-called “celestographs”: photographs created Paglia has suggested that the ecstatic dancing at discos and by exposing photographic plates directly to the starry sky (o.c. clubs could be interpreted as a resurgence of pagan ritual in 8). So the cosmos and the body seem to merge in these imag- a post-Christian world (Paglia 1993: 23). Like the maenads es, creating expanses of matter that echo the textures of the dancing in honour of Dionysos, connecting with the void, the body physical. It could even be argued that they represent yet revellers at contemporary clubs become one with the bodies another step in Tillmans’ voyeuristic endeavour to lay bare around them and together make up the cosmos of the physi- the hidden depths of the body. After all, Mark Wigley urges cal. There may be melancholy quiet in Tillmans’ work, and us not to forget that ‘for all its sensuous beauty, the image is tender politics of polymorphous erotics, but in connecting a laboratory test, a forensic exposure of the raw materials of back to the world the tremendous force of something cosmic the art’ (Wigley 2006: 156). It is a most fortuitous coincidence, is always at play. Imagining Petals O’Keeffe takes the imagining of flowers out of our mind and One of Tillmans’ greatest images is Grey jeans over stair post into the real world. To understand how she does that, we (1991), which shows a pair of grey jeans draped over a stair must look at Elaine Scarry’s investigation of imagination in post. To the right of the jeans we see the soft red tones of Dreaming by the Book (2001). the carpet on the stairs, to the left there is simply a bright Scarry starts from the observation that we actually seem to white light, probably daylight. The banister, in the middle experience imagination going on in our forehead. ‘When we of the image, is covered by a white T-shirt. The stair post think of images somewhere on the inside of the body, we bulges phallus-like through the bottom of the jeans. The habitually think of them as residing inside the head’ (DB 46). image recalls Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexualised images of The forehead is ‘the habitual space for interior imagining’ Calla Lilies, which are in turn indebted to Georgia O’Keeffe’s (DB 47). But she adds that it is equally easy ‘to carry out one’s lusciously sexual images of flowers. O’Keeffe’s flower imag- imagining in other parts of the body: for example, one may ery has long been controversial, not in the least because the picture Pegasus in one’s forehead, but one can also imagine artist herself was often unhappy about the sexual meanings him in one’s forearm or in one’s forefinger’ (DB 46). But Scarry that were read into them. But these meanings are obviously adds a note in which she records Robert Nozick’s reaction to 416 there. In fact, since flowers actually are the sexual organs of this mental experiment. In fact, Nozick ‘questioned whether 417 plants, the visual link between them and human genitals is the image in the forearm is really in the forearm or in a pic- a very natural one. By choosing flowers as a subject, O’Keeffe ture of the forearm held in the forehead’ (DB 256). I believe was challenging traditional ideas about what was a suitable Nozick’s observation is quite correct: if I try to imagine a subject for women artists. Instead of painting her flowers in minute Pegasus in my finger, this is remarkably easy, but I nice little watercolours, O’Keeffe painted them in oils and am not imagining Pegasus in my finger in the sense that my on a grand scale that was usually the preserve of sublime finger becomes the space of imagining; rather, I am imagin- landscapes or cityscapes. She simply dismissed the idea ing in my forehead a picture of my finger in which a minus- that flowers were not an appropriate subject for serious art. cule Pegasus can be found. So the forehead does seem to be ‘I’m one of the few artists, maybe the only one today, who is the primary space for imagining. And one of the remarkable willing to talk about my work as pretty,’ she wrote in 1924. ‘I things Scarry notices, is the ease with which we can imagine don’t mind it being pretty. I think it’s a shame to discard this flowers inside that space. If we imagine a human figure, a word; maybe if we work on it hard enough we can make it horse, a landscape, or even a human face, it is very difficult fashionable again’ (Drohojowska-Philp 2004: 246). But apart to see all the details in our mind’s eye. But a flower emerges from that, the giant size of her flowers also forces the audi- in full detail with very little effort. The ease with which we ence to really look at them. Flowers are easy to overlook. imagine flowers is due to what Scarry calls ‘the ratio of ex- But they are easy to imagine. By painting them extra-large, tension to intensity’ (DB 53). If an imagined object has a size that is comparable to the size of our interior space of imagi- our space of imagining, emerging in vibrant directness. But nation, the image is perceived in greater detail. To imagine a an opposite approach is also possible, as is shown in the work horse or a landscape, the image must be reduced in size to of the Swiss-Dutch artist Regula Maria Müller. She creates fit it into our mental projection room. In reduction, details, small sculptures of flowers and other organisms out of beads, and hence a degree of intensity, get lost. But flowers are just threads, and pieces of blown glass. She reproduces in reality the right size to fit the inside of our head. That is why, when the kind of intense detail that Scarry associates with flowers they emerge, they immediately emerge in full detail. Another imagined in the mind. By using beads and glass, shimmer- reason why we so easily imagine flowers is what Scarry calls ing materials that are fragile to the touch, Müller enhances (with a word borrowed from Aristotle) their rarity: the fact the preciousness we naturally associate with flowers. There that their petals are thin and veil-like, so that one can see the is a tremendous vivacity in her work, making it seem almost light shining through them. Things imagined, Scarry writes, more alive than actual reality. This way, Müller seems to in- are rarely solid. Images in the mind have a ghost-like quality: vert the normal creative process. As we saw, the artist usually they appear to be weightless and hover before the mind’s eye. takes a motif or a material from the world and transforms When the object imagined shares this gossamer-like quality it into something imaginary, something fictional. Müller, on 418 in real life, it is very easy to imagine it. That is why it is very the other hand, seems to have taken something imaginary, 419 easy to imagine a fog, a veil, or a ghost, which are all sheer namely the vivacity of imagined flowers, and made it real. substances, but it is difficult to image a car, a face, or a build- In her work, she creates the illusion of aliveness that is usu- ing. ‘Phenomena in the actual physical world that have [the] ally associated with objects imagined. If we remember David attributes of transparency and filminess (such as thin cur- Hockney’s observation that our eyes can only focus on one tains, fog, and mist) can be more easily imitated in the mind point at a time, it is clear that we can never really take in the than can thick or substantive phenomena. The gossamer splendour of beautiful things in one view. Since mental im- quality of many flowers [...], the thinness and transparency of ages do not rely on the optics of the eye, they can appear to the petals [...] gives them a kinship with the filmy substance- us in greater vivacity and with greater directness than objects lessness of mental images’ (DB 59-60). Therefore flowers are in the real world. By reproducing such mental images on a easy to summon before the mind’s eye. small scale, and with materials that reproduce an experience It is now clear what we mean when we say that O’Keeffe took of vivacity through effects of shimmering colours and light, imagined flowers out of our heads and into the world. By Müller creates the illusion of objects, and flowers at that, that painting flowers on a size much larger than the human head, have been lifted straight out of the mind’s eye and put out she forces us to look at them with an intensity that is even there in the world for our physical perception and delecta- greater than the intensity of imaginary flowers. The paintings tion. In their elaborate yet refined beauty, Müller’s objects flood our field of vision in the same way imagined flowers fill seem hyperreal and preternaturally beautiful. The same opulence can be found in the work of Welsh artist What the Dreamachine incites you to see is yours... your Cerith Wyn Evans, who also addresses imagination and vi- own. The brilliant interior visions you so suddenly see whirl- sion in his work, whether it is in the rarity of super-imposed ing around inside your head are produced by your own brain slide projections (The sky is thin as paper here..., 2004) or in activity’ (Dwyer 1999: 70). his use of neon lights in his many installations. A series of Evans’ installatians are radiant works of light and transpar- chandeliers created between 2003 and 2007 are attempts to ency. Their gorgeous beauty derives from the fact that they bring into consciousness processes of meaning that usually can turn a commonplace environment into something that remain beneath the radar of felt experience. The chandeliers, looks as if it is dreamed. He bestows upon the material world which often were opulent works of design or hand-blown the rarity of imagined worlds. For instance, Arr/Dep (Imaginary glass, burned in pulsating light patterns. These patterns were Landscape for the Birds) (2006) was a project created for the anything but random: they were transmitting texts in Morse Lufthansa Aviation Center at Frankfort airport. It is a chande- code, ‘transformed into pulsing light’ (Birnbaum 2008a: 23). lier that was assembled from lines representing the air routes Literary texts, poems, philosophical tracts, or any other kind that connect cities all over the world (one cannot help but see of text were translated into Morse code and programmed into this work in conjunction with Wolfgang Tillmans’ series of 420 the pulsating pattern of the chandelier. Daniel Birnbaum has photos of the Concorde, 1997, following its tracks through the 421 compared the messages of the chandeliers to channelling sky). Daniel Birnbaum describes the work as ‘a kind of three- because ‘voices – translated into light signals – reach us from dimensional drawing [that] hovers weightlessly and mysteri- the past, from the future or from a place that is impossible ously in its crystal container, and in the evening and the early to define in temporal terms’ (ibid.). The works are ‘about in- morning hours you get the sense that the entire building is voking other subjects, other zones of experience that remain turned into one massive lamp’ (o.c. 27). But despite its beauty, radically inaccessible to the viewer’ (o.c. 25). But the idea of the work is also political, for in its representation of global channelling messages through light was not entirely original aerial trade routes it is in a very real sense ‘the most alluring to Evans, who was inspired by Brion Gysin’s famous Dreama- and stylish portrayal of something that probably cannot be chine, an instrument that was designed to generate mental portrayed, Global capital’ (ibid.). If we agree with Birnbaum’s visions. The Dreamachine is a metal cylinder with a series of interpretation then Arr/Dep takes the project of the earlier geometric patterns stamped out. Inside there is a light that chandeliers a step further. Instead of broadcasting existing shines through the openings. Once the Dreamachine starts texts through chandeliers, Arr/Dep succeeds in visualising a spinning one must look at it with the eyes closed. The stro- concept that only exists as an idea in our collective imagina- boscopic effect of the light flashes will then generate visions tion. As such, it underlines the fantasmatic nature of global in the mind. As Gysin himself explained, ‘you are the artist capital. It is a fiction, a dream dreamt by the rich and power- when you approach a Dreamachine with your eyes closed. ful on the backs of the poor and the oppressed. That is the sting in the tail of its beauty, for what it represents is the a metaphor for the loss of memory, then it could be argued dialectic of Enlightenment, where, according to Adorno and that Apichatpong’s cinema is an act of resistance against Horkheimer, ‘the whole enlightened earth is radiant with this loss. It is an attempt to pull back into consciousness the triumphant calamity’ (ibid.). In a sense, then, Arr/Dep is a memory of things nearly lost. ‘We are in the age of extinc- beautiful wreck, a global tragedy only imagined. As a work of tion,’ Weerasethakul writes. ‘The cultures, the languages, the precious beauty, it at once dazzles us, presents us with imagi- forests, the animals, the treasures hidden in the vast tunnels nation made flesh, and shows us the cynicism of global capi- in the mountains. We are then forced to move to the Age of tal, which generates a rhetoric of progress and civilisation at Enlightenment when Nothing is meaningful. But the spirits the cost of tremendous human exploitation. It is a perfect fit remain, the spirits of the artefacts’ (Quandt 2009: 239-240). of meaning and form. Memory is the organising principle in Apichatpong’s cinema, where it is related to the strategy of the exquisite corpse. Le Living Memory corps exquis was an artistic method used by Marcel Duchamp To see the plentiful world as beautiful is to see the objects in to introduce chance and random coincidence into the artistic it as carriers of meaning. But in our world of global capital- process. In the exquisite body ‘drawings or texts are passed 422 ism, objects are constantly being slaughtered on the altar of from person to person to elaborate upon, with the original 423 profit. This entails the risk that the meanings might perish materials hidden so that each addition does not adhere in along with the objects, leaving the scope of human experi- any “logical” or predetermined way, resulting in a collective, ence greatly impoverished. What remains is the rule of rea- randomly assembled piece’ (Quandt 2009: 31). Apichatpong son, the law of efficiency and profit that bleeds all meaning used this practice in his first feature film, Mysterious Object from life and leaves us with the Nothing of the capitalist at Noon (2000), where a series of characters take turns to tell void. In this void, which is really the egalitarian expanse of their own version of the same story, each adding their own the postmodern field (a collection of equal things stretching twists or details. Some of these stories are dramatised in the beyond the horizon), nothing is really of value since distinc- film, so that Mysterious Object evolves into a rhizome of shift- tions no longer apply. In his film Syndromes and a Century ing narrative strands that blurs the line between fact and (2006) Apichatpong Weerasethakul offered an unforgettably fiction. But the exquisite corpse technique expands beyond ominous visual metaphor for this process: in a sterile subter- individual films. Many of Apichatpong’s films contain clues ranean space the black hole of a large funnel slowly sucks and references pointing back and forth between them. For in- in the mist that hovers in the room, as if it were sucking the stance, in the opening scene of Tropical Malady (2004) a group place empty. This drain is what is happening to human expe- of soldiers find a dead body, which is implied to be (and has rience in capitalist culture: our inner lives are being bled or been identified by the director as) the body of a young man sucked dry by the logic of corporate vampirism. If this pipe is who was presumably shot dead in Blissfully Yours (2002), Api- chatpong’s previous film. One of the two main characters in ity that it is true”’ (o.c. 104). By combining his own memories Tropical Malady is the soldier Keng, who was also mentioned and the memories of others, or his own vision of a film and in Blissfully Yours. The other main character of Tropical Malady, the input of his collaborators, Apichatpong blurs the line Tong, seems to reappear in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His between reality and fiction, between real past and imagined Past Lives (2010), but is there played by Sakda Kaewbuadee, past. This undermines the reliability of the accounts present- the actor who played Keng in Tropical Malady and who has ed but also brings them closer to actually lived life, where we since become the director’s muse. are constantly having to deal with the tricks memory plays However, the practice of the exquisite corpse is most struc- on us. In the final reckoning, it is even possible for memory to turally present in Apichatpong’s way of making films. He forget, to eliminate people and events from the realm of real- is a director who allows his collaborators much freedom to ity by suppressing them or consciously omitting them from introduce their own contributions into the film. Comment- a narrative. This is a topic that has occupied Apichatpong in ing on the process of editing his films, Apichatpong says that the Primitive project, which finally resulted in his film Uncle both he himself and his editor cut their version of the film. Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. ‘Then we compare. Or we separate scenes. Or I break down The Primitive project originates with a monk who gave Api- 424 the script and add my notes on editing for him’ (o.c. 186). chatpong a copy of his book A Man Who Can Recall His Past 425 This open approach also extends to both the professional and Lives, which tells of a man called Boonmee who had memo- non-professional actors, who often decide what will happen ries of previous existences. This fascinated Apichatpong to the characters, a practice that is most explicit in Mysterious because he felt that this Boonmee carried around his own Object, which is constructed according to this very principle. cinema: he did not need film to project his (reconstructed) For Apichatpong himself this method is closely related to the memories because everything was in his mind. In an inter- importance of memory in his work. ‘I think this is one of the view Apichatpong also explains that a monk (possibly the reasons I make films,’ he explains. ‘My personal memories same monk who gave him the book) told him ‘that medita- are always interwoven with those from various other sources, tion was like filmmaking. He said that when one meditates, reading, listening and travelling (my own travels and those one doesn’t need film. As if film was an excess. In a way he’s of others). It was hard then to remember the real past clearly, right. Our brain is the best camera and a projector. If only we so I made films without knowing how true they really were. can find a way to operate it properly’ (o.c. 184). The idea that This was an important detail; it was like waking the dead there is a link between imagination, meditation, and cinema and giving them a new soul, making them walk once more. It is a fundamental key to Apichatpong’s cinema. This link is is the same when writing, sometimes it is just our imagina- also mentioned by Elaine Scarry in Dreaming by the Book, when tion, arising from our desire to remember, as Gabriel García she claims that imagination operates like a projection in our Márquez wrote: “The memory is clear but there is no possibil- forehead. But to comprehend the full import of the mind as an interior cinematic space for Apichatpong’s work we must of the most memorable results of the project was the short say something more about the Primitive project. Apichatpong subject Ghosts of Nabua (2009), which shows a group of young decided he would try and track down this Boonmee who men playing soccer with a burning ball in the light of a single could recall his past lives, or at least people who had known neon lamp in the village of Nabua. him. This had an added attraction for the director because But the Primitive project also yielded the feature film Uncle Boonmee had lived in the Northeast of Thailand, which was Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. In this film Boonmee also where Apichatpong grew up (in the city of Khon Kaen). is dying of an unspecified affliction of the kidneys. He is But this region has a very violent history, much of which has cared for by his sister-in-law and by his nephew Tong. As been repressed. In the 1960s the army used extreme violence death approaches, spirits and animals from the forest gather against communist peasants who revolted against the gov- around the house. On the eve of his death, the spirit of his ernment. Many men were slaughtered or disappeared in the deceased wife and his long-lost son come to visit. During the wilderness. This violent history, dragging on for years on end, film Boonmee also recalls several of his past lives. In one of is a deep trauma in the region, but it has been repressed. his previous existences he was a princess with a scarred face People do not spontaneously speak about it. The past is pres- who visits a magical well where she makes love to a fish to 426 ent, but it is not mentioned. Apichatpong’s search for Boon- regain her earlier beauty. But at the end Boonmee also has 427 mee eventually took him to Nabua, which had served as a a dream about a future world in which the government has centre to organise the government’s repressive actions and the power to make any undesired subject disappear from was in a state of siege from the 1960s through the 1980s. In- the world; a totalitarian nightmare that not only refers back terviewing locals about the past, stories began to emerge and to the disappearance of countless men in the 1960s, but also Apichatpong felt he should start a project working with the points towards the political and military reality of Thailand in teenagers of today who are the descendants of the forgotten 2010. Thus, Boonmee’s memories of his previous lives serve men who disappeared or were slaughtered in the violence of to link past to future in the present, which is haunted by the earlier decades. So remembrance, memory, and reincarna- ghosts of lives past. In fact, Boonmee himself is haunted by tion (the return of dead spirits in a different guise) are at the the past, for it is revealed, almost in passing, that he killed a heart of the Primitive project, which seeks to make present lot of communists back in the 1960s. Through Boonmee the the past, reincarnated in a different form. The project yielded film creates a continuum in time, where the ghosts of people several short films, including A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (2009) move through us (through Boonmee), undoing the forgetful- which centres on the narrative of a man who claimed to be ness forced upon them. But these political themes are not the Boonmee’s son. Apichatpong also made a video short for a lo- main focus of the film, which is really about the descent into cal band and had the teenagers assemble a spaceship which a man’s self-consciousness. The film takes us into an interior served both as film set and as a hangout for the youths. One world in which the lines between man and animal, between dream and reality, and eventually also the lines between par- to be looking at a representation of what happens when we allel worlds are blurred. The film surrenders linear time to an remember. Taking our cue from Scarry’s image of memory as associative stream of consciousness that presents us with an a mental cinema, we could argue that watching a film is like organic vision of man and his world. watching the operations of our own imagination being objec- The scene of Boonmee’s death provides a mighty metaphor tified. But since the projected film in the dark theatre fills the for this vision. Led by the spirit of his deceased wife and ac- visual field of perception, this objectification is immediately companied by this sister-in-law and Tong, Boonmee ventures blasted onto the screen of our interior cinema, which is over- into the wilderness and is taken into a magical cave where whelmed by it. This is a more roundabout way of saying what the ceiling is lined with little specks of light that look like an is more commonly expressed when people say that they expanse of stars. It is a stunningly moving sequence. Inside feel “inside” a film. Cinema is an intimate medium because the cave the dying Boonmee is spied upon by spirits and it emulates the deep structure of our most intimate faculty: ghosts, dark shadows that have glaring red eyes. These are imagination, which projects images onto our forehead. In this the spirits of the past who have come to welcome Boonmee sense Langer was correct to suggest that the primary illusion into their midst. Boonmee remembers the cave: it is the of cinema is the virtual dream or ‘the dream mode’ (FF 412). 428 womb of the earth, the place where he was born without But she also points out that the camera is not the dreamer: it 429 consciousness of the differences between man and animal, is ‘the mind’s eye and nothing more’ (FF 413). But saying that male or female. Several lines of interpretation open up at the camera is the mind’s eye is saying that cinema is an ex- this point. It seems plausible to see the cave as a place where ternalised representation of the felt experience of imagining. some king of collective unconscious is located (it seems Apichatpong has compared the experience of watching a unlikely that such a cave of birth and remembrance would film in a darkened theatre to a return to the womb: ‘we seem exist for the sole benefit of Boonmee’s memories). But for instinctively to want to enter dark halls; we are excited by us it is interesting to link this sequence to Scarry’s image of the prospect of hearing stories that emanate from that light the internal cinema. In making a film that takes us into the in the darkness. It is like returning to our mother’s womb’ enclosed space where a man’s memories (his internal cin- (Quandt 2009: 114). In his films, this return to the womb, ema) become real, Apichatpong seems to attempt to repeat which is linked to remembrance, is symbolised by the de- in a cinematic image the deep structure of imagination and scent into forests and caves. Apichatpong has said that be- remembrance. The descent of the characters into the cave is ing in a forest ‘forces us to reflect on ourselves’ (o.c. 50) and filmed in such a way that it takes the viewer, if he is willing can be a transformative experience. Apichatpong’s film that to submit to the experience, into the internal cave of his own expresses the transformative power of the forest most force- imagining and remembering. Or, put the other way around: fully is Tropical Malady, a miraculous work of art and a truly looking at Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives we seem original cinematic experience. Its story is deceptively simple. It tells of two young men, the provincial lad Tong (Sakda halves, but it seems clear that the second half of the film Kaewbuadee) and the soldier Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) who fall is an internal reprise of the first half: it shows the internal in love. The film observes their budding relationship with struggle of the boys, who must come to terms with the vio- remarkably demure spontaneity. But then, halfway through lent emotions that love unleashes in them. It shows their the film, something odd happens. The two boys are driving inner quest of finding each other. The fact that the same ac- through the night on a motorbike and have stopped to relieve tors return in the second part underlines such a reading. It is them selves. When Tong is done pissing, Keng takes his hand the wild beast of love and lust that is metaphorically being and starts smelling, sniffing, and licking it; and Tong returns tamed in the second half of the film. This is also indicated by the gesture by licking Keng’s hand in what James Quandt has a quote from the Japanese author Atsushi Nakajima who says called an ‘ingestive sexuality’ (o.c. 72-74). But suddenly Tong that we must learn to master our animal desires because ‘all turns away and walks into the dark forest. He disappears. The of us are by nature wild beasts’ (o.c. 65-66). Benedict Ander- next morning, Keng sits in Tong’s room, mourning his friend’s son has pointed out that the second half of the film can also disappearance. At the same time, rumours start circulat- be given an Orphic interpretation as the story of a man (the ing around the village: there is a ‘strange beast’ roaming the soldier) who must journey into the underworld (the wilder- 430 area, killing cattle. This strange beast translates as the literal ness of the forest) to bring back his beloved (the boy who has 431 meaning of the film’s original title Sud pralad. Benedict Ander- been transmogrified into a were-tiger that must be tamed) son has noted that the title was also, for a brief period in the (o.c. 76). On either reading the forest is a place of inner explo- early 1980s, gay slang for the penis or for a male homosexual ration and discovery, similar to the way Uncle Boonmee pres- (o.c. 158). Keng decides to set out into the forest to find Tong, ents the cave where Boonmee dies as a place where Boonmee after which the screen goes black and an entirely new film returns to his origins. As such it also recalls the principle of seems to begin. The second half of the film follows an anony- the Dionysian, a primeval realm where the categories of cul- mous soldier, again played by Banlop Lomnoi, who is hunting ture do not apply. For example, Boonmee clearly recalls that a were-tiger, a shape-shifter who can turn from human into he did not know the difference between male and female or tiger and back again. His hunt takes him deep into the forest between man and animal when was born in the cave. Hence, until he finally meets his opponent eye to eye. In a stunning the cave represents a realm before such differences applied, sequence the tiger (who, when in human shape, is again if not a Golden Age such as Greek mythology tells of, then at played by Sakda Kaewbuadee) looks down at the soldier from least a primary biological miasma of brimming life, polymor- a tree and the soldier offers him his body and soul. It is clear phous and polysexual. Apichatpong’s characters certainly that hunter and hunted are really one soul, leaving open the seem to exist in such a realm. This is made especially clear in question who is hunting whom. the many transmutations that they undergo and in the blur- Much has been made of the symbolism of the film’s two ring of the lines between species. Boonmee has had earlier lives as a woman and as a buffalo (among others). When he his son and himself and who is changed by the experience: was a woman, namely the princess with the scarred face, she once the son is found, the man leaves him with the tribe, had intercourse with a fish. Inter-species sex was also sup- which is his new home, and destroys the dam that would posed to make an appearance in Tropical Malady, where, it destroy that home. He sacrifices the supposed progress of should not be forgotten, a man and a tiger share a soul and Western society and his own life’s work as an engineer to the hence are meant for each other. In an interview with James higher good of preservationism. But there is also a stylistic Quandt Apichatpong has explained that ‘we shot the soldier influence, for Apichatpong has expressed his amazement at licking, eating Tong in the end (for one of the three endings). the many shades of green Boorman’s film brings out in the And we shot the soldier making love with a tiger’ (o.c. 130). forest (Quandt 2009: 44, 189). As Boorman himself explains in Man, woman, and animal, male and female, human and an interview included on the 2008 dvd release of the film, the spirit: all live together in a continuum extending infinitely film has been heralded for its very realistic depiction of what through time and space. the rain forest actually looks like. But ironically, this effect was achieved with artificial means because the dense forest Inner Space is so dark that it must be artificially lighted to translate its 432 Apichatpong has pointed out that an important influence on visual impact to film. Boorman explains that the rain forest 433 his work was John Boorman’s film The Emerald Forest (1985). usually looks murky on film because cinematographers make This ambitious but flawed film, which is hampered by some the mistake of treating it like an exterior when it is really an stilted acting and an overreaching finale, is based on true interior that must be lighted the way you would light a room. events and tells of a young boy who is taken from his parents This same artificial take on the forest returns in Tropical Mal- while they are working on a dam on the Amazon river. The ady, where the stunning light effects of the nocturnal forest father spends ten years of his life looking for his son, who were actually created with matte effects in a German studio. has grown up as a member of the tribe called the “Invisible The Emerald Forest is a continuation of core elements from People”. Father and son meet again when the dam is near Boorman’s earlier work. After all, Boorman directed what is completion and the expansion of the white man’s world into possibly the locus classicus of films about men who descend the rain forest is about to destroy the territory of the Invis- into the wilderness to find themselves: Deliverance (1972), ible People. Much research into Amerindian tribes went into based on a novel by James Dickey. Deliverance tells of four the film and director Boorman even spent three weeks living city-dwellers who want to spend a weekend in a canoe on with such a tribe. It is easy to see the link to Apichatpong’s a river in the Deep South of the United States. The river will work. The Emerald Forest is about resistance to the extinction soon dry up because it (like the river in The Emerald Forest) is of a tribe, of a culture, and of the rain forest. It shows the being dammed. The expedition is meant to renew contact quest of a man who must descend into the forest to find both with something essential these men feel they have lost. Glibly, one could say they want to find their inner selves or men do not live in nature, they embody it, brutally indifferent reconnect with nature. Fashionable as such sentiments may and ingeniously brutal. be, they do point towards a fundamental problem in Western The forest as a primeval scene of self-exploration was taken culture, which is so focused on rationality, control, and order up again in Excalibur (1981), Boorman’s mighty take on the that we have become neurotic beings that are alienated from legend of King Arthur and Merlin. This, too, is a film about ex- the natural rhythms of life. Throughout his career, Boorman tinction, for as Merlin points out in the film and Boorman has has dealt with this problem, which he perceives as a very explained in interviews, ‘the Arthurian legend is about the real danger: ‘I really feel the most dangerous thing – and it’s passing of the old gods and the coming of the Age of Man, of a cliché – is to be totally cut off from the source of things: rationality, of laws – of man controlling his affairs. The price to have no sense of where our food comes from, how the he pays for this is the loss of harmony with nature, which machines we operate work... It’s a process of profound alien- includes magic. [...] The only way to regain it is by some form ation and leads to neurosis: that’s what the modern city is all of transcendence, which the quest for the Grail represents about’ (Yakir 1981: 50). The four men’s expedition turns into – to transcend the material world and find a spiritual solu- a nightmare when they happen upon a group of mountain- tion’ (Yakir 1981: 50). The Age of Reason means that man is 434 dwellers: a bunch of inbred farmers who seem to have lost no longer part of nature, as he was in the Middle Ages, but 435 contact with civilisation. These mountain-men start hunting its opponent. ‘The most significant thing about the Middle down the intruders, who are now facing two enemies: nature Ages,’ Boorman explains, ‘is that it was an untamed world and its inhabitants. If looked at metaphorically, one could say and man had a minor role in relation to the animal kingdom. that the mountain-men are the henchmen that nature sends It was the mystery of the forest’ (ibid.). Merlin (Nicol William- out to rape these arrogant intruders as punishment for the son) is still from this old world and it is his task to introduce rape they have perpetrated on her by building a dam. Nature the young Arthur into the world of magic. Merlin compares takes revenge, and the rape is literal, for one of the four men the forest to a Dragon, ‘a creature that came out of the slime is humiliatingly raped by the savages in an unsettling scene. and had to do with the memory of emerging from the reptile’ If civilised man violently penetrates nature (damming rivers, (ibid.). As part of his spiritual journey to become king of the cutting rain forests, soiling oceans) then nature will penetrate Britons, young Arthur (Nigel Terry) must sojourn in the forest him right back. And just like the benign Invisible People in and hold his own among the many creatures that come out The Emerald Forest, who seem to blend in with the green of the in the night and fill it with strange sounds. Again, the forest forest, the mountain-men of Deliverance seem to sprout from in Excalibur is similar to that in The Emerald Forest and Tropical the primal soil of the Deep South. ‘I shot the mountain men,’ Malady: filled with eerie light that shows in great detail the Boorman explains, ‘as though they were emerging from trees many strange bugs and beasts that crawl around. Its hues like malevolent spirits of the forest’ (Kemp 2001: 23). These are preternaturally green or violently red and orange, lighted like a visionary landscape of Pre-Raphaelite invention. The fled with youthful exuberance and great dedication, tramping mist that hangs between the trees is the Dragon’s breath. The around the country without a safety net. Then McCandless knowledge of the forest’s innards has been forgotten by man found that, come the spring, a river he had crossed when it and now only lives in the minds of witches and sorceresses was frozen had turned into a giant wall of water, barring his like Morgana (a formidable Helen Mirren), who seduces Mer- way back to the human world. Trapped in the abandoned bus lin and traps him in a stone. he has found, he dies after eating poisonous berries. Ironi- In Excalibur nature is kosmos, all-encompassing. In Deliver- cally, McCandless’ camp was a mere few miles away from a ance and The Emerald Forest it has been instrumentalised, luxurious holiday resort. functionalised, commodified. It is an adventure to indulge in The forest has always been a place for introspection and during the weekend, renting a canoe and getting in sync with transformation, as Apichatpong also pointed out. And in your inner self. It is a picturesque event, something that is many primitive tribes it is customary to send young men out supposed to look primeval but not be it: tracks, guided tours, into the forest as part of their ritual transition to manhood. refreshments, and the necessary emergency exits are pro- Several contemporary films have taken up this theme. Ariel vided for the happy campers seeking to commune with Gaia. Rotter’s film El otro (2007) tells the story of Juan (Julio Chavez), 436 But nature, as Björk sings, is ancient and she always gets the a middle-aged man whose younger girlfriend informs him 437 upper hand. Man may pass through and do some damage, that she is pregnant. A business trip to another town turns but the world-encompassing organism that is our planet will into a journey of self-exploration as Juan ponders what di- always prevail and will finally undo all that man has done. As rection his life should now take. This journey is framed like Boorman points out in his comments on The Emerald Forest, a dream or a metaphorical “trip”: during the bus ride Juan is the rain forest itself is not much bothered by its deforesta- lulled to sleep. When he wakes upon arrival, he discovers that tion. It is we, the humans, who will suffer the ecological con- the man sitting next to him, a doctor, has died. Wanting to sequences. The forest itself might need thousands of years extend his stay in the foreign city for a day, Juan takes rooms to grow back, but that is really a very brief period of time in in two hotels. In the first one he checks in under his own the life of the planet. Similarly, in Deliverance nature reminds name, in the other under the name of the deceased doctor. arrogant Western man of her might. Even on a charted river Finally, a friend wants to take Juan for a night out in a club, only a few miles away from the civilised world these four but feeling in no mood to party, Juan flees the scene and finds adult men succeed in getting lost. In this respect their plight himself running along a highway in the middle of the night, is almost pathetic and reminds one of the tragic case of with the lights of passing trucks looming ominously in the Christopher McCandless, which was filmed by Sean Penn in dark. The next morning he wakes up in the forest, picks fresh Into The Wild (2007). McCandless also wanted to flee the fake fruit for breakfast and spies on a group of young girls swim- civilisation of large cities, but unlike the men in Deliverance he ming in a river. Chastened, Juan takes the bus back home, is lulled to sleep again and takes up the thread of ordinary life. apply themselves to their craft because in prison nobody is Whether the events in the other city were real or not remains going anywhere. There is no rush, just a steady and unhur- unclear. But the otherworldly nature of events is stressed ried communion with each other and with the objects at by the fact that the other city, the city of Juan’s inner trans- hand. Vargas’s last night in jail is a stunning evocation of his formation, seems bare and desolate, without inhabitants or physical being. Lying in bed, he tries to read the paper, but traffic, almost like a ghost town. The other of the title is really cannot concentrate. Finally, he simply lies down, unbuttons three others in the film: it is the other man, the doctor whose his shirt and starts caressing his abdomen. It is as if we can identity Juan steals; it is Juan himself, who is going through a actually feel the masturbation Vargas is thinking about but process of inner change; and it is the unborn child that con- not performing. This scene is of great importance to the film, fronted Juan with himself in the first place. for the rest of Los Muertos basically evolves around Vargas’s Lisandro Alonso’s film Los Muertos (2004) also highlights the physical relationship to and presence in the forest. So it must relation of man to primeval nature. The film’s narrative is be made tangibly clear to us that he has a body. sparse and may lend itself to several, indeed, to a host of in- The use of extended takes, which make real time palpable, terpretations. Los Muertos follows a middle-aged man, Vargas is a very efficient way to create such a sense of physicality. 438 (Argentino Vargas), who is released from prison where he has But since Alonso’s films always focus on male protagonists, 439 served a long sentence for the murder of his brothers. The there is a lingering sense of homo-eroticism here that is not film actually opens with an extended, three-minute point of easily dismissed. Possibly it is a consequence of the fact that view shot of the camera wandering through the green jungle Alonso’s characters are loners, solitary figures who necessar- and happening upon (presumably) the murdered bodies of ily commune primarily with themselves. In La Libertad (2001), the boys. This is all we learn about (what we assume to be) his first feature, Alonso focused on a day in the life of a young Vargas’s crime (although an earlier treatment of the film Argentinean woodcutter, showing him both as he washes provided the added information that Vargas killed his broth- his chiselled body and as he takes a shit. In Los Muertos, Var- ers because they were starving, which would turn him from gas’s body is alone in its dialogue with the forest. He glides a possible homicidal maniac into a complex moral being; up a stream in a small boat in a hypnotising journey through Quandt 2008: 334). At first, it is not clear that Vargas is actu- the green belly of nature. The journey has a purpose: to find ally in prison, for the prison seems to function like a village, Vargas’s daughter and grandchildren. Alonso constantly em- a miniature community where only the occasional presence phasises the presence of the forest. Vargas, who seems to of guards and bars serves as a reminder of what kind of place feel entirely at home in the forest, is an expert at procuring this is. In these early scenes we get a very close feel of the food from it. When he sees a goat on the edge of the river, he physical aspect of Vargas’s existence. Most inmates learn a stops the boat, catches it and slaughters and guts it with his craft and we see them at work. They can take their time to machete. In a stunning sequence, Vargas ravages a beehive to extract big slabs of honeycomb, which he eats with a rel- take note of the very different use to which these directors ish that makes the mouth water. When Vargas finally reaches are putting a style of filming that is superficially similar. There his destination, it appears that his daughter lives in a shabby is a harshness in Alonso’s universe, expressed, among other tent-like construction on an island in the stream. She is out things, in the extended sequences of animal slaughter and in and all Vargas finds is his twelve year old grandson who is the rugged inexpressiveness of his male protagonists, that is looking after his little sister. The boy enters the tent while entirely missing from Apichatpong’s work. To be sure, there Vargas remains seated outside. Finally, he gets up, puts his is darkness in Apichatpong, too, but it is his love of the world, machete on the table and follows the boy inside. The camera or his love of worlds, that fuels his cinema. Both filmmakers slowly pans to an abandoned toy on the ground. In the back- unsettle and leave their images unresolved, and both have ground we hear the ominous sound of joints that are being created works of genius. But in Alonso, nature is ‘immense, torn. Is a chicken being slaughtered or the little boy? Has the entropic, indifferent’ (Quandt 2008: 332) whereas in Apichat- film come full circle to the scene of slaughter with which it pong it is equally immense, certainly entropic, but never indif- opened? The shot of the abandoned toy is held for an uncom- ferent. It is (inside) us. fortably long time. Then, without any explanation or warning, 440 the film abruptly stops. Magmatic Poetics 441 What ties all these films together is much more than the Filming from the inside is not a new idea. It is what Pier Paolo use of a forest as the site for reflection and transformation. Pasolini, in a famous essay published in the October 1965 is- They share a use of landscape as a means for illuminating sue of Cahiers du Cinéma, has called “the cinema of poetry”. In psychology; something that Ruskin would surely condemn as poetic cinema the filmmaker uses the cinematic equivalent of a pathetic fallacy. There is an immense power in this kind of free indirect speech in literature (‘soggetiva libera indirecta’; Ber- minimalist cinema, whether it is done by Alonso or by Api- tolucci and Comolli 1965: 24; Pasolini 1965: 59). In the poetic chatpong. But there is also a difference. As James Quandt has cinema, Pasolini explains, ‘the director entirely penetrates the written, ‘Alonso wants to besot with the ordinary’ (o.c. 333): he soul of his character, whose psychology and language he thus hypnotises his audience with intense observations of the ev- adopts’ (Pasolini 1965: 59). There is no mediation between the eryday that are made eerie by the obsessive way in which they character’s interior and what is communicated, no authorial are lingered on. Quandt also wrote about Apichatpong that intervention. This means that the cinema of poetry is a stylis- he has ‘a predilection for employing the camera to “just look tic device: it is a kind of visual interior monologue. In practice at beauty”’ (Quandt 2009: 28) and for revelling in what Elaine it means that narrative makes way for mood. The filmmaker Scarry (in another context) has called ‘the intense somatic writes poetry in images instead of telling a story. A key way of pleasure, the sentient immediacy of the experience of beauty’ doing this is to make the style of the film palpable. The viewer (BBJ 122). Despite the similarities in description, we should is constantly reminded that he is watching a film because ‘one feels the camera very strongly, there are a lot of zooms, the film has the characteristic features of a Catholic work. But intentional faux raccords’ (Bertolucci and Comolli 1965: 25) that internally nothing I’ve ever done has been more fitted to me express the character’s subjective perception of events. Paso- myself than The Gospel [because of] my tendency always to lini called this cinema of poetry a ‘stilistic magma’ (ibid.) that see something sacred and mythic and epic in everything, even he achieved by filming a lot of documentary footage and by the most humdrum, simple and banal objects and events. So working with non-professional actors. From this rough mate- in this sense The Gospel was just right for me, even though I rial he constructed the final film. Pasolini explained that ‘the don’t believe in the divinity of Christ, because my vision of the films of the cinema of poetry are not made according to the world is religious’ (Stack 1969: 77). This tendency to see some- ordinary rules and conventions of the script, they do not obey thing sacred in everything is of course linked to an animistic the usual narrative rhythms. On the contrary, disproportion is concept of the world, which should not surprise us since Pa- the rule: details are enormously exaggerated, points that are solini was a practising Marxist rather than a practising Catho- traditionally deemed important are dealt with rapidly. Also, lic. In fact, Pasolini told Oswald Stack that ‘I am not interested there is no narrative peak, no catharsis, no narrative closure. in deconsecrating: this is a fashion I hate, it is petit bourgeois. Through the technique of free indirect speech the film is en- I want to re-consecrate things as much as possible, I want to 442 tirely reconstructed from within’ (o.c. 76). It is remarkable that re-mythicise them’ (o.c. 83). But to re-mythicise things implies 443 Pasolini’s description of free indirect speech comes extremely exactly the kind of projection of quasi-aliveness and the pro- close to Warhol’s filmic practice. In fact, the principles of the jection of value that we have been discussing. ‘Shooting films cinema of poetry were central to many of the filmmakers in- is a little bit like a drug for me,’ Pasolini once claimed. ‘it’s like volved in the New American Cinema. being drunk on reality. [...] When I make a film I am in reality Pasolini used the cinema of poetry in Edipo Re (1967), in Medea and I make reality’ (Snyder 1980: 29). To both be in reality and (1970), and in the Trilogy of Life. But his greatest achieve- make it: aliveness to the quasi-aliveness of the world never ment in this style of filming is Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964), sounded so solipsistic and yet so expansive. which in a sense generated the style. ‘The Gospel confronted There is much of this cinema of poetry in Apichatpong’s work. me with the following problem,’ Pasolini told Bernardo Berto- In Blissfully Yours he ‘misconstrues topography’ by combining lucci and Jean-Louis Comolli, ‘I could not tell it like a classical mismatched shots that undermine continuity. For example, narrative because I am not religious, I am an atheist. [...] So an image of a woman on a moving boat is followed by an im- I had to tell a story in which I did not believe. So I could not age of a boy on an elephant filmed from a moving vehicle, a be the one telling it. That is how, without really wanting it, I combination that is ‘geographically impossible’ (Quandt 2009: wound up changing my entire cinematographical style’ (o.c. 37). More importantly, however, Apichatpong also uses the 25). Despite his own atheism Pasolini claimed that the film free indirect speech of Pasolini’s cinema of poetry in his strat- was probably his most personal work. ‘It’s only externally that egy of filming from the inside out. This becomes especially clear in the treatment of time. Pasolini claimed that the idea Perchance to Dream of temporary progress was an illusion. In Volker Koch’s film One of the greatest filmmakers of memory is Terence Da- S.P.Q.R. (1972) Pasolini explained that ‘time is not a sequence, vies. His entire body of work, which is small but immensely as is shown not only by the philosophy of mysticism, but also powerful, is a glorious metaphor for the moving fabric of by science. Therefore there is neither progress nor regress. remembrance. His films most clearly illustrate the process Time does not exist; and since time does not exist, there is of the inner cinema described by Scarry in Dreaming by the no history either; there is an eternal absolute present’ (Koch Book and taken up by Apichatpong as a cinematic metaphor 1982: 209). I believe we should read this observation in the for memory. In his film Of Time and the City (2008), which is a light of Kondylis’ concept of the postmodern, for which space portrait of Liverpool, the city where he was born and grew up is the master metaphor. As we saw earlier, the postmodern in, Davies speaks of a feeling he calls “unrequited regret”. The is an expansive field in which everything is present, like a notion is paradoxical, but it is a very accurate definition of counter from which we can pick and choose our identities, what is more generally called melancholy. In melancholy we personalities, and worlds. In the cinema, this postmodern feel sadness about a past that cannot be undone or relived condition is expressed in the techniques of flash-forward and and that has withdrawn into time, existing beyond our reach, 444 flashback, which allow the filmmaker to juxtapose several as a memory. Memories are experiences and events that we 445 temporal strands. Similarly, several narrative strands, or sev- know to be real but the reality of which can no longer be ex- eral narrative strands situated in different timeframes, can be perienced. It is one of the strangest aspects of time that it is combined and interlaced within the continual visual stream entirely punctual: only the now is ever real for our conscious- of a single film. Pasolini used this technique in his Trilogy of ness. The future is sure to be and the past has unquestion- Life, which consists of Il Decamerone (1971), I Racconti di Canter- ably been, but we cannot know or even comprehend where the bury (1972) and Il Fiore delle mille e una notte (1975), his film ver- past is now. Where are past events? Where are past places? It sion of The Arabian Nights. Especially in the latter film Pasolini seems absurd to suppose that the past has been stored away jumps from story to story and from story-within-a-story back somewhere. In fact, the places where the past took place are to story or to another story-within-a-story without bother- still here, but in the mode of the present. The places have ing to keep us informed of the jumps he is making. Similarly, not gone, it is simply the past that eludes us. So where do Apichatpong drifts in and out of Boonmee’s past lives in Uncle past events go? Does anything ever have any kind of reality Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and it is up to the viewer beyond the brief split second in which it occurs and is really, to determine when and where the stories shift; a task we ac- tangibly here? These are questions that have long gone unan- complish with considerable ease because postmodern cinema swered and that the present book, alas, is not going to answer has trained us to do this. either. But what we can do, and what Terence Davies’ work greatly helps us to do, is to try and explain the deep structure of memory as it is also discussed by Elaine Scarry. This struc- narrative strategies used. If the first two instalments of the ture of memory seems to be more than superficially linked to trilogy showed events as they occurred, the feature film pres- the condition of unrequited regret, so we would do well to see ents the autobiographical elements as memories. That we how Davies translates this regret to film. are watching memories is made clear with several stylistic Davies was raised a Catholic and suffered the guilt associated devices. First, the film is structured like a dream: characters with it more strongly than most, especially because he had come and go and events are linked together in an associa- to come to terms with his homosexuality. That he became a tive way that moves back and forth in time. Weaving through filmmaker is almost a coincidence. The first twelve years of the years and picking up scenes to highlight before they melt his adult life were spent working as a bookkeeper. Internally, away again to give way to other memories, the film generates Davies was torn apart by frustration. He tried to deal with his a tapestry of life remembered. Music is the glue that holds misery by writing it down in a screenplay. The script turned everything together. In most of the scenes the characters out to be impossible to sell, until the British Film Institute are singing. This is an important aspect of the film because took it up and gave Davies a minuscule budget to film it, de- it canalises private emotions through popular tunes of the spite the fact that he had no experience in directing and had 1940s and 1950s, opening them up to the experiences of the 446 not even seen a camera up close. The resulting autobiograph- viewer. We all have personal memories associated with spe- 447 ical short Children (1976), filmed in forbiddingly stark black cific songs. Davies is counting upon our willingness to inject and white, tells the story of how Robert Tucker grows up in our own memories into the memories portrayed in the film. a poor workers’ area of Liverpool. He has to suffer a boorish The music kindles our own feelings of melancholy because father at home and sadistic bullies at school and is repeat- it takes us back to times long gone, especially if we happen edly beaten up. After the success of this first short, Davies to be familiar with the music and the era to which it belongs. took lessons at a film school and next produced Madonna and Thus, the music helps us to bring the film’s memories closer Child (1980), a second short subject in which Robert Tucker to our own, enhancing our emotional investment in the has entered adult life, living with his aged mother who pre- events of the film. tends not to know about his nightly forays into the homo- Another important shift in comparison with the trilogy is the sexual underground. The final instalment of what would be fact that Distant Voices, Still Lives discards the often despon- assembled into The Terence Davies Trilogy was Death and Trans- dent realism of the earlier films. In the last two segments of figuration (1983), where Tucker is seen on his deathbed, lonely the trilogy there was already a shift towards symbolism and and deserted, visited by memories of his past. The sense of impressionism, especially in Robert Tucker’s visions on his total desolation and loneliness that imbues these three films deathbed, but also in the way his sexual encounters were returns in Davies’ first feature, the heart-rendingly beautiful depicted in Madonna and Child. But Distant Voices, Still Lives is Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988). But a shift takes place in the entirely and unabashedly anti-naturalistic. In fact, it takes its title quite literally because in most scenes the characters present in any of the earlier films: the cinema as an escape are positioned frontally in relation to the camera and they from the depressing humdrum of everyday life. We should are lighted as if they belonged in a painting by Vermeer. In remember that in 1956 cinemas were still impressive palaces, this way the film is literally structured as a series of still lives sumptuous and luxurious theatres; not the multiplex screen- that are filled with the absent voices of memories and songs, ing boxes of recent times. In The Long Day Closes films play the voices that seem to echo from afar to linger ever so briefly part that was played by music in Distant Voices, Still Lives: they and then make way for another scene, another story. A third are carriers of collective memory. Just like songs, films can structural shift in relation to the earlier shorts is that Distant trigger memories of the olden days, they can project us back Voices, Still Lives is no longer concerned simply with the mem- through time to events and feelings long gone. In this sense ories of one person. The memories that are interwoven in the they really do function as memory banks. As we saw earlier, film belong to several members of the same family. The web Elaine Scarry writes that dreams and daydreams are experi- that is woven by the film is a fabric of collective memory. This enced as projections on the inside of our forehead. Taking up forces the viewer to take up the role of narrator, or rather the this analogy, it could be argued that the magic of the cinema role of authorial rememberer. Because there is not one per- lies in the fact that the beam emanating from the projector 448 son to whom the memories can be linked, there is an empty and captured on the screen appears to us as an externalisa- 449 place at the heart of the film which the viewer must fill. In tion of the interior processes of dreaming, daydreaming, and doing that, he or she engages in the labour of remembrance remembering. Or, as Deborah Harry sings in a Blondie song: that the film accomplishes. Distant Voices, Still Lives is a mo- the beam becomes my dream, with electric faces rising from saic of memories that is structured in a floating mood. the glow. This way, the cinema as a metaphor for memory This changes again in Davies’ next film, The Long Day Closes brings together all the important elements in Davies’ work: (1992), which is once again structured around one central just like a dream a film is a sequence of images that move character, the eleven year old Bud who is facing the chal- outside the normal laws of time and space; they are linked lenge and horrors of secondary school, where he is bound emotionally and are rife with cores of expressive imagery. to become the butt of bullies. The film, which is set in 1956, Music, film, dream, and memory exist in a phenomenological harks back to the memories of Children, but in a milder tone. continuum. All Davies’ films contribute to this metaphorical The story has a warm glow and the family is tangibly pres- vision and use of the cinema, but it is in Distant Voices, Still ent, whereas the earlier film simply showed Robert Tucker in Lives that he hones it to perfection, creating an associative abject isolation. The only person who is conspicuously absent fabric of luminous dream reality. is the abusive father; and it seems that nobody really misses his presence. Taking yet another step beyond all the previous films, The Long Day Closes introduces an element that was not Soft Sightings that in fog the physical universe approaches the condition The phenomenology of dream and remembrance can help of the imagination’ (DB 22-23). This is a possible reason why us understand one of the most reviled techniques in the filmmakers and photographers resort to soft focus in pre- cinema: the use of soft focus to suggest dreams, flashbacks, senting us with erotic imagery. In fact, the effect they achieve or, most commonly, to suggest an erotic atmosphere. Nubile is double. On the one hand, there is the by now familiar effect young girls in soft focus have been a stock in trade of erotic of presenting us with an outward objectification of the in- imagery for a very long time (interestingly, homosexual erotic ward process of daydreaming. But by wrapping their imagery imagery seems to rely much less on soft focus, but it does in soft focus they also take the edge of the obscene away, pre- have other conventions for cloying erotic photography). The venting the shock of the pornographic by softening it into the logic behind soft focus might very well have something to do instant recognition of the image as resembling images in our with the phenomenology of the daydream as it was described imagination. What is shown with greater reality than it has by Elaine Scarry. What links dreams, daydreams, and imagi- in the inner eye of imagination is wrapped in the soft focus of nation to soft focus photography is the element of vagueness, the imagination to prevent it from being all-too-real. the inability to get an image clearly into focus. This is no co- By wrapping erotic imagery in soft focus, the edge is taken 450 incidence. Scarry has noted that mental images are anything off the images. This is often done to make the images more 451 but solid. She points out that it is very difficult even to imag- palatable for a mainstream audience that would shrink from ine the face of a beloved person in clear detail. Whenever outright pornography. This probably explains why the moral we want to bring specific features of a face into focus they outcry over erotic films often seems disproportionate to the seem to elude us. Scarry comes to this point through some rather unexciting films themselves. The mainstream erotic experiments that she invites the reader to share with her, cinema is paradoxically among the most conservative genres notably trying to imagine one’s mother’s face in the clearest in film because it wants to entertain its mainstream audience possible detail. According to Scarry, this is more difficult than without alienating it. So the story is usually highly moralistic one would imagine. Whenever we seem to grasp the image, it (with love prevailing and licentiousness often leading to un- eludes us again. This kind of fuzziness, clouding our mental happiness) and the presentation is neat and tidy. But there view or wrapping our imaginings and daydreams in cotton are also maverick directors who have infused their erotic wool clouds of mist, also appears in reality. ‘Some physical films with a sexual energy that explodes these restrictive objects have features that more closely approximate the phe- genre conventions. One of the most interesting is the prolific nomenology of imaginary objects than do others. We often Spanish director Jesús ‘Jess’ Franco. Tim Lucas, a critic of speak of actual mist, actual gauze, filmy curtains, fog, and fringe cinema, has once stated that it is impossible to watch blurry rain as dreamlike.’ Especially a mist has the property one Franco film without watching them all (Du Mesnildot of making the world appear as in a dream. So ‘we might say 2004: 102). He meant that Franco’s oeuvre is of a piece and that there are unifying themes, motifs, and stylistic char- views that, incidentally, lend themselves to interesting views acteristics that clearly mark a Franco film as a Franco film. of the lower parts of women’s legs. Franco claims that Chet Admirers of the filmmaker can usually tell after one scene of Baker once told him that ‘when you are playing, it’s wonder- a film whether it is or is not a Franco: the director has an un- ful to close your eyes, begin to improvise and, to pass the mistakable signature style that you either love or (as is appar- time, see your life fragment by fragment, to feel transported ently most commonly the case) hate. Every Franco film con- to an unreal world... and when you finish the solo, and two tains visual and narrative echoes from previous films. Names minutes have passed, you look at the faces of the specta- of characters and the actors who perform their parts appear tors, which are the same as before you closed your eyes – but and reappear from film to film, but with slight alterations, as you’ve been away and you’ve come back’ (Tohill and Tombs if every film were a variation on a theme. Franco obsessively 1995: 100; see also Aguilar 1999: 158). Whether Baker actually returns to these themes again and again, turning his body of told Franco this is of no real importance; what matters is that work into a rhizome of references. This works both for and this description fits Franco’s style very well. His films are in- against him. His detractors will see this obsession as a clear deed structured like visits to a parallel universe that is organ- indication of his lack of talent or vision, whereas his admirers ised around the filmmaker’s own obsessions. In this sense, 452 will simply point out that all great artists have always obses- Franco’s work is much closer to the experimental cinema of 453 sively returned to a given set of themes and motifs. When the 1960s than it is to commercial sex-films or pornography. they do so in mainstream cinema, they are usually referred to Many of his best films have a framing device that sets the as auteurs. erotic vision apart form the everyday world. Very often the Stéphane du Mesnildot has called Franco’s cinema a ‘cinema scenes that establish this frame are either set in a bar or of trance’ (o.c. 93). It is not through their plots that Franco’s introduce us to dreams or hallucinations. Another possible films intrigue, but through the way they are filmed. There is framing device is setting the film in a remote or isolated loca- something in the images themselves that mesmerises the tion, be it an exotic island, an exclusive club, or a mansion spectator. In this sense, Franco’s work is entirely visual and high on a hill. Such devices are very popular in mainstream exceedingly cinematic. His best films (and it should be admit- erotic films as well, and for exactly the same reason as the ted that he has also made his share of very bad films) are not use of soft focus is popular: it clearly identifies the film as structured around narrative, but along a musical line. Franco a daydream and a fantasy, a form of escapism into sensual has often been forced to improvise due to budget restraints. reverie. What sets Franco apart is the intensity with which he And when he improvises, he likes to do so to jazz rhythms. obsessively fills the realm of fantasy that is cleared by closing Franco’s love of jazz music is in evidence even in his earliest the film off from the real world. films, where his eccentric camera positions echo the imag- In Vampyros Lesbos (1970), possibly Franco’s most famous film, ery of jazz album covers of the 1950s, often taking low angle the blonde lawyer Linda (Ewa Strömberg) is hired by Nadine von Karlstein (Soledad Miranda) to take care of the inheri- of sadistic libertines who torture her (at one point assaulting tance of the Dracula family. To do this Linda must travel to her with no less an aphrodisiac than the mace) while she is Nadine’s private island, where she soon comes under the sedated, so that they can tell her afterwards that the whole enthralling influence of the vampiric brunette. The first hellish experience was only a bad dream. So the erotic imag- scene of the film is very famous and is a key to the structure ery of Eugénie is framed twice, as a dream-within-the-dream. of what follows. Linda is sitting in a bar where a brunette is A paradigmatic image of Franco cinema is the title sequence performing an erotic cabaret with a mannequin. We will later of La comtesse noire (1973), which is an erotic film of unusual learn that the dancer is in fact Nadine, who apparently has intensity. It tells of Irina von Karlstein, the last descendant of the gift of travelling through time and space. Right from the a family of vampires, who wants to free both herself and the start, Nadine infiltrates Linda’s mind, speaking to her sub- world from the curse of her family. As the title credits roll we consciously as she performs. Other successful Franco films see Irina appear from a fog as she walks towards the camera. begin with similar scenes that blur the lines between fact She is naked, except for a black cape, a black belt, and black and fiction. Both Necronomicon (1967) and the very fascinating boots. She approaches the camera until her black pubic hair Exorcisme (1974; probably best known under its alternative almost fills the screen (abundant pubic hair is a particular 454 titles Le Sadique de Notre Dame and Demoniac, but best enjoyed obsession of Franco’s). Since she seems to materialise out 455 in its original French language version since bad dubbing of the fog, Irina becomes an immaterial creature, inhabiting spoils the atmosphere of the film) open with sadistic torture a shadow world between the material world and the realm scenes that are revealed to be cabaret acts performed for a of the spirit. The film clearly illustrates her ability to move select crowd of jet-set libertines. Both performances end in between worlds. Every time she kills, we see Irina leading a murder that is revealed to be staged. Such scenes make her victims through a misty forest to the underworld. But clear the theatrical and phantasmatic nature of the film: be- the clearest sign of her otherworldly nature is the fact that yond this point the viewer is invited and in fact required to she remains mute throughout the film. Irina communicates leave behind all his presuppositions about ordinary reality. with her victims telepathically and it is her disembodied We are cautioned to consider that we are entering a parallel voice that also provides the narrative in an interior mono- universe. Justine (1968) is framed by scenes of the Marquis de logue on the soundtrack (considering the economic context Sade (Klaus Kinski) writing in his cell, inspired by the pres- of sex-films, the fact that Lina Romay, who plays the part of ence of naked tortured women. The entire film is a visualisa- Irina, never actually speaks on-screen is a great advantage tion of his fantasies about the virtuous Justine and her licen- when it comes to dubbing the film in other languages, giv- tious sister Juliette. And the stunning Eugénie (1969) is in fact ing the film a potentially global market). This means that all simply an onanistic daydream of the heroine in question. In the characters who fall for Irina’s charms are subconsciously this daydream she imagines falling into the hands of a bunch seduced by her. They can feel her presence even when she is not there. One character who is especially aware of her pres- of a jewel’ (o.c. 447). Among the examples she lists are Leon- ence in Madeira is the mortician Dr. Orloff, played by critic ardo da Vinci’s The Virgin with St. Anne, where both women Jean-Pierre Bouyxou. When a police officer who is trying to look like twin sisters (o.c. 156); Hymen’s doubling of Rosalind track Irina down (and who is played by Franco himself) visits in her reading of As You Like It (o.c. 211); and Dante Gabriel the doctor to gather information, he is urged by the mortician Rossetti’s The Bower Meadow and Astarte Syriaca (o.c. 447); to to leave reason behind and submit to Irina’s call. This way, he which I would add the almost clone-like figures that fill many will discover real life. But to surrender to Irina means to sur- paintings of Burne-Jones or Puvis de Chavannes. To be sure, render to the fantasy, to the sexual force-field that lies at the Franco does not fill a single image with multiple Romays; heart of this film. We are not simply invited to have sex with but if we look at his body of work as one extended work, Irina but to engage a style of living and of experiencing that then the recurrence of bodies, scenes, motifs, and characters is drenched in sensuality. It is an invitation to leave the ratio- throughout his many films blurs the lines that separate each nal universe behind and enter the world of phantasm. individual film from every other to the point that titles might It is this interior world of lust that Franco wants to capture in even become interchangeable. If allegorical repletion does images. At its heart lie a series of images, scenes, and motifs not figure within any one scene, it is surely the driving force 456 to which Franco obsessively returns again and again. And at behind the oeuvre, which, in its most intensely fascinating 457 the heart of this obsession there also lies a body, which is the moments, simply reproduces itself in countless variations on body of Lina Romay, who started making films with Franco in the same theme. In the eye of this sexually obsessive storm 1972 and who has since starred in most of his many dozens lies the powerful body of Romay, who was given free range of films. She is also his partner in real life, despite an age by Franco to improvise her many sex scenes and whose flesh difference of a generation. This circling around a hard core of seems to harbour infinite resources of sexual ecstasy. images and a given set of bodies (for apart from Romay, Fran- It is in the recording of Romay’s sexual convulsions that soft co had a stock of several actresses who reappear in film after focus comes into play again. Unlike his more mainstream film) recalls the way the Pre-Raphaelites would obsessively colleagues Franco does not usually use soft focus as a sty- reproduce Jane Burden’s face or the way Fernand Khnopff listic tool; it simply occurs in his films. It is often said, and would paint all the figures in a painting in the image of his usually not by way of praise, that Franco is obsessed with beloved sister. As was already mentioned in our discussion of the so-called crash zoom, which means that the camera will Anthony Goicolea, Camille Paglia has called this process al- frantically zoom to single out a point of interest in an image. legorical repletion, ‘a redundant proliferation of homologous The crash zoom is a cheap way of avoiding an edit, which identities in a matrix of sexual ambiguity’ (Paglia 1991: 157) would require a new shot and a new camera position during or ‘the filling up of fictive space with a single identity appear- filming. Instead, Franco allows Romay her performance, cir- ing simultaneously in different forms, juxtaposed like facets cles around it with the camera and zooms in on anything and everything that grabs his attention. But Franco often uses this other filmmaker using his camera this way, recreates ‘the technique to great poetic effect, especially when he combines interior space of thought’ (Du Mesnildot 2004: 127). This con- it with reflected images or images filmed through windows nects back to Scarry, with whom we started this discussion. with a moving camera. The results of such cheap but effec- Scarry has pointed out that, neurologically, the eyes are an tive filming can be stunningly poetical, as in several scenes extension of the brain (DB 68). In the hands of filmmakers in Vampyros Lesbos, especially a surreal sequence where blood like Franco or Warhol the camera becomes the extension of trickles down a window pane in which several layers of re- their eyes, and hence of their brains, and hence of their deep- flected images jump in and out of focus. This sequence plays est desires. These filmmakers reveal (themselves) through like a magic lantern for voyeurs. In such sequences Franco’s their gaze. The restless camera eye, making soft focus occur films almost become abstract and recall the lyrical cinema through obsessive movement rather than consciously con- of Stan Brakhage. In La Comtesse noire Franco uses the zoom structing it, is constantly trying to focus when it is almost too in the sex scenes, and especially in an extended sequence of late to see anything. It makes visible the frustration and ob- Romay masturbating. Franco tries to focus on Romay’s crotch, sessive searching of the voyeur or the lover who feels he has but the image becomes blurry, jumps into focus, goes blurry never “really” or “fully” seen the desired or beloved body. That 458 again and then glides away along her thighs. When several is why he keeps looking. He keeps looking for the body’s se- 459 people are involved in sex it is sometimes difficult to tell the cret, and to do this, he must keep looking at the body, return- bodies apart. But all the time the camera is roving the scene, ing to it again and again. As an effect of this obsessive gaze, anxious not to miss anything. soft focus becomes something entirely different from a cheap Franco is a true voyeur, constantly looking for that one mo- commercial trick: it is the phenomenology of desire. ment or that one detail that will unlock the mystery of the body before him. ‘When I use the zoom,’ Franco explains, ‘it Cinechroma is because at that moment there appears on the actor’s face Apichatpong likes to combine his own memories with those a unique expression, which will not be repeated and which of his collaborators to create a new, fictional memory that must be captured’ (Du Mesnildot 2004: 121-122). Franco has seems to exist in a parallel universe that is very similar to also called himself ‘a voyeur not just of fucking, but of ev- ours and yet ever so slightly different. In Uncle Boonmee Who erything’ (Tohill and Tombs 1995: 119; Aguilar 1999: 157). And Can Recall His Past Lives this merging of memories becomes Franco’s obsessively wandering gaze indeed does not limit very clear in the remembering-ahead of a society that will be itself to sexual matters. Very often his camera will drift to a able to do away with all unwanted individuals. The sensual detail in a scene that is not dramatically relevant, echoing flow of the film is suddenly interrupted by a series of still Warhol’s errant camera eye. Jean-Louis Leutrat has claimed photos that show the violence of the army against helpless that in doing so Franco, and by extension Warhol and any citizens. In an interview in the Belgian press kit for the film Apichatpong explains that ‘with that photo scene in the film, a series of memories of the king in his cell before his execu- Boonmee’s and my memories merge’ because, obviously, the tion. The biopic Wittgenstein (1992) is seen through the eyes of pictures that are remembered-ahead by Boonmee actually the child Wittgenstein who narrates his own life story in the refer back to the violence of the 1960s that Apichatpong was past tense. And, finally, Blue is a sheer projection of inward- researching for the Primitive project and in which Boonmee ness, the mind’s eye made cinematic in a monochrome field is said to have participated. A similar merging of memories of blue. This structural characteristic of Jarman’s films puts occurs in Terence Davies’ film Of Time and the City, where Da- them in the avant-garde tradition of what P. Adams Sitney vies overlays the general memories of archive footage with has called the lyrical film. Sitney explains that ‘the lyrical the more intimate reminiscences of his very personal com- film postulates the film-maker behind the camera as the mentary. But the artist and filmmaker who has most radically first-person protagonist of the film. The images of the film are fused his own memories with collective history to create a what he sees, filmed in such a way that we never forget his synthetic visionary experience of cinematic remembrance is presence and we know how he is reacting to his vision. In the Derek Jarman. His film Caravaggio (1986) opens with a shot lyrical form there is no longer a hero; instead, the screen is of the painter’s hand preparing the ground on a canvas in filled with movement, and that movement, both of the cam- 460 strong repetitive streaks. The canvas fills the screen and is a era and the editing, reverberates with the idea of a person 461 fitting metaphor for Jarman’s cinematic practices. For Jarman, looking. As viewers we see this mediator’s intense experience the film screen was a moving painting, a celluloid canvas for of seeing’ (Sitney 2002: 160). The lyrical film was invented private dreams and memories. This applies most strongly to by Stan Brakhage, and Pasolini’s notion of the “cinema of his early experimental shorts, but also to his features, where poetry” clearly has a family resemblance to the lyrical film. Jarman often brings his own point of view into the material. It is also clear that much of Jarman’s work, especially the Many of Jarman’s features are structured like dreams, memo- alchemical shorts and the great features The Last of England, ries, or visions. Jubilee (1978) is framed as a vision of a future The Garden, and Blue, are firmly anchored in this tradition. England conjured up by John Dee for Elizabeth I. The Tempest Other features, such as The Angelic Conversation, fit the form of (1979) is framed as a pageant dreamt by Prospero. The Angelic the psychodrama or trance film, out of which the lyrical film Conversation (1984) is entirely presented as a series of dream developed. A trance film shows a protagonist (often played by images. Caravaggio is structured as a series of memories that the filmmaker him- or herself) engaged in a dreamlike quest linger in the mind’s eye of the artist on his deathbed. The Last for sexual identity. The great classical psychodrama’s are Jean of England (1987) and The Garden (1990) are both framed by im- Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète (1930), which can be said to have ages of Jarman himself, writing at his desk, conjuring up the invented the genre, and American films such as Maya Deren’s films’ episodes and visions. Edward II (1991), based on the play Meshes of the Afternoon (1942) and Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks by Christopher Marlowe, has been restructured to resemble (1947). In fact, Jarman often works in the space between the two genres, mixing highly lyrical passages of almost abstract same time an image and a word. So in hieroglyphs and, by imagery with fragmented narratives centred on the quest for extension, in Jarman’s films, word becomes image (and vice a gay or queer identity. versa). Jarman once referred to super-8 cinema as ‘contrac- Jarman started out as a painter and designer, but in 1970 he tion to a point, the 20th century hieroglyphic monad’ (O’Pray took up an 8mm camera and started to make experimental 1996: 71). And in his memoir Dancing Ledge (1984) Jarman ex- shorts. At this time, and partly inspired by his research for plains that ‘the pleasure of Super 8s is the pleasure of seeing the sets he designed for Ken Russell’s furious film poem The language put through the magic lantern. [...] The first viewers Devils (1971), Jarman was very much influenced by hermetism wracked their brains for a meaning instead of relaxing into and alchemy, a Renaissance tradition that was (falsely) traced the ambient tapestry of random images’ (Jarman 1991: 129). to Hermes Trismegistos and which had flourished particularly Jarman’s most ambitious experiments in this personal form in the English Renaissance with such figures as John Dee and of cinema are In the Shadow of the Sun (1980), which is to a Robert Fludd. The idea of the alchemist as a man who can see large extent a collage of material culled from the earlier past and future in a mirror fascinated Jarman and inspired shorts, and The Angelic Conversation (1985), which combines al- him to introduce alchemical imagery into his films: mirrors, chemical imagery referring to John Dee’s conversations with 462 but also fire (as the purifying element), and an expressive angels with Shakespeare’s homosexual sonnets to create a 463 use of colour. Jarman’s most important film from this period reverie of homosexual desire. In these films the screen be- is The Art of Mirrors (1973), a highly stylised collage of highly comes a canvas that is engulfed by images that overlap and symbolical images. The most impressive sequences show melt away into abstract patches of colour; effects that were three figures clad in black who move through a maze of burn- realised through a series of technical manipulations ranging ing patterns on the ground in a derelict urban site. As they from double exposures and re-filming of videotaped footage move about, they use small mirrors to reflect the sunlight through the use of unusual film speeds and transferring vid- directly into the camera. The mirrors refer both to the alche- eotape to film and vice versa. Jarman especially loved to film mist’s practice of scrying, or: seeing the future in a reflecting or project (and refilm) at three (or sometimes six) frames per surface, and to the cult of the sun disc in ancient Egypt. Apart second, a speed of which he said that it equalled the rhythm from that the film’s iconography seems rather opaque. This of the human heartbeat (Peake 2001: 179; O’Pray 1996: 127- holds for most of Jarman’s experimental work. This is due to 128). The first of Jarman’s films to be made this way was Gar- the fact that Jarman saw the alchemical imagery mainly as a den of Luxor (1972), for which he ‘projected two films, one on visual motif and not as a key to a belief system. Jarman never top of the other, on his living-room wall and refilmed the re- practised magic nor did he believe in it. What did fascinate sult. He used this primitive but perfectly adequate means of him was the fact that in hieroglyphs and hermetic symbols achieving such an effect without the use of an optical printer the visual and the verbal coincide: a hieroglyph is at the until the mid-80s’ (O’Pray 1996: 65). At some points, the films seem to become a cinematic equivalent of the all-over field violently hypnotic series of visual explosions. A young man of Abstract Expressionism. The effect amounts to a trance is seen shooting up in the bombed-out remnants of a house; film in which the smallest movement of the figures becomes another young man aggressively kicks a painted reproduction important, a poetic event, because every single frame of the of a Caravaggio painting (originally created as a prop for Cara- film is treated as if it were a self-sufficient painting. In Kicking vaggio) and proceeds to rub against it in a fucking movement; the Pricks (1987) Jarman explains that ‘the single frame makes a naked man gnaws at a raw cauliflower; and there are travel- for extreme attention, a concentration that is voyeuristic. ling shots through derelict suburbs shot through with violent Time seems suspended. The slightest movement is amplified. visual effects created through manic montage that could be This is the reason I call it “a cinema of small gestures”’ (Jar- the envy of Stan Brakhage. The very bare elements of narra- man 1996a: 146). This phrase was first introduced in the final tive that hold this despairing vision together point towards intertitle of Imagining October (1984) but seems especially apt a totalitarian system. Masked men herd people together at to describe The Angelic Conversation, which is the tenderest of gunpoint on the London docks. A young man (Spencer Leigh) films, focusing to a large extent on the gestures of longing roams around this urban wasteland, separated from his be- and love that two young men exchange. loved (Tilda Swinton). Finally, he is captured and shot by the 464 But despite its poetic imagery The Angelic Conversation also masked men. The film culminates in his beloved’s furious 465 has an undercurrent of menace. ‘Destruction hovers in the dance on the docks during which she cuts apart her wed- background of The Angelic Conversation,’ Jarman writes, ‘the ding dress. This sequence is a whirling montage of image and feeling one is under psychic attack [...]. In the background of sound set to a Diamanda Galás soundscape. The imagery of The Angelic Conversation there is surveillance by Nobodaddy’ The Last of England is at once entirely fragmented and entirely (o.c. 133). This is made clear in recurrent images of a radar, coherent. It is a kaleidoscopic mental landscape that entirely sounding back the silence of the surroundings it is scan- overwhelms the viewer. ning, or in a sequence where the lovers toil on the rocky In a sense, The Last of England is the cinematic culmination coast, carrying barrels about. The latent threat of The Angelic of Jarman’s practice of assemblage and montage, which is a Conversation would become manifest in Jarman’s greatest constant factor throughout his work. Discussing assemblage, trance film, The Last of England (1987), which is also one of Roger Wollen points to ‘Jarman’s interest in film superimpo- the great achievements in modern experimental cinema. The sition; montages of positive and negative, black and white, Last of England takes us into a furiously fragmented world colour, tinted and untinted sequences in his films and videos; that is filmed in highly anti-naturalistic colours and seems and in the books, the interweaving of journal entries, autobi- to be situated in a vision of London gutted by fire. The film ography, personal philosophising, gardening notes, social and is apocalyptic in every sense of the word, both in its themes political campaigning, poetry and commonplace book com- and in the way it translates these themes to the screen in a position’ (Wollen 1996: 26). To which we should add Jarman’s work as a painter in the 1980s, assembling found objects and style of filmmaking, especially in the painting of Giotto and broken glass onto heavily worked surfaces of pitch or oil. As Duccio. Similarly, Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls (1966) also a filmmaker, narration was never Jarman’s strong suit and juxtaposes, in non-synchronised double projection, vignettes his best work is always intuitive and associative. But it is held or stories that supposedly take place in different rooms of the together by his strong and persistent vision as an artist who Chelsea Hotel. This technique of storytelling is in a way taken knows very well what he wants to achieve. But in fracturing to its extreme in The Last of England, where not only stories or even the non-narrative sequences that make up The Last of sequences but sometimes sheer clusters of film frames are England Jarman in a sense achieves a profoundly postmod- put next to each other in a whirl of imagery. In the final reck- ern style. If we remember that Kondylis saw the postmodern oning, Jarman’s montage leads us back to his claim, referred sensibility as one constructed through the metaphor of space, to earlier, that every frame of a film should be treated like a with all the elements in the world available at once and next self-contained painting. In his case, an abstract painting with to each other and in total equality, then the art of montage leanings towards the all-over field of Abstract Expressionism; in cinema is clearly a thoroughly postmodern art for it allows but in spirit there is also a similarity with Giotto and Duccio the creator to shift time and space about at random (as we and their series of narrative panel-paintings for altarpieces. 466 saw already in our discussion of Uncle Boonmee). But Jarman 467 is certainly not the only or even the first director to use mon- Gardens of the Underworld tage in such a way and he has in fact acknowledged a debt to Another important key to The Last of England, but also more Eisenstein. But other interesting parallels can be suggested. broadly to Jarman’s work in general, is that the city of London For instance, Pasolini used the technique of putting several is itself a character in this film. It is a burned-out ruin that lies stories next to each other in his Trilogy of Life. In Il Decamerone broken with its torched innards exposed. Michael O’Pray has (1970) and in I Racconti di Canterbury (1971) he used a fram- argued that Jarman was inspired by the work of William Blake ing story with himself in the role of the narrator or, more to create this vision. ‘Like Blake,’ O’Pray writes, ‘Jarman was a precisely, the dreamer of the stories. But in the stunningly Londoner who believed the city physically embodied the woes beautiful Il Fiore delle mille e una notte (1973), his film version of of its times – in sixteenth-century alchemical terms, it was the Arabian Nights, Pasolini eliminates the framing device of a microcosm’ (O’Pray 1996: 12). In his poem ‘London’ Blake Sheherazade and lets the stories melt into each other. It could describes the city as a claustrophobic space where factories be argued that the juxtapositioning of several stories in the devour pale and sickly men. As Blake wanders through this films and in the literary sources on which they are based is suffering city, the clamour of the oppressed rises up around related to the panel painting of the early Renaissance, which him. Camille Paglia has called this ‘the cinema of Blake’s great shares a cultural space with the Decamerone and the Canter- poem “London,” where solitary, excluded voices smear or mar bury Tales and which was a profound influence on Pasolini’s the cold stone walls of society’s institutions’ (Paglia 1993: 41). But there is also another way in which London functions describes this underworld as a labyrinthine parallel universe. as a microcosm in Jarman’s work. Since the 1960s Jarman Writing of his expeditions to the piers of New York, where had been part of the homosexual underworld of London. We men come to cruise at all hours of the day and the night, he should remember that until the late 1960s, homosexual acts comments that ‘as you stepped into the dark you entered were still illegal in Britain. So gay men would meet in illicit the world of strangers, on the derelict piers you left the im- bars and meeting places. The homosexual underworld, in prisoned daylight world behind. The ground was strewn with London as in any major city, was a parallel world governed glittering glass from the smashed windows, every shadow by codes and signs that the straight world did not (want to) was a potential danger, you kept your money in your shoes. notice. On this level, the city splits up in two Londons, the You walked through a succession of huge empty rooms, “visible” city of the normal world, and the shadow city of the with young men often naked in the shafts of light which fell underworld. Geographically, these places are the same. But for through the windows. The piers had their own beauty; sur- the members of the underworld society, everyday places have rounded by water, they were a secret island’ (Jarman 1996a: a double meaning. A subway station, a bar, or a public lava- 63). The vision of Rome in Pasolini’s unfinished novel Petrolio tory are often not simply what they seem, but double their is a similar island, and we last visited it when Carlo was giv- 468 function as meeting places and points of orientation for those ing himself to twenty young street thugs on a derelict patch 469 who are moving among the normal people, visibly indistin- of urban wasteland. Pasolini, too, makes the city a character guishable from them, but guided by a different set of cues and in the novel, as if it were an organism, alive on its many dif- signs. Under every major city such a clandestine geography ferent levels, a moloch that harbours its inhabitants like lies hidden, an alternative lay-out with places and signs that, micro-organisms that make their ways through its arteries like hieroglyphs, speak a coded language to those who are in and organs. On these endless journeys many of the inhabit- the know about their hermetic meanings. It is a world within ants end up in the dark crevices of the urban body, where the world that is guided by a language all its own. Still today the organism delights in excretory functions that have been tourists or families with children will lounge on the grass in edited out of the neatly structured, normalised top-layers of public parks while unbeknownst to them men are cruising in external tissue. The normal world is but the surface of such the shrubbery. Meeting places, secret holes, and corners that an urban body, the aesthetic bag that holds together all that are damp with the libations of decades of lubricated nightly moves and wallows inside. meetings are spread out through these parks like dots on a Jim Ellis has made an interesting and convincing connection map that is not announced at the entrance. There is more to between Jarman’s creation of parallel worlds and the practic- any city than its official layout, but one needs the key to the es of the Situationist International. The Situationists argued code to be able to read the hidden geography. for an art that would undermine the commodified world of In Jarman’s diaries there are exquisite passages in which he capitalism, which they famously labelled the society of the spectacle. Among their favoured practices was the dérive or cinquecento street urchins have bicycles to roam the streets drift, which would be a walk through an urban environment of Rome: these are but a few of Jarman’s many anachronis- that was unplanned and in which the participants would tic interventions in these films. But even in their narrative simply be guided by what drew their attention as they moved structure the films happily jump back and forth between past along. This introduces an element of chance that also allows and present or between reality and dream. ‘When Caravag- for unconscious desires and longings to surface in the choice gio is just ten minutes underway,’ Kevin Dillon argues, ‘we of elements that guide the walk. ‘The dérive has as its goal have passed through six or seven sheets of time: we see the the discovery of a certain knowledge about the authentic life dying Caravaggio, Caravaggio buying the little Jerusaleme, of the city and the everyday, knowledge that can be used to Caravaggio’s brief memory of the adult Jerusaleme, and the challenge modern urban alienation’ (Ellis 2009: 5). Ellis argues young Caravaggio. Later, we will even see the little Michele that Jarman has used the dérive in several of his early films, as he seems to look upon his adult self’ (Dillon 2004: 160). All notably in his very first film, Studio Bankside (1972), which is a places, objects, and sheets of time (as Dillon very beautifully portrait of his studio that moves from object to object in the calls them) are interchangeable and can flow in and out of room, mapping a journey through space by connecting com- each other. This approach is especially salient in Caravag- 470 monplace points of interest. A similar approach can be found gio because the artist himself also engaged in such breaking 471 in Duggie Fields (1973), which records the studio of the art- open of time and space: his historical and biblical scenes ist Duggie Fields, and Journey to Avebury (1973), among other are clearly peopled with contemporary figures. Caravaggio’s films. The technique of the dérive ‘has the effect of rendering saints are street people from contemporary Rome. ‘Part of everything within the studio as equivalent. The paintings, Jarman’s method in the film is to pick up on Caravaggio’s use furniture, props, photographs, and the artist himself all be- of lowlife models and extend it, making the models all char- come interrelated elements of a larger experience of space’ acters in an invented biography: del Monte, whose surname (o.c. 24). But this experience of space is the postmodern was Francesco, becomes the model for the Saint Francis notion of space that Panajotis Kondylis introduced, where paintings; Pipo, a young hustler, becomes Love in Amor Vincit everything and everyone is set on a plane of equality. Every- Omnia’ (o.c. 123). And the dead Virgin, both in Caravaggio’s thing, even the most commonplace object, can be a point of painting and in Jarman’s film, is possibly a drowned prosti- interest or a source of beauty. Hierarchies fall away. tute. In the end, such postmodern levelling of space and time In line with Kondylian space, Jarman also expands this ap- can result in a form of nihilism that is linked to the ethos of proach to the experience of time. Several of his films, and Punk. Jarman developed this in his film Jubilee through the notably the “historical” films Caravaggio and Edward II, revel in character of Amyl Nitrate, who is a self-styled ‘historian of anachronism. Historical characters appear in twentieth cen- the void’ (o.c. 58). Amyl is writing a new history of England, tury dress, cardinal Del Monte has a pocket calculator, and titled Teach Yourself History, from which she reads in the film: ‘history still fascinates me – it’s so intangible. You can weave native, parallel universe for the oppressed to live in. This is facts any way you like. Good guys can swap places with bad one reason why Jarman often wrote very poetically about his guys. You might think Richard III of England was bad, but cruising forays in public parks and on Hampstead Heath. The you’d be wrong. What separates Hitler from Napoleon or even surreal night-time world of anonymous sexual encounters is Alexander? The size of the destruction? Or was he closer to part of the clandestine urban parallel world that exists under us in time?’ (Jarman 1996b: 49). It is also in light of this ‘radi- the neat surface of London. Jim Ellis has linked this creation cal levelling of the past’ (Ellis 2009: 59) that Punk’s use of the of parallel spaces to Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopias, swastika as a decorative motif should be read. It had nothing ‘real spaces that do not conform to a society’s dominant to do with anti-Semitism but was an indictment of a govern- spatial paradigm, that offer space for refuge, resistance, or ment that claimed to reject fascism and prided itself on hav- retreat. [...] Foremost among Foucault’s examples of the het- ing fought Hitler, while at the same time organising totalitar- erotopia is the garden; other spaces include the theatre, the ian oppression at home. In levelling history Punk was simply cinema, prisons, cemeteries, and old-age homes’ (Ellis 2009: spitting the majority’s moral degeneracy back in its corporate xiii). Jean Genet’s film Un chant d’amour (1950) chose a prison face. as its setting for heterotopia, and in Terence Davies’ films we 472 In Jubilee it is the capitalist entrepreneur Borgia Ginz (Jack found that the cinema could be a powerful space of escape. 473 Birkett) who represents this corrupt society. It is also he But when he finally set about creating his own heterotopia, who delivers a leering speech that quite accurately sums up Derek Jarman chose to retreat into the garden. the dark side of postmodern relativism: ‘You wanna know my story, babe, it’s easy. This is the generation who grew up Into The Garden and forgot to lead their lives. They were so busy watching Shortly after finishing The Last of England Jarman was diag- my endless movie. It’s power, babe, Power! I don’t create it, I nosed hiv-positive. In the remaining years of his life he was own it. I sucked, and sucked, and sucked. The media became very open about his status and used it as a way to shape his their only reality and I owned their world of flickering shad- activism for the cause of gay rights. About the same time of ows. BBC, TUC, ATV, ITV, CIA, CBA, NFT, MGM, KGB, C of E. his diagnosis, Jarman discovered and bought Prospect Cot- You name it, I bought them all and rearranged the alphabet. tage, a fisherman’s cabin in Dungeness on the coast of Kent, a Without me they don’t exist’ (Jarman 1996b: 56-57). It is from rough and uninhabitable place with a shingle coast. The area this totalitarian reality that the refugees of The Last of England was dominated by two nuclear sites. And as there was no soil are trying to escape. Living in the United Kingdom under under the shingle, only the most robust plants could flourish Thatcher, Jarman, as a homosexual, an artist, and a person in the area. Remarkably, Jarman succeeded in cultivating a with aids, felt himself, and many others with him, under garden at Prospect Cottage which has since become famous attack. Much of his artistic work is aimed at creating an alter- as one of the most original contemporary gardens. It was also to become the centre of his film The Garden (1990), which is mimicks the working of memory, as we saw in our discussion a requiem for the many victims of aids. It is a film of anger of Terence Davies through Elaine Scarry. But The Garden also and remembrance that is anchored to a poem that expresses highlights the frailty of memory. The film in fact ends with a very succinctly what the film is about: ‘I walk in this garden / stunningly beautiful scene that expresses this frailty better holding the hands of dead friends’ (Jarman and Sooley 1995: than any other cinematic image I know. The two young men 81). Like Orpheus descending into the netherworld Jarman sit together with a woman (Tilda Swinton), a boy, and an old invites us to share his memories of lives lost in the cold and man at a table in a bare space. The woman brings in a basket desperate years of Thatcherism. The film is structured from of Amaretti sweets. They eat the sweets and then light the memory, Jarman’s memories of a life spent in an oppressive wrappers, which rise above them in a brief flurry of fire. Then society and of lives wasted by that society’s negligence in the ashes slowly drift down and are caught in the cups of the dealing with a major health crisis. The film thus takes us into characters’ hands. In touching the ashes, they are careful not a very personal garden of remembrance. But this personal to destroy the remains of the wrappers, which seem to repre- meditation is combined with an evocation of the Passion, sent all that is fragile and beautiful in life, in our memories, with Christ represented by a young gay couple who are ar- and on this planet. 474 rested, tortured and humiliated by (who else?) the police. The In Modern Nature (1991), his published diary of the period 475 two young men sit bound and gagged at a table, are smeared when he was making The Garden, Jarman also repeatedly ad- with syrup, humiliated, intimidated, and flogged. It is a har- dresses memory and its fragility and links it explicitly to the rowing sequence that is genuinely infuriating. garden and to the frailty of flowers. ‘The gardener digs in an- But The Garden is also a film about resilience in the face of other time,’ Jarman writes, ‘without past or future, beginning violence. Living in a society that would be happy to erase or end. A time that does not cleave the day with rush hours, homosexuality from its surface of normality, the oppressed lunch breaks, the last bus home. As you walk in the garden have gone underground and created a parallel world to you pass into this time – the moment of entering can never live out their lives. It is the heterotopia of Jarman’s garden be remembered. Around you the landscape lies transfigured’ at Dungeness. There is a moving montage near the end of (Jarman 1992: 30). The garden is a world outside the world, the film that brings together the elements of nature within or, a world within the world, similar to the way the vision- the compass of the garden. In a stream of lyrical images, ary London of The Last of England appeared to be a parallel filmed at faster than normal speed, visions of the sea, the universe that Jarman had projected over the actual city. The shore, and the surrounding landscape are welded together visionary power of the garden of remembrance is stressed by into a visual poem. In this burst of vital imagery Jarman’s Jarman’s repeated quoting, in the diaries, of medieval her- film brings the repressed world of the garden back into the baria that highlight the medicinal or visionary properties of viewer’s conscious experience. This is the way the cinema herbs and flowers. Many of the properties Jarman singles out have to do with the gift of the seer. ‘My garden is a memo- thousand pieces’ (Jarman 2001: 330). rial,’ Jarman writes, ‘each circular bed and dial a true lover’s As the symptoms of his illness intensified, as they did rap- knot – planted with lavender, helichryssum and santolina’ idly after the filming of Edward II (1991), a noticeable shift (o.c. 55). He notes that ‘a sprig of lavender held in the hand or occurred in Jarman’s diaries. Modern Nature revelled in a lyri- placed under the pillow enables you to see ghosts, travel to cism of looking, recording the details and colours of plants the land of the dead’ (ibid.). ‘Egyptian seers placed the flowers and herbs. As his eyesight deteriorated in the period covered of forget-me-not on the eyes of initiates to bring dreams’ (o.c. in Smiling in Slow Motion Jarman’s observations shifted to- 60). In the garden of memory the various aspects of time, past wards a lyricism of the hazy: he observes the mist hanging and future, coalesce. The mind’s eye is free to rove through over the sea, the haze of dawn, and the almost abstract ex- time. Dream becomes reality and reality is made dreamlike. panse of landscapes. But even with failing eyesight his pow- This means we can see the future, like the alchemist could ers of perception are remarkable. He writes of ‘a cotton wool see it in a reflecting surface, and we can bring the past to mist blowing in veils from the sea, the horizon disappears life again. Flowers are of central concern in this imagery of making a very secret garden’ (o.c. 43). ‘Half an hour before the memory. This should not surprise us in light of Elaine Scarry’s sun rose, in the first white light of dawn, the shingles are a 476 discussion of flowers and the space of memory. Their petals ghostly bleached bone, grisaille silhouetting the grey of the 477 are sheer and luminous, like the transparent visions of cine- shrubs and black of the broom, a silent light unshattered by ma or the interior screen of the mind’s eye. And like the base- colour’ (o.c. 131). Jarman describes how ‘the grey washes an less fabric of this inner vision or the ashen texture of burnt intense colour into the garden’ (o.c. 136) and how a dense Amaretti wrappers the petals of flowers are easily destroyed; mist ‘left the garden sparkling with dewy spiders’ webs. As all it takes, is a careless flick of the finger or the crushing the sun came up the mist glowed an iridescent white’ (o.c. step of a foot. ‘You can’t pick bluebells,’ Jarman reminds us 140). Alongside the observations there is another shift, away in Kicking the Pricks, ‘they wilt, even as you touch them. How from the material world and towards the mystical, as if Jar- often that happened as a child: the terrible guilt you felt, put- man’s losing battle with aids were preparing him for his final ting them in water you knew would never revive them. The goodbye to this world. Elaine Scarry has described how pain feeling of loss the next morning as you threw them into the locks people in their bodies and Jarman’s observations on his dustbin. It’s easy to murder a bluebell wood’ (Jarman 1996a: own agonies express this with painful accuracy. ‘At moments 237-239). In the posthumously published diaries of Smiling in I wish my physical self would evaporate, cease, no more Slow Motion (2000) Jarman tells us how Keith Collins, his true aches and pains’ (o.c. 114). He describes his increasing blind- love, ‘shocked us by picking up a daffodil and plunging it into ness as a ‘strange feeling, disembodied eyesight; there is a the liquid nitrogen for burning my molluscum. It came out distinct falling off of vision on my left, a grey area that comes smoking. He flicked it with his finger and it shattered into a and goes’ (o.c. 187) almost like a mist blowing in from over the sea and retreating again. ‘One interviewer asked me how intimidating about mere formlessness: it is a muddle. What much the illness dictated my life. At this moment almost makes the true sublime so discomforting is the fact that it completely, there’s no life outside it, I’m locked in. My entire still harbours the shape that it is about to undo. The sublime physical self is a ruin that hurts’ (o.c. 372). is a form shown on the verge of its disappearance, as in the Turning inward Jarman produced one final film, Blue (1993), melting figures of Francis Bacon’s paintings. Similarly, Blue a monochrome blue screen over which we hear a collage of invites us in to partake in Jarman’s experience of self as the diary entries, observations, street sounds, and music. The text outside world takes its leave with encroaching blindness. But of the film is included in his book Chroma (1993), in which the inner eye, the mind’s eye, is as quick and alert as ever. the objects in the world give way to colour, an abstract haze Jim Ellis writes that because of the monochrome blue screen, that fills the field of vision as blindness takes over. Just as he ‘the film’s image track is constructed in the viewer’s head. was careful to note the alchemical and magical properties of This intimacy of film and audience is furthered by the physi- flowers in his diaries, Jarman here remarks on the magical cal properties of the medium: the blue screen lulls us into or ritual significance of colours. About the black draperies receptivity, while we are surrounded and penetrated by the that are the backdrop for his immaculate film on Wittgen- soundtrack. Sound is a more intimate medium than vision. 478 stein (1992) he writes that ‘black velvet registers as infinity It is vision that allows for the separation between ourselves 479 on film with no form or boundary, a black without end, that and the object or the image, and we can shut our eyes to lurks behind the blue sky’ (Jarman 1995: 137). Kevin Dillon close off the experience. There is less voluntary control of notes that the film is set in ‘a series of open interiors with- the sense of sound, and it serves to connect us rather than out horizons’ (Dillon 2004: 218). Finally, Jarman accepts and separate us from the world, helping us to orient ourselves in embraces with relief the liberating abstraction of the colour space’ (Ellis 2009: 241). Observing and acutely experiencing field: ‘From the bottom of your heart, pray to be released from his own disappearance from this world, Jarman has found image’ (Jarman 1995: 115). Having reduced (or replenished) in Blue an artistic form that objectively represents this most cinema to an immaculate blue screen that whispers voices subjective of processes. Memories rise up and mingle with into our consciousness, Jarman is literally living among the the experience of the present, again obliterating the ordinary voices of dead friends (he once said that ‘the only real thing relations of time and space. Experience becomes an eternal, I like about my films is that it is possible to see my dead and expansive now where past and present coalesce, aware of dying friends in all the nooks and crannies’; Hacker and Price the fact that there is precious little future left to turn to. ‘Why 1991: 260). Blue captures a consciousness on the verge of its have I escaped from the garden?’ Jarman asks (Jarman and disappearance. This makes it a sublime work. 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European Sex and Horror Mov- ry [1995], New York, Vintage, 1996. 2005, p. 355-411. ness Too?’, in: Sight and Sound, Vol. 59, ies 1956-1984, New York, St. Martin’s Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Richard Sennett, The Craftsman [2008], Nr. 4, Fall 1990, p. 259-263. Griffin, 1995. System des transzendentalen Idealis- Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2009. Jack Stevenson (ed.), Fleshpot. Cin- Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Tijgers Tem- mus [1800], edited by Horst D. Brandt Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or, The ema’s Sexual Myth makers & Taboo men. Voor een Cinema van de Traa- and Peter Müller with an introduction Modern Prometheus, edited with an Breakers, second edition, Manchester, gheid’, in: Cinemagie, Nr. 251, Summer by Walter Schulz and notes by Walter introduction and notes by Maurice Headpress, 2002. 2005a, p. 5-10. E. Ehrhardt, Hamburg, Meiner, 2000. Hindle, Harmondsworth, Penguin, Philip Strick, ‘Zardoz and John Boor- Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Lust Wil Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische 1992. man’, in: Sight and Sound, Vol. 43, Nr. 2, Eeuwigheid. Een Metafysica van het Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe Roy Sherwood, ‘John Boorman’, in: Spring 1974, p. 73-77. Gluren’, in: Streven, Vol. 72, Nr. 9, Octo- von Briefen. Mit den Augustenburger John Wakeman (ed.), World Film Direc- David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact. ber 2005b, p. 783-794. Briefen, edited by Klaus L. Berghahn, tors. Volume II: 1945-1985, New York, Interviews with Francis Bacon, enlarged Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Cinetrauma. Ontreddering is een Plek naar Ner- MENT%20-%20Christophe%20Van%20 Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POP- Jonathan Wolff, Why Read Marx gens’, in: rekto:verso, Nr. 17, May-June Eecke.pdf) ism. The Warhol ‘60s [1980], San Diego/ Today?, Oxford, Oxford University 2006a, p. 10. Christophe Van Eecke, Absolute Begin- New York/London, Harvest/Harcourt Press, 2002. Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Begeestering. nings. Detours Towards a History of the Brace & Company, 1990. Roger Wollen (ed.), Derek Jarman: A Manifest voor een Nieuwe Kunstkri- Fragment, Breda, Lokaal 01, 2009e Marina Warner, Fantastic Metamor- Portrait, London, Thames and Hudson, tiek’, in: rekto:verso, Nr. 18, July-August (http://www.lokaal01.nl/actueel/pdf/ phoses, Other Worlds. Ways of Telling 1996. 2006b, p. 10-11. ABSOLUTEBEGINNINGSdefinitief.pdf). the Self, Oxford, Oxford University Gaby Wood, Edison’s Eve. A Magical Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Andy Warhol’, Christophe Van Eecke, Stock Footage Press, 2002. History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, in: Cinemagie, Nr. 256, Fall 2006c, p. & Shock Tactics. Marx, Eisenstein and Tracey Warr (ed.), The Artist’s Body, New York, Knopf, 2002. 73-84. Filming ‘Capital’, Breda, Lokaal 01, 2009f London, Phaidon, 2000. Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway [1925], Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Arendtsogen. (http://www.lokaal01.nl/actueel/pdf/ Steven Watson, Factory Made. Warhol edited with an introduction by Claire Over de Verbeelding van Geweld’, in: STOCKFOOTAGEdefinitief.pdf). and the Sixties, New York, Pantheon Tomalin, Oxford/New York, Oxford Uni- Streven, Vol. 74, Nr. 2, February 2007a, Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Vlees is het Books, 2003. versity Press, 1992. p. 114-124. Taaiste. Kleine Fenomenologie van The Lawrence Weschler, True to life. Dan Yakir, ‘The Sorcerer’, in: Film Christophe Van Eecke, ‘De Mythen van Wrestler en Hunger’, in: Cinemagie, Nr. Twenty-five years of conversations with Comment, Vol. 17, Nr. 3, May-June 1981, een Late Pasolini’, in: Cinemagie, Nr. 269, Winter 2009g, p. 37-47. David Hockney, Berkeley/Los Angeles/ p. 49-53. 259, Summer 2007b, p. 73-89. Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Perchance To London, University of California Press, Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Nel Mezzo del Dream. De Herinneringscinema van 2008. 494 495 Camin. Moeilijke Mannelijkheid in de Terence Davies’, in: rekto:verso, Nr. 39, Mark Wigley, ‘The Space of Exposure’, Film’, in: Cinemagie, Nr. 265, Winter January-February 2010a, p. 5-6. in: Russell Ferguson and Dominic 2008, p. 25-36. Christophe Van Eecke, ‘De Kelder van Molon (eds.), Wolfgang Tillmans, Los Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Verdoemenis. Kruithof. Verzamelen Tegen het Ver- Angeles/Chicago/New Haven/London, Het Demonische Universum van Béla geten’, in: rekto:verso, Nr. 41, May-June Hammer Museum/Museum of Con- Tarr’, in: Cinemagie, Nr. 266, Spring 2010b, p. 13. temporary Art/Yale University Press, 2009a, p. 46-53. Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Mad Caps and 2006, p. 145-156. Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Lijnen Van Flowered Cups. Some Notes on Seeing Oscar Wilde, Plays, Prose Writings and Geleidelijkheid’, in: Kris Van Dessel Regula Maria Müller’s Work’, in: Regula Poems, with an introduction by Terry (ed.), Drawing Actions, exhib. cat., Geel, Maria Müller, De Muzen van Erasmus/ Eagleton, London, Everyman’s Library, De halle, 2009b, [p. 2-7]. The Muses of Erasmus, s.l., RTBOOKS, 1991. Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Fade Away 2010c, [p. 1-3]. Linda Williams, Hard Core. Power, And Radiate. De Verloren Talen van de Christophe Van Eecke, ‘Zij Cool, Wij Pleasure and the “Frenzy of the Visible” Dia’, in: rekto:verso, Nr. 36, July-August Cool. De Kinderen van Larry Clark’, in: [1989], expanded edition, Berkeley/Los 2009c, p. 22. Metropolis M, Vol. 31, Nr. 3, June-July Angeles/London, University of Califor- Christophe Van Eecke, Displacement/ 2010d, p. 38-47 (English translation, p. nia Press, 1999. This Placement. Het Standpunt in de 105-107). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico- Moderne Kunst, Breda, Lokaal 01, 2009d Lea Vergine, Body Art and Performance. philosophicus. Logisch-philosophische (http://www.lokaal01.nl/actueel/ The Body as Language, Milan, Skira, Abhandlung [1921], Frankfurt am Main, pdf/DISPLACEMENT%20THISPLACE- 2000. Suhrkamp, 1963. Only Connect is een uitgave van Lokaal 01 en is verschenen naar aanleiding van de tentoonstelling Pleasure Ground (25 februari – 18 juni 2010)

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