Con/Text Part II:
The Thousand Natural Shocks that Flesh is Heir To
THE THOUSAND NATURAL SHOCKS THAT FLESH IS HEIR TO
THE HUMAN COMEDY
This is a painting about patronage, trauma culture, and “white feminism”. It is not intended as a remonstration regarding the three women that it alludes to,[1] but rather the mechanisms that have allowed for their empowerment and valourisation, which are then simultaneously employed to quell all (often salient) criticism (lest that criticism breed dissent). For the purposes of this essay, only passing allusions will be made to the two contemporary figures, Julia Gutman and Taylor Swift. The figure of Catherina de’ Medici, however, requires some historical, but more importantly: contemporary context. There have recently been ”feminist” attempts to rehabilitate her legacy, which actually bear striking resemblance to the arguments of Honoré de Balzac in his novel dedicated to the subject (part of his larger work “The Human Comedy”). Balzac was famous for his well-rounded female characters, a great proponent of the “realist novel” (thought to be one of the founders of the modern novel), and one of the greatest demonstrators of the “own goal”: being generally quite well-disposed to the violent quelling of democratic upbringing, whilst so rigorous in his scrupulous “realisms” as to unintentionally make excellent arguments for the liberation of the people (he was a favourite author of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, for example). Engels wrote (of French society following the revolution) he had learned more from Balzac than “from all the professed historians, economists, and statisticians of the period together.”[2] In keeping with the legacy of her famous family, and as Queen Mother (and de facto ruler) of France, de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts, this is indeed the most “google”-able fact of her life. Throughout European history, many of the world’s most problematic figures have been great patrons, gifting to the world some of the most beautiful, powerful, and poignant endeavours that human beings have undertaken. But the work championed by the patron class over the last 30 years shows no sign of such capacity. This is often attributed to a lack of “newness” (argued convincingly in Mark Fisher’s “Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures” [3] and Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s “After the Future”[4]). However, living on the unceded lands of one of the world’s oldest continuous cultures, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, (though I speak of First Nations cultures more broadly), the “avant garde” just doesn’t seem quite so convincing (traditions that predate Western history prove to be constantly surprising). I will delve deeper into what I believe to be the reasons as to why Western “art” is so bad in a later blog, suffice to say that scale certainly plays into it (3,311 being in control of half of the world’s wealth), but also that, during the Renaissance (before labour saving devices) a certain amount of inequality was seen as inevitable. Inequality was also immediately present, where the peasantry was close by and confrontational very unlike our “global supply chain” of outsourcing and drone strikes. It should, after all, not be surprising that there is nothing to look at when culture is basically instrumentalised as a distraction from growing inequality, and that there will be only the less so as asymmetric warfare wrought against marginalised populations begins to escalate. With temperatures around the world set to soar, with the likelihood of disaster, there is almost certainly going to be an ever-rising number of desperate people who will do anything to get back at those who have doomed them and their communities to starvation and death, aka “terrorists”. What is going on now has been happening for quite some time, but what is looking like a great experiment is being carried out regarding exactly how much violence privileged populations will allow to be carried out in their name.
SOLIDARITY FROM THE TOP DOWN
Back in (stupid) Sydney, it seems that now my friends are being pressured to denounce me because I strongly disliked an artwork, (which is in keeping with the current climate of McCathyism). I found out that an (easily disproven) lie that I referred to Gutman using an antisemitic slur in one of my posts has been spreading among the “cultural elite”, which is probably only the tip of the iceberg. One of those spreading the lie was curator James Gatt. When invited to sign a petition calling for arts institutions to come out in support for an end to genocide in Palestine, Gatt enquired as to what the person distributing thought about my “post”, refusing to sign when he did not immediately receive the denouncement he required. Of course, it is also a good excuse not to sign a petition lest it effect one’s career. Gatt recently published an Instagram post gushing over the curation of the Louise Bourgeoise exhibition at AGNSW stating that “It’s obvious no expense has been spared and that the general public (visiting in very high numbers) is (sic) engaged for reasons different to my own”… which is sort of exactly the attitude I have been criticising. It puts me in mind of “An American Poem” by Eileen Myles:
“And my art can’t
be supported until it is
gigantic, bigger than
everyone else’s, confirming
the audience’s feeling that they are
alone. That they alone
are good, deserved
to buy the tickets
to see this Art.”
…For background, I had a falling out with Gatt over his unsolicited editing of an early draft of my poetry in his side project essentially text-messaging poetry to a group of people (which looked a lot like Brian Fuata’s practice rather than an original curatorial idea). I was sufficiently irritated by his patronising tone to cut off communication with him as a result. A male artist friend pointed out that the only other artist Gatt treated in the same way was also female, and accused him of misogyny. I had simply assumed his superior attitude to be the product of someone with a wildly inflated view of their own intelligence. I think that misogyny is very complicated and engrained, and often very difficult to pinpoint or prove. It certainly can be evident in something as simple as lowered expectations. But the assumption that women need to be helped and explained to is so run-of-the-mill that it barely registers, and will seem to pale in import against other issues. Except that a lot of these instances can eventuate in real disadvantage to a career. After all, my male peers most similar to me in interests and intelligence all seemed to pick up work as academics some five to ten years in advance of me. My first role as an academic only came about because (after years overseas) academic/writer/editor Tom Melick returned and found it very strange that someone as smart as me had never been offered academic work (not that Melick endorses my politics) (please assume that I am friendless lest anyone else get drawn into this campaign). When one starts to look at growing disadvantage among older women, a picture emerges of how much these negative stereotypes perpetuate social issues (which are again much worse for people from poorer backgrounds and people of colour). I don’t believe that gender division is solely the fault of men. I think that it most pernicious where it is structural, as it is very convenient for the status quo, and always has been.
Recently, when confronted with the notion that a graven image derived from a flattering press photo was produced without “consent”, the language of sexual assault being co-opted as a counterpoint to what was largely a structural criticism, my initial bemusement gave way to rage. I thought about how, as a woman, I can quite easily shrug off such nonsense, where a man might be hurt by the implication, or even socially and professionally impacted (especially in a “world” in which the “social” is professional). Thus, we have the language of degradation for those disproportionately enfranchised and degradation for all others, the subject and the subjected. I considered the cost of devaluing such terminology in order to simply silence criticism, where disenfranchised men are increasingly a legitimate danger (and are not believed that they are victims too). It was strange, as I had already been writing about the weaponisation of “feminist” values and language, and the destructive impact of magnifying gender division amidst growing inequality. This is not because I believe that white men are inherently worse off than other groups (quite the contrary), just that, quite simply, the same old power structures tend to reproduce themselves by any means possible. Debates over who gets to speak on certain subjects have, for example, essentially emboldened white artists to leave the heavy lifting to artists of colour, effectively outsourcing the imperative to speak out against societal ills, or even so much as to judge between right and wrong. The fact that one should be sensitive when it comes to speaking to the experience of others does not mean that issues that do not affect one are beyond the exercise of judgement (and sympathy). I truly believe that with what is happening now around the world, the silent will never be forgiven.
TRAUMA AND PROGRESS
As written about extensively by Angela Nagle in her book “Kill All Normies: The Online Culture Wars from Tumblr and 4chan to the Alt-Right and Trump”, the weaponisation of discourse imported from very often well-meaning fields of psychology have resulted in the bizarre effect that on the Left there is little room for critical thought or debate.[5] Nagle writes that: “The problem with the contemporary style of Tumblr-liberalism and a purely identitarian self-oriented progressivism that fomented in online subcultures and moved on to college campuses is that the very idea of winning people over through ideas now seems to anguish, offend and enrage this tragically stupefied shadow of the great movements of the left (…)”[6] Typical of the art establishment, which as many of those labelled “Post Internet Artists” like to lament, is always grindingly slow to adapt to contemporary cultural discourse,[7] it is really only recently that this phenomenon has become evident internal to Institutional Museums and Galleries, where it would seem to have found its natural home (where the superior moral appeal to amiability far outweighs uncomfortable conversations about sponsorship and complicity). As further examined by Nagle, “subversiveness” is a value that has now been claimed for the Alt Right. In Nagle’s analysis, subversiveness is entirely arbitrary, and could belong equally to either side of politics, which is certainly true when it comes to the spread of progressive versus conservative issues. While I understand Nagle’s derision regarding the gatekeeping typical of those that play on subversion, its very moral ambivalence has been somewhat inherent in the production of European art of the modern period and it is hard to imagine a time that it will not be important (as in providing direct dissent in privileged spaces that garner the attention of the ever smaller percentage of people in control of the world’s wealth). In the book Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class[8] Catherine Liu writes about how following the publication of Nagle’s book, Nagle was systematically hounded out of the academy by an academic (with a much more secure position), Gabriella Coleman, who Nagle had criticised for championing “subversiveness” even to the extent of Coleman basically overlooking the patently antisemitic rantings of one of the subjects of her book.[9]
Nagle’s analysis is occasionally sweeping. I did find a particular offhand remark glib on the point of unhelpful (without entirely disagreeing): “Trigger warnings had to be issued in order to avoid the unexpectedly high number of women who had not gone to war claiming to have post-traumatic stress disorder”[10] . It is more understandable contextually when one is aware that PTSD is likely overdiagnosed, that people are essentially encouraged towards mediated suffering over resilience.[11] Frustration around these diagnoses being appropriated by privileged university students is understandable, but also could be construed as a reaction to the lack of opportunities that many young people are faced with. If the anger is occasionally misdirected it is also understandable. What Nagle refers to is also simply the historical diagnosis of PTSD as confined to returned servicemen. Aside from a few earlier interpretations from Sigmund Freud, the experience of war was necessarily gleaned by the psychiatric profession from an American perspective after Vietnam (Iraq, after that), those whose governments had sent them in to “liberate”, which is to say oppress external populations in asymmetric warfare.[12] The soldiers studied were largely the perpetrators of their own horror. Trauma is as trauma does. Though, obviously many soldiers hailed from disadvantage, with few options but to discover what “fighting for their country” truly meant. As highlighted by psychotherapist Dana Becker in her book “One Nation Under Stress” during the Vietnam war “literary critic Leslie Fiedler commented acerbically that Vietnam was “a war fought for us by our servants.”[13] The relatively new diagnosis of PTSD, of course, arose at the same time as the Women’s Movement and thus was roundly criticised for its gendered focus and augmented in order to include the experience of sexual violence.[14] In fact, women are much more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD (which, according to Becker, has been attributed to a whole host of distasteful studies attempting to enculturate a form of biological determinism) but has been quite clearly demonstrated to be a result of the increased likelihood of poverty and disenfranchisement among women.[15] In Becker’s analysis, a vague set of symptoms set out in newer versions of the DSM allows for a culture of overdiagnosis where PTSD is concerned, where it almost looked for in populations, though (fortunately) is unlikely to manifest even in those who have been through objectively traumatic experiences (and most sufferers recover over time). Becker speaks to much lower-than-expected reporting as a result of “9/11” in New York: “In one 9/11 study, women, Hispanics, and African Americans were found to be at greatest risk, and survivors of the terrorist attacks with incomes under $25,000 were eight times likelier to have PTSD than survivors earning over $100,000. In that study, poverty was the most potent of all risk factors for mental health problems following the events of 9/11.”[16] She gives an example of how, for a person in dire financial straits, even the breakdown of a washing machine can constitute an existential threat, so the experience of trauma becomes compounded by entrenched disadvantage. It should go without saying that while everyone goes through a certain amount of negative life experience, the ongoing effects of those experiences are disproportionately experienced by marginalised groups. More than simply being frustrating, the language surrounding PTSD being co-opted by the privileged has done a great deal of harm in individualising what should be a collective struggle to improve the living conditions of the majority of the world’s population.
In the essay “A Posthumous Shock: How everything became trauma”[17] author Will Self explores the relationship between our contemporary language and understanding regarding trauma and its relationship to literary theory. Self begins: “part of what gives modern trauma theory its appeal is precisely its covert importation of Judeo-Christian redemptive eschatology: a grand narrative of human moral progress in which suffering is an essential motivation for all the principal actors. For literary theorists, psychic trauma is an exclusive sort of stigmata, a wound at once invisible and sacred, the bearers of which become sanctified and thereby able to convey the singular Truth that shines through the miasma of contemporary moral relativism: that of their own suffering. This suffering is elicited by the intercession of qualified (or ordained) critics and psychotherapists, who join in this communion of pain and distress, and share it with the laity via books and monographs.”[18] Self presents a convincing case against the colonising triumphs of “trauma studies” in appropriating works of literature (even ancient literature that would have a very different interpretation of the word “trauma’) as narratives of individual over collective struggle. Self explains that when going through a crisis of authorial voice after post-structuralism, the deconstruction of Derrida, certain theorists decided to apply themselves to defining the most irreconcilable experiences in order to claim them, so as to be unimpeachable, virtuous where they could no longer claim any other kind of authority/superiority.[19] It seems completely in keeping with a world in which writers are no longer remunerated well enough for base survival (unless they are writers of “Best Sellers”, i.e. a bit crap). Where once we had the consolations of literature as a means of effecting our shared experience we now have literary theory bound up with industrial psychology, famous for the “get them back to work” mentality that would cast the blame of disadvantage on those suffering, while the “social” media that we use limits our ability to concentrate on anything more than “funny” ten second videos referencing the shortcomings of our disparate neuropathologies (thus exacerbating them). (This is not to denigrate the important work of the mental healthcare profession but to question the idea of it operating in a vacuum, or in a world without literature).
In The New Wounded Philosopher Catherine Malabou works between the disciplines of psychology, neurology and philosophy to attempt a greater understanding of increasingly prevalent forms of brain injury, from physical trauma to Dementia and Autism, that share common expression with the effects of PTSD. She states that from the perspective of contemporary neurology there is an “impossibility of separating the effects of political trauma from the effects of organic trauma”.[20] The details of the trauma that Malabou undertakes to elaborate refer to the utter dissolution of identity as a common thread of a set of neurobiological conditions of which PTSD is one. “The accidents of cerebrality are wounds that cut the thread of history, place history outside itself, suspend its course, and remain hermeneutically “irrecoverable” even though the psyche remains alive. The cerebral accident thus reveals the ability of the subject to survive the senselessness of its own accidents”[21] writes Malabou. For Malabou, the literature of trauma, when written as experienced, most closely resembles the work of Samuel Beckett in evoking subjects who have lost their sense of self, [22] quite a different phenomenon to those privileged actors that describe their ”trauma” as part of their heroic narrative. Such is the cynicism of “trauma culture”, pitching trauma as a heroic ideal, that it centralises the individual selfhood of the allegedly traumatised over their agency, it is in suffering that redemption is found, not through the cultivation of resilience. The virtue is in the experience itself and not in the unrelated skills that might otherwise distinguish a person a worthy artist. It seems that no one will be judged “by the content of their character”. Many of these identities formed and reified by their positioning begin in a kind of privilege when confronted with the absolute dissolution bred of poverty, war and assault.
I suppose I set about this rather perfunctory literature review to illustrate the complexity even of the history and politics of what has become “trauma culture”, let alone the complexity of diagnoses and the experience of trauma. “Contemporary Art”, in belonging to a history of vanguardism that has run concurrent with industrialisation, sees its mission in affirming always the “latest” technologies, like the perfection of the human soul has everything to do with labour-saving convenience. The eschatology examined by Self in the aforementioned article would have it that people, in general, our attitudes towards each other and therefore our actions have improved with time, which is a little bit hard to swallow in a world where children starve unnecessarily, where children are dying as “human shields” for “terrorists”. Working towards this perfection of history a “rational” sense of time, after all, would have to be rendered physical[23] which would imbue all objects with a misguided sense of permanence, free from entropy and erosion. Since there has been writing systems there have been those that lament the loss of memory, all progress comes at a cost. In the Memorial Culture[24] of Europe, before the invention of the printing press, a common mnemonic device was to store information inside the rooms of a remembered building.[25] It is difficult inside any kind of neuropathy, but particularly in suffering short-term memory loss (a common symptom of PTSD) to establish continuity, to remember one’s purpose from one room to the next. This exhaustion of will, common to brain traumas, is increasingly more prevalent in this digitally manipulated world, or in a world in which traumatic events increasingly impinge on daily experience. Authorities that have been rightfully displaced seem only capable of attempting to reassert consciousness as a stable element related to each (consistent) personality, the personalities rendered morally superior, immutable and unquestionable. This “identity” that is politic does not break as the subjective self breaks, as trauma reveals the myths of the personal, as one looks at one’s self and sees it as a narrative imposed from without. For the self itself is a fiction. The self is hopelessly suggestible and prone to total dissolution under the most subtle of neurological traumas.[26]
THE PROTESTANT ETHIC
When I started out as an artist, (white) feminism was all the rage. I was all but invited into the fold. I tended to reply that I was an artist before I was a woman, but even then I could see that this agenda largely excluded artists of colour, and where it was inclusive, it was largely managed from the top down from groups of white female artists ascended to the level of curator-adjacent. I had not long recovered from years of being bedridden, still suffering frequent relapses, and felt incredibly guilty for being alive, thinking that if I had been born in a different time or circumstance I could not have survived, as basically unproductive. I thought that comparatively I had nothing to complain about (which is still true, but a pretty unhelpful stance nonetheless). It also took me a long time to realise that people in earlier times, as well as poorer populations, tend to be relatively less mercenary when it comes to sharing the wealth with the infirm. Without knowing it, I had been indoctrinated into ideals that permeate society but especially the rich private school system, where people will tend to believe in an exclusionary meritocracy, whether or not it is evidenced by an environment of excellence that could be proved other than by largely rigged school results (I attended Kambala, Church of England Girl School, until my father left when I was 13). (I became ill when I was almost 16 and did not finish high school, so 19th century French realist novels became my primary source of education. It was then strange to go to university and discover that it had actually been a pretty good education, “A Sentimental Education”[27].) The idea of a kind of morality that is predicated on work and what one can contribute is derived from what Max Weber described as “The Protestant Ethic” (a logic underpinning neoliberalism).[28] It always takes me a while to understand the impulses I have to paint things, and it seems that the choice of Catherina de’ Medici partially emanated from these feelings about instrumentalisation. She is notorious for being implicated in the Saint Bartholemew’s Day Massacre (of 1572). It is true that she was not singularly responsible for the massacre (which got totally out of hand), though it is likely that she ordered the deaths of certain Protestant leaders at a wedding that she organised (no one ever said she didn’t have style). The resulting skirmish, in which the Huguenots (French Protestants) were easily targeted due to their strict black and white dress code, lasted two months and probably resulted in the deaths of 20,000 people (estimates vary). Recently, I read an article stating she couldn’t possibly have been involved because she had in other instances worked towards peace (as much as it is agreed that she was a shrewd political operator) and suggesting that all of the (admittedly misogynistic) negative material produced about her was due only to her sex (not to her actions or the wider political context). I found this quite irritating and simplistic, largely because feudal rule was generally pretty bloody feudal, also because it kind of ruins a very good story… The other day I saw a video on Instagram suggesting that it was “unfair” and misogynistic to offer Mary Tudor the epithet of “Bloody” (which in itself is partially more understandable when you come to terms with how many Marys Tudor there were around that time) while King Henry VIII isn’t called that… as though he is thought of fondly…? Given the “misogyny” directed at two regents historically connected with literal genocide (if in de’ Medici’s case, mostly unfairly), I wondered how Elizabeth I remains essentially revered (though she did get up to her fair share of murder, including the targeting of Catholics). But then, she was a Protestant. And if there is anything that the Protestants were expert at, it is propaganda (they practically invented mass media, utlising printing presses throughout the Reformation and thereafter). Whether the murder of certain populations is determined as genocide in the modern parlance, has always had a lot to do with what and not who they were. In the Introduction of Balzac’s Catherine de Medici he writes: “There is a general cry of paradox when scholars, struck by some historical error, attempt to correct it; but, for whoever studies modern history to its depths, it is plain that historians are privileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs precisely as the newspapers of the day, or most of them, express the opinions of their readers.”[29] This is not to trivialise the amazing campaign directed against de’ Medici: her female friends were referred to as the “flying squadron” and accused of sleeping with men to work towards de’ Medici’s ends (again, such a good story, so much cooler than any “girl squad”). The French court was never notorious for being chaste, but obviously most of this is nonsense. Balzac, on the other hand, was happy to concede that the rumours that de’ Medici at the very least flirted with a young man (after the birth of her children) are true, and that it was fair enough given her famously loveless marriage (in some ways he was pretty okay for a 19th century man). He wrote: “At the time of the king's death Catherine was, therefore, on terms of gallantry with the vidame,—a situation which was quite in conformity with the manners and morals of a time when love was both so chivalrous and so licentious that the noblest actions were as natural as the most blamable; although historians, as usual, have committed the mistake in this case of taking the exception for the rule.”[30]
François de Vendôme, Vidame de Chartres, de’ Medici’s accused lover. (I like to think it was true because he was a total babe).
There is certainly a lot of misogyny bound up with the early Protestant church, with its “family values”, where celibacy came to be seen as a sin against the state, and women’s bodies became political objects, as all behaviour was suddenly policed and judged for its ethic towards net productivity. Following the Protestant Reformation in Germany, the witch trials there were some of the worst in Europe. In “Caliban and the Witch” Silvia Federici[31] wrote about the role of the witch trials in terms of what Marx termed “primitive accumulation” (in this case, of women’s bodies), which she saw as a blind spot in Marxist literature. Her contention is that division between the sexes was encouraged as a way of breaking working-class solidarity, she gives some striking examples regarding the new policing of women’s sexuality: “The repulsion that non-procreative sexuality was beginning to inspire is well captured by the myth of the old witch flying on her broom, which, like the animals she also rode upon (goats, mares, dogs), the projection of an extended penis, symbol of an unbridled lust. This imagery betrays a new sexual discipline that denied the “old and ugly” woman, no longer fertile, the right to a sexual life.”[32]
Lucas Cranach the Younger “The Ill-Matched Lovers: Old Woman and Young Man”, 1520-22 (I have written about Lucas Cranach the elder and his association with Martin Luther and the Reformation in “Font, Of All Knowledge” and pointed to misogyny, but neglected Lucas Cranach the younger’s series of derisive images of couples of mismatched ages.)
The television series about de’ Medici that so irritated me, “The Serpent Queen”, presents the most disgusting misogyny regarding de’ Medici’s “love rival”, Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of de’ Medici’s husband Henry II of France, presenting their relationship as some sickly incarnation of the Oedipus complex in which his older lover basically nurses Henry (she was 19 years his senior and they were together when he married Catherine when they were both 15). While the age at which their relationship commenced is actually criminal by modern standards, it was a pretty normal age to marry young women to older men, young women who hardly held the power over life and death that the young Dauphin ultimately held over his mistress. It being wrong could quite easily have been represented without making older women appear sexually ridiculous. Of the many things I found objectionable about this series (based on what is reviewed as being a very measured historical account), is the way that diversity is alluded to in the fictional personage of a maidservant of African heritage that Samantha Morton’s de’ Medici takes a liking to, where de’ Medici is presented as a victim of circumstance (her early life was pretty horrific) to the extent that she would be able to relate to the young woman as though a member of the peasantry. It is true that the Medici were nowhere near as rich as the Kings of France, but de’ Medici was no pauper. Her early suffering was a result of being orphaned as well as political instability and public ill-will toward the banking dynasty she was born to, because of corruption and because they were responsible for economic collapse in the Florentine republic. That the people objected to this and even sought retribution for it (instead of simply giving the bankers access to more public money) is evidence that sometimes the past really is so distant from our experience as to be truly unrelatable. It is also quite a weird way of framing de’ Medici while leaving out the part about how de’ Medici’s marriage to the Second Son of the then-king of France was partially arranged by her half-brother, Alessandro de’ Medici, who had by that time earned the title of “Duke of the Florentine Republic”, though he was called “il Moro” as he was the bastard son, most likely of an African slave. Alessandro de’ Medici would have been born to his mother’s station in life (though the illegitimate children of the Medici were generally acknowledged and well-treated) and would not have easily risen to prominence (before being murdered by another de’ Medici at the age of 26). He is also generally referred to as a tyrant. This, to me, is a pretty great story and a weird thing to overlook. Regardless of a lot of murder, corruption, intrigue and attempts to establish dynastic rule, the Medici are remembered mostly as patrons of the arts, bringing Europe out of the “darkness” of the early modern period, with incredible feats of engineering and art (more even than being among the first to institute new forms of credit foundational to the current system).
Bronzino workshop, “Portrait of Duke Alessandro de' Medici”. Oil on tin. Galleria degli Uffizi.
FULLY FEUDAL[33]
Of course, my interest in Catherine de’ Medici and the reference image for the painting is derived from a sculpture made by Girolamo della Robbia, who hailed from a long line of visionary Florentine Renaissance ceramicists (his great uncle was Luca della Robbia). I first became aware of this work and de’ Medici’s distaste for it in reading a book on an obscure area of Medieval Political Theology[34] (as you do), regarding the representational difficulties of a monarch being simultaneously immortal (as God’s representative on Earth) and mortal (God’s servant), demonstrated in the phrase “The King is Dead, Long Live the King”. I think that when I initially sought an image of the effigy in question it carried a caption explaining that the sculptor must have intended it as an insult, as the (then) Queen mother (who ruled on behalf of three sons over the course of her life) was a known as a tyrant (whether fairly or unfairly), responsible for the deaths of many Protestants.[35]
For context, for just over a hundred years before de’ Medici ascended to the French throne it had become custom to build tomb monuments that displayed the monarchs as in life on the outside, in full regalia, while showing the same monarchs in the repose of death, as they would meet with God, on the inside, just visible for the viewer. The versions showing the dead monarchs are fairly macabre and belonging very much to a gothic tradition that was then being supplanted by the Renaissance (in itself a good reason for de’ Medici’s horror), Though it is certainly strange that della Robbia, as a son of the Renaissance and native Florentine, whose family had long profited by the patronage of the Medici would attempt to conform to such a tradition to the extent of making a work more characteristically gothic than the earlier examples.
Girolamo della Robbia, “Effigy of Catherine de’ Medici”, 1560
None of the other tomb effigies (including that of her husband, Henry II), were in any way as “gothic” or horrific as that made by della Robbia, which (hilariously) sits in the Louvre, while the actual tomb, completed with the most beautiful effigy of de’ Medici, dead as though asleep sits in the French Imperial Church, the basilique cathédrale de Saint-Denis, which has been much neglected since the revolution (it is a deeply fascinating triumph of gothic architecture and politics which I will write on in future). It is actually due to the French revolution both that the Louvre became an art museum (as early as 1793) and that we are aware that medieval Kings were buried in full regalia up until the 14th century, when they began to be buried naked but for a winding sheet, humbled before god (and referring to the ‘terrestrial political institution’ of which a king was in charge) which for a contemporary equivalent of ruling class propaganda is basically akin to “behind-the-scenes”, “the tell-all”, Katie Perry exposing herself by not wearing makeup, the many documentaries dedicated to Taylor Swift (and how nice she is). Dignity and mortality, apparently the twin essential demonstrations of the right to rule. I sought an explainer as to the music of Taylor Swift, as I had only ever read about how she wrote songs about famous exes. I found a list of other songs written by her fanbase, variously about how she is treated in the industry, the lives of her friends and her sexual assault (which is undoubtedly very brave of her to speak out on). However, I could not help but feel that the subject is only ever Taylor Swift, who like de’ Medici is the daughter of a banking dynasty. It seems as though her career is built on giving her fans an insight into her life, into a “reality” that would undoubtedly horrify Balzac, a singular perspective, an elevated bourgeoisie (something opined by writers such as Balzac and Flaubert with certain misogynistic undertones, lol), where this “reality” is apparently the opiate the masses now require to distract them from the massive inequality that has become very literally life-threatening for the majority of the population of the world. This surveillance-form accepted uncritically when caught through the medium of the camera (and editing) has supplanted all lived experience, replaced it with the sickly proofs of singular, individualised viewpoints, where we can now see exactly as far as the lens and no further (don’t get me started on Western perspective). “Realist” novels in their exhaustive complexity are increasingly difficult to read for people whose capacities have been foreshortened by the technologies of “capture” (film, sound recording etc.) And “Reality” is the big business built up to distract. This is of course, quite in keeping with contemporary culture and “main character syndrome”. One could ask, “what else has music ever been about, if not love”? One could reply:
“Men of good fortune, often cause empires to fall
While men of poor beginnings, often can't do anything at all
It takes money to make money they say
Look at the Fords, but didn't they start that way
Anyway, it makes no difference to me”[36]
Because centralised culture might monopolise the conversation as well as the profits, but the music is just not as good as that produced by the obscure (and occasionally bizarre). (Give me Total Control or Shabazz Palaces any day.) But it is the concentration of profit that is a problem, because artists can no longer “sing for their supper” as they would have literally done at any other point in human history (it is in the tradition of folk songs that we have modern pop music). It is getting so that to fail to be one of the biggest artists in the world is to be unable to carry on being an artist. It is true of all the arts now and it is weird that we allow them to be siloed by distributional methods. In the meantime, Contemporary Art holds onto this ideal of belonging to a culture of legitimate critique, where one might make something out of nothing. But with artists hailing from good families, from socially and economically comfortable circumstances, to the exclusion of working-class artists, how could we ever expect to see art that is again critical of those in power? Thus, Gutman sits in the foreground of this work having painted a popstar (as she did for the Archibald) only this time as a critique of the system in a way that she is unlikely to express (having undoubtedly profited by it). (A contrary example, of artwork that still demonstrates this vital function, which I saw immediately before I made this work, is a painting by Hamishi Farah entitled “Beyoncé and Jay-Z (The Love of Things)”.)
Hamishi Farah, “Beyoncé and Jay-Z (The Love of Things)”, 2023, Oil on linen, 109 x 79 cm (42 7/8 x 31 1/8 inches)
It is entirely possible my feelings towards Catherine de’ Medici had been unjustly influenced by the unfair remonstrations of the Reformers, and yet, the issue of central import was in the hierarchy of images. “The Serpent Queen” directly asks the viewer (in the personage of the young servant girl) “what would you have done differently?” My question would be “why is it now that we are so often asked to extend our empathy almost exclusively to feudal lords?” If the highly publicised example of “Saltburn” is anything to go by we can look forward to more weak recreations of successful works of art (borrowing heavily from “Call Me By Your Name”) wherein the express horror of the ultrawealthy is indulged with plotlines suggesting that the working class seek only to take advantage of their incredible kindness and magnanimity in order to replace them (not simply to have access enough to the wealth created by their labour to be able to subsist, as base survival becomes increasingly difficult).
MISERY ACQUAINTS A MAN WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
When I started out at art school, I used to write a blog that was much more hostile than this one. On a date with a young person recently, I was reminded of how it all seemed back then- going to the big exhibition openings and seeing all the same (old) artists and the same (old) work, that many of them had been rehashing for years or even decades. I remember thinking that my generation was obviously going to replace it all with something much better (the same energy that this young person was giving off). My grandfather used to tell my mother that if she didn’t feel like she was good enough to do a job she should look at the people doing it, safe in a positive comparison being made by my brilliant and capable autodidact of a mother (who did not finish high school). But, in the course of my lifetime, the opposite seems true. If the people working a job (however “qualified”) are less expert, less capable, less intelligent than those that come along to disturb that equilibrium, the latter are treated as betrayers and cast out. In a society built on rampant individualism, welfare is for the banks and equality is the enforcement of conformity. I have alluded before to this very weird conversation between Billionaire Peter Thiel and Anarchist anthropologist (involved in the Occupy Wall St Movement) David Graeber, in which the two agree that no innovation can come out of the modern university. They speak of all the great weirdos that used to be left to their own devices and how they are probably all internet trolls now (they were, after all, all white men). Graeber speaks at length of how academics spend more time competing against each other for funding and writing proposals in which they outline what they will do, indeed so much time that they never actually get to discover anything.[37] The arts are home to exactly the same kind of devastation by bureaucracy (encapsulated in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”). For me, the great dream of diversity is that everyone with talent would get a chance to be one of those weirdos, not that conformity would be enforced by some metric designed by administrators who had no expertise in the field that they were controlling.[38] But when I first wrote my blog it ended up being regularly read by curator Susan Gibb, which lead her to visit my first solo exhibition, from which she curated me into an exhibition at ARTSPACE. Gibb went on to work at If I can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution in Amsterdam and is now the Executive Director of Western Front in Vancouver, because in my generation, talent in the curatorial field was almost invariably lost to greener pastures (again, I do not suggest that she shares my politics, assume I am friendless). And yet things have demonstrably changed for the worse. Once upon a time, artists could have disagreements, one could enjoy works without necessarily agreeing with the politics of the artist, and one could have political beliefs without the threat of a negative impact on one’s career.
I often think about this ambivalent function of Western art in relation to patronage and wonder if the two could ever truly be separated, though much has actually changed in the last 30 years, and the widespread feeling that art, that music, that literature, just aren’t “good” anymore is pretty well-founded. The great consolation on this side of the picket line, is that the mainstream provide nothing that I could value. Wealthy collectors may brag of having bought brilliant subversive artworks of the past, but they will never truly “own” them, no one can own that feeling of inspiration and consolation that a real work of art offers. There is consolation because those who have forfeited their humanity, as surely one must in acquiescing to the censorship of those speaking out against state-sponsored murder, cannot hope to make art of any value. This is all very weird when one considers how many truly reprehensible people have made art throughout history… I guess the difference is that those people weren’t simultaneously “nice”. (This is not to say one can’t be an entirely nice person and make good art, just that maybe hypocrisy is something of an impediment, that censorship is the ultimate impediment.) Art can have a valid function in advancing progressive ideals, but it should not be instrumentalised purely in service to what is right, especially where that moral imperative is dictated by those in power (now almost exclusively those with a disproportionate share of the wealth). The application of top-down morality, where only those who can afford to buy “ethically” can be truly good people, dooms all outside a very narrow norm (regardless of how ostensibly “inclusive” privileged spaces may become). ‘Dooms’ where those who are “bad” are spoken of even as though they are unworthy of life now, as we are convinced that climate change is caused by overpopulation (though the ultrawealthy contribute exponentially more to environmental destruction).[39] I guess if anything can be learned from Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” it’s that a lack of access to opportunities and financial security can breed resentment and contempt, even paranoia. (Thus, if the “nice” artists/curators/academics would like me to be less of an arsehole, I am quite open to them paying for the professional help I have never been able to afford and demonstrably need, lol.) In truth, while I believe that art can function very well in producing empathy (where everyone can see themselves in the character of a nineteenth century French aristocrat in the case of the works of Marcel Proust, or in a Contemporary Asian-American woman as in the TV series “Beef”), what good art does that most interests me, is to remind one that everything that human beings claim to know is ultimately spurious. This is why I think that good art is now more political than ever: it is not nice (it is not propaganda), it is just honest about how terrible and pointless and stupid we all are. It is the ultimate argument against all the people who claim that they “know” (as a species we claim mastery while destroying our environment, we are not very smart). It has been nice to be reminded lately, that the possession that I have always valued the most is a library card, that access can be as simple as that. I used to believe that it was in vain that art/literature saved my life through all my years bedridden (a life which could have little value as far as this society was concerned); and then just as vain that in return I lived for art; but now it seems imperative. I am energised thinking about what I can do now that I have given up trying to please a mainstream that have always held me in contempt, I have hope for the first time in a long time.
[1] (I am also a white feminist) (thus hardly capable of being self-critical, lol).
[2] Frederich Engels, “Engels to Margaret Harkness In London” April, 1888; Marx-Engels Correspondence 1888. Selected Correspondence; Moscow : 1953;
[3] Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life : Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester, U.K: Zero Books, 2014.
[4] Berardi, Franco., Arianna. Bove, Gary. Genosko, and Nicholas Thoburn. After the Future. Edinburgh ; AK Press, 2011.
[5] Nagle, Angela. Kill All Normies : The Online Culture Wars from Tumblr and 4chan to the Alt-Right and Trump. Alresford, Hants: Zero Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017.
[6] Ibid, 120.
[7] Here is a pretty great keynote address by New Models delving into the media landscape: Keynote from New Models (Caroline Busta and Lil Internet) – The Future of Critique (18.11.22) (youtube.com)
[8] Liu, Catherine. Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv1fkgbjx. 26-28 Liu is currently writing a book about trauma culture (which I eagerly anticipate). Liu has spoken on several panels and written an article on the subject: in a podcast hosted by Joshua Citarella, while discussing the controversy surrounding the staging of a major retrospective of the paintings of Philip Guston, Liu expresses both disappointment that the curators originally assumed the audience to be “too stupid” to understand the difference in Guston’s painting in representing the Klu Klux Klan and endorsing it, and the compromise that came about as regards wall texts constantly referring to Guston’s life in relation to his trauma and ethnicity (Guston grew up very poor and was Jewish), an act which she describes as “biological reductivism”.
[9] Liu Ibid, 27
[10] Nagle, p.78
[11] Becker, Dana. One Nation under Stress : The Trouble with Stress As an Idea, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=4703241.
Created from usyd on 2024-01-17 23:00:33.
[12] See Malabou, Self
[13] Becker, ibid. P.181
[14] In Part I, I mentioned the work of Del Kathryn Barton and Ben Quilty as artistic explorations of thoroughly gendered experience, mentioning Quilty’s portraits of returned servicemen. Barton also recently made a, by all accounts graphic film surrounding sexual assault.
[15] Becker, ibid.
[16] Ibid, 120
[17] Will Self “A Posthumous Shock: How everything became trauma”, Harper’s Magazine, December 2012
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Malabou, Catherine. The New Wounded : From Neurosis to Brain Damage, Fordham University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=3239638. Created from usyd on 2023-11-09 01:56:18. Xviii
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid. p. 56
[23] this had something to do with Henri Bergson…
[24] A term coined by Mary Carruthers in The Book of Memory : A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Malabou ibid.
[27] The title of a favourite novel of mine, at the time, L’Education Sentimentale by Gustav Flaubert.
[28] Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1st ed. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2001. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203995808.
[29] Balzac, Honore de. Catherine de' Medici, Floating Press, The, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, p.8 http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=583228
[30] Ibid. p.61
[31] Silvia Federici-, “Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body, and primitive accumulation”,
Autonomedia: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, USA ww.autonomedia.org info@autonomedia.org, 2004
[32] Ibid. p. 192
[33] Borrowed from the name of an excellent Sydney band.
[34] Kantorowicz, Ernst., William Chester. Jordan, and Conrad. Leyser. The King’s Two Bodies : A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400880782.
[35] https://www.britannica.com/event/Conspiracy-of-Amboise The number of executions after the Amboise conspiracy of 1560, for example, (when a Huguenot faction attempted to rebel against the young king) were in some accounts (likely exaggerated to) 1500. Balzac seems to concede that de’ Medici had to have been involved, to have given orders, but punishment was dealt out by the Catholic house of Guise, torturing, quartering and hanging conspirators, tossing their bodies into the Loire (over the course of a week). De’ Medici used this opportunity to pit the Huguenot house of Conde against the Guise to secure her place as de facto ruler of France (immediately following the passing of her young son Francis II and his ten-year old brother, Charles IX’s ascension to the throne).
[36] Lou Reed, “Men of Good Fortune” from the album, Berlin, 1975.
[37] David Graeber vs Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go (youtube.com)
[38] https://academic.oup.com/book/40915/chapter-abstract/349089301?redirectedFrom=fulltext
[39] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/19/life-earth-wealth-megarich-spending-power-environmental-damage