Sweet Sixteen – the Madonnas, Feminism, and Fifty Shades of Grey

‘I never really looked at them before: all figurative, all religious – Madonna with child, all 16 of them. How odd.’ [Fifty Shades Darker, Chapter 8]

Odd doesn’t even start to describe it. We will start with the number: 16. It seems rather random. Random could mean just that; that it was pulled from a stake of numbers like in the lottery. More often than not however random but specific facts are carefully chosen. The question is why?

So, 16? When we think of mystical numbers we think of 7 or 40 or 666, not 16. Yet, if we are in the realm of the unexplained already, let’s try numerology. St. Augustine of Hippo said a long time ago, a very long time ago: Numbers are the universal language offered by the deity to humans as confirmation of the truth. And in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe we can read that the answer to life the universe and everything is 42. In plain, dry words numerology is any belief in divine, mystical or any other special relationship between a number and some coinciding events. It means that believers believe that numbers have some meaning attached to them. For 16 you can find:

‘The key words of the karmic sixteen are: restlessness and problems related to personal relationships. The ultimate goal of the karmic number sixteen is to provide the possibility to reawakening the soul, so that it can rediscover its evolutionary path. It therefore involves unexpected and drastic changes. […] Sixteen represents the opportunity to overcome impediments in relation to the past life; perhaps being born in an unusual and not very fortunate environment or, perhaps, simply conflictive family conditioning. The person characterized by the number 16 will almost certainly have to face conflicts in personal relationships or connected with marriage in adult life, i.e. betrayal, deceit or debasement.’

Impediments in relation to the past: check.

Born in an unusual and not very fortunate environment: check.

Conflicts in personal relationships in adult life: check, check and check.

In fact make that 16 checks since Christian had 15 previous submissives. Ana was meant to be his sweet 16. And then she left. The doors of the lift shut. She is gone. Christian sits on the floor and can’t figure out what has happened, what went wrong. He looks up and there they are, his 16 Madonnas.

‘I gaze up at the paintings, my Madonnas. They bring a mirthless smile to my lips, the idealization of motherhood. All of them gazing at their infants or staring inauspiciously down at me.’ [MotU, Edward PV Outtake I]

The Madonnas are another of these randomly seeming, but very specific facts given to us in the books. They are the only figurative paintings in Christian’s apartment, and they greet you as soon as you enter his castle in the clouds. As he says himself we generally think of them as an idealization of motherhood. As such they can be easily dismissed as symbol of the oedipal conflict we all have to go through in our psychological development in our teenage years. We learn from Dr. Flynn’s later statements that Christian surpassed this part of his development and now needs to play catch up. He still needs to separate sexual desire and love when it comes to his birth mother and thus has problems to keep her out of his intimate relationships leading to chaos in his feeling. And as we all know, Christian doesn’t do chaos.

That’s all nice and good. But what about the ‘inauspicious stare’? What do we really SEE when we look at an image of a Madonna, this not just image of an ideal mother, but really ideal of a woman?

We see a mostly seated, sometimes kneeling figure. The figure is covered, usually to an extent that the typical outlines of a (female) body are totally blurred and merge with the background. Last, but not least the person whether she wears a crown, a halo or some version of a headscarf is never looking directly at the viewer, but has demurely lowered her eyes.

Not just numbers have a meaning, or random facts in books. Paintings have a language of their own which you can decipher if you want.

A seated or kneeling figure is an inactive one, and one that made herself/was made smaller/lowered herself. She might wear a crown, but don’t let that deceive your perception. A seated king would always be drawn on a pedestal with the signets of his power tightly grabbed in his hands. This queen is chained to her chair, waiting to be told what to do just as she was expected to do as told when the holy spirit impregnated her with the baby she holds in her hands.

‘As I strap her into the seat her breath hitches. The sound goes straight to my groin. I cinch the straps extra tight, trying to ignore my body’s reaction to her.
“This should keep you in your place,” I mutter. “I must say I do like this harness on you. Don’t touch anything.” […] She scowls at me and I know it’s because she can’t move.’ [MotU EPOV Outtake I]

If you cover something you are trying to hide it. Yes, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995 because they wanted to create a new curiosity for what is behind the wrapping based on the idea that you don’t really see anymore what is constantly in front of you. (That’s a thought to chew on for our social media age where we are bombarded with the same images of the same people 24/7.) But covering the female figure has nothing to do with recreating curiosity. On the contrary, blurring the outlines of the female figure, merging them with the background is meant to make the figure as a person forgettable and make her not arouse any interest.

‘”That dress is very short,” he adds.
“You like it?” I give him a quick twirl. It’s one of Caroline Acton’s purchases. A soft turquoise sundress, probably more suitable for the beach, but it’s such a lovely day on so many levels. He frowns and my face falls.
“You look fantastic in it, Ana. I just don’t want anyone else to see you like that.”’

The demurely lowered eyes go right along with a seated position and a covered silhouette. They too are a restraining measure as they don’t allow you to take in your environment. You can’t observe what interests you in open curiosity, but you are left in a weak, defenseless position unaware of what is to come. You are kept a virgin – innocent, but also inexperienced, naïve, ignorant, unaware, and helpless.

‘”You look very relaxed in these photographs, Anastasia. I don’t see you like that very often.” […] “I want you that relaxed with me,” he whispers. All trace of humor has gone.
Deep inside me that joy stirs again. But how can this be? We have issues.
“You have to stop intimidating me if you want that,” I snap.
“You have to learn to communicate and tell me how you feel,” he snaps back, eyes blazing.
I take a deep breath. “Christian, you wanted me as a submissive. That’s where the problem lies. It’s in the definition of a submissive – you emailed it once to me.” I pause, trying to recall the wording. “I think the synonyms were, and I quote, ‘compliant, pliant, amenable, passive, tractable, resigned, patient, docile, tame, subdued.’ I wasn’t supposed to look at you. Not talk to you unless you gave me permission to do so. What do you expect?” I hiss at him.
His frown deepens as I continue.
“It’s very confusing being with you. You don’t want me to defy you, but then you like my ‘smart mouth.’ You want obedience, except when you don’t, so you can punish me. I just don’t know which way is up when I am with you.”’ [Fifty Shades Darker, Chapter 2]

Yes, a Madonna, the painting of a perfect, desirable woman, is the picture of a submissive. Continuing this thought, it is what had been expected of a woman for centuries, and is still expected by many though they might disguise it as ‘behavior belonging to the social contract we who live in a society of plenty have entered in’ or as ‘behavior demanded by religion’ etc. It is that picture down to the part where the image is an oxymoron – a virgin mother – and really unachievable. In that light a woman will always be a sinner and therefore punishable for just being that, a woman.

Have I mentioned already that all Madonnas are brunettes? Yes, like Christian’s mother who was a crack whore with a pimp using her, beating and abusing her into submission. Like the women Christian likes to beat. Like Ana, who was meant to become Christian’s 16^th Madonna. Christian – who’s name means ‘follower of Christ’, the baby son in and from the lap of all those Madonnas.

But Ana said no and walked out on him. She wasn’t ready to sit or kneel, to lower her eyes or herself.

‘”I don’t want a set of rules.”
“None at all?” Shit – she might touch me. Fuck. How can I legislate against that? And suppose she does something stupid that puts herself at risk?’ [MotU EPOV Outtake I]

This reflects a lot of the male fear in regard to a shift in a female’s position in society: What if they hurt me? How can I still prove my masculinity if I can’t be their hero? But back to the moment in that Ana left and refused to become the 16^th Madonna, one of those now looking down at Christian inauspiciously. What other female models are there he can draw from to paint another picture of a desirable woman?

There is Elana, the dominant. She made the transformation from trophy wife – the Madonna of another man – to a successful business woman. In a market that stagnates at best she was able to found and grow a business that sells luxury – not an easy feat to accomplish for anyone. It is business in an area that shapes the image in all our heads of what a modern, at least outwardly successful woman has to look like. She says of herself:

‘”I was the best thing that ever happened to you,” she hisses arrogantly at him. “Look at you now. One of the richest, most successful entrepreneurs in the United States – controlled, driven – you need nothing. You are master of your own universe.” […] “You loved it, Christian, don’t try and kid yourself. You were on the road to self-destruction, and I saved you from that, saved you from life behind bars. Believe me, baby, that’s where you would have ended up. I taught you everything you know, everything you need.”
Christian blanches, staring at her in horror. When he speaks, his voice is low and incredulous.
“You taught me how to fuck, Elena. But it’s empty, like you. No wonder Linc left.” […] “You never once held me,” Christian whispers. “You never once said you loved me.”
She narrows her eyes. “Love is for fools, Christian.”’ [Fifty Shades Darker, Chapter 22]

Elena for me represents in many ways old school, fundamental feminism of the kind that thinks itself superior because of the second X chromosome. She wants to be the better man up to the point where she uses and abuses men and denies the existence and power of feelings. She divides the world in worthy opponents and pawns in her game. And any woman not willing to see the world like her will never be worthy because there is no other way than hers.

‘”You can’t go. Ana, I love you!”
“I love you, too, Christian, it’s just –“
“No … no!” he says in desperation and puts both hands on his head.
“Christian …”
“No,” he breathes, his eyes wide with panic, and suddenly he drops t his knees in front of me, head bowed, his hands spread out on his thighs. He takes a deep breath and doesn’t move.
What? “Christian! What are you doing?”’ [Fifty Shades Darker, Chapter 13]

Yes, sticking to what he knows Christian offers Ana this way. But for Ana this is just wrong and disturbing. She said she wants no rules, no roles to fill, no presaged paths to walk. And she meant it for both of them. She doesn’t want Elena or her ways, no standard feminism which tries to tell her how a woman has to be either. No man or woman is to tell her how she has to behave or who she has to be.

‘”Don’t you dare to tell me what I’m getting myself into!” I shout at her. “When will you learn? It’s none of your goddamned business!” [Fifty Shades Darker, Chapter 22]

But it is finally not Ana who throws Elena out.

‘”Get out of my house.” Grace’s implacable, furious voice startles us.’ [Fifty Shades Darker, Chapter 22]

Grace “Call me by my right name – Mom” is for Christian the angle that rescued him. He is eternally thankful, so thankful that he calls his catamaran after her. And that throws Ana off for a moment because on the outside his relationship with her is reserved and more on the coolish side. But the reason for that too is confusion. The term ‘mother’ is attached to the Madonna for him, his birth mother. The image of female force is taken by Elena. He cannot connect successful and yet warm Grace with either. She doesn’t fit. She is a category of her own. But since he sees her as a rescuing angle she is also something otherworldly, in her love maybe even slightly dangerous. And as Grace shows in this situation she can be an awesome, forbidden creature.

Just like his Ana, who accepts no conventions; who is only a Madonna when she chooses to; who is the dominant when she must; who doesn’t know what is the right path, but ploughs forwards on her path; who is proud and more secure of who she is not least because of him and his support and can freely admit it.

That is Fifty Shades for me – a story about a young woman’s way in today’s world to finding her definition of what it means to be a woman, of what feminism is today. There is sex, yes. Being female is first and foremost a gender and implies needs that ask to be sated. There was silence about that for too long. No need or desire is wrong. Christian, when Ana and he enter this new chapter in their relationship, stresses again and again how important it is for Ana to articulate her wishes, discuss sex and become comfortable with it. She stresses in return how he needs to open up about his thoughts and feelings and accept her love. They try a way of partnership and communication. It is more, more than there has been.

Is it mommy porn? Yes, because the idea of being cherished while free, of being who and how we want to be, of being not superior or inferior but truly equal while staying unique in all ways with a man who knows to value that is very arousing despite all the work it is.

Look at me. – I am.

Erika, did you know … fans tweet

 

It was back in fall last year when a friend asked me if I would want to do something for EL James upon the occasion of the movie premiere. I was reluctant at first. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the books. I am a fan and I have been a fan for a long time already. Two insecure, imperfect, inexperienced people find somewhere the courage to dare the struggle for love together while shredding their masks they even wore to hide from themselves. What’s not to love? The language you say? It might not flow from your lips like Shakespeare but I am with E. E. Cummings who wrote: Since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you… It was me. I didn’t know what I could offer that would be interesting and unique enough to bother. I am not your average fan art artist. Beautiful faces don’t have the capability to hold my attention for long (except one but that’s not the story here). I bow my head at the altar of amazing creativity and extraordinary ideas, and I expect the same in my offerings I leave behind. There wasn’t anything – or maybe there was. There was this idea that had been lingering in my head for quite some time: Watching fandoms like the 50 Shades of Grey one, being part of them in celebration of incredible creative work and the great minds behind them, sharing precious moments with like-minded people who might even turn into friends because a shared love can bridge the gaps our ever present, usually first noticed differences create, I came to the conclusion that fandoms and religions show many parallels, and not just in their devotional aspects. Especially tweets often read like prayers expressing gratitude, love or asking for something while marking the hours, days, and special occasions life provides. That again would make the creators, people like EL James, something like Henry VIII – sans the ulcerous leg that turned him into a grumpy, eccentric old man too fond of young women and beheadings. They shape a new ‘religion’. They do so not out of nothing, but deeply rooted in the millennia-old tradition of storytelling. Speaking of Henry VIII, in medieval times the most common type of books, of illuminated manuscripts were Horae or Books of Hours. They were prayer books developed for laymen who wanted to incorporate elements of monasticism into their daily lives like reciting the hours. Thus the name. Personalized copies were a common thing in the great families. Even without personalization would these manuscripts all be unique since they were as their appellation points out hand crafted. Yet they typically contained the church calendar, excerpts of gospels, psalms, and special prayers. Keeping all that in mind I went ahead, kept the general structure of a Book of Hours and substituted the prayers with tweets by the 50 Shades of Grey fandom to create the personalized Horae of the Grey family. I didn’t just find matching illustrations from original manuscripts and added, where possible, figures from movie scenes; but to highlight 50 Shades’ place in the tradition of storytelling I added fitting quotes from other books throughout history from the Odyssey and the Divine Comedy to contemporary YA. The result is funny, sometimes provocative or ironic, but always full of love for EL James’ creation and the work of all involved in making the movies. It would have been a great gift. Would have been because currently the book is MIA. I put it in the mail, as a registered item and everything, in December to give it enough time to make the trip to said friend. It didn’t help. It’s gone missing somewhere between Berlin and Chicago. The worst thing is that despite properly filed search requests with the Deutsche Post AG and many phone calls everywhere no one seems to actually been looking. In my devastation about it, about over a month of living for just that one thing lost, I did the one thing I could do. I created something that kept me connected with the Grey Horae – a triptych fashioned after the typical altar pieces of old with a touch that reminds of old manuscripts as well. The three panels are connected and can be folded shut thanks to a crocheted embroidery that is very much a pun on the dismissive term “mommy porn”. Whenever I see it I imagine the witches of the Garlickhythe gathering giggling and doing needle work while discussing THAT book, above all Marjorie Cooper of course. The needlework magically sneaked its way through centuries and realities into the art. After all this talk the point why I said all this – I decided to give at least the scans of the Horae, what is left of it right now, and images of the triptych back to the internet. Not an eye for an eye but a gift for a gift. (If you find yourself in the artwork why not leave a not?)

Book of Hours – If you can’t beat them, join them. List of content: Prayers through the Day Prayers through the Week Prayers for Special Occasions Prayers through the Day I know a place where no one is lost, I know a place where no one cries, crying at all is not allowed, not in my castle in the clouds. Fortunately the Milk! I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime… And I thought about how many people have loved those songs and how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs… There is more than one kind of family.   Daemons are creative, artistic creatures…     For in dreams we are entering a world that is entirely our own… Oh happy dagger! This is thu sheath.There rust and let me die.

 

Prayers through the Week	Look at the Moon.
Make Tyr pride heroically!	Why so Mercurial?	Beware Thor’s thunder in the skies.
All you need is love.	Liberate your mind!
Shine on!	Prayers for Special Occasions	Erika, did you know that your baby boy wil one day walk on screen? Erika, did you know that your baby boy will turn some envy green? Did you know that your baby boy has come to bring millions joy? This brain child of yours is here now to enjoy.
She also called me brave…unless she was talking to the catfish.		A towel, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have…
You want weapons? We are in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world!	Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.	No. It is said that the Nephilim are the children of men and angels. All this angelic heritage has given to us is a longer distance to fall.
“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly…	If all else perished and he remained…	“Who are you?” “No one of consequence.” …
Quand le hibou chante, la nuit est silence.	So I’ll be bold as well as strong, and use my head alongside my heart.
Sometimes the storm winds blow so strong a man has no choice but to furl his sails.	“What’s your name?” he asked above the roar of the music…	Heroes are important. Heroes tell us who we want to be…
“Test?” Hades lovely mouth twisted bitterly around the word as if he could read Helen’s thoughts…	It’s very hard to grow up in a perfect family if you are not perfect.	There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends…
Remember tonight … for it is the beginning of forever.	Since feeling is first…	People say that life is a thing, but I prefer reading.
“It’ll be alright, my fine fellow,” said the otter…	Do you wish me a good morning; or mean that it is a good morning…	“Tell me, as a pagan who do you worship?”…
What a strange thing! to be alive under cherry blossoms.	And, dying, he declined to die.	In the end, this shall be for me sufficient, …
VII The desire of Man being infinite, the possession is infinite and himself infinite.	No violence,, gentlemen, no violence. I beg of you! Consider the furniture.	For she had eyes and chose me.
Modern life is such an unholy mix of voyeurism and exhibitionism…	Death is peaceful, life is harder.	Sun is bad for you, Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat … college.
I said it before and meant it. Alive or undead, the love of my life was badass.		He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
	She dots on poetry, Sir. She adores it…	“Common, let’s see the degree.” Kathrine unrolled her scroll…
The dim, dusty room with the busts staring down from the tall bookcases…		It is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine…
As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it…	Our nada, who art in nada, nade be thy name…	Some days you are the pigeon, some days you are the statue. Live with it.
	Piglet noticed that even though he had a very small heart, it could hold a rather great amount of gratitude.	“I will only add, God bless you.”
A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.	It was a pleasure to burn…	Through me you pass into the city of woe…
When you’re supported by millions all over the world, you can either go nuts or feed of the goodwill.	It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases that age and kill us.; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.	As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning…
A mother is the truest friend we have…	A lot of what inspires many musicians is celebrating the differences, and people relate to that – more people feel like the unpopular, freaky one than the one in the incrowd.	“Who’s been sleeping in my bed?”…
The snow began to fall again, drifting against the windows…		Donde termina el acro iris, en tu alma or en el horizonte?
Promise me you’ll always remember: You are breaver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.	Heaven knows, we need never be ashamed of our tears…	I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of loosing it again.
Fare thee well, and if forever, then forever fare thee well.

A Grayish Illumination Full Of All Souls

I spent the last months – really since April – to show with From Berlin With Love that though a network of friends can not prevent a war, it is able to show the world what it can be. Friends all over the world accepted my dare and put the trash bags I designed for them into the streets of the places they call home or they will do so in the weeks to come. It’s based on the centennial of the begin of WWI, it’s (peaceful, arty) attacks in the vicinity of innocent bystanders, but they mean to show that common ground – the place where friendship starts and that makes it possible for us to easier accept our mutual differences – can be found anywhere, if you just look.
What wonder that when I was asked by some friends to create something special for them, I fell back on a friendship, you can witness on Twitter if you care. It reminds me of Schiller’s ballad The Hostage (Die Bürgschaft) in so far as it makes me want to scream like Dionys (though I am no tyrant to start with in the least):
“‘Tis mine your suppliant now to be,
Ah, let the band of love – be three!”
It is the friendship between Deborah Harkness and EL James.
Last year in early fall, between Marbon and Samhain (fall equinox and Halloween) I did a series that was based on Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy. She mentioned a medieval alchemical manuscript – Aurora Consurgens – with 38 illuminations depicting allegorical representations of alchemical elements and described 2 more that according to the story line were part of a hidden, earlier copy of the Aurora. I recreated or in the two cases created the 40 illuminations in an art deco style and each of these paintings bears the number of the place the original illumination has in the Aurora.

The Aurora starts “Everything good comes to me along with her. She is known as the wisdom of the South, who calls out in the streets, and to the multitudes.” And the two new illuminations (which Harkness added) are accompanied for him with: “Turn to me with all your heart. Do not refuse me because I am dark and shadowed. The fire of the sun has altered me. The seas have encompassed me. The earth has been corrupted because of my work. Night fell over the earth when I sank into the miry deep, and my substance was hidden.” And for her: “From the depths of the water I cried out to you, and from the depth of the earth I will call to those who pass by me. Watch for me. See me. And if you find another who is like me, I will give him the morning star.” These lines aren’t just fitting for Matthew and Diana, they could also describe Christian and Ana.

Given the friendship between Harkness and James, the similarities hidden deep in their stories and that I already played with numbers in the Aurora C40 series I decided to create a number 50 illumination. It depicts the conceptio stage of alchemy both with a human couple and with orboros/ fire drake entwined in an inseparable knot, from their bleeding wounds drips blood that brings new life. It’s a traditional way of depicting it though usually the one or the other couple. I liked the naked couple for the sex theme. The snake brings in the idea of temptation and the forbidden fruit. Sun and moon stand for the opposites that unite. The wounds are representative for equally their past wounds that need healing and the BDSM element. The room of pain is blood red too and reminds Ana of a womb upon first entering – conceptio. Of course, I also chose this specific alchemical design as well because it relates back to the All Souls Trilogy, but my words to that could be spoilers. I don’t do spoilers. And who already read Book of Life will recognize it anyway.

London in Paintings – Donmar Warehouse’s Versailles

Though London: From Berlin with Love, the art attack on Regent’s Park, has its place in the framework of my WWI based art project, the Great War theme running through my London trip happened by chance. From turning on Warhorse after we returned from our first visit at Ginger and White after my arrival to Lest We Forget of the National Ballet – it was not like we consciously looked for something war-related to do or see. And so, buying tickets for Versailles was less about that particular play and more about the fact that it was a Donmar Warehouse production.

It was back in the beginning of this year that National Theater Live brought the Coriolanus, another Donmar Warehouse production, to ‘my’ movie theater at Potsdamer Platz. I sat next to two very lovely expat British ladies, who shared their smuggled in sparkling wine with me, while I convinced them to try my equally smuggled in White Chocolate and Mint M&Ms – we are such rebels – and  I watched on with wonder, how the brilliant actors turned the unusual stage into a viable character pivotal for the success of the play. The actors faced off in duels or gang vs. gang with the stage that is built to reach like a tongue into the audience becoming an arena and the wall behind it the scoreboard. Like in a good run for Lord Stanley or the FA Cup the lead changed constantly – oh well, Coriolanus could have my voice any day, but that’s another story – and sympathies swayed back and forth. You waited for cheers to start from the ranks, swelling and shrinking with the change of the tides. The whole room filled up to bursting with energy until it spilled over, even into a faraway movie theater. It was released in tears and standing ovations.

I was convinced that not just a little part of the magic at play was due to the space. Once a brewery’s warehouse and a banana ripening depot Donmar Warehouse today is a 251 seats theatre in the heart of Covent Garden. Since the building wasn’t meant to be a theater, the theater had to adjust. That the mix of two things that usually have nothing to do with each other isn’t the worst idea shows not least Tate Modern that found its home in a former factory building that lends it its distinctive charm. And one of my favorite definitions of creativity states that creativity is nothing more than the ability to combine things that are usually completely unrelated into something meaningful. So, Donmar Warehouse is by definition and founding creative, a spirit it infuses into its productions (and nurturing like bananas and beer I guess too).

Versailles at the Donmar proved my conviction and gave me everything I hoped for. I was lucky enough to score front row tickets (information about Barclays Front Row Tickets is available on the Donmar Warehouse website) and had we’d been any closer to the play we would have had to act. In fact, once in a while I was afraid the ghost will end up on my lap if he’d taken another step backwards.

Yes, the ghost. He represented everything, Versailles didn’t show and the characters tried to repress in order to continue the life they have known – the war, the horrors, the death, the trauma, the lost hopes. And he represented so much more on so many levels. I’m with Dumbledore, I love knitting patterns. And Versailles is an intricate one that allows you to ride along its many strings while they intertwine though they only once really all come together – at the very end when the beginning is shown and the tears about what is yet to come are shared by all equally.

It’s on the ghost that I picked up on for the painting as well as on the unstable status quo of the end. The true face of the war is reflected in the famous mirrors of Versailles, while the hint of the Roaring Twenties – the attempt to continue business as usual despite the knowledge that this way has failed once before – can be found in the Art Deco patterns of the stage. Another thank you for a highlight of this London trip turned into inspiration.

 

London – From Berlin with Love

Let me plunge right in. It was around the time when I started to ponder, what to bring my friend and hostess Sophie upon my visit that she posted on Facebook about painting being dead. Well, if painting is dead everything I could bring was for the garbage bin. I went out and got a role of trash bags in a cheerful sunny yellow, because getting rid of stuff is such a funny business. No really, my choices were indifferent Gollum grey, feministic lilac with odor protection and sunny yellow. In the end the numbers convinced me. 20 yellows it was.

Now that I had my bags I had to decide, what to put on them. It should better make some sense. Warning: Here comes an example, how my brain works by picking something from here and a thread from there and waving it into an intricate knitting pattern. Bear with me.

Painting is dead is based on Duchamp’s rejection of what he called retinal art. He was truly influential, not just through his art that was while path breaking not plentiful. He was a consultant for the main art collectors and museums like the MoMA. And WWI had made it certain for him that the whole art world needed a radical change. The piece of art wasn’t as important – it’s technical merits, appeal and aesthetics – as the idea of it and the whole process from creation to exhibition. He didn’t say panting per se was not up to date anymore. That was what people made from it to simplify the conclusion.

Anyways, I was back to my WWI project – Nothing New in the West. All of my great-grandfathers fought in WWI for Germany. My maternal great-grandfathers had the questionable pleasure to be drafted for WWI and WWII. They were both later discharged in dishonor from the Wehrmacht because they refused to divorce their Jewish wives. My paternal grandfather however, was a proud soldier of a special unit guarding a train bound rocket launcher aiming at Great Britain. And I was traveling now to London, the city he probably threw once some bombs at.

I wanted to bring something nice that also spoke of the respect I have for the British people. I remembered that when Sophie and I spoke about plans while I am in London, I mentioned some lovely stereotypes like picnics in the park and high tea with nibbles. Actually I said cucumber sandwiches, but there are Canterbury Eggs and Dinner Mints and according to Dumbledore Sherbet Lemons, whatever these are. So, I made a list that started off with some clichés like tea, telephone booths and wellington boots but soon also included Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, Dr. Who, Bond and Harry Potter and the Beatles. It all starts with the poppy as respect for the fallen heroes and veterans. 19 different things that embody Great Britain for me. The last bag says From Berlin with Love.

What to do with 20 though nice, but still trash bags? They are really colorful, even more so now that I painted on them. There exist a poem by Goethe, a part from Faust – A Tragedy called Easter Promenade. I had to learn it in school and ever since torture my family with it early in spring. A line from it reads:

But the sun endureth no trace of white;
Everywhere growth and movement are rife,
All things investing with hues of life:
Though flowers are lacking, varied of dye,
Their colours the motly throng supply.

Goethe talks of people in their Sunday best, but I am sure only because he didn’t know of trash bags yet. To scatter them is like a cheerful art attack, the only kind of attack that should exist with heart and love and laughter. Hence we scattered them today (Wed April 2, 2014) in Regent’s Park, London.

 

Dive Up and Around

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
Albert Einstein

Or as my uncle said recently to me – one of the few people, who’s opinion always counted for me, and who for the longest time wasn’t convinced that choosing from all the gifts I was blessed with the one thing that promised hardly anything countable as reward was sane:
“What does it matter to be the wealthiest person on the graveyard?”

Selfie

During my high school exchange year in South Carolina I took US History. It was obligatory for all exchange students just like US literature and US government/ economics. The teacher did not just make us watch videos like Gone with the Wind and Dancing with Wolves, we had to learn the names of all US presidents in the correct order by heart.

Our textbook had them all lined up with their pictures on the cover pages at the front and back. Looking at them you could tell when photography took roots, and then television. Some of the presidents pre-photography were not exactly a pleasure to look at to say the least. But people wouldn’t know, would they? And what is even more important, people wouldn’t care. Other things were more important than looks when it came to the decision about who should rule.

What a thought given today’s fixation on our pictures, the visible, sometimes tangible expression of our existence. Look, here I am, and the next day and the next. Everyone is rushing somewhere. Up. Anywhere. Everything is fleeting – trends, opinions, interests, celebrity status, fashion, music, technology. While we hate to be reminded that our lives are a mere wink and done, the reminders for life’s momentariness, for our unimportance even are everywhere. Every picture a cry: I am here and I count.

No, I don’t think that every picture taken, takes away a piece of our soul. There are people out there, who had more pictures taken of them than can be healthy and good and respectful for their private lives, who still have a beautiful soul. And those who don’t probably hadn’t one in the first place. But I’d hope that we would move the focus of proof of our existence back from the outer shell and name to our ideas, deeds, skills and work.

I was known to exchange my profile picture with that of a snail shell whenever my Aspie self had enough of the world and wanted to hide. I try to avoid that now and even make an effort to look for contact though every unanswered email, every personalized tweet sent out without reply brings up the same fears that I just failed again in this communication game that I don’t fully understand. Yet, as a person I step back behind the bright universe of my art, in which I celebrate creativity that excites me, while not losing the inter-human dimension in it out of focus. But who am I than just a jester screaming that the king wears no clothes?

The Loneliness of Arachne (Nothing New in the West series #3)

Once upon a time a house in the middle of the woods was the epitome of loneliness. It’s where Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother lived and Snow White hid with the Seven Dwarves. When you wanted to be really, really, really alone, you went into the desert, preferable for 40 days. Or you got lost and ran in circles for 40 years, yet that’s another story. But no matter what, you were still part of the tight-knit network of people living in the same area. You were accounted for, known, and you had a place.

Of course, you had a family history to live with, and expectations and prejudices to deal with. Your rank in the pecking order was pretty much set. It wasn’t perfect. But it fulfilled a basic need that every human being has – to belong.

One of the worst punishment possible was to be outcast. E.g. Dante never got over the fact that he couldn’t return into the embrace of his beloved Firenze and it wasn’t just the streets and stones he missed. Coriolanus died because yet outlawed and driven from his home, he didn’t find the strength, not even in his rage, to have the place he belonged to once destroyed and every living being killed.

Today, the lone house in the woods has probably internet. And being in a desert doesn’t necessary mean you lost access to the world wide web – ask me, I would know. Being connected that way hasn’t just become normal for many of us, it has become a necessity. We are available 24/7 and have the world at our fingertips, access to everyone everywhere constantly, member of groups and circles and what not. Being well connected, center of a vast network, constantly informing the world, who we are and what we do, is a must in order to get anywhere and find a place.

In reality however, it is like you live constantly on a train station. The people around you stand there waiting with you. Some walk a little bit with you in the same direction. Some might even take the same train for a while. You talk. You feel a connection. And they are gone. You start again in search of the one thing about which psychologist say it is one of three must haves in order to be content – the feeling to belong.

We gave it up when moving into anonymity in pursuit of happiness in wealth – which btw does not show up in said short list of the psychologists. Our craving for it however just increased with every new technological way to stay connected. The more we merged our corporal and non-corporal personalities, the stronger our need to hear from others that we really exist and are seen.

I chose King’s Cross Station in London not just because it is a train station or because its incredible architecture worked perfectly in the composition of the painting. It’s at King’s Cross that Dumbledore tells Harry “Of course it is all happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?” The whole internet thing, our need to belong, our  craving for attention as the unique being we are, our loneliness – it all happens in our heads, very real.

The Loneliness of Arachne is the third of my paintings in the series Nothing New in the West, in which I deal with the idea of man created and reflected through art and hence the media since World War I. The horrors of the war that was meant to end all wars, but soon needed to be named with a number, led the leading artists of this time to consider human kind as a complete failure and insist in a radical change of the approach of all arts to create a new idea of man. A hundred years later I ask myself, what the results are so far and hope that others will join me.

I incorporate or base my paintings in this series on paintings created around WWI – here a work by Otto Dix. I also add lines and sentences from letters originally written by soldiers from the trenches of this war. Here they become of special importance as this link to their parents, siblings or spouses remained the soldiers’ link back to humanity between death and destruction, a link to humanity we search on the internet as well.

 

The Frost Giant’s Tear

Some days ago I found this photo in my timeline:

It is a photo of the nearly frozen Great Lakes, a rather seldom phenomenon. But when I looked at it, I saw part of a face – a curve of a lip, one hole of a nose, wrinkly skin and one nearly closed eye with a tear. It was clear to me that I was looking at a crying Frost Giant.

I don’t mean the smurf-blue creatures as depicted in the Marvel movie Thor (which I love nevertheless), who live if one wants to believe the movie makers in a rocky stretch of nothing. According to the Edda Frost Giants (Jötnar) were natural deities, who were not constantly fighting the Aesir and Vanir, but intermarried and had children with them as well. Even Allfather Odin’s mother was a giantess, so was Loki’s father etc.

Legend says that Odin used the body of the first creature ever – Ymir, a Frost Giant – to create the physical world. All things from wind, water and fertility to summer, winter, night, sun, and moon claim Jötunn heritage. And folklore attributes violent weather and even land formations to the Jötnar’s doing.

There is one Jötunn in particular – Aegir – who is the sea personified in a giant. And I think it is Aegir, who is in this photo shedding tears, most likely over the state nature is in today and the world is in today. It is not without reason that we experience these weather caprioles rather constantly now.

One more thing as it popped up while I was drawing this painting: This Time article reports that this weekend Ragnarök will take place, the Viking apocalypse. I just have one wish if it’s true, I want to meet Loki.

 

Nothing New in the West

I do have a problem, or let’s better call it project, I could need help with. Mainly I fear that this idea is too big for me alone to do it justice, but also too persistent in my head to let go. And as I explain further down it is in its nature to be tackled in as many ways as possible.

The Worship of the Golden Bully

This year will be the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI. The aspect I am most interested in in this connection is not the war itself. It was one of the most inhuman wars ever fought by humankind – soldiers laying in trenches and shooting at each other for months just to die under horrible circumstances of mustard gas or simple exposure without ever moving an inch during that time. The sad thing is, they all ran into this with songs on their lips and romantic ideas of comradeship, heroism, and patriotism fluffing up their minds. Yet, due to human achievements and developments in the field of science and technology warfare had changed dramatically. Under the dead were a lot of coming artist and poets e.g. Franz Marc, who painted camouflage in pointillist style with influences from Manet to Kandinsky just to be shot in the head in the Battle of Verdun (Marc painted The Large Blue Horses that became the symbol of The Blue Rider, an expressionistic art group, of which he was a founding member. He also participated in the North Africa trip with Klee.), that let themselves be infected by the classicistic ideals of a just war.

There are few political incidences that had more influence on the art world than WWI had. The reality of modern warfare was a shock and cured even the most romantic minded of his fantasies. The bottom line for people like Duchamp (his ready-made Fountain, a standard issue urinal signed with a pseudonym, was voted the most important piece of art of the 20^th century) was that a humankind that could allow something like this to happen has failed in all aspects including and especially the arts. A radically new approach was needed that would change thinking processes and ideals, and with it the reigning idea of man. The focus turned from the group, the nation, and organized style to the individual, its brain, and rule breaking.

I – that’s all there is

It is this aspect of WWI – its impact on art, the aimed for impact of art on humankind, the strive for a new idea of man – that caught my interest in connection with the anniversary. What is the idea of man the arts communicate today? (e.g after an era dominated by vampires and superheroes in TV/movies/books we are now heading into an era of witches. So, preternatural and supernatural powers aren’t enough anymore to succeed. We need magical abilities to be good enough.) We went from Michelangelo via urinals and bottle rags to an event culture where it’s called art to allow the audience to decide which sheep will be killed by a guillotine. For what? How did the complete new approach taken after everything was declared a failure change the idea of man? What have we become?

In my head this idea runs under the headline ‘Nothing New in the West’. It is the straight translation of the title of Erich Maria Remarque’s WWI novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Though I know that the English title has become a colloquial phrase as well, a description for stagnation, Nothing New in the West seems even more provocative and hence fitting.

What I am aiming for is an examination, an artistic debate of the questions raised, mainly about our idea of man with a backdrop on WWI. I fear that just I with my limited means of expression can never do this idea justice. After all, the main notion of the new start was: Everything goes. It’s not about the means of expression but the act of expression and its impact. Hence, I am searching for others from whatever field of the arts, who want to contribute their ideas in their chosen way of expression. All I can offer so far is a compilation of all the snippets on the internet. I’m a thinker and artist and a scaredy-cat by nature, not the greatest communicator, who can find more opportunities. But maybe that person can be found too for this project. So far it is just an idea born out of my passion for art and my fascination and fear of humans.

If you are interested or have ideas, who might be willing to add their ideas in their way of expression – spread the word, let me know. Everything goes (when I say the arts it’s broad from words, photos & pictures via music to video & performances) except perhaps the Dadaists beloved manifestos.