Eduardo Kac, Adsum, 2019

Adsum is a 1x1x1cm glass cube with a series of symbols laser-engraved inside. The symbols, described as a “spatial poem,” are designed to be interpreted in multiple directions, a response to the multiple gravitational paradigms the cube will experience (“Adsum” 20). The hourglass and infinity symbols can be read as representing human and cosmic time scales, respectively, indicating the role Adsum plays in bringing the two together as it occupies the lunar surface ad infinitum. On his website, Kac details the five phases of the project, from early proof-of-concept to final sculpture. Over the course of these five phases, various preliminary versions of Adsum traveled to the International Space Station, the lunar-orbiting Orion spacecraft, and the lunar surface itself. Through his detailed description of the years-long process, Kac demonstrates his deep knowledge and enthusiasm for his craft. 

While the project of creating artwork for the moon is undoubtedly fascinating, Kac seems far less interested in examining the ideologies which underpin his work or the systems making it possible. No phase of the project would have been possible without the vast amount of resources expended by both governmental and private space programs in the name of capital or national supremacy. However, rather than critiquing these systems, Adsum reinforces a kind of human exceptionalism under which expansion into outer space is imperative. The title of the work, Adsum, means “Here I am” in Latin, equivalent to the “Here!” of a roll call. Kac states that he considers the title a response to the phrase “ad astra” (“to the stars”) commonly used in reference to space travel (“Art on the Moon” 20). It remains unclear whether the responding “I” refers to a homogenized collective humanity or the artist himself. 

By anticipating a call to humanity from the stars, Adsum makes the need to respond by expanding beyond the planet Earth appear self-evident. Kac certainly believes in this inevitability, anticipating somewhat conceitedly that far-future “space archaeologists and astro-art historians” will be able to find and appreciate his work (“Art on the Moon” 23). Indeed, Kac’s space artwork contributes to the ideological projects of the Deleuzian “royal science,” defined by Braidotti as “institutionally implemented and well-funded” science which is “compatible with the economic imperatives of advanced capitalism” (47). He receives support from this royal science in the form of the space program, while producing work reinforcing its cultural or aesthetic necessity. In the process, his own brand is elevated. While Kac’s words frame expansion into outer space as humanity’s inevitable future, an attention to his collaboration with the royal sciences reveal his active role in making that future a reality. 

In a period of ecological and social upheaval like the one we live in, progressivist narratives of space exploration appear particularly troubling. Kac’s participation in narratives of outer space as the “final frontier,” in which Adsum stands in for the artist as a kind of pioneer for a “new cultural phase in humanity’s history,” suggest an evasion of the many entangled issues that lie inside the Earth’s biosphere. (“Art on the Moon” 21). Kac frames this evasion as a heroic break from tradition, pointing out that, “The entire history of art is predicated on this planet’s gravity, on this planet’s atmosphere and temperature variations, on this planet’s ability to partially shield itself from cosmic radiation” (“Art on the Moon” 21). In creating artwork for the moon, he seeks to transcend these previously implicit limitations and expand the possibilities of what forms art can take. However, the shared material conditions of Earthbound art and Earthbound life are part of what enables such far-reaching engagement between the two. Kac’s Adsum, despite being designed to live on the moon, does not bind itself to any location; rather, it imagines itself as part of a movement, one of humanity’s first steps on a new journey of cosmic discovery. The work’s placelessness untethers it from the conditions of the present and projects a future in which the work’s significance can be maximally realized. 

In the end, my purpose is not primarily to cast aspersions on Kac’s motivations for Adsum. Rather, I want to prompt a reexamination of some of the basic questions concerning art. What can this artwork do, and who is it for? The space travel industry and the CLPS initiative exemplify an ideology in which progress for progress’s sake is always justified, but that ideology is one of many. Artworks like Adsum that reinforce popular narratives in high-profile settings have the power to naturalize these ideologies unless they are properly examined. Through such a naturalization, Adsum compels its audience to subscribe to its ideology in order to comprehend its significance. That kind of transformative power can surely be put to a better use in the service of the present people of Earth in all their variation, rather than for the benefit of an imaginary, homogenized, spacefaring humanity inhabiting one of many possible futures. 

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Huma Bhabha, My Ancestor, 2023 (photo: David Zwirner)

My Ancestor features two upright nubs of cork with white chalk lines depicting the amputated legs of a hooved animal affixed to a single wooden board, giving the impression that they presumably supported a once powerful anthropomorphized figure. In its ruinous state, however, the sculpture reads as a secular relic. Showcasing its durability, My Ancestor materially carries its history into the present, using its affective rhetoric to inspire reverence and belonging. Symbolically laden, the legs signal the destruction of the hidden yet living natural world, rendering unintelligible My Ancestor’s material composition—cork, chalk, and wood—to highlight the power of images and language, which, at once, give meaning to and conceal the world.

Language, particularly the politics of naming, has positives and negatives. Naming is a form of recognition and sense-making. Negatively, it can constitute a violent act, distribute false identities accepted as natural and erase a subject’s complex history. 

My Ancestor’s material components, while signaling resource extraction and globalization, serve as instructional aids for a new way of knowing. Cork oak trees, or Quercus suber, are indigenous to the Mediterranean region. These trees produce cork valued for numerous industrial applications, most notably the familiar wine stopper. Devoid of its familiar uses, cork’s bare materiality discloses the work’s artistic nature and thingly character, properly casting My Ancestor as a disruptor of habits. Following Bill Brown’s definition, a thing is an “irresolvable enigma” that “hover[s] over the threshold between the nameable and unnameable;” it specifies “a particular subject-object relation” via the “work they perform” in behaving their subjects.² Cork is a dead protective layer that replaces the tree’s epidermis. With the factual evocation of cork as skin, My Ancestor, whose “sensuous presence” defies its supposed inanimate character, inspires us as humans to alter our relationship with the world, enrich our relational capacities, and encourage an intercorporeality with nature that stimulates empathy, responsibility, and generosity.³ If one considers the “body [a] thing among things,” a permeable “dividual” or “quasi-object” deeply “entangled” in a relational world who shares an embodied kinship with “all things and everything,” then My Ancestor presents a point of origin, an oracle with regenerative powers offering renewal.⁴ Quercus suber can produce cork for centuries after multiple harvests. Hence, the Ancestor who emerges from the wood below produces not only an image of human impact but a lesson in how one should approach things. Chalk only furthers this notion. As a writing and educational tool that is “powdery and brittle,” ironically much like language, it plays a supporting role to My Ancestor’s raw charismatic power. 

Along with Bhabha’s other living sculptures, My Ancestor presents nature as a haunting. According to religious scholar David Morgan, “haunting seems to happen where enchantment has been banned and suppressed.” Suppressed needs give rise to ghosts, defined as “nagging forms of memory” who “[object] to their mistreatment” and “refuse to let the past go away.”⁵ Monuments to Confederate generals and colonizers provide an all-too-relevant example. As ghosts who have been animated and granted a voice, their material traces evoke competing colonial memories. While a majority hear hate speech, others hear these inanimate statues enacting their freedom of expression, acknowledging their calls for protection from citizens who commit against them “willful injury.” Nature, too, objects to its mistreatment and demands protection. Its voice comes through in rising sea levels and ever-stronger hurricanes, which has only accelerated the “Rights of Nature” movement. 

Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2023
(photo: David Zwirner)

Extending the “right to life” concept, in addition to complicating our way of seeing, are Bhabha’s enigmatic, Untitled visages, whose aggressive liminal qualities evoke discomfort and sympathy. One rarely sees a picture in its entirety. A beholder discerns different aspects by alternating between the image and the medium. In these works, canines, gorillas, and humpback whales, among other animals, form pupils and supernatural eye colors; silent cries howl through agape mouths fashioned by dog hair; and a photograph of a brick wall forming the creature’s nose deceptively appears as tree bark from a distance. Viewed as a defense mechanism, the latter’s employment of mimicry marks an attempt to gauge a beholder’s relationship as parasitic or mutualistic before revealing itself. In these portraits, Bhabha toys with the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia to lend nature an ambiguous face. With these creatures’ true nature obscured, they blur the distinctions between culture/nature and human/animal, stressing relatedness and a deeper engagement with the sensible world. 

Huma Bhabha, Untitled, 2022
(photo: David Zwirner)

The medium of collage, a historic form of cultural critique, presents further challenges. Subordinate to the overall composition, pasted photographs signal reality and emphasize the picture’s surface, allowing Bhabha’s subject matter—nature’s destruction—and the reality of climate change to directly confront believers and deniers alike with a sense of immediacy.

The mediums of Bhabha’s works are the message. She highlights the symbolic veil that confines nature’s “resources” to secondary agents unable to tell their (his)stories to return this human-centered privilege to the natural world. Her humanoid yet alien creatures aid her effort by placing us face to face with our culpability, calling attention to our indirect relations to and unconscious consumption of nature. As actors in the world, their agency provokes reflection. If one truly sees these creatures, their once menacing and monstrous demeanor can appear quite sweet, relatable, and innocent. Perhaps, blinded by our “knowingness,” we are the monsters, who, selfish and ignorant, possess a ghoulish greed in our Darwinian “struggle for existence,” thus, committing violence.  

The misinterpreting of an artwork can of course be read as another form of violence, a “roving arbitrariness” as Martin Heidegger names it.⁶ But in attempting to understand one’s environment and things’ mysterious nature, one does justice. If receptive, Bhabha’s convincing works can attune us to nature’s aliveness and direct us toward a “democracy of things,” as Peers and others have argued.⁷ 

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. According to art critic Ben Davis, ecological disaster art no longer “shocks” or provokes action; it is one crisis of many that proves too overwhelming.⁸ The public, as well as governments, have grown tired, resorting to imposing penalties and labeling climate activists “eco-clowns” and “eco-terrorists” no matter how informative and clever their actions. One of Just Stop Oil’s latest at Stonehenge, whose generous dusting of orange corn flour transformed the iconic structure into a series of glowing embers, served to mimic the fire within activists and nature. Fittingly accompanying such passions is the widely accepted interpretation of the megaliths as “ancestors,” who, standing over crematory remains, produce an enduring image of a triumphant Nature.⁹  

While Bhabha’s works are often described as apocalyptic or antitheses of progress, revelatory appears better suited. Built from an assemblage of pasts, her works confront the limitations of language while making present an image that brings the unknown closer to us, gifting beholders a glimpse into a potential future. Let us hope they are not cast as Cassandras. Despite their alien appearance, her creatures are very much of this world; it is their message that appears foreign, strange because we begrudgingly acknowledge that they teeter on the edge of a new way of knowing. Just as anthropogenic evolution has altered animals’ environments, behaviors, and genetic compositions, so too will humans be forced to adjust to sub-optimal habitats. Huma Bhabha’s haunting project urges us to reassess our role within a larger ecosystem, to acknowledge nature’s mute scream, and to see ourselves as “living beings [among others] … not just in the world,” but as Hannah Arendt argued, “of the world.”¹⁰  

Notes:

1. Glenn Peers, Animism, Materiality, and Museums: How Do Byzantine Things Feel? (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2021), 1. ︎
2. Bill Brown, “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 4-5, 7, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344258. ︎
3. Brown, “Thing Theory,” 5. ︎
4. Brown, 5; Peers, Animism, Materiality, and Museums, 1, 14. ︎
5. David Morgan, “Enchantment, Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment,” in Re-Enchantment ed. James Elkins and David Morgan (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2011), 5, 9. ︎
6. Erwin Panofsky, “On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts” trans. Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz, Critical Inquiry 38, no. 3 (2012): 477, https://doi.org/10.1086/664547. ︎
7. Peers, Animism, Materiality, and Museums, 5, 26. ︎
8. Ben Davis, “The Shocks Are Not Shocking,” Spike Art Magazine 79: The Pessimist Issue (Spring 2024): 106-109. ︎
9. Oliver J. T. Harris and Rachel J. Crellin, “Assembling new ontologies from old materials,” in Rethinking Relations and Animism: Personhood and Materiality ed. Miguel Astor-Aguilera and Graham Harvey (United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2018), 62-66. ︎
10. Veronica Vasterling, “Arendt’s Post-Dualist Approach to Nature: The Plurality of Animals,” HannahArendt.Net 11 no. 1 (2022): 115, https://doi.org/10.57773/hanet.v11i1.461. ︎

Further Reading:

Nancy, Jean-Luc, and Federico Ferrari. Being Nude: The Skin of Images. Translated by Anne E. O’Byrne and Carlie Anglemire. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.

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Referencing his mother’s passing in 1992, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s “aim as an artist [was] to make a work that [was] so palpable and so dynamic and so incredibly felt that [his] Mom could literally walk off the surface of the canvas and back to life.”[1] The result was Untitled (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) from 2000, which was exhibited at his high school “Senior Art Exhibition.” Now housed in a private collection, the portrait offers a rare glimpse into Quinn’s early artistic process while communicating themes of loss, longing, dignity, purpose, parenthood, rebirth, and reciprocity.

Today, Quinn’s composite portraits of friends and relatives defy traditional portrait conventions. Employing a lone exquisite corpse technique, chance encounters of distorted and realistic body parts combined with incongruous brushstrokes create subjects that border on the unfamiliar, laying bare the body as an archive of undeveloped images. The embracing of chance, intuition, and the incorporation of familial memories highlight the spontaneous nature of his work. In their own state of becoming, the portraits express Quinn’s vulnerability and participatory role, and speak closer to the process of artmaking than the finished works themselves. Their dichotomous nature—being completed works that never quite seem finished—offer a surreal experience that remains firmly grounded in reality.

This reality is no less present in his mother’s portrait. In the black space of the foreground, she stands commandingly in swagger pose, reminiscent of Grand Manner portraiture. Bathed in a white light and taking up nearly the entire frame, her protruding stomach, rigid posture, and “chin-up” mentality, add to her regal and confident demeanor. The folds of her fuchsia gown add visual weight and further cast her apart from her gloomy environment, where a depressing, blue sky looms over inward-leaning grey towers to create a sense of claustrophobia. 

Born in 1977, Quinn grew up in poverty on the South Side of Chicago in the now demolished, and presumably depicted, Robert Taylor Homes. Built with good intentions in 1962 as a waystation to foster social mobility, federal and municipal policies, soon hijacked by private interests, allowed the buildings to fall into disrepair. Social disorder followed as living standards worsened throughout the 1980s and 90s; crime, gangs, and drugs became the norm. The Home’s notoriety, “considered the worst slum area in the United States” according to the Chicago Housing Authority in 1998, would unfairly extend to its inhabitants, who were nearly all Black. Exacerbating matters, the practice of segregated development created not only a “great wall of exclusion” but a “psychological barrier,” which strengthened negative stereotypes that would plague a whole community, spawning myths that remain all too prevalent today.[2]

The Artist’s Mother is at once a denouncement of such myths and an affirmation of humanity, embodying concepts of home and community, which often fail to extend to public housing.[3] Here, Quinn rightly expresses the body as “an amalgam of numerous experiences… built from a history of joy, sadness, ups, and downs.”[4] Her grey countenance, which mimics the towers in the background, surrenders to brown hues and full pink lips. While brown serves the purpose of skin tone, it also highlights certain elements within the composition: a fragmented eye, a delineated hand, and narrow legs. Eyes, one sensitive, the other ostensibly weary, can convey one’s memories and inner emotions; as windows to the soul, they maintain the capacity to tell narratives words alone cannot. Hands can connote work, responsibility, determination, caretaking, or reference a future act of creation. The hand’s prominent singularity, a possible reference to his mother’s partial disability due to multiple strokes, performs as an accessory to motherly greatness.

From the dreary, she emerges as a complex figure whose pillar-like stature confronts historic misconceptions, which the vanishing point behind her head assists in perpetuating. Through her confrontational gaze, she assertively erases and inverses this vanishing point, a visual metaphor for single-mindedness, or more aptly, tunnel vision. In doing so, she undermines once-assured gazes; she is not what she appears. Her defiant and towering presence, which renders the picture plane abstract, commands an act of submission, a beholder’s acknowledgment of their shrunken state and similitude with the receding towers in the background.  

Quinn’s baroque sensibility and compositional framing allow for such a submission to take place. While the pyramidal composition lends his mother stability, Quinn’s foreshortening of her right foot, presenting a passage between two worlds, places this stability in question only to reaffirm it. The foot’s formal insignificance, which gives the misleading impression of a safe and comfortable bird’s eye view, demonstrates its symbolic strength by withstanding a crushing environment, and possibly, the weight of a child. No matter the picture’s placement, whether hanging on a wall or sitting on the floor, one is unable to “look down” upon this woman; the foot’s deceptiveness, at once, reveals our culpable gaze and champions her irreducible presence.[5]

Bearing a symbolic weight similar to her meager right foot, the bright blue sole of her left sandal aids in our transcending of such limiting views while referencing his mother’s deceased, yet magisterial state. In formal terms, this blue provides visual relief from a black background and corresponds with the sky above, adding a lightness to her imposing stature. The connection evokes the Christian belief of death as gain and a new life in the beyond. Between feet, a delicate balance is struck, contributing to her dichotomous nature. While one appears to hover, the other is firmly grounded; their joining marks her eternal and palpable presence—two feet, two realms. In her fragmented state, she stands as a celestial being whose given corporeal presence extends from the felt absence of Quinn’s living memory. The balancing of these juxtapositions suggests not only a determined mother ceding to succumb to a “desperate” atmosphere, but a watchful, awe-inspiring maternal icon whose transcending of such settings bestows upon beholders gifts of resilience and comfort.

These gifts, conveyed through a calming smoothness that overtakes the harsh geometrics of her setting and fragmented make-up, also aid in capturing the conflicting nature of parenthood. The rigidity and stiffness of her posture, meant to convey a sense of fear, awe, and respect, are accompanied by soft outlines, bouncing strands of hair, pillowy draped folds, and a weightless flowing gown. These contrasts, which add a sense of playfulness to an otherwise unfriendly set of circumstances, are the convincing measures of a parent’s undeniable love, and a child’s acknowledgment of their parent’s role as disciplinarian, guide, and protector.

Seemingly a memorial portrait of his late mother, in superseding her referent, the painting communicates much more than an act of remembrance. The essence of the work, of his mother, hides in plain sight by way of the painted stroke. As gestures of intimacy and longing, they are the literal transformation of life into matter. Here, in this mood-inherent medium, his mother is both immanent and transcendent, and challenges further dichotomies of subject/object, active/passive, and animate/inanimate to lend her an irrefutable existence with equal participatory powers. The depicted hereafter paradoxically presents the here and now.

“At Wabash,” Quinn “learned… to be a human being… to transcend social conditioning… to be free,” an awakening he extends to his mother.[6] Expanding upon this notion, commonly said is that having children is akin to having your heart outside your body. This feeling is mutual for Quinn, hence the adoption of his mother’s name, which he signs on the back of every canvas as co-creator, accompanied by three hearts. In this sense, the picture presents a contradiction, who has given birth to whom? Regardless of her pregnant status, or if her belly perhaps houses an unborn Quinn, there is, nonetheless, an acknowledgment that he would not be where he is today if not for his mother’s sacrifices. As a bodily extension of Quinn’s memory, the portrait communicates a reciprocal act of creation in painterly form, a gracious and resurrectionary gesture of a beloved lost soul, and for Quinn, the beginning of a new life filled with passionate pursuits.

[1] Richard Paige, “When Sunday Comes,” Wabash Magazine (Winter 2017): 28.  https://issuu.com/wabash_college/docs/wm_winter_2017

[2] Nicholas Degan Bloom, Fritz Umbach, and Lawrence J. Vale. Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 34, 50.

[3] Quinn’s mother “was literally around the building, helping people, feeding gangbangers and the drug users when they didn’t have anything to eat, letting guys help her with the groceries and paying them to help out.” “Mary: The Making of Nathaniel Mary Quinn.” Hindman Auctions, September 28, 2022. https://hindmanauctions.com/items/10615750-untitled-portrait-of-the-artist-s-mother#_edn1.; Bloom, Umbach, and Vale. Public Housing Myths, 57-59; Audrey Petty, High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (San Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s, 2013), 17-18.

[4] Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Wabash Magazine (Winter 2017): 2.

[5] This analogy extends from my own experience with his mother while working as an intern at Hindman Auctions in Chicago and witnessing both the work’s installation and de-installation. Several times a day I walked past her hanging in the gallery. Each time, her silent gestures made subtle commands upon my body, a radiating stillness that beckoned me as if wishing to disclose a secret. Not once did I refuse to acknowledge her, whether through a quick glance or, when time permitted, through a more formal conversation, where, seemingly of my own volition, I walked respectably as I would toward any elder past the other pictures in the gallery—the massive Paul Jenkins on view never stood a chance. When standing before her, I felt inferior, but never unwanted. Each encounter was a boost in self-esteem. I looked forward to our conversations and contemplated them afterward. This would all last until her departure, where I witnessed her on the floor propped against the wall surrounded by shipping supplies. When I approached her saddened to say goodbye, even though I stood above her, my smallness remained intact. Her awesome presence denied her objecthood and demanded my humility, which I felt obliged in part for what she had given me. My sadness came in knowing that she had more to say and that I would never see her again in the flesh.

[6] Paige, “When Sunday Comes,” 28.

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Tracey Emin, Like A Cloud of Blood, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 59 7/8 x 71 5/8 in. (152 x 182cm)

The difficulty in comprehending Tracey Emin’s Like A Cloud of Blood (2022) is the paradox of witnessing a disappearing figure coming into being. In Emin’s painting, an incomplete and empty body lies isolated in curled tension, presenting an image of discomfort, pain, and human frailty. Yet beauty is still present. Leaving aside beauty’s bifurcation into the sublime and the beautiful, its historically malicious tactics,[1] and its reduced role to something nostalgic and irrelevant, what interests me is beauty’s moral dimension, in particular, its capacity to “intensif[y] the pressure we feel to repair existing injuries.”[2] With beauty as a starting point, my aim in sharing this picture is not to arrive at a singular meaning, but rather offer a formal investigation that highlights the beholder’s essential role in the viewing process in an attempt to understand, as scholar W.J.T. Mitchell wishes us to contemplate, what pictures want.

Tracey Emin is a multi-media, conceptual artist loosely affiliated with the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group that rose to prominence in the 1990s for their sensationalist art and entrepreneurial spirit. Throughout her oeuvre, Emin has expressed “how it feels to be a woman” through motifs of bodily absence and alienation.^[3] These themes can be seen in indexical artworks such as Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995), My Bed (1998), and Death Mask (2002), among others.

The diaristic and the confessional, in which Emin’s work is so often read, is a response to her fraught upbringing. Her father, having a second family, abandoned Emin when she was young, leaving her family in poverty. She was raped at the age of thirteen and guiltily underwent two abortions in the early 1990’s, all which contribute to the unsettling quality her works tend to evoke. Like a Cloud of Blood is no exception; it was one of her first paintings after recovering from bladder cancer.

While all artworks mentioned can imply the absent body of Emin, a re-embodiment need not belong exclusively to the creator. Confronting solely the artwork, such an absence would invite the beholder to perform an “unselfing,” signaling a search beyond the singular and autobiographical for real and/or imagined others. As a characteristic of being in beauty’s presence, one’s selfish concerns vanish and direct themselves outward toward the concerns of others.

Elaine Scarry, in her book, On Beauty and Being Just, describes beauty as something sacred and unprecedented, an unexpected greeting that turns one to stone in its presence. In our reverence or in our staring, whether prolonged or for mere seconds, the sheer conviction of beauty causes a search for truth and opens one up to the world, people, and things. Enthralled by beauty, with its life-affirming and life-giving qualities, it makes one vulnerable and curious, inciting a desire to create or replicate, hence Scarry’s position of beauty as the basis for education.

She also acknowledges that beauty resides in the particulars, in this instance, lines and their formal relations. Building upon this notion, a line, or mark, is a present absence. It traces a moment in time, a past event that is no longer. This event is the all-too-ephemeral present structured and informed by our emotions. The individual mark, like time, constitutes such emotions. As latent forms of expression they require a close reading, or preferably, a greater visual attentiveness, a request quite at odds with the diminished attention spans yielded by the digital age.

In the painting, Emin’s lines are unsettling and convey a range of conflicting emotions. They appear rushed, scratchy, agitated, and frantic, fading when the ink runs out. Most are deliberate and aggressive, applied with a confident force, others affectionate, hesitant, and slow. Each individual mark, short or long, thick or thin, faint or distinct, implies a form of release, and along its journey can possess a different tone, personality, pulse, or intensity. The soft swell of the figure’s lower back along with the gentle curvature of its left knee compete against quick strokes of agitation, giving the impression that these caressing lines of self-care are meant to calm moments of pent-up frustration and/or uncertainty. Furthering this tension, forceful smears of deep magenta double at the top of the figure’s head and between its legs, forging a distressing mind/body connection. Comforting this upsetting scene are broader supportive swaths of muted pinks and white that sit below and cushion the contours of the figure, the very fibers of its being.

Yet not all marks can be attributed to the human hand. Seemingly taking on a will of their own, bloody streams of pink angst permeate the figure’s body and seep through the canvas, the figure’s perceived world, for pain slows time and invites loneliness. Solely belonging to one’s self, pain closes one off from the world. That said, the alienating nature of pain also unites people by virtue of all having experienced its effects.

Beauty’s long held correlation to truth affirms this figure’s fragility and pain. The exigencies of line, their perseverance and visceral tensions not only prompt but demand an engagement with the image and the environment that produced it—our world. In addition to conveying memories, consciously or not, the lines of this embodied image carry the artist’s silent and palpable presence. While the urge exists to ascribe Emin’s traumatic biography to the figure, an image extends beyond personal experience. It takes form from a wealth of collective imagery both real and fictive which an individual internalizes, recalls, and imaginatively transforms into an image of their own.[4] Regardless of whether this body belongs to Emin, there appears a tempering of the artist’s raw mental state on display, a coming to terms with the ghostly body before her, wishing for it not to disappear. Through the use of line, Emin builds up this body through traces of its painful past while simultaneously recognizing its need for care and compassion.

The figure’s vulnerability is further manifested by the gaps in the contours of its body, which the beholder fills in to repair the body to completeness. Although these interruptive gaps hint toward the figure’s disappearance and its slow decay into the affliction it suffers from, they also aid in the contour lines becoming ever more acute and in need of suturing. Becoming involved in the figure’s making, our eyes offer a form of nourishment. Sealing the body, clothing it in flesh, we animate the figure, lifting and removing it from the ground it was confined to. In our looking, wanting to empathize and care for this figure, we open ourselves up to the image, which, in turn, opens itself up to us and reciprocates a nourishing gaze. In this sense, the beholder gives life to the image, and the image affirms life for the beholder. With this reciprocal act, in our shared state of vulnerability, it allows us to reach a place of understanding wherein the figure’s world and our world become one; its burden is our burden.

Furthering this notion, the figure’s fleeting hand reveals a desperate impulse expressing a need, a want, or a desire. The chaotic manner in which these faint hurried lines are displayed—literally wearing themselves out—denotes multiple attempts to no avail. In addition to signaling a loss, the desperate gesture refers to its own vanishing. As if on its last breath, these fading lines are given a greater intensity, a felt sense of urgency. The figure’s frantic search leads one to hypothesize the what: a form of relief? a recovered self? bodily autonomy? longing? acknowledgement? a human’s touch? The beholder, however, via sight, has already provided a response to the figure’s plea, thus ending its search. Our restorative gaze acts as a metaphorical helping hand. Our vision is a haptic vision, a liberating recognition that attempts to pull this figure into existence, to rescue it from its lone state. It is a visual act that wishes for the figure, in a sense, to get out of its own head.

Beauty, Scarry asserts, demands a sense of “moral urgency” that comes with an urge to preserve and protect. The sketch-like quality of the image, its flattened perspective, the figure’s instability and human scale, and the visual weight of the medium atop the figure that ungraciously assists it further toward the bottom of the frame into nothingness and despair, adds to this sense of immediacy.Effectively weakening the power of the beholder, the image compels one to offer a more secure and nurturing environment, to reverse its downcast horizon. One must remember that a work of art is the objectification of human experiences; hence, we not only preserve and protect the artwork for its beauty, but its ability to express the beauty of being human and feeling alive, which extends to human rights and equitable justice. Scarry explains this urge as the “particular” manifesting itself into the “distributional,” that is—after succumbing to and identifying beauty—the need to share and convince another of the beauty they see in an effort to adjust another’s perceptual error (e.g., this essay). If such distribution is successful—meaning a population’s agreement on what is beautiful—actions, such as implementing new laws, would be upheld, and shouldered by a community, thus leading to a more just society.[5]

Having fortified a sense of solidarity with the figure, meeting it on equal terms, Emin’s work can be said to redirect claims of individualism toward helping our fellow man. Her work unabashedly embraces the less admired fundamental conditions of being human: vulnerability and dependency. Moreover, her telling of women’s stories through art—taking into account her own—can extend to a woman’s plight, the violence perpetrated against them, and reproductive rights, all of which the literal and metaphorical pressures of magenta come into play. Making explicit reference to female sexual anatomy and perhaps its inner bodily functions, these pressures direct attention to the mental and physical afflictions that plague these two sites. With this in mind, the previously mentioned streams of pink angst, which bleed down the canvas in unison, could be said to perform the dual role of signifying “period positivity” while acknowledging women’s slow and mentally draining fight for equality. But more to the point, and as Emin reminds us, “we all bleed.”[6]

Ultimately, what Emin’s work achieves—which all art should strive for—is that it provokes questions. Or put another way, demands answers. Art and our encounter with it presents a negotiation. Its aim is not to provide solutions, but to bring one closer to truth. Its ambiguous nature offers shared experiences and sustenance. While we all seek predictable and stable lives, it is art’s instability that we cherish, its ability to rattle our realities and awaken our cognitive faculties. To some, this is poppycock, hence the demonization of liberal arts and humanities programs in universities across the nation. But as we inch closer to climate catastrophe and a world where so-called “obscene” books cease to exist, all the while contending with an automated society run by AI, humans may soon be relieved of their critical thinking skills and agency and instead prescribed a permanent role as spiritual healers in search of new ways of knowing. So, in this not-so-fictional dystopian state, having the ability to master the art of close reading and engage in matters beyond the surface may come in handy after all, for being able to see beauty in the flatness of the everyday or take pleasure in the commonplace may be all we have left. “The question, maybe,” as cultural critic Megan O’Grady engaged with, “has never really been whether or not art can heal us but rather to what extent we have the courage to heal ourselves.”[7]

It is Emin’s visceral venture into the unknown, her artistic process akin to a healing touch, which brings a pleasure that exceeds pain and offers one the courage needed for an uncertain future. Like A Cloud of Blood, at once poignant and consoling, heavy yet tender, endeavors toward a humanist ideal of acceptance. Asserted through resistant lines of conviction, the painting’s confessional quality assists in bolstering Emin’s claim that “Honesty is beauty.”[8] Beholden to this picture’s beauty, which can paradoxically be expressed as a distracted contemplativeness, helps remove us from the everyday while simultaneously bringing it into greater focus. Our intimate encountering and animation of this supposed “dead matter,” complimented by an appreciative and empathetic viewing, enables the beholder to share in emotional time with this figure and adopt its calls for human betterment and relief for those in need.

While I have expressed that a sympathetic entering into an alternative world can birth new perspectives, growth, and understanding, the choice ultimately rests with the beholder to see this figure as a static, mute image or a living image. But in seeing the beauty of the latter, such a view can be adopted and directed toward the injustices and human sufferings found throughout our world. I, of course, acknowledge that my close reading may be viewed as speculative and subjective—although pure objectivity is just as illusory—but in my dialogue with this picture, perhaps this is what it wanted all along: to be seen, heard, and valued on account of a beholder’s inquiry, an attempt to understand its point of view and what it asks, or possibly, demands of us.

Notes

[1] Eric Michaud, “Self-Mimesis and Self-Portrait Gods,” in The Barbarian Invasions: A Genealogy of the History of Art. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019), 49-93.

[2] Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 57.

[3] Sotheby’s, “Sotheby’s Talks: Tracey Emin CBE RA and Simon Shaw on Edvard Munch’s Women,” YouTube, March 2, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MqFXvdYrJw.

[4] Hans Belting, “The Locus of Images,” in An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 37-61.

[5] Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just, 9-16, 65-67, 74-75, 80-82, 86-119.

[6] Sotheby’s, “Sotheby’s Talks: Tracey Emin CBE RA and Simon Shaw on Edvard Munch’s Women.”

[7] Megan O’Grady, “The Artists Bringing Activism into and beyond Gallery Spaces,” The New York Times, October 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/t-magazine/art-activism-forensic-architecture.html.

[8] Sotheby’s. “Sotheby’s Talks: Tracey Emin CBE RA and Simon Shaw on Edvard Munch’s Women.”

Further Readings

Belting, Hans. An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Elkins, James. “Marks, Traces, ‘Traits,’ Contours, ‘Orli,’ and ‘Splendores’: Nonsemiotic Elements in Pictures.” Critical Inquiry 21, no. 4 (1995): 822–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344069.

Mitchell, W. J. T.. “What Do Pictures Want?,” in What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 28-56.

Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Vetlesen, Arne. A Philosophy of Pain. Translated by Jon Irons. United Kingdom: Reaktion Books, 2009.

The post A Painfully Honest Portrayal of Beauty appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

The American flag, in its original form, presents a highly organized design. The horizontal and alternating red and white stripes provide the visual foundation for the flag and the symbolic foundation for the nation, supporting fifty white stars housed in a field of blue. Red symbolizes hardiness and valor; white, purity and innocence; and blue, vigilance, perseverance, and justice.[ii] In her haunting reinterpretation, Clarke complicates this ordered visual in terms of reconfiguring the composition along with the mental image, or idea, that the American flag evokes.

The American flag is a sacred symbol that signifies the country’s past, present, and future. It forces one to recall her battles for independence, the birth of a liberal democracy, the countless lives lost in her defense, our inalienable rights, ceaseless fights for equality, the formation of established values and traditions, and the culminating of a fully formed nation that promises life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all her inhabitants. The “desecration” of this sacred symbol—a contentious issue dating to the early 20^th century that still holds relevancy—displays an act of symbolic speech. Clarke’s symbolic act signifies a provocative, yet beautifully poetic gesture admissible by the very symbol she redesigns. 

Compositionally, the quilted flag is predominantly white. Modest geometric fragments of blue resemble shattered glass while feeble red stripes convey an equally disquieting note. “This quilt,” Clarke states “represents the (lack of) gender and racial diversity in the US Senate during the 116th Congress” (2019-2021). Every blue triangle in the star field represents a female senator; the red stripes represent the proportion of non-white senators.”[iii] Red and blue, once equally prominent and offering a sense of harmony within the original, lose their sense of vitality in Clarke’s interpretation. In their diminished state, these colors reflect the marginalized and the unheard, which serves to underscore the work’s uneasy tension.

Perpetuating further tensions is the frieze-like pillowed fabric resembling an oozing discharge from that of a wound, which contrasts sharply with the quilt’s uneven horizontal bands. Running from weakened, yet taut red strips of fabric, one can infer that the white discharge not only references a predominantly white male run Congress, but stems from a wounded, bleeding nation, a nation that has witnessed a rise in white nationalist groups, the emergence of a Black Lives Matter movement, an insurrection on our nation’s Capital, an overflow of disinformation, a floundering educational system, harrowing numbers of mass shootings, a widening wealth gap, increased polarization, and a misremembering of America’s past that has perpetuated a fictionized post-racial present. If one were to consider the works’ aliveness and predict the outcome of its continuous seepage, the white discharge would soon engulf the few red stripes that remain, erasing one of the very elements that lends the work its alluring magnetism. The work’s transformation into a dull homogenous whole would coax an infectious and uniform way of seeing with no alternative subjectivities to complicate or supplement the composition’s projected worldview.

But not all is lost, for the act of quilting is a delicate one, one that—like all art forms— requires tender patience and an understanding of the medium. Clarke’s stated “aim” is “to further blur the line between art and craft, old and young, science and emotion, and the individual and the community.”[iv] Through quilt making, Clarke offers a unifying and reparative gesture. Notwithstanding heart ache, the “tangible” and functional qualities of her work convey the comfort of reassurance and affectionate warmth, bringing a sense of calm to uncertain times. The critical message of These Colors Should Run, thus, not only illuminates Congress’s unacceptable lack of diversity, but suggests a process of healing, where the metaphor of stitching symbolically mends a divided nation.

Aside from Clarke’s role as artist/practitioner, her current profession aligns with that of a facilitator. At the heart of her work is a librarian’s spirit to organize and disseminate information. “Motivated by the juxtaposition of modern themes with traditional textile techniques,” Clarke wishes “to provoke viewers and users into seeing new and alternative perspectives,” in turn, creating new ways of understanding.[v] The creative transformation of “hard data” to “soft textiles,” enables Clarke “to visualize information in a tangible, visceral way with the ultimate goal of introducing­ quilting to digital natives and technological provocations to quilters of traditional demographics.”[vi]

Yet, her work extends beyond mere instruction. As an ominous forewarning of threats to democracy, These Colors Should Run offers an alternative narrative of patriotism in material form, asking us to partake in critical reflection. Albeit at times unwelcome, her quilt acts as a sympathetic and helpful guide to a more equitable and accepting future while acknowledging it a painful process. In a nation whose dissatisfaction with democracy grows, her work, however, brings a softness to the “visceral” tensions on display, tensions that recall the emotive rationale behind the recent acts of iconoclasm against Confederate monuments [vii]. As an allusion to hope and possibility, These Colors Should Run emanates an elusive sensibility that awakens an array of sensations from melancholy to revelation, thereby presenting a palpable visual rhetoric that embodies affective politics and rekindles one’s sense of civic duty. The quilt forces us to constantly question, rework, and re-define what our mental image of America is and what we want it to become. The “desecration”—or rather, a skillful reimagining—of the American flag paradoxically reflects a re-sanctification of a sacred symbol, one that we all wish to see uphold its founding principles. Reaffirming this lofty aim is the work’s loaded title; terminating in the word Run, which extends itself to the directional flow of a liquid, a form of physical exertion, management, and the political arena, the implied communal nature of These Colors Should Run demands that we—colors—run together in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness to create a better, less pernicious world.

[i] Rachel Ivy Clarke, “Toward a Design Epistemology for Librarianship,” The Library Quarterly 88, no. 1 (2018): 41–59, https://doi.org/10.1086/694872.

[ii] “History of the American Flag,” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, June 27, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/a-capitol-fourth/history/old-glory/.

[iii] “Art Quiltsgoing Forward – Paqa-South,” PAQA, accessed January 19, 2023, https://www.paqa-south.org/artquiltsgoing-forward.

[iv] Rachel Ivy Clarke, “Art and Design.” Accessed January 19, 2023. http://archivy.net/ivywp/art-and-design/.

[v] Clarke, “Art and Design.”

[vi] Clarke, “Art and Design.”

[vii] Richard Wike, et. al., “Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, but U.S. is a Major Outlier.” Pew Research Center. December, 6, 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/PG_2022.12.06_Online-Civic-Engagement_REPORT.pdf

Works Cited

“Art Quiltsgoing Forward – Paqa-South.” PAQA. Accessed January 19, 2023. https://www.paqa-south.org/artquiltsgoing-forward.

 Clarke, Rachel Ivy. “Art and Design.” Accessed January 19, 2023. http://archivy.net/ivywp/art-and-design/.

Clarke, Rachel Ivy. “Toward a Design Epistemology for Librarianship.” The Library Quarterly 88, no. 1 (2018): 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1086/694872.

“History of the American Flag.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service. June 27, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/a-capitol-fourth/history/old-glory/.

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So, if Eliot finds coffee to be not a symbol of productivity but of unrealized productivity, where does this position him in relation to the other modernists concerning the values of futurism? Is Eliot lamenting speed, asking us to resent the expectation to be productive? Is Eliot the anti-Pound, the anti-Marinetti?

As if in reference to Pounds “In the Station of the Metro,” (“Prufrock” was published at Pound’s request), Prufrock finds frustration in his inability to make out faces in a crowd, at his bewilderment to their constant movement, and tries to comfort himself, saying, “There will be time / to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” But Eliot’s Prufrock isn’t frustrated with speed or productivity itself, but with his own inability to keep up with the pace that has been set for him. By the end of the poem, he resigns himself to a lower position in the social hierarchy, understanding that the unity of society is what propels this necessary speed. He says:

He is willing to find solace in being a part of the whole, “an easy tool,” “of use,” for something bigger. While he himself may not be able to represent the pinnacle of futurist/modernist values, he will serve those who can, “an attendant lord” to the truly exceptional ones. There is a sense of duty here, as if he has no real choice but to serve this system, like a bureaucracy he is beholden to. And if he must do this, he might as well enjoy it, “glad to be” a part of the whole.

But an important question remains: what kind of coffee was Prufrock drinking? He mentions “coffee spoons”—otherwise known as demitasse spoons—which would suggest espresso. But the poem suggests he’s in a smokey city, and with the amount of references to tea in the poem, as well as Eliot’s location at the time of writing the poem, it is likely that it takes place in London. Espresso, having barely been invented at this point, was not readily available outside of Italy and parts of France. Had it been written later, say after World War I (maybe 1922, after an interesting Victoria Arduino poster was printed, as well as Eliot’s own The Waste Land “the Hoftgarten / And drank coffee, and talked for an hour”[i] (espresso was in Switzerland early too)), or even right before World War II (1933 perhaps, officially A.M.P.) things may have been different for Prufrock. Perhaps he would have encountered a genuine espresso machine, maybe even a Victoria Arduino Mural Machine, and had himself a good cup of coffee. Hard to tell. However, soon after the publication of Prufrock, most of Italy, even rural areas, would have access to espresso via the Moka Pot.

[i] T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

I outlined the basic mechanism by which the Moka Pot operates in Part I of this series, but it is especially important to dwell on the Moka Pot’s use of aluminum. Trying to maintain a level of self-sufficiency among the Italian Empire, Mussolini supported the use of aluminum as “an Italian metal… the inexhaustible Italian resource!”[i] Marinetti in his Futurist Cookbook (yes, a real book), he claims that all plates should be made out of aluminum (and also claims that spaghetti makes you weak). The Moka Pot, among other Italian productions, became a nationalist symbol, representing the technological prowess of Italian manufacturing. It is a micro-machine of expedient production—a futurist’s dream—which in turn fuels even more production for the “everyman.” Whether in Turin, Milan, or the coastal village of Pingone, one could experience the national pride of Italy, a pride based in movement, unity, and of course, proper coffee bean extraction. Italians know how to suck the very life out of grounds—fragments and ruins of a roasted bean, shored there from distant waste lands.

But where did Italy get its coffee beans from? The very origins of coffee—then under the command of the Italian Empire as a colony, existed in Ethiopia. Coffee is next to impossible to grow in Europe, and so most of the coffee consumed in Europe had its agricultural origins in an equatorial colony. Much has been said about sugar in this regard, but coffee is a similarly important crop. While Italy isn’t talked about in the same regards to colonialism as Great Britain, Spain, or Belgium, for example, it is notably responsible for colonizing the region of the world with the greatest coffee production. Thus, espresso becomes not only symbolic of the speed of futurism and fascism, but is also a product of imperialism. Without imperialism, there is no espresso, and without espresso, well, modernism isn’t… as fast.

So, let’s move forward in time a bit. After World War II, the Moka Pot became a world-wide commodity, and a symbol of the charm of Italy. The Moka Pot remains an important object in Italian culture, and according to the nearly sixteen thousand reviews the product has on Amazon presently, it’s safe to say that the Moka Pot is here to stay. As “coffee culture” continues to grow, the Moka Pot is likely to end up in more and more home kitchens (I have two myself!) where aficionados may experiment, practicing proper bean extraction—that violence which became one of the many fuels of fascist political perversity. The Moka Pot is charming; it reminds us of the romance of the Italian countryside, visions from Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, perhaps.

[i] https://medium.com/@Nicola.Romagnoli/exploring-the-caffeinated-legacy-of-italian-fascism-aff8b3db36

Call Me by Your Name is about an American graduate student Oliver travelling to Italy and the love affair he has with his professor’s son during the summer of 1982. There has been little to nothing said about the ways in which this film very subtly interacts with Italy’s fascist legacy, but the film is not ignoring it. A commonly forgotten detail about the film is that all of the main characters are Jewish, something that the son Elio learns to accept, rejecting the mother’s assertion that they are, “Jews of discretion.” Later, Elio and Oliver laugh at noticing an old fascist political poster and Elio adds, “That’s Italy for you…”—a subtle reminder of the countries’ strained past, but also suggesting that, perhaps in some ways, this past is harmless.

Throughout the film, the Moka Pot is presen, at every breakfast table and on the counter while the family’s maid does their dishes. It is embedded within the Italian landscape and atmosphere, an atmosphere of romance and charm. Instead of being the pinnacle of speed and invention, the Moka Pot is now reminiscent of the slow pace of the Italian countryside. Italy’s very own technological advancements in espresso, contrary to their original purpose, evolved to create a very different image of Italy: that of a beautiful and historical space steeped in the culture of slow food—a movement which celebrates local food cultures—even if the coffee is still be shipped from foreign shores.

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The Moka Pot, designed and introduced to the market in 1933, offered consumers an inexpensive way to make espresso-like coffee in their own home, right on their stove top or even over a fire. It works like this: water in the bottom chamber begins to boil and create steam pressure, which, pushing up through a filter of coffee, brews a dense, espresso-like coffee that slowly drips out of spigot into the upper chamber. Because of the pressure generated in the bottom chamber, the coffee is forcibly extracted from the coffee grounds, using less liquid than a pour-over or immersion brewing technique. This violence—that is, the violence of pressurized bean extraction—is what makes espresso espresso. The Italians knew that steeping wasn’t enough—there was more caffeine left, more to be taken—and thus, the espresso machine was made. But the Moka pot brought that machine into the home, in a small aluminum casing. It was espresso for all, the democratization of strong coffee, an idea we will come back to. Just bear with me please.

In 1922, Italian born artist and advertiser Leonetto Cappiello made a now famous poster for the espresso machine company Victoria Arduino, that featured a man in a trench coat leaning out of a moving train grabbing a cup of coffee. It was a brilliant idea: I mean, what better way to show the speed of it all? The brewing process, the consumption of the drink, the jolt of energy, the on-the-run ceremony, the productivity it brings, and the pace of modernity—all on display in one succinct image. Espresso became fundamental to the Italian image, and that image sought to represent one important value: speed.

Well, at least that’s the image some Italians wanted to show the world, and it actually predates the Moka Pot (a period referred to by absolutely no one as, B.M.P.). In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote and published “The Futurist Manifesto,” in which he declared the start of a new national art movement, “Futurism.” In it he writes, “We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.”[i] For Marinetti and the futurists, art is and must be the expression of violent, explosive creation, and glorification of the values of war, militarism, patriotism, a contempt for the past, and a contempt for women. It’s origins in Italy are especially significant, since the futurist, tired of the past ruling over Italy’s image, sought to, “deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.”[ii] For them, Italy could represent the future—the powerful, fast, and violent future—and thus, they sought to present these values in their art.

Marinetti’s literary works never received much in the way of critical praise, but his political writing, as well as several important speeches he gave, became incredibly influential to other artists. Futurism took off in the visual arts, with sculptors and painters who were intrigued by the challenge of representing speed and “dynamism” in the still image. Trains, planes, automobiles, crowds, proto-robots, and dogs—surprisingly—became favorite subjects of the futurists, and their paintings oftentimes featured a mix of harsh-edged shapes and blurred figures so as to represent movement and industry. Take “The Train Arriving at the Station of Lugo” (1916) by Roberto M Baldessari, for instance, which portrays the fast pace of modern mass transportation, through jagged confusing lines and blurred faces, like apparitions.

[i] http://bactra.org/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

[ii] Marinetti

The Futurists were hugely important to the arts during the 20^th century, and their influence stems far beyond those who identified directly as “Futurists.” The “Vorticists,” for example, who’s manifesto was published in Ezra Pound’s magazine BLAST! in 1914, took the geometrical abstraction of futurism even further, rejection representational art completely, and was founded directly after Marinetti gave a speech in London to a group of major poets and artists.[i] Vorticism, as a response to Marinetti’s insistence that they reject the past, was also influenced other contemporary Avant Garde movements, such as Imagism and Cubism, which were both invested in abstraction and concision. So, while Marinetti’s actual writings were not critically successful, his influence can nevertheless be found among even the most critically acclaimed of modernist artists and poets, which suggests that his violent yearnings and revolutionary thoughts were not just some benign fringe, but rather, commonly shared among many of the so-called “high modernists.” Many of these writers and artists would go on to support, or at the very least “sympathize” with the fascists. After founding the Futurist political party, Marinetti wrote Italy’s first Fascist manifesto—pre-dating Mussolini’s—which eventually was subsumed by the official Fascist party. Wyndham Lewis, co-editor and founder of BLAST! was a supporter of Hitler. And Pound’s support of the fascist cause has been discussed widely.

But are there earlier hints towards this political leaning in modernist works? Or, better yet, how does modernist poetry confront the confluence of Futurism, the Avant Garde, and the impending wave of fascism?

In 1913 Ezra Pound wrote a poem named, “In the Station of the Metro.” It reads: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd: / Petals on a wet, black bough.” Is this not the very scene from Baldessari’s painting, painted just three years later? Pound is finding beauty not just in the faces, but in the movement of the faces—the speed at which they come and go, as apparitions—in the train station, arriving and departing. Not only is Pound quick in his writing—the poem is only two lines—but the scene suggests the movement of a crowd, faces been seen then lost, absorbed into the pace of the train station. And so quick is he to make an equation: that these faces are “Petals on a wet, black bough,” individual units tied together, connected to the main branch. What does it mean for Pound to turn these faces into flowers, and to hamper them to a branch? His seemingly pretty image here, can instead be seen as restrictive, in that the figures he finds in the station are tied to movement, forcibly progressing, petals waving in place, yet held together by some larger structure, the bough. It is representative, then, of the condition of modernity, the necessity for movement and productivity, and the constraints that this places on the human. And concerning Baldessari’s visual representation of this scene, the figures become one large mass, in which the individual faces blur into one shape-less-shape, relinquishing each of their individuality. Pound’s image here is not too far from the main concept of Mussolini’s fasces—the symbol of fascism—which represents societal unity visually the tying of individual sticks to a central post. In Mussolini’s fasces, however, the bough becomes an axe, suggesting a violent strength in this unity.

[i] “Futurist Speech to the English” from Marinetti: Selected Writings (1972).

I’m not proposing that there is something inherently fascist to modernism, or that trains and the concept of speed is either. Instead, what is interesting is the ways in which modernist poems either knowingly or unknowingly played into an emerging imagery which would go on to influence, inform, and ultimately, create what we now recognize as fascism. This aesthetics of materiality and particular representations of modernity (i.e. representations of the train, the crowd, etc.) is embedded in an ongoing and intricately connected conversation. Pound’s contribution is obvious—he was literally a fascist and anti-Semite—but where else might we find the fascist influence in modernism, especially where it may not be at all intended? And what other artifacts and cultural symbols (i.e. coffee) might be embedded in this conversation?

For instance, let’s reconsider Cappiello’s poster, which contains, after all, it has a train and coffee. We have already noted the way in which the poster visually represents the central tenet of futurism, that of speed, and how it does this through the use of the train as a way of highlighting the pace at which one consumes espresso, but also, the pace at which one operates after consuming the espresso. In many ways, espresso and the espresso machine are the ultimate futurist symbols. Espresso machines, for example, make use of steam and pistons just like a train, have a shiny metallic exterior, and produce a drink which makes the consumer faster and more productive. It is a machine-extension of the human, optimizing human performance through the sheer power of pressurized bean extraction. Cappiello, whether he knew it not, marketed not only an espresso machine here, but also the core values of futurism.

But, to experience the espresso machine, you had to go to a café, and probably live in the city. What makes fascism just slightly different from futurism, is that it is much better at encompassing and including the rural. This is where the Moka Pot comes in (A.M.P).

Tune in next week for part two, where we’ll take a closer look at the role of coffee in the creation of fascism, as well as coffee’s unique role in the Avant Garde poetry of American writer T.S. Eliot and the 2017 film Call Me by Your Name.

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The exploration of queer representation in Hannibal allows for a greater understanding of the conventions of gender and sexuality within the thriller genre. Highly-fictionalized thrillers such as Hannibal thrive on extreme relationships, but also rely heavily on non-traditional erotic relationships to further depict the extremes of personalities in its central characters. The cop-vs-serial killer subset of the thriller genre adds an element of intense, personal desire to what would otherwise be a genre categorized by rote sleuthing. So it is in Hannibal, where the main draw of the series (besides its stunning visuals) is the eroticly-charged cat-and-mouse game between FBI agent Will Graham and cunning killer Hannibal Lecter. Several characters of the series equate the furious obsession the two men share for each other to love. This suggestion troubles the relationship between the two men, indicating that their painful, self-destructive relationship is based simultaneously in love and hate. They are unable to pull away from each other, just as they are unable to completely become one. Instead, their relationship serves to complicate the viewer’s understanding of desire and the desire to kill.

Hannibal stabs Will in the opening shots of the film Red Dragon (2002)

To fully understand the complexity of Hannibal and Will’s relationship, we must return to one of the first incarnations of this relationship in the 2002 thriller Red Dragon.^[1] What is unique about the Silence of the Lambs trilogy is that no one film depicts Hannibal’s time before prison in great detail.^[2] Hannibal’s crimes are defined largely through rumor and his own description; Hannibal is the arbiter of his own mythos. However, there is a significant gap in the viewer’s understanding of the relationship between Hannibal and Will. This is deftly remedied in the opening scene of Red Dragon. Over the opening credits, Will Graham, here played by Edward Norton, comes to the shuddering realization that the mysterious killer is eating his victims — and that the killer is none other than his close confidante. At the crescendo of Will’s understanding, signified by the drawing of his gun, Hannibal sinks his knife into Will’s stomach. Despite the violence of the action, there is unmistakable tenderness as well. The stabbing mirrors a lover’s embrace; Hannibal rests his chin on Will’s shoulder, hushing him gently. In this scene, Hannibal gains no visible pleasure from hurting Will. Instead, he is careful, tender. “Remarkable boy,” he says. “I think I’ll eat your heart.” The reverent, intimate delivery of the line, coupled with the way Hannibal holds the fallen Will around the waist like a dance partner suggests a fond tenderness that goes beyond the bounds of homosocial friendship. Their intimacy serves to hint at a homoerotic bond that is only briefly touched upon in Red Dragon.

Hannibal embracing Will

This highly-charged bond is given far more screen time and consideration in Hannibal. The two men are far closer in age, diminishing the mentor/pupil relationship present in Red Dragon^[3] and emphasizing a more equal footing. Furthermore, the first two seasons of Hannibal take place prior to the moment of understanding in Red Dragon that culminates in Will’s stabbing. The challenge of Hannibal then is to balance the painful anticipation of this “breakup” with the pleasure of watching the budding relationship between two fascinating, electric men. And a pleasure it is. Hannibal and Will have a powerful chemistry that obsesses the narrative. They share intense, longing looks, have little regard for each other’s personal space, and have many moments of strangely endearing domesticity. Hannibal is always cooking for Will, seeking to impress him with increasingly elaborate presentations. Food in Hannibal is always a matter of seduction and charm, a way for Hannibal to exert power over his guests (Will most frequently) while simultaneously providing them with nourishment and artistic pleasure.

Hannibal preparing a rare non-human delicacy for Will.

The homoeroticism of food and eating crescendos in Hannibal’s second season, when Hannibal and Will share a meal of songbirds eaten whole. In an interview with Logo, director Bryan Fuller comments on this feast below:

We really want to explore the intimacy of these two men in an unexpected way without sexualizing them, but including a perception of sexuality that the cinema is actually portraying to the audience more than the characters are. There’s a scene at dinner where we were tackling in the edit bay because it was so transparently homoerotic. They were doing something that was not sex or anywhere near sex, but it was shot so suggestively that they may as well have been…

This scene lingers lovingly over open mouths, swallowing throats, and blissful expressions. In mood, framing, and aesthetic, it is a sexual scene. And yet, everyone’s clothes remain on. The evident homoeroticism of the scene is tempered by its modesty. There is power and seduction, but the lack of sexual acts and romantic physical gestures such as kissing leaves it clear that the relationship is not a traditionally romantic one.

For LGBT audiences, representation in film and television is an obstacle course of flirtation with canon. This battle with on-screen depictions of queer couples is often waylaid by a phenomenon known as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting teases the viewer with hints to a homosexual relationship in order to entice LGBTQ viewers, but this potential relationship ultimately remains unfulfilled. (Shows such as Supernatural are notorious for queerbaiting its fans.) Despite accusations of queerbaiting when it became apparent that central characters Will and Hannibal’s relationship would never be a physical one, queer fans nonetheless rejoiced at Hannibal. While Will and Hannibal would not explore a homosexual relationship on-screen, which frustrated some fans, many others were content in the highly-aesthetic, subtext-heavy portrayal of Hannibal and Will’s relationship.

“Hannigram” fan art by DeviantArt user Look-ling

Fans of this relationship, which is affectionately dubbed “Hannigram,” are quick to admit that the relationship between the two men is certainly an abusive one. For all of the intimacies between Will and Hannibal, their relationship is one built on manipulation, violence, and entrapment. However, for many, this is part of the attraction. The intensity and darkness is appealing, especially with two lead actors with significant fanbases. Many elements of “Hannigram” are aesthetic; there are large sects of fanworks dedicated to the sheer beauty of the show and its actors. However, the appeal of “Hannigram” is not wholly artistic. The cat-and-mouse element of their relationship, emphasized by a history of serial killer/cop films with similar relationships, is characterized by danger and seduction. In a show about the art of violence, “Hannigram” dances alongside the violence, rather than shying away from it. The honesty of the appeal of “Hannigram” in (largely female) fans allows for a deeper exploration of the intimacy of violence between Will and Hannibal.

This violence culminates in a stabbing, just as in Red Dragon. In Red Dragon, the stabbing is presented as a shock. In Hannibal, however, there is great anticipation for the moment. While this could be, in part, due to lingering audience familiarity with the source material, it is more likely a reading of the tone of the scene. Red Dragon amplified the shocking element, playing off of Will’s horrified revelation about Hannibal’s guilt. In Hannibal, however, we anticipate the betrayal. Will has spent the season desperately, obsessively working to prove Hannibal’s guilt. And yet, when the time comes to make the arrest, Will balks; he reveals the ploy to Hannibal. When he finds that Hannibal has not run but instead done grave violence to Jack and Alana, Will is heartbroken. “You were supposed to leave,” he says, his voice low and devastated. Hannibal responds by touching the side of Will’s, and stabs Will like an apology, like a betrayal.

Hannibal pulls Will close after stabbing him

The embrace that Will and Hannibal fall into speaks to the unsustainable nature of their relationship. They are so deeply caught up in each other’s obsession that they are desperately linked. They are fated to trap each other. While their romance departs from traditional depictions, Will and Hannibal are still star-crossed, their mutual erotic obsession only just beginning.

Next week: Seduction and Devastation After the Betrayal

^[1] There is also an adaptation of Red Dragon even before Silence of the Lambs, a thriller titled Manhunter released in 1986. However, this did not enjoy the same popularity as the later Harris-based film trilogy.

^[2] _{A later film, Hannibal Rising (2007) attempts to remedy this, but it is considered separate from the trilogy.}

^[3]_{This is not to say that mentor/pupil relationships lack homoerotism. Rather, this particular relationship is strengthened by a different power dynamic.}

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Promotional image for NBC’s Hannibal

Because of this, a second, more subtle argument is made by Hannibal’s narrative about the “right” way to be a killer. The pop-culture juggernaut of Silence of the Lambs isn’t the terrifying Buffalo Bill, or even the feminist darling Clarice Starling, but rather the slick and seductive Hannibal Lecter, whose presence in psychological thrillers spans three books, four films, a television series, and endless fanworks. The audience — casual viewers and “Fannibals” alike — is charmed by Lecter, largely due to the way he departs from other popular fictional killers. Lecter is not a brute: he does not resemble the slasher-killers of the gory teen film franchises; he is no Freddy Kruegar or Michael Meyers. Nor is he the pure psychological villain such as those made popular by the Saw franchise. Instead, Hannibal performs a meeting of the two, all of their strengths and seemingly none of their weaknesses.

Though he is never seen working out, Hannibal is physically fit, shown to be extremely strong and agile; he is able to easily overpower police officers and threatening patients, and, like any proper serial killer, he shakes off injuries that would cripple anyone else. Despite this strength, Hannibal is lean; his bone structure is that of a dancer. His physical presence is catlike and easily predatory. This effortless strength is the kind of appealing danger that typically befits the slender femme fatale, but Hannibal subverts this by having its hero-villain emulate these traits. His graceful-killer performance is further emphasized by the raw, calculating intelligence he displays. When his cannibalistic secret is revealed to Jack, Lecter attempts to fight his way out.  When FBI agent Jack Crawford puts him in a stranglehold, Hannibal goes limp, playing dead. In Jack’s moment of ensuing confusion and hesitation, Hannibal takes up a piece of broken glass, stabbing Jack in the side of the throat. As Crawford bleeds out in Hannibal’s pantry, Lecter is able to make his escape.

Hannibal uses an improvised weapon in his fight with Jack Crawford

Logically, Hannibal should not be able to overpower a highly trained federal agent, but his combination of strength and wit allow him to move beyond the killer roles his gender suggests. He deliberately avoids the highly-phallic, hypermasculine killer forms, seen in Michael Meyers, Jason Voorhees, Pyramid Head, and many others, as does he avoid the physical frailty of the feminized mastermind. Although Hannibal embodies the sissy killer, his success^[1] in the television series speaks to his performance of this trope. He navigates between men and women’s worlds with ease, and confidence. This confidence is what is most critical. Hannibal is never shown to struggle. His acts are effortless. Those that struggle to express themselves, fashionably, romantically, sexually, or otherwise, are portrayed as desperate, fawning, trying too hard. Hannibal paints a clear image of its wannabe villains — either you’ve got it, or you don’t. And Hannibal has “it” in spades.

This charm is instinct, intuition. Hannibal is a natural leader, drawing moths to his flame. It is predatory power. He is described by a childhood acquaintance as “charming, like a cub is charming before it’s learned to be one of the big cats.” His therapist describes him as wearing “a well-tailored person-suit.” His danger is magnetic, sensuous. Even in his most threatening moments, the men and women surrounding Hannibal are drawn to him. He works a cobra-dance, expertly weaving aesthetic, philosophy, and manipulation together to entangle his victims. And yet, they are glad to be wound in his web. The violence (and resulting cannibalism) is filmed like sex: lush, lingering shots of stolen breath and trembling bodies.

Hannibal experiencing a completely innocuous projector malfunction

Though Hannibal’s victims are male and female in similar ratios, his only (onscreen) sexual relationship is with a woman, whom he later attempts to murder. However, he engages in his erotic, sensual seduction with men and women alike. In an interview  with Entertainment Weekly, director Brian Fuller opened up on his view of Hannibal’s sexual preferences. “I think Hannibal is a very broadly spectrumed human being/fallen angel, who probably is capable and interested in everything humanity has to offer.” This interpretation of Hannibal positions him in a unique position of the sissy villain. Being presented as a figure with attractions all over the gender spectrum both embroils Hannibal in gender and distances him from it. He never indicates a preference for men or women in particular, but in this lack of preference, Hannibal is presented as a man who samples from any and all areas of the spectrums of gender and sexuality.

When not trying to kill and eat his paramours, Hannibal performs the role of an attentive lover, acting with sensitivity and romance. He remembers food and drink preferences, washes his lover’s hair, teaches them to play instruments. He draws beautiful European landscapes, plays the harpsichord, and, of course, cooks. Although it is often used as a way of disposing of his victims, Hannibal’s love of cooking also expresses a departure from gender norms. He delights in feeding his friends (and, on more than one occasion, feeding his friends to his friends). He uses food for care-taking, for seduction, for friendship, and for art. Such expertise furthers his aura of effortless skill, and the appeal of his power to those around him. He works with precision and tenderness — many shots see him lingering lovingly over smells and tastes, clearly impressed by his own work. (And with Hannibal, we know that’s the only opinion he truly values.) This delicate care is a humanizing moment of tenderness, one that allows him to embrace his gentler side.

Hannibal enjoying the fruits of his labors

Hannibal is the true Renaissance man, an exquisite dandy in bespoke suits. Alongside the cannibalism and culinary skill, Hannibal is known for his stunning fashion sense. His suits are finely tailored, the colors and patterns unique, precise, and often mirroring the color scheme of the episode. Dedicated fans have compiled a list of images for a complete look at Hannibal’s wardrobe over the television series. Hannibal’s suits tend to depart from traditional male attire, often featuring colors and patterns most would not attempt. Hannibal wears them with confidence, embracing a look that is not traditionally masculine. He also wears ascots and unironic bowties, many articles of clothing that are reminiscent of queer menswear. And yet, his unique style is celebrated among straight and cisgender male fans. Men’s fashion websites even offer instruction on “How to Dress Like Hannibal Lecter”.^[2] Through fashion, Hannibal is shown to thread a delicate dance through gender expression that is very often lauded by those who would never describe themselves as queer.

Promotional image featuring Hannibal Lecter for the NBC television series

In Hannibal’s nuanced performance of gender, he embodies the danger of the Sissy Villain while also working to appeal to an audience across the entire spectrum of gender and sexuality. However, rather than a Buffalo Bill-esque performance that disturbs both audience and characters, Hannibal is deeply appealing to both. This suggests that there is a correct amount of sissiness to be played to still remain attractive and desirable, even when the subject in question is a serial killer and cannibal. For Hannibal, his effortless performance allows him to glide through gender in the “fallen angel” manner his creator intended.

^[1] Here, success is defined as Hannibal’s ability to escape danger and pursue his sadistic goals.

^[2] The how-to guide is prefaced not by a disclaimer that emulating serial killers is wrong, but that Hannibal was canceled due to the fact that “most people would rather the quality of McDonald’s over the quality of a 5-star restaurant.” Hannibal would approve of such haughtiness

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Mechanics of Victorian “Nervousness”

As a Victorianist, I spend a lot of time talking about nineteenth-century, and specifically Victorian, anxieties. So much of my time is devoted to this in fact that recently, when I was telling someone about research I’m currently doing for a seminar paper, they replied by saying, “So, is your research interest Victorian anxiety because you relate, or…?” As it turns out, my research interests do not center around Victorian anxiety disorders. However, I am very interested in the ways the phrase “nervous energy” is explicitly or implicitly invoked across discourses in the Victorian era.

To make the statement that Victorians were anxious because they were forced to witness and experience THE transition into modernity seems like a fallacy because a “fear of modernity” is noticeable throughout history. There is always something new, changing, incomprehensible and, therefore, ominous on the horizon. So, a general fear of modernity itself may not be the best way to explain the “nervousness” of the Victorians.

Because most of my research up until this point has focused on nineteenth-century anxieties surrounding affectation and performance, much of my time has been spent trying to understand the apparently problematic nature of inauthenticity and fake or forced feeling. My “obsession” with Victorian anxieties began with an interest in Victorian sensation fiction. Specifically, how period critiques of the genre called the incitement of fake feeling—the genre’s need and ability to “make the public’s flesh creep”—one of sensation fiction’s worst offenses.

More recently, a conference paper I presented on performance in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park focused on the problem of theatricality and acting (i.e., faking feeling) and mediation—more specifically, the ways in which mediation affects the performance and interpretation of feeling. While this paper focused on how the body and printed text can be used to mediate and remediate affect, a recent line of inquiry (as stated in a previous post) has gotten me thinking about Victorian “new” media’s relationship to affect and feeling. Although I’ve encountered arguments describing the “nervousness” of the Victorian era when looking at various elements of Victorian popular culture (such as sensation fiction and theatre), I came across the phrase “nervous energy” multiple times while reading about Victorian new media. This phrase might help elucidate the Victorians’ relationship to and anxieties surrounding modernity.

Media theorist Marshall McLuhan has used the phrase “the affect of the electric age” to describe twentieth-century changes in aesthetic and social interaction. Though he is writing roughly a century later, this phrase can be used to reference the problem of energy (gas, steam, electricity) beginning to permeate Victorian life in much the same way fears of affectation appear to. If criticisms surrounding nineteenth-century sensation fiction and theatre often described feeling as a contagion that could infect bodies and attack nerves, electricity might necessarily be a hypermediated, physical manifestation of this anxiety.

This thought leaves me with many thoughts and questions, but I’ll wrap up this section with just a few: If nervous energy and feeling can infect bodies and attack nerves, is it possible to understand electricity functioning in a similar way if media are interpreted as mechanical bodies? How might the concept of affective economies be applied to media, if at all? What might a comparison of Victorian new media/technology, sensation fiction’s (female) readers, and the figure of the (female) occultist medium reveal if we think of energy as something that is able to possess and control fleshy or mechanical bodies?

In the next week, I’ll be attempting to tackle some of these questions in a seminar paper. I’m not quite sure how I feel, but I’m hoping it’s affective.

Objects and Bodies

I’m a person that spends most of their time thinking about objects, space, and bodies. Even though there are similarities between objects and bodies, I still choose to separate the two. For instance: both move through cultural spaces, both can seem ‘out of place’, and both are manipulated for labor. I admit that the separation itself at first feels as if I am privileging the human over the inhuman. Except separating the two also allows for us to partially divest that which has been considered human from the body; creating lacunas that must necessarily be filled by that which is nonhuman.

While writing this I am listening to Porter Robinson’s, “Worlds: The Movie” and am having a memory of their performance at Electric Forest. People often refer to the festival and its [s]p(l)ace as ‘Forest’. Of course it has a different meaning for everyone, but I’ve come to understand this experience as a celebration of the (in)organic. There you will find a horse made of CDs in a small clearing, and more towards the center you might find a technicolor cloud installation among the branches of trees.

As a scholar, I seek to understand the relations between humans, materials, and art. This has led me to consider questions of media, remediation, and affect. To be clearer, I am interested in which ways the individual, susceptible to its environment, is affected by objects. I’m now entangled not only in considering the techne of affectation, but also in questioning how affect circulates between materials and bodies. Readers can find similar concerns being worked through in the modernist novel, Nightwood.

My obsession with Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood during the first semester made my cohort convinced that my dossier was going to be on melancholy. The extent to which Nightwood had affected me also affected my cohort – to put it in another way, we sensed something. How might a text not only contain affect, but also infect readers with affect? Strange discusses the melancholic affect within Nightwood as it relates to the incapacity of figural language that over represents, and occludes, sensation to mediate the truth (134). Parsons suggests that it is not just the text, but the narrative form that’s also structured in such a way that melancholia permeates (169). I consider Nightwood an affective object. However, what makes Nightwood an object of fascination for me is that the objects within Nightwood are affective as well (as mentioned last week). But, as a return to how we sensed something while in the presence of Nightwood: should we not call this, as Noelle has suggested, resonance? Further, what does thinking about the mediation of affect as ‘resonance’ afford in contrast to thinking of affect as an epidemiological phenomenon of ‘infection’?

I took breaks while writing this to watch the video of Worlds on YouTube. I’ve been thinking about which ways I resonate with this particular virtual object. Porter has commented that he created this album as a way to channel his feelings of nostalgia. This is interesting when you consider the fact that the video is compiled of videos from various performances, uploaded by disparate users and edited into a narrative that is just over an hour long. We can draw connections between the reasons for why the video was created, to fix the memory of an enjoyed performance from the past, and the emotion of nostalgia itself. I question whether the nostalgia I’m feeling is in fact my own feeling, or if it’s a resonate affect of this virtual object.

Parsons, Deborah. “Djuna Barnes and Affective Modernism.” The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel. Ed. Morag Schiach. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 165-177.

Strange, Martina. “’Melancholia, melancholia’; Changing Black Bile into Black Ink in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood.” in Hayford Hall: Hangovers, Erotics, and Modernist Aesthetics. Edited by Podnieks and Chait. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 133-49, 2005.

Noelle Hedgcock is an MA student in English at Syracuse University. Her research and teaching interests focus on nineteenth-century British literature and culture.

Tyler Smart, an MA student in English at Syracuse University,  is primarily interested how space produces certain subjectivities, locally and transculturally, in literary and cultural imagination. Other research interests include cross-cultural influences, queer theory and the history of sexuality, subjectivity, phenomenology, eco-criticism, and post-humanism.

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