“Christianity is a myth that has been literalised.”
Timothy Freke
Here I am at the opening act for what will be the grand guignol, for my very own book of Revelations.
The first of the last,the meanest story ever had then. Infernal, the Denouement.
For any end, there has to be an origin story, and with that in mind, I
suppose it was inevitable that my work would arrive back at the
beginning. I’m thinking of course of Theothantos, my artistic
fumbling’s through the quagmire of dogma and mortality. Dealing with
those questions back then, carried a lot of heft. With the burden of
weighing up the ultimate existential odyssey, I found it easier to
reduce the work to the abstract crevices of a skull.
As Henry Miller once pronounced when talking about Tropic of
Capricorn, he should have waited until the end of his career to do what
he’d tried at the beginning.
Perhaps a decade on, none the wiser, over fifty and certainly more world weary, I feel more able to put flesh on those bones.
And alongside Eliots The Wasteland- I’ve been drawing on some old
stalwarts for spiritual encouragement. Goya’s black paintings, Picasso’s
later years, Otto Dix’s war etchings, Grunewalds Corpus Christi,
Liverpool urban decay from the 70’s.
Perhaps it’s some sort of fait
accomplais, but I want the series to feel like it’s been produced from
the vantage point of an artist, journaling the end of days.
I wish I could say it feels like a stretch.
‘ The idea, that the piece of work is not finished until
the audience come to it, and add their own interpretation, and what the
piece of art is about, is the grey space in the middle-that grey space
in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be about”
David Bowie talking about the internet (1999)
2008’s “Incarceration” looks like it finally hit it’s mark, albeit as
a meme, but shared no less than over 50,000 times regardless. It’s the
kind of stadium level exposure, that being on the cover of Juxtapoz
couldn’t have afforded me. Regrettably, the swine who originated the
meme, not only neglected to credit my work, but also cropped out my
name. Damn!
That would be some fuckery right there, except to say, I’m too old,
ugly and block worn to add it to the lifetimes list of personal
effrontery’s, back stabs and pass overs, to bend myself too much into a
pretzel about it.
I mean, go tell it to Da Vinci.
And as the better David predicted when he invited participating
members to download art from his website to rework and deface, it’s an
inevitable consequence of the web, that all culture is to be reclaimed
and co-opted.
If Art is the last truly democratic roar, then it’s one which has no
currency or cachet beyond the one afforded by the viewer, and as a
friend of mine supposed, it’s something of “a back handed compliment”
that a long forgotten work, has resurfaced and made such a remarkable,
reaching impact.
In these days of columns bloated with divisive opinion, its a measure
that my art was able to transcend the boundaries and be relatable on a
fundamental human level.
Regardless of the delivery of the medium, it continues to be arts greatest function.
Signed Prints of Incarceration available HERE
“Horrible things happening to people is inextricably linked to people thinking horrible things might happen to them.”
Ari Aster
Here we go then, once more into the breach, or the beginning of the end if you will.
Series three-“Infernal, The Denouement”-Dark Art Emporium 2021. And I
know it seems a ways off, but when you measure your hours in drying
paint, months can suddenly collide into years.
You can’t see yet, but this one is going to be about the plague-not
the black death you understand, but a disease equally as deadly. The
disease of what dear old Hitch described as something that ‘infects us
in our most basic integrity” and that is monotheistic, messianic
religion, or at least in its modern incarnation of white, right wing
evangelicalism.
Someone who understands this contextually is Ari Aster. His film
‘Midsommar’ on current release is a revelation. Coming off like a kind
of bastard offspring that comprises Holy Mountain meets the Wicker Man,
Aster is being deceptive when he refers to it as a “break up movie”.. A
break up of what exactly? It’s no accident that the female protagonist
Dani’s surname is Ardor and her boyfriends name Christian.
A film redolent with
runic rituals and traditions of the Nordic Thule, Aster is clearly
aware of its unsavory Nazi antecedents, peppering one of the early
scenes with book titles that are a masterclass in Blavatskian thru
lines.
In fact it’s a movie lush not just with sumptuous imagery, but a
spectacle of clues and pictographs. Art peers down from every corner,
echoing, lampooning,or predicting scenes, in what are a myriad of
illusionary incantations.
But it’s in the character of Ruben, the grotesquely deformed and
disabled child, who is the oracle, seen at the end sitting on a cotton
wool cloud, smearing paint abstractly on the pages of the communes
sacred book for the priesthood to decipher, where the true dark heart of
the story lies. It’s the mass delusion concocted from archaic ritual
madness. The assimilation of a community willing to participate in
terrible acts, following an insane edict, for the sake of prosperity and
genetic immaculacy.
And Ruben is it’s Godhead,
avowed as pure and divine-but an an inbred progeny regardless- whose
inflated lips seem to caricature the unmistakable, pneumatic sphincter
like pout of a former reality tv host. It’s an eviscerating parody that
at its core references eugenics and white supremacy-and as such is one
of the most profound statements for the times we live in. What
on the surface seems like a contemporary folk horror tale- is in fact
an indictment of the pernicious cult of racism and religion.
Having already seen it twice now, I can attest that it is a movie
that demands repeated viewings, if only because of how rich it is
symbolically, but it is also deeply affecting, beautiful, compelling
cinematic work.
It makes me spurred on by my own direction, having ploughed a similar furrow artistically with my piece “The Death Eaters”.
It’s a welcome reminder that as dark and bleak as this era is, there are
still seeds of extraordinary artistic expression able to inspire and
flourish.
