For those of you who appreciate my writing, please consider five ways of indirectly assisting me.
Donate to me via www.ko-fi.com/alexanderadams Small donations add up and help to pay for articles I write, many of which are unpaid.
Subscribe to my Substack newsletter/blog here: www.alexanderadamsart.substack.com It contains material very similar to this WordPress site but also some extra content. If you become a paid subscriber ($5 per month, $50 per year) you gain access to exclusive content including articles, reviews, opinion piece, extracts of my books and offers.
Consider subscribing to the journals I most regularly write for. They are The Jackdaw (“independent views on the visual arts”, featuring journalism, news, artist profiles, exhibition and book reviews and contributor letters, six issues per year), The Salisbury Review (“the quarterly magazine of conservative thought”, featuring discursive articles on politics, culture, history and biography, with art, book and media reviews, four issues per year) and Bournbrook Magazine (a traditionalist-minded website of news, views and culture). The websites are here: The Jackdaw and The Salisbury Review and Bournbrook Magazine. The pieces that I publish in these outlets appear nowhere else, so you will be receiving unique content. You will also be supporting independent journalism.
Consider purchasing my books. Culture War: Art, Identity Politics and Cultural Entryism (2019, Societas/Imprint Academic), Iconoclasm, Identity Politics and the Erasure of History (2020, Societas/Imprint Academic) and Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism (2022, Societas/Imprint Academic) are available via the publisher’s website here. Women and Art: A Post-Feminist View (2022, Academica Press) is available via the publisher’s website here. Degas and Magritte (both 2022, Prestel) and all the other books mentioned are available via bookshops and book-selling websites. Other books by me include fiction, verse and art published by Aloes Books, Golconda, Bottle of Smoke Press and Pig Ear Press. These books can be bought here https://www.bournbrookmag.com/books/.
Buy me a book. There are a large number of books I need to prepare articles, books and livestreams, some of which are not monetised. If you would like to purchase me a book for research, my Amazon list can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/A42XD31HR913?ref_=wl_share All purchases are much appreciated.
Sharing my online articles. I write regularly for the websites Spiked Online,The Critic and Bournbrook Magazine. I also publish articles on this site. Please consider liking and sharing these articles. Even small efforts like this raise my profile and make websites and publishers more likely to commission future articles and books.
Rating my books on Amazon, Goodreads and other websites.
[Richard Serra, Tilted Arc (1981), steel. (c) Estate of Richard Serra]
Sculptor Richard Serra has died at the age of 85. This American sculptor, who deployed raw sheet steel in giant publicly sited installations, was notoriously tough about his uncompromising art. Serra understood power as a sculptural element in a way no other recent artist has. He was the heir not only to steel-welding sculptors David Smith and Anthony Caro but also, rightfully, Titian, Velazquez, Rubens and Goya.
Minimalism as an aesthetic movement is seen mainly as the domain of cultivated good taste. It is a way of displaying one’s adherence to simple living that requires an expensively engineered space that elegantly hides one’s possessions in an ostentatious show of simplicity and humility. However, it is much more, especially as the art movement that emerged around 1960 as a riposte to the intensely subjective, personal, gestural, expressive character of New York School of abstract painting. How could an artist outdo the lyricism of Pollock, the intensity of Rothko, the drama of Kline? By cutting through it by going in the other extreme, by negating these very qualities by going to the opposites. Carl Andre used roughly sawn wood blocks or tiles of metal; Robert Morris made geometric forms in metal or plywood; Donald Judd set up stacks of shapes in pressed steel and Perspex. Expression was out, presence was in. Minimalism was not anodyne; Minimalism – and its architectural stablemate Brutalism – could intimidate as effectively (albeit indirectly) as the Heroic Realism of Socialist Realist USSR.
Serra occupied spaces with rolled steel, as used in structural construction and shipbuilding. His towering forms were unpainted and untreated; they accrued a skin of rust according to natural processes. Slabs of metal weighing many tons formed freestanding stacks – rolled metal or slabs leaned against walls – all without any mechanical connections, held in place by gravity, mass and inertia. They could only be moved with powered machinery. The most ardent detractor could hurl himself at the slabs and not come close to destabilising a Serra prop piece.
The glowering presence of Serra’s slabs had overtones of toughness that reflected Serra’s dockside sartorial taste. Serra worked in a steel mill when young and his appreciation for the materials, methods and attitudes of industrial manufacturing carried over into his tough character and dress, which only slightly moderated as he aged. The physical threat from his metal slabs was intimidating. They could – and, in the case of worker crushed during the installation process of one Serra piece in 1971, did – present a threat to anyone in the vicinity. The menace was real and contributed to a frisson of fear in the audience. I remember viewing pieces in the 1990s and there was a tangible electrical charge to standing close to Serra’s props.
As Serra’s aesthetic and financial standing increased, his work’s thuggish quality became more indirect rather than outright diminishing. In the 1970s Serra received commissions to set up permanent sculptures in specific places. Standing stacks of rusted iron loomed in a plaza in London; curving strips of steel several metres high and ten, twenty or longer metres long appeared in the forecourts of buildings in American cities. They antagonised office workers by not only being ugly in a conventional sense but because they blocked out familiar views and forced them to take detours. Routes that people would have taken most directly to get to and from their office or parked car were no longer accessible. By forcing individuals to take a detour, Serra’s tilted walls provoked and tired people. Serra’s installed sculptures comprised (quite unironically) art that could not be overlooked or disregarded. They imposed the artist’s will in a way that was both aesthetically bold and socially aggressive.
When Tilted Arc (1981), sited in a plaza in Washington D.C. proved unpopular with office workers, was scheduled for removal, the artist sued to preserve it. Serra argued that removal of a site-specific piece was destruction of an artist’s intellectual property, effectively putting forward his legal right to defend the art work even if he did not own it physically. The courts ultimately ruled that the land owner controlled the art and it was that body’s property. In 1989, the piece was cut up and transported out of the plaza, but Serra’s argument set a precedent and is a landmark in art law.
Serra used power and threat directly and indirectly as a material in the same way as had court painters and papal artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. While those prince portraitists or makers of martial murals depicted the wielders of worldly might, Serra’s art demonstrated the might of industrial commodity production on a breathtaking scale by putting it unadorned in public forums in a way that could not be ignored or removed. Serra’s art could only have been made through large sums of money, institutional backing, local government approval and the agreement of senior figures. That observation does not make Serra’s art immoral, makes no aesthetic claims and does not preclude beauty. Indeed, the beauty and drama of the curved walls of metal was something that captivated individuals who found them objectionable.
Serra’s curling ribbons of metal were as undemocratic as a papal injunction or dynastic coup; they were unarguable and uncongenial. They did not work well in group exhibitions, at least the ones I saw. Serra’s pieces had too much power and were too absolute, making all around them looking compromised, fussy, effete. They brooked no compromise with the taste of the masses or the utilitarian expectations of urban planners. Serra’s ability to set up potentially dangerous and actually antagonistic interventions which inconvenienced others was a demonstration of the power of art.
I am pleased to share the new website www.alexanderadams.art. Although this is the same address as my previous website, it is a wholly new site, containing more art, new archival images, links and other information not on the previous site. Most importantly, it has a lot more art, especially of new pictures. The website allows visitors to buy (art and books) as well as browse. I’d be pleased to get any feedback from visitors.
Appearance on In The Raw with Raw Egg Nationalist
It was great to be invited by Raw Egg Nationalist to appear on his channel In The Raw. We chat about the politics of art funding, difficulties facing young artists now, an essay I writing on T.E. Hulme and much more. Find the discussion here: www.raweggstack.com
“Recently, I looked at two senior public sculptors: Michael Sandle RA (b. 1936), a Modernist, and Alexander “Sandy” Stoddart FRSE (b. 1959), a Neoclassicist. This is on the occasion of the publication of a new book on Sandle’s art (Jon Wood, Michael Sandle: Works on Paper, 2023, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 180pp, 250 illus., £40). This caused me to reflect on two paths regarding monumental sculpture in Britain.
“Sandle gained prominence in the late 1970s when his monuments criticising American imperialism and commemorating war dead. A period of teaching in Germany cemented his reputation there and compensated for a lack of realised commissions. What are the recurring elements of Sandle’s sculptural vision? Emphatic geometric form, prioritisation of structural rigidity, dynamism of the diagonal, rhythm of repeated forms, hybridisation of mechanical and human, comparison between skeleton and armour. Sandle’s profound pessimism about human nature tempers his moral repugnance at the slaughter of innocents. Sandle understands the inevitability of conflict even though he deplores it and argues for human compassion. Sandle is compelled by the brutal strength and ingenious design of weaponry and armour; he sees that the aerodynamic sweep of the nose cone of a missile resembles the gothic arch and wing span of a bomber is the outstretched arms of crucified Christ, as noble as Vitruvian Man’s pose. One can think of Sandle as at one with the Medieval artist who possessed the awe of mortal man before the might of a vengeful unknowable God.
“Sandle’s uncompromising approach and his mixing of materials gives his art an idiosyncratic and surprising qualities. His St George and the Dragon (1988) has the energy of Futurist figure by Boccioni, with the diagonal bas plane adding a precarious forward motion and send of instability – something that has been diminished by the addition of raised walkway around the column. His best-known completed monument is the Malta Siege Monument (1988-92), which combines architecture and figural elements. The haunting presence of the dead body, draped and resting on a catafalque, underlines the price paid in a way that is grave and dignified. It also has an air of inevitability. The International Maritime Organization Seafarers’ Memorial (2001), situated on the Albert Embankment, London has a sailor atop the prow of a ship, the front sliver of which acts as a column, raising and isolating the figure. Its position facing the river, which is only a few metres away gives the monument a sense of anticipation, as the viewer mentally conflates the intimated forward momentum with the proximity of the river….”
The latest the series of compilations from ancient authors is a volume distilling the Collationes of John Cassian (c. 360- c. 435 AD). Collationes (Conversations) of c. 420-30 is a collection of conversations and learning that the monk recorded following encounters with holy men while touring Egypt. Cassian’s writings became influential among monastic orders and was seen as an insight into the early monastic pioneers of the Near East, which was subsequently emulated by new orders founded across Western Europe. From the extensive Collationes these extracts are limited to advice regarding concentration, intended for a general readership.
Abba Moses tells Cassian and his companion Germanus that one must have in mind scopos (an immediate goal) and telos (an eventual end) and that without man will waver and be led astray. Following the scopos will allow one to reach telos but this must be checked and adjusted. The scopos is “an immediate goal for the soul, or a relentless mental attentiveness. If you don’t focus on it with all your effort and perseverance, you won’t be able to reach your ultimate goal and enjoy the payoff you’ve been waiting for.”[i] To concentrate on one to the exclusion of the other will lead to deviation.
The honing of one’s attention on an approaching scopos allows one to set aside one’s failures and one’s weaknesses and thereby do better. It stops one dwelling on the past or embracing complacency. Near targets also allow us to assess our competence by giving us a means by which to see if we achieve what is necessary. The multiple scopos must not be unworthy of the telos, for what would be the point of attempting enlightenment if one fails to do good on the way? The telos for Christians is to have an open and pure heart which will allow God to communicate his will to the pious.
With a telos, the mind has a base; without this it “will inevitably get bounced around by all sorts of distractions, and it will just keep taking on the shape of whatever external stimulus it comes across next.”[ii] This sounds like a classic description of the untethered mind “doomscrolling” Twitter, submerged in a sea on conflicting, erroneous, angry, disturbing thoughts which merely serve to make the subject anxious and uncertain. As does the advice to avoid “bad habits and pointless chitchat, or [becoming] entangled in mundane preoccupations and unnecessary concerns” it poisons the heart the way a mills can grind poisonous seed as well as it can nutritious seed.
Abba Moses tells us that intrusive thoughts cannot be prevented but can be expelled. In many respects this self-control is a legacy of the Stoics, who urged that men make themselves resistant to internal pressures and temptations. Memorising a verse or prayer is suggested – one that can be repeated endlessly rather than only at times of distraction. Abba Isaac’s mantra was “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me!”[iii] Guidance and repetition are the cornerstones of education. One monk even recommends learning and meditating upon holy writings to the extent of blocking out childhood memories. One might consider this the breeding ground of the fanatic but it is also the training regime of an ascetic; there is little to separate them.
These are obviously Christian goals that frame the role of meditation. There are specific discussions about prayer – should prayers of different types be combined or delegated to different monks? Are certain monks more suited to certain types of prayer? Choosing a constant prayer will transform your responses to life. “May you nod off while you’re meditating on this verse, until you’ve become so conditioned to the constant practice of it that you chant it even while you’re fast asleep. May it be the first thing to greet you when you wake up. May it anticipate all the thoughts you’ll have when you’re awake. May it usher you to kneel when you rise from your bed, and then from there, may it conduct you through all your deeds and affairs. May it always be at your side.”[iv] This brings comfort to the devotee but alarms the layman, as it should. The way of the acolyte is exceptionally arduous and few are capable of the rigours required.
The necessity for concentration and devotion are aspirations for exceptional men, who set aside family, wealth, worldly pleasure to do praise to God. In some respects the advice is aimed at the most dedicated, men (and women, in the form of nuns) who cut themselves off from the world in order to do spiritual battle. This is what Julius Evola might describe as being in the world without being of the world. In other words, acting decisively and existing consciously in today but always attempting to keep distance from the limitations of one’s period by keeping in mind the expansive sequence of eras.
In a way, these lessons could be of particular help for all outsiders who deliberately turn their backs upon the way of the world – those who called to devote themselves to a cause and must abjure earthly distraction. For those whose calling is production of cultural material, or building networks that benefit their community without necessarily gaining materially or even being able to acknowledge their work publicly, these strictures regarding self-restraint and determination are worthwhile reminders of man’s everlasting struggles. One ancient speaks sympathetically of the monks who farm and therefore need to leave isolation periodically to mix with villagers, which brings about agitation and temptation.
Here we get to the crux of the difficulty with this guide to concentration. Namely, that the advice given by Cassian is specifically for the religious initiate seeking a path to redemption in the kingdom of God. Attempting to extract these particular recommendations from the telos – or ultimate end – is difficult and a touch misleading. It suggests that such serious devotion to the salvation of the soul may be equivalent to gaining fame, succeeding in a career, raising a family and so on. These are aims quite distinctly different from those of monks, who are called to leave earthly appetites behind. Now, we might argue that the means of concentration and mindfulness are ones that can be applied to multiple and quite different ends than those in the mind of Cassian and his wise interlocutors, but surely intention shapes advice, just as the experiences of meditation shape the character of the insights gleaned.
Jamie Kreiner, selector and translator, is aware of these limitations. In his introduction he agrees that there is a gulf between our mentality and those of Cassian and the late Roman Christian holy men. The editors of the Princeton series too often project their own political concerns and social mores into the task of selecting and translating ancient authors, for surely much the value of ancient texts resides in the unique worldviews they present and the distance from our time. This is not the case here, Kreiner is admirably detached, although some may differ on his translation choices. Only readers will be able to judge if this book succeeds in bridging the divide between the holy and secular and between ancient times and modern. I sense it does, others may disagree.
John Cassian, Jamie Kreiner (trans, intro.), How to Focus: A Monastic Guide for an Age of Distraction, Princeton University Press, 2024, hardback, Latin/English text, 257 pp + xxx, $17.95/£14.99, ISBN 978 0 691 20808 4
Edvard Munch, “Friedrich Nietzsche”, 1906, oil on canvas, 201 x 160 cm
“The publication of a first English translation of Nietzsche’s notebooks provides further views on aesthetics, which I have previously covered here. Part 1 is here (free); part 2 is here (paid subscribers only). Friedrich Nietzsche, J.M. Baker Jr, Christiane Hertel (trans.), Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Dawn (Winter 1879/80-Spring 1881), is the thirteenth of nineteen volumes in the Stanford University Press edition of the German-language Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke has been published. It covers the notebooks from late 1879 to early 1881, at a time when Nietzsche was writing Dawn (Morgenröthe, 1881), the second book of his “free spirit” trilogy. Even a well-informed Nietzsche reader may draw a blank at that, as it is the least widely read of his books. These notes relate to a critique of the generation of morals, particularly the topics of dissimulation and self-deception, the subjects of Dawn. The title refers to the potential rebirth of modern man, freed from the shackles of Judeo-Christian religion and worldview, led by great self-actualised men – the Übermenschen.
“The philosopher succinctly summarises his primary concern in this period like so: “The greatest problem of the coming age is the eradication of moral concepts and the cleansing from our representations of moral forms or colors that have crept into them and are often difficult to recognize.”[i] He meditates on the nature of morality and how it arises and if some different system of values can govern man’s conduct. Christian morality divides people (according to their characters) into obedient slaves or mindless enforcer. Both act from character, rather than making value judgements based on personal and social good. The claims that Christian morality has the right to be considered normative (as per Pascal) are spurious, Nietzsche contends – as outlined in many of his published books. “[…] Christianity takes no pleasure in the human being.”[ii]
“Nietzsche rails against misguided egalitarianism, democracy, socialism and (of course) Christianity, which he sees at the root of modern European man’s slave morality and the ultimate cause of many of civilisation’s parlous state. He sees a levelling of people as a rebellion against natural inequality and exceptional men. It makes men manageably pliable. However, Nietzsche opens the door to individualism for its own sake – the myth of meritocracy, which allows the collectivised minority to seize its power and advantages and (ultimately) its supremacy, as Gaetano Mosca argued. There are few autobiographical comments, but these are indirect and brief, so the reader only averagely acquainted with the philosopher’s life will be able to glean anything from them.
“He wonders at the alienness of Judaism, which has been incorporated into European thinking through Christianity, and notes that the words of the Old Testament are (perhaps paradoxically) more accessible to us than the ancient Greeks and Romans. He repeatedly describes morality as Asian – i.e. derived from the Semitic people of the Near East – and finds it unfitting for Europeans; he also adds that considers Stoicism Semitic. Valuations determine both our personal responses, interpersonal relations and society as a whole; if moral valuations can be altered, or the whole system abolished, then human capacity is freed…”
As usual, my sets of three original linocut prints are launched the first day of every quarter. The next one will be on 1 January 2024, becoming available for purchase exclusively via Imperium Press. This year we have a long-standing favourite, a political theory heavyweight and a figure from Orthodox Christian theology. Here are the three prints previewed exclusively for paid subscribers to my Substack channel.
“H.P. Lovecraft” American horror-fiction author
Edition of 60
Size 23 x 17 cm (image)
Paper Satogami (80 gsm, off white) 35.5 x 25.5 cm, Somerset (300gsm, off white) 38 x 28 cm
Price: $45 Somerset, $55 Satogami
“Gaetano Mosca” Italian political scentist
Edition of 50
Size 23 x 17 cm (image)
Paper Satogami (80 gsm, off white) 35.5 x 25.5 cm, Somerset (300 gsm, off white) 38 x 28 cm
Price: $45 Somerset, $55 Satogami
“Konstantin Leontiev” Russian theologian and author
Edition of 50
Size 20 x 15cm (image)
Paper Satogami (80 gsm, off white) 35.5 x 25.5 cm, Somerset (300 gsm, off white) 38 x 28 cm
Weight: 35 g Somerset, 10 g Satogami
Price: $40 Somerset, $45 Satogami
It was great to work on these. The Lovecraft image is a development of an earlier print that was never editioned or offered for sale. For the first time it becomes available to collectors and fans. It was previously my avatar image for YouTube and Twitter. “Mosca” is a strong image of the Italian author in old age. His writings helped me understand elite power theory, not least through his observation that the organised minority triumphs over the disorganised majority. “Leontiev” is perhaps the least known. He was a Russian theologian and author, who entered religious order near the end of an eventful life. The symbol in the top left is the Orthodox cross. This print is based on an early image of the Slavic nationalist who worked as a diplomat and developed an idea of trans-Slavic political-cultural renaissance. It was exciting to move away from Western European writers and expand the range of the set.
From a technical point of view, there is a departure. The Satogami paper has proved very popular and this set uses that paper again. As the Zerkall papermill has now closed, there will be limited stock in future before it depletes. So, I have moved from Zerkall to Somerset Satin 300 gsm, pure cotton, off-white paper. This is much heavier than the Zerkall and gives a lovely surface. In future, all the prints will be printed on Satogami and Somerset.
I hope that collectors will be as enthusiastic about this new set as they have been about previous ones. Be first to acquire copies by visiting Imperium Press website on 1 Jan. 2024. Delivery is worldwide. https://www.imperiumpress.org/merch/
Three designs of Christmas cards featuring paintings by me are now available for purchase and shipping worldwide. These cards, which fold to A6 size, are printed on silk-finish card and are supplied with envelopes. Prices start at £1.75 per card and envelope and can be reduced by purchasing in quantity. Get your orders in now in time to post these special cards in time for Christmas!
Disentangling the writing and life of German artist-author Unica Zürn (1916-1970) is both impossible and unnecessary. By inclination, I try to detach my criticism and understanding of art and literature from biography, principally because the tendency to biographise readings tends to both simplify and flatten the artistic achievement. It also expands inexorably. Having discovered a key to art – literally analogised in the phrase “roman à clef” (French, “novel with key”) – the reader starts to apply this thinking indiscriminately and universally by seeking to find actual-life sources for all of the contents of the art. This bleeds into a desire to establish the validity of the art in terms of accuracy to the life. That, of course, is not why the art was made and not how it can be best (or, perhaps, even usefully?) judged.
As Malcolm Green, translator of two books by Zürn, puts it: “Unica Zürn’s biography is inextricably interwoven with her work, and above all with the present book. Her texts are largely autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, and move between her fantasies, and later on her hallucinations, and the concrete events surrounding a series of serious mental crises, which in turn are catalysed by her writing.”[i]
Zürn was born in Grunewald, Berlin. Her happy childhood was extinguished when her parents divorced and the family house was sold and her father’s collection of exotic curios was auctioned off. She worked for UFA, the German national film studio in the 1930s and throughout the war. The collapse of the Nazi government and the exposure of atrocities in the death and concentration camps destabilised her, triggering a breakdown. Feelings of war guilt combined with latent schizophrenia – which now manifested itself in psychotic breaks, hallucinations, obsessional behaviour, episodes of disassociation and depression – which would determine the shape of her life thereafter. Divorce and separation from her children isolated her further from domesticity and routine. In the 1940s and 1950s, she wrote numerous stories and radio plays, making a modest living from writing.
In 1953 she met Hans Bellmer, whose art and writing she greatly admired, and consequently moved to Paris, where she maintained her difficult but fruitful relationship-cum-collaboration. Zürn became a model-muse for Bellmer, and subject of some erotic photographs, while Bellmer became a useful sounding board for Zürn’s ideas and writing. (The original manuscript of The Man of Jasmine omits her name and is instead ascribed to “the wife of Hans Bellmer”.) Both were difficult individuals but they did sustain each other until 1969. How the series of miscarriages that she experienced during these years affected her is uncertain.
The Man of Jasmine is a novella which was written between 1965 and 1967 and was published posthumously. Novella (subtitled “Impressions from a mental illness”) is a description that fails to convey the peculiar qualities of the writing. It is broadly narrative, describing the author’s mental crises that precipitated arrest and compulsory institutionalisation in asylums. The author flits in and out of self-awareness about how distorted her behaviour is. Numerological obsessions are recorded without any comment, as are her fixations on talismanic signs, such as the initials “HM”, symbolic to Zürn of admired author Herman Melville and poet Henri Michaux, whom she met and with whom she took hallucinogenic drugs.
Jasmine conforms to the author’s life and describes incidents unique to her, mainly covering her post-war life in Germany and her time in a mental asylum following her arrest for failing to pay for a haircut and her inability to deal with the consequences. Some of the incidental images and stories are all the more powerful for being described so briefly. It was in institutions that Zürn started drawing. These drawings attracted first professional interest then commercial and critical interest. When attached to the Surrealists in Paris, her drawings were exhibited. She explained the obsessive repetition and expansion of her drawings like so: “[…] I couldn’t stop working on this drawing, or didn’t want to, because I experienced endless pleasure while doing it. I wanted the drawing to carry on over the edges of the paper – to infinity…”[ii] Drawings depict invented heads or fantastic animals with detailed improvised scales, feathers or patterning. Before departing Berlin, Zürn destroyed most of her drawings, something she came to regret.
[Unica Zurn, Automatic Drawing, 1956-8]
“In her madness she considers it a boon to be with children who believe in the possibility of miracles, like herself.”[iii] She experiences some kinship with fellow inmates but at other times she finds them strange or exasperating. She recounts events coolly. “Tied to her bed in [restraining] suit like one crucified, she begins to cry bitterly. She has never felt such self-pity before. It is very humiliating to find yourself in a s strait-jacket. She is given the gift of an injection and she falls asleep.”[iv] In general, an absence of self-analysis gives the narrative a peculiar mixture of fantastic and banal, akin to a dream journal. And, after all, self-analysis is less interesting than simply describing things and allowing readers to take the meaning – psychological, personal, poetic – from that, as they will.
Other texts in the Atlas edition of The Man of Jasmine are short texts, including one that explicitly draws an analogy between a patient experienced sexual delirium and the creations of Bellmer. “In this posture (the moment of rapture) the woman resembles one of those astonishing cephalopods that Bellmer has often drawn: women consisting of just a head and abdomen, their arms replaced by legs. In other words, she has no arms. She even has the protruding tongue of Bellmer’s drawings of cephalopods; there is something outrageous about it.”[v]
Hans Bellmer, Cephalopod (1965)
The other stories and propositions in the volume – including one for a game of two (a man and woman only) which is for the fabrication of remarkable fantasies – display Zürn’s facility for invention, association and verbal fluency. She was noted for her elaborate anagrams, which satisfied the Surrealist practice of seeking out unexpected hidden meanings in found materials.
The House of Illnesses is an account of the author’s stay in a hospital while being treated for jaundice in 1958. It reproduces in English translation the German manuscript in facsimile, including illustrations with text. It does justice to the layout and character of the original text. In the story, the protagonist tells of her time being examined by Dr Mortimer, whose actions reveal that her carers understood that her physical malady was accompanied by a separate psychological condition. He transforms into a militaristic figure who can deliver lethal injections as a mercy. She inhabits a hospital with different zones, some delightful, others that make nauseous with their grotesque bodily associations. (Surely, a guide to the author’s aversions.) Eventually the narrator liberates herself, healing naturally. The book is lighter than her others and has more whimsy than obsession about it, though one could not dismiss it as lightweight. Some readers will no doubt draw analogies between The House of Illnesses and the writings of Leonora Carrington.
Zürn’s fate was to act out one of her fatal fantasies. After she was hospitalised and Bellmer was crippled by a stroke, she returned to spend a last night with him and then (the following morning) jump to her death from the window of the apartment. Five years later, Bellmer was laid to rest next to her. Her art and writing has been recognised more since her death, with new editions of her writings and exhibitions of her drawings bringing her to the attention of new generations. This is not just due to the wave of feminist-driven reappraisal of women artists. Zürn’s work is genuinely original and distinctive and her writings deserve these first translations into English.
Zürn spans the division between professional and outsider artists in a unique way. She was a professional writer before she commenced her more personal and fantastical stories. In the 1940s and early 1950s she wrote stories and radio-play scripts that conformed to conventional expectations; they were published and produced professionally. Yet what she produced later, sometimes under institutional confinement and subject to medication, could be regarded as outsider art. The forms that this late work takes are the repetitive flat drawing and the interior monologue. The artist was untrained and worked spontaneously; the writing often lacks a cohesive structure and is stimulated by the occurrence of associative thoughts. These are typical of the outsider producer, even if they were made by someone who had worked professionally in cinema and radio.
How much of an outsider was Zürn? She was untrained as an artist but she revised her later writings for publication and some were published in her lifetime. She exhibited and sold art; she published with the Surrealists and her partner was Bellmer, a senior Surrealist. We should not think of her as adopting a faux-naïf persona but rather working in a way that Matisse and Picasso did, internalising the example of art of children and non-Western makers to open up new avenues of expression, although in Zürn’s case it was less detached. She was attempting to access and record inner impulses in the most direct manner possible. Her writings are more effective for being as they are, rather than presented as clear delusions being described in the context of dispassionate clinical analysis conducted in retrospect. Furthermore, would such a latter approach even be feasible for someone in the grip of schizophrenia, albeit with phases of calmness? It was the mental agitation that prompted her to write and draw as she did. In that respect, her production is a map of the mind of the maker and a tool to alleviate distress. Whatever the cause, and wherever she falls in the categorisation of professional/outsider, Zürn’s art and writing is well worth becoming acquainted with.
Unica Zürn, Malcolm Green (trans., afterword), The House of Illnesses, Atlas Books, 2019, 96pp, hardback, £13.50, ISBN 978 1913407 001
Unica Zürn, Malcolm Green (trans., intro.), The Man of Jasmine & Other Texts, Atlas Books, 2020, 192pp, hardback, £17.50, ISBN 978 1 900565 820
“While in my hotel room in Brussels I tuned in the television to an arts discussion programme. I rarely watch television except when in hotels and passing by screens in public spaces. After a day of constant walking and standing around a city – detached from the umbilical cord of the internet – I might turn on a news programme or a new film (i.e. one released in the last decade) dubbed into one of the languages I can vaguely follow. The sheer novelty of having access to a television is more of a distraction than anything I actually see (I can’t say “watch”) on the screen. “Mont des Arts” discussion programme had the chyron “Brussels Museums – is the latest step too far?” It was about the importance of cultural tourism to the economy of Brussels. The prompt was the latest initiative: a night of the museums – already a familiar concept to residents of Berlin and other major European cities – where 33 museums open late and audiences can visit overnight, for the price of a ticket, naturally.
“In the Low Countries, but specifically in the major cities and some more historically noteworthy towns, culture is big business. Starved over lean COVID years, institutions, councils, governments and various tourism agencies are raring to win back visitors and redress deficits that saw cuts in budgets and staff. But culture is not like sausage production; you can’t simply add a few staff to a factory and increase your production by 15%. Museums have finite capacity, not withstanding measures to channel visitors in a more efficient manner, and greater numbers means reduced quality of experience. The depressing site of a blank wall instead of a masterpiece is a common experience; loans to temporary exhibitions are the down side of the current museum ecosystem.
“Musée Magritte has just reopened after refurbishment. Decals of Magrittian imagery have appeared on walls across the city and on top of the museum a giant green apple has been plonked….”
Following the success of the author linocut prints launched on 1 July, I am pleased to reveal the next set of prints. They will be launched on 1 October, for fulfilment in October/November. In this post I shall show the new prints and some of the preparation for them.
The first stage is selecting which authors are suitable for the series. I am focusing on dissident authors who could be called reactionaries, rebels, conservatives and counter elites. Some of the authors’ writings I know well, others only slightly. I move between figures who are meaningful for me and those who are highly regarded by others. The chosen author’s source images are assessed. The chosen test images have to be striking images, preferably typical or recognisable, but not necessarily iconic. In fact, the iconic image is sometimes unsuitable because its familiarity can render it benign or banal. The best image is one that is identifiable but also new. This is often a difficulty when one deals with an obscure author with relatively few accessible photographic portraits. In the case of Joseph de Maistre, I worked from a painted portrait.
[“Knut Hamsun”, preparatory ink wash drawing at the initial outline stage]
I will draw the subject a number of times, using different sources, becoming familiar with the appearance. I will then make alterations. These are mainly simplifications, as the linocut requires radical reduction in detail and form, but it may also include adding a new background. Above you see the profile of Knut Hamsun placed in a Scandinavian landscape appropriate to the themes and locales of the Norwegian writer’s books. Once the design is worked out, a test is done in ink wash. This is black only, with no grey. This is to simulate the appearance of a linocut and intended to see how the design works. Sometimes there will be no changes between this and the transference on to the plate, although there are generally a couple of alterations, usually matters of shading. Occasionally, the drawing will reveal that the design is weak and will have to be abandoned.
The design is transferred from the ink painting to the surface of a lino plate, which is then cut. The cut plate is inked, covered with paper and run through a press. The resultant proof is then checked to see it conforms with the artist’s expectations. When the proofs are dry, they are signed and numbered by the artist, assigning each a unique number, “1/55” and so on. Later, the plate is destroyed so that there can be no extra prints. The artist usually keeps a few for himself. These are marked “A/P” (artist’s proof).
These prints will be on two types of paper, a very clean, thick, slightly off-white paper made in Germany called “Zerkall” and a thinner, slightly creamy, speckled paper made in Japan called “Satogami”. The Satogami paper is more expensive and there are fewer proofs on this paper, making those rarer. That is why the Satogami proofs are slightly more expensive than the Zerkall ones.
Here are the three new prints to be launched in the autumn.
Julius Evola, Italian philosopher and cultural critic, linocut, edition 50 proofs, image 20 x 15.3 cm, paper (Zerkall) 26.5 x 24 cm, paper (Satogami) 35.5 x 25.5 cm
Knut Hamsun, Norwegian author, linocut, edition 50 proofs, image 23 x 20 cm, paper (Zerkall) 35 x 26.5 cm, paper (Satogami) 35.5 x 25.5 cm
Gabriele d’Annunzio, Italian novelist, linocut, edition 50 proofs, image 23 x 17 cm, paper (Zerkall) 35 x 26.5 cm, paper (Satogami) 35.5 x 25.5 cm
alexanderadamsart 