Macabre *Not For Everyone*

fftopic: But oh well, do forgive me.

I was sitting in a world cultures back in Sophomore year. And we were talking about culture shock. The one example we got was, The such-and-such tribe from somewhere drinks out of human skulls, now why do you think they do that?
I couldn't resist.
For flavor?

Phil said:

fftopic: But oh well, do forgive me.

I was sitting in a world cultures back in Sophomore year. And we were talking about culture shock. The one example we got was, The such-and-such tribe from somewhere drinks out of human skulls, now why do you think they do that?
I couldn't resist.
For flavor?

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Culturally insensitive. 10 demerits.

I love it. Get me some. My birthday is in Feb.

Closest I have come to making bone art is a pipe out of which I used to smoke tobacco that my friend, a butcher, made out of a pig bone. I smoked out of it for years. Only a few friends refused to touch their lips to it.

As for the crazed German plastinator mentioned above, I went to his exhibit in LA. "Bodyworlds." (It is featured in the newest James Bond movie.) I didn't see the kitsch in it and found it fascinating (not that kitsch would turn me off).

Doran said:

As for the crazed German plastinator mentioned above, I went to his exhibit in LA. "Bodyworlds." (It is featured in the newest James Bond movie.) I didn't see the kitsch in it and found it fascinating (not that kitsch would turn me off).

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I was surprised at how heavy the liver was, even without the fava beans and chianti.

Story said:

I was surprised at how heavy the liver was, even without the fava beans and chianti.

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Thank you Mr Hopkins.

jake_fink said:

Witkin, for example, I have problems with. He took his subjects from the city morgue in Mexico; most of them were homeless and "unclaimed", therefore, they could not have given their consent to Witkin for the work he would then do with their remains - like sawing a head just about in half, and then pulling it apart like a clamshell so it looked like the two pieces were kissing. nom de prout?

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I respect your opinion, but I also love JP Witkin. I suppose that I love (i.e. react in a very positive emotional way) some things that are not morally defensible. But art has often been like that. e.g. Pauline Reage.

Doran said:

I respect your opinion, but I also love JP Witkin. I suppose that I love (i.e. react in a very positive emotional way) some things that are not morally defensible. But art has often been like that. e.g. Pauline Reage.

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Pauline Reage was the author of Story of 'O' was she not? A somewhat specious comparison. I don't easily offend, and the sex or violence depicted in works of the imagination are all fair game as far as I'm concerned - though both are often used in works without substance (or a clue) to make up for other deficiencies (Sin City for example).

I'll put it this way: If someone says or indicates via a will or other document that they WANT to be turned into art, or have their legs donated to a lamp maker or have their innards ground up into baloney sandwiches then I have no argument against the objects that result that is not just aesthetic, and therefore a mere matter of taste.

The only "moral" reservation I have is in the case of a subject who has not given their consent, whether that subject is a living person made an internet porn "star" by a nasty ex, or a deceased subject who has every right to the dignity of interment but has been "found" by an artist and made into art like some dropped ticket stub or cigarette butt from Schwitters' merzbau.

The Witkin is particulary infuriating to me because - and I tread carefully for my argument edges into the politcal - the subjects were NOBODIES, homeless people, essentially street refuse to be used by a middle-class artist whose concerns are aesthetic and not in any meaningful way connected to the betterment of the lives of those - and others like those - who he used. Pure scumbaggery in my opinion. The trade in human remains is also fraught with issues of class and exploitation.

Finally, just to forestall any misunderstandings, even if the remains in question were those of kings and robber barons, I'd stand by my argument that no-one has the right to make (especially commercial) use of human remains without the subject's prior consent.

That's really all I have to say. Sorry folks. Back to the jokes.

Jake Fink, those are all very good points you made. Something to chew on.

The only things I can say at this point are:

1. I need concrete evidence that the persons in question did not give their permission before I can abhor Witkin.
2. I am still able to respond to artwork I do not approve of -- you have almost totally addressed this with a good and fair distinction between e.g. The Story of O and the taking of bodies and making art without permission; but from the other end of the tube, I am very uneasy with the idea of a person refusing to feel pleasure from a work of art (or telling himself or other people that he does not feel it) because of non-aesthetic reasons. Your argument is good, but it does remind me a bit of the people in the Social Realist Museum near Lublin in Poland, which is all Stalin era art -- i hate Stalin, but I also hate people who look at portrait paintings that are clearly very very skillful but who say that they think it is bad because they disapprove of Stalin. I feel the same about music. If it moves me, it moves me, and I cannot care too much about whether the drummer or even singer or even lyricist has politics that conflict with my own.
-- But then again, the mistreatment of a body is more than mere politics, one might argue- - and that is why your argument is a good one, and an important one.

I have no conclusion.

Doran,

I'm not asking you to abhor Witkin... far from it. Some of his work is gorgeous, and if you've only ever seen them reproduced you have to see the prints themselves which are also beautifully made objects.. manipulated, glazed and perfectly polished.

My problem is with the work that comes from his time in Mexico. Here is your evidence... perhaps not concrete, but reasonably compelling in-as-much-as it is from a reliable source, an article on Salon:

Witkin's greatest artistic accomplishment may be the deal he was able to work out with a hospital morgue in Mexico City, which allowed him to sift through its daily supply of anonymous corpses picked up from the streets and cavalierly manipulate them into "art." "I am no longer the helpless observer," explains Witkin, "but the objectifier who chooses to share the 'hell' of his confusion visually, rather than confront the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body."

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Here's the link: http://archive.salon.com/people/bc/2000/05/09/witkin/index.html

Ultimately, all I can say is that there are things that are more important than an aesthetic experience, though I believe an aesthetic experience is a deeply necessary and iportant one.

I don't think there can be a conclusion. As with any discussion of art you kind of have to go on a case by case basis. Your Stalin-hating example is a good one... heck, nothing I like more than a good tractor musical - and I wouldn't respect an argument that dismissed one thing out of hand because another thing was disapproved of, as in your drummer's politics example. I'd even say that despite the intensity with which I abhor Ayn rand and her politics and every little thing about her and her worshippers, but if The Fountainhead were anything but a cloth-eared disaster of a pot-boiler I'd have to admire it, as I admire the work of, say F. Celine or Knut Hamsun.

The thing is, however, I am admiring the work as an object, and only if something that I hold to be more important than the aesthetic experience is creamed in the making of that object itself will I run into real problems. There was a case here recently of an artist charged with cruelty to animlas for making a video of the torture and killing of a cat. Art or cruelty? Or art of cruelty?

But that's an easy one.

Foofoogal said:

It only fascinates me in the sense that Victorians were much more comfortable with death.

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In all my years of being in love with all things dark Victorian, I actually find it quite the opposite. It was the incompatibility with death, as I see it, that led them to postmortem photos that showed dead children with their live pets, dead children with their siblings, dead parents with live children, mourning rites that lasted for ages, etc. It was the difficulty in coping with loss that seemed to create the need to ritualize it in such a long standing way.

But I still love mourning jewelry, hair-work, lachrymatory bottles, and mourning warehouses that the Victorian era ushered in.

Excellent and thought-provoking points, my good Fink. I love Celine, personally, and know a guy doing his dissertation on him; and after reading the Frederic Vitoux biography, I feel I understand him. Naturally I do not appreciate what he said about a certain group at all. Knut Hamsun: loved Hunger, but haven't read more ... but that book is before he made any bad political moves, so it wouldn't matter in any case; the same can be said (in fairness, I think) about Celine's Mort a Credit and Voyage Au Bout de la Nuit, but clearly not about his D'un Chateau a l'Autre if you wanted to make distinctions. I suppose the parallel would be Dieudonne in France today; I can imagine enjoying his early work when he ridiculed everyone but perhaps not the recent stuff. The cat example is very good and clear as well.

I actually liked Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, not because I thought it was Dostoevsky in writing quality but because I thought she made her point well. And I am not a libertarian at all.

Your points are very good.