Anguish

Detail of the hand puppet made for the dog mutation in The Thing.

Detail of the left front quadrant showing the heart mould made of rubber mud, attached with glue-drenched strips of cotton fabric.

Grief denied will surface in borrowed clothes, the mad, sad clothes of paranoia, fear or loneliness”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

Like a good British person, I have tried to learn the stiff upper lip, to keep negative emotions in a teapot with the lid on. Sometimes, however, emotional pain must be discharged. It is messy and prickly and feels as though it will never end, but to hold onto it, to suppress it, is to invite further pain, both physical and emotional. I have learned this too. Procrastination, though, is addictive. The piece languished in a dark ditch in my brain until by chance...

Firstly, I was reminded of the genius of Aubrey Beardsley. Those sinuous lines, almost clinical and stark in their simplicity, convey so much. Despite the occasional grotesquerie of the subject matter, his swirls and swoops of art nouveau-influenced beauty convey depth, perspective, emotion – and remain resolutely elegant. While his work could be busily baroque, there is usually a pleasing sense of minimalism, not a line wasted, a technique I absolutely covet.

Beardsley was influenced by the clean lines of Japanese woodcuts, and his use of the restrained, monochramatic style for which he became known combined with subject matter of excess, decadence and eroticism led to dynamic creations. They have a depth that should not be possible. He worked obsessively, perhaps aware that his career would be cut short. Beardsley suffered with tuberculosis and died at the
age of 25.

The second spur came from a very unlikely source – John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing. Yes. The special effects are gory, gruesome and very moist. There are lines of Beardsian beauty within the horror such graceful balanced swirls. They caught my eye the first time I saw the film as a teenager. These two elements combined and I found myself reaching for the old polystyrene mannequin torso which was to be my object in this exercise. This is the result.

It was important that the faces were as androgynous as possible, and stark. The wire had to be thick enough to cast shadow, and soft enough for me to bend along the lines of the paints. Copper and enamelled aluminium looked good, but only bare aluminium gave me the soft waves I wanted. The anatomical heart is slightly large, but not enough to cause concern. It was mould-made with ‘rubber mud’, a substance I discovered in Shanghai and have not been able to find in the West, probably for good reasons.

This involved some techniques that I’d not tried before, a lot of patience, and going on to other things while waiting for substances to dry. The torso, which was old and crumbling in parts, was cleaned and the holes filled. The hollow neck was filled with paper towel soaked in a 50/50 mix of acrylic paint and pva. Then the torso was painted with two layers of thick acrylic paint and allowed to dry. The faces were sketched on paper, then traced onto rectangles of thin cotton with hard pencil to avoid blurring. The fabric was applied to the torso with plain pva. Further strips of cotton filled in gaps. The faces were redrawn with watercolour pens, and finished with permanent ink pens. Two coats of spray varnish were then applied and allowed to dry before the wires were inserted. There was some experimentation with wire placement to ensure that the piece did not topple. Even with all the wire, the piece is still very lightweight. It was placed on a turntable under a 60w lightbulb to make best use of the shadows cast by the wire

It is by no means a Beardsian masterpiece. However, in making this I experimented with techniques I’d not tried before. More than that, I was able to access emotions (to a certain extent) that could then be transferred onto the mannequin. I am particularly pleased with the shadows created by the wires, I feel they communicate the meandering and intangible waves of emotion we all experience. It would be an interesting project to enlarge this, to perhaps work with a full mannequin, or even simply a shape – a column or sphere.

So I’d call this phase one, and adequate.

Anguish (2020) Polystyrene torso, pva glue, acrylic paint, watercolour paint, cotton fabric, aluminium wire, turntable.

Detail of some of the faces on the mannequin torso, with wire and shadowing

Aubrey Beardsley (1896) Salome and her Mother