Bad Manners — A review of two words
On two counts this is a departure from the writing usually published here. First, the subject matter is not in any way digital and second, it centres on two words of the exhibition text. Bad Manners[1] was an exhibition at Luxembourg + Co, a Saville Row based gallery, and was curated by Yuval Etgar and Jake Chapman, of Jake & Dinos who are now artistically separated.[2] It concerned “the Creative Potentials of Modifying Other Artists’ Work” and accordingly featured some nineteen works that are played as singular, paired, triptych or sequential variables[3] on this theme.
We see Marcel Duchamp removing a mirror from Enrico Baj’s studio before it could be smashed and turned into a collage, next to one of Baj’s colleges incorporating fragmented shards. The artist appropriates material and interrupts a process. Martin Kippenberger turns a Gerhard Richter into a coffee table and Wade Guyton repurposes the steel frame of a discarded Marcel Breuer chair, claiming the altered remains as a sculpture. Sherrie Levine makes inverted watercolours of pieces by Man Ray and Kazimir Malevich. Jake and Dinos coat eighty Goya etchings in varying degrees of glitter. Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman take near-identical photographic disguised portraits. Honda imitates Fischli and Weiss’ kinetic video.[4] And so on.
Read in its expanded remit, Chapman and Etgar’s conception of collaboration can thus be interpreted as ranging along a spectrum from intergenerational homage, to the necessary (and physical) destruction of predecessors, and all the way to unattributed theft of ideas. Outside the exhibitions remit is a further form of expanded colonial ‘collaboration’, which feels amiss considering many of the featured artists — Manet, Cezanne, Man Ray, Duchamp — lived through a period in which othered influences were incorporated into a European art historical cannon.[5] However, this is not where my grievance rests, it isn’t in the lack of addressing one subject[6] but in the deliberate but covert evocation of another.
“dedicated to the role of non-consensual and otherwise unusual collaborations”[7]
A hyphenated term, ‘non-consensual’ does not necessarily refer to acts of a sexual nature, however, in the current post-MeToo era it most certainly carries this association. Out of the eight “recent examples” listed by the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, seven are related to sexual acts or the distribution of sexualised images.[8] Associations which Chapman, famous for deliberately courting controversy and not only trending on but also grinding egg shells, and Etgar, an RCA and Ruskin School educated curator and art historian with a specialism in image appropriation, most certainly should have been aware of.
Reading and re-reading this statement I was alone in the gallery and not having my wife by my side or any art gallery-crawling partner to vent to, I ended up asking the gallery attendant, a young women in her mid-twenties,[9] whether she was aware if this term had been employed to provoke? Of course she could not say, though a previous visitor had raised the issue. She was not privy to any of the conversations that took place between Chapman and Etgar, and I sense out of professionalism she would not concede[10] whether she felt the curators might have been conscious of the connotations. Though as I’ve suggested I cannot fathom how they were not.
We agreed that there are few useful synonyms[11] for non-consensual or at least those that exist do not have the same visceral nature. The best may be non-voluntary which does not carry the same weight. Next our conversation wandered into a discussion of the absence of more sexually non-consensual collaborations between artists and their muses, another major area unrepresented in the selection of works.[12] Two influential male sculptures spring to mind, firstly Rodin and his treatment of the artist Camille Claudel.[13] And secondly, Marc Quinn in regards to his actions against Jenny Bastet,[14] which came to light in 2020 when Bastet spoke out following Quinn erecting without local council permission a statue of BLM protestor Jen Reid.
An inclusion or allusion to either of these problematic figures may have created a space for the term ‘non-consensual’ to be discussed within the gallery’s walls. Instead beyond a set of works regarding Manet’s Olympia[15] the selection seemingly avoids any issue of the male gaze or the violence men do against women. Or sexual violence between people of any gender for that matter. ‘Non-consensual’ as used in the press release becomes a dead-end, a red herring, which once realised is revealed to be nothing more than a tactic to startle or offend, and can only be judged as being deliberately cruel. The fact that it exists in the very first sentence only raises the probability that Chapman and Etgar knew its potency and were keen to upset.
Where I would like to end is with this, it is not Chapman or Etgar who bear the brunt of this criticism.[16] They are insulated behind layers of infrastructure: I can dig up their emails[17] but they are free to ignore that; I could communicate my concern to the gallery,[18] though why would they pass those comments along; I can write this review but it is ultimately ineffectual. The only real recourse to action I have is to speak to the gallery attendant. She is the frontline who speaks to me and who considers these issues. Issues that may burden her day, may trouble her, may cause undue harm. Issues that I have put upon her non-consensually.
[1] Not the two words concerned, wait for it. [2] Across Mayfair Jake’s ‘first solo-show’ Me, Myself and Eye at Paradise Row has also recently concluded. The press have paid significant interest in the unamicable breakup of the YBA bad boys. I could not care less, whatever the details of the split they did very well from each other these past 20+ years and J dumping on D comes reads as a man unable to define himself except in opposition to his brother. [3] In order of the exhibition text the combinations are: triptych, diptych, diptych, single, single, single, collection (80 works), double diptych, single, diptych, single and single. [4] My following grievances aside, the works brought together in Bad Manners truly illustrate cannibalistic artistic practice, which to anyone acquainted with the names on show is a rich, entertaining and rewarding fragment of art history. [5] Much could also be said about Chapman’s colonial aesthetics, in 2002 The Chapman Family Collection felt like a biting critique of colonial legacies and neo-colonial corporations, as well as being a parody of Picasso’s use of African masks in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, etc. Now twenty years later I am far more uncomfortable with the works produced for Paradise Row, a mix of Africanised statues, incense holders and Extinction Rebellion aesthetics. [6] To be fair I did not purchase the exhibition catalogue and it may very well have an essay on this theme. The gallery’s website does explain that the publication includes discussions on “a drawing by Pablo Picasso signed as Henri Matisse” and so may contain a diversion into how Picasso in particular picked from African influences. However, in general it seems to fixate on artist-on-artist events and not on wider cultural absorption. [7] Added bold for effect, not present in the original press release. [8] The eighth concerns a lawsuit being pursued by the family of Henrietta Lacks, whose unlawfully obtained cells have been used in scientific research for decades. [9] For what it is worth I note the immediate problematics of a thirty something man asking a younger woman about this subject. I have no idea of her personal experience and whether the subject itself may be triggering to her. It was also something we discussed in our conservation and if any harm was done and if she ever happens to read this, please accept my apologies. [10] Again the use of ‘concede’ here is a deliberate suggestion of the pressure power dynamic implicit in this conversation which darkly echoes the subject. [11] Spending some time dredging through online thesaurus I cannot find another term that quite captures what non-consensual means. One close term was ‘coercive’ but the onus is more specifically on the guilty party and not the violated party, whilst non-consensual is situated more equally between them when describing the nature of the relationship. [12] In the same order as footnote four the gender relationships are: M>M-M, MM>M, M>M, F>M, M>M, M>M, M>MM, M>F M>F, M-F, M-M, M>M, MM>C>M (with M=Male, F=Female, C=Corporation, >=Direction of Authority (e.g. the party to the right has control), and -=Equal Authority (e.g. a collaboration). The one instance of F>M is a work by Jean Arp which used torn fragments of Sophie Taueber-Arp’s work following her death. This act is more commemorative than controlling. [13] In our conversation I could not actually recall Claudel’s name, which hardly adds to my credentials in this matter. [14] Bastet had posted on Instagram that Quinn objectified her body for the 2017 series All About Love and subsequently refused to let her see the works, contributing to a mental breakdown. At the time the work was produced Bastet and Quinn had been in a relationship. [15] Though the exhibition text does note Olympia’s challenge of the male gaze by gazing back at us the viewer, the majority of the concerning text is about the interplay between Manet, Cezanne and Chapman. The woman is mostly omitted. [16] What I feel is important to highlight is the essential enabling factor. There is an unaccountability to Chapman and Etgar that permits them to think callously about language, to consider it and people as toys to manipulate. Potentially this criticism is overwrought, I have spent nearly 900 words (plus a lot of footnotes) complaining about two, yet I do consider it important to be rigorous both in our analysis of language. It is our foremost tool and one which forms the conditions of the world around us. [17] I’m currently looking into this. [18] And this as a back up option. If I get a reply for either I’ll make sure to update this text.
