on unexpected art criticism
Olivia Laing’s Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, backless dresses, and pastel wards
21 Jan 22 | Issue 52
First, apologies over there being little philosophy this week. There is, however, by-stealth consumerism in the form of a book recommendation. New subscribers, bear with me, this week was not conducive to the writing of columns. After Bezos in Space [1 ] this was going to be a piece using the ethical theory of utilitarianism to decide whether Elon Musk was being fair or being a twat in moaning about his being doxxed. Not this week though.
It has been a week of surprises, both pleasant and alarming. The pleasant surprise was finding myself in possession of Olivia Laing's Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. Further enhanced by having the time to read it, and discovering it to be thoroughly enjoyable.
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing | Buy here
Art essays are not my normal reading, I didn't even know Olivia Laing wrote them. You may remember me making mention of my sweetheart suffering severe Covid complications these last few weeks. Things came to a head, or rather a neck, last Friday, when having finally been diagnosed and prescribed the correct drugs, we attended a follow up appointment at the hospital to see how the new medication was doing.
What I didn't expect was then seeing Anne trundled off to emergency, followed by a text from her two hours later saying she was being rushed into surgery. This is, of course, the week that my phone decided to go into what Apple refer to as ‘DFU’ mode, but you may more commonly know as paperweight mode. I had also finished my novel.
Never mind Goya's The Horrors of War, can we talk about — for the squeamish like me — the horrors of the emergency waiting room. On my right, a man auditioning for the part of a mental asylum patient predicting many foreboding and dark events, and on my left, a man who was agreeably quiet for ninety minutes until jettisoning an inhuman amount of very dark brown sick across the floor. In a finale that would have finished off even the most steely of stomachs, the orderly cleaning up crafted of this mess what I can only describe as cunningly realistic poo shapes made of vomit. Really not a time to be without a book or phone.
I'm trying to keep this as not too long; didn't read as possible. We'll skim over the part where all my wife's possessions and clothing were handed to me in a clear plastic bag (pausing only to note that I can't think of a single situation where this is a fortuitous event). We can cut straight to the moment when, having miraculously found me sitting outside in the hospital grounds with a clear plastic sack of wife's clothing etc, a large bag of grocery shopping (I went shopping while she had her original appointment, I'm an optimist, fool me), and my own bag, I'm led up the top floor where a doctor will see me.
The doctor is in there, they say.
I enter the room. There, to my alarming, rather than pleasant surprise, instead of said doctor — and I’m using surprise is in the very lightest of terms — is Anne. Unconscious. With a breathing tube coming out of her mouth. In fact, lots and lots of tubes coming out of everywhere.
Having just about processed the situation the doctor appears. Registering the look on my face he tells me that Anne is alright. I can't remember what I said at that point, being somewhat incredulous, but whatever it was Anne must have subconsciously heard my voice. For she suddenly jerked, triggering a loud alarm with red flashing lights.
"Don't worry", he says, "She is fine".
I have gone from incredulous to outright panic.
"This is perfectly normal" the doctor says.
I have had some seriously wild Friday nights, but seeing your wife in a catatonic state with a large tube coming out of her mouth, wired up to a bank of machines that are now on def-con-3 is far beyond the scale of anything I would call normal.
"Yes, perfectly normal" he says.
I am practicing my mouth agape look.
"We will bring her round tomorrow" the doctor says, "she stays another day to make sure". I remember to breathe. I stop looking like a terrified meerkat. Or less like one.
I return home to find a copy of Art in an Emergency has arrived. I didn't order it. Perhaps Anne bought it for me as a gift. I take it to the hospital the next day, expecting to find Anne awake. But she’s not, for they cannot remove the breathing tube— her jaw muscles have seized shut. Of course they have. This and other shenanigans go on all week, including a jovial moment because the doctor took biology at school and not English (and very glad that he did too), mistranslated, saying 'your wife is downstairs awake in recovery' when what he meant was your wife is now back in what appears to me to be an induced coma with, yes, a breathing tube coming out of her mouth, again, but now in a room on her own with twice as many machines and tubing.
So I have had plenty of time to read Art in an Emergency (ward), both to myself, and out loud to a comatose Anne.
I recommend it. Not to art enthusiasts but to everyone. It gambols through an appreciation of modern culture with pieces on, amongst others, Hilary Mantel, David Bowie, Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Hockney. Putting in place art and social movements, particularly the struggle for recognition gay and women artists have gone through. It's never worthy, and unlike some criticism there's very little wheeling out of clever, erudite words. It's plain, direct, humanistic, and above all engrossing.
It's a book I would have never read had it not been for unseen circumstances, where it kept me very good company, taking my mind off calamitous thoughts. My darling is back home safely now, but she's not getting her book back — it turns out it was a present to her from my mother — until I've finished it. Which is I think is about the best recommendation that a book can receive.
You are bound to learn something. I discovered the artist Agnes Martin. What in particular stayed with me was Olivia Laing’s introduction, talking about how art can help in these calamitous times...
Anyone who's spent time on the Internet in the past few years will recognise how it feels to be caught up in paranoid reading. During my years on Twitter, I became addicted to the ongoing certainty that the next click, the next link would bring clarity. I believed that if I read every last conspiracy theory and threaded tweet, the reward would be illumination. I would finally be able to understand not only what was happening but what it meant and what consequences it would have. But a definitive conclusion never came. I'd taken up residence in a hothouse for paranoia, a factory manufacturing speculation and mistrust.
...which struck a chord, as I too have tried to steer away from the incessant click and scroll of news following. Abstaining for peace of mind, instead trying to engage with what's directly around me. Focussing on those people and situations I can directly engage with, helping change for the positive.
Laing elegantly sums this up a few paragraphs later...
At the very end of the essay she briefly, tantalisingly floats the possibility of an altogether different kind of approach, that isn't so much concerned with avoiding danger as with creativity and survival. A useful analogy for what she calls 'reparative reading' is to be fundamentally more invested in finding nourishment than identifying poison. This doesn't mean being naive or undeceived, unaware of crisis or undamaged by oppression. What it does mean is being driven to find or invent something new and sustaining out of inimical environments.
Not following the news also came up as a client conversation topic. They too had stopped based on the advice in a self help book entitled The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions by Rolf Dobelli. Though the reasoning behind abstinence was not avoiding doom mongering, but the premise that if you immerse yourself in everyday news drama, you can not see the big picture. You can not come up with world changing views if you remain too nearsighted. Stepping beyond Foucault’s understanding that cultural views are bound to their historical time.
Looks interesting I thought. I've overpaid in an eBay auction, I've continued to do things that are bad for me. This sounds like a book for me. Then I saw the CEO of Lufthansa Airlines liked it, as did the CEO of McKinsey. They might be nice people but their website is a poster child for late stage capitalism, so no. No thinking beyond the current historical framework for me. Bunch of c-u-n-t-s the world doesn't need. Bezos in Space and Doxxing Elon Musk it is then. Next week.
Although I've already made my recommendation, how could I not recommend Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland? He seems to have quit writing to pursue an art career making Andy Warhol pastiches, but he is one of the turn of the millennium's finest authors, capturing its zeitgeist. This is his greatest novel, a clarion call to wake up and resist the slow heat-death entropy of consumerism.
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland | Buy here
As I was hanging out the washing during my week of house husbandry, I found myself humming Goldfrapp as I unexpectedly pegged up a backless gown, which Anne must have brought home from a previous hospital stay (there's been drama this month). Anne awoke from her coma-lite singing the very same song.
Also, can we stop calling women housewives. Having spent a week trying to juggle shopping, cooking, laundry, and being in the right place at the right time I feel we should be describing their role as Domestic Operations Managers.
This week featured
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Laing
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Illustration by Fatima Fletcher
The amazing artist Fatima Fletcher is artist in residence. The hero image is Ruff Ruff Players © 2020 Fatima Fletcher available as a print if you ask her nicely.
Please show Fatima your love by following and liking every single one of her posts at www.instagram.com/fatima.fletcher, and visiting fatimafletcher.com, where her work is for sale, she is available for commissions.
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References
The artist Fatima Fletcher also by coincidence being in intensive care this week, for it is, surprise surprise (both pleasant) the nomme de plume of my Anne.
The hero image is Ruff Ruff Players © 2020 Fatima Fletcher available as a print if you ask her nicely
Legally I have to tell you I might get five pence or something from Bookshop dot org should you purchase something, but really I just want to stick it to Amazon and keep independent bookshops alive. Yeah, rebel me, bringing the man down from the inside etc etc.
Is Anne OK now?
so glad to hear your wife is okay - what an awful experience you both have had.
I really liked Everybody by Olivia Laing if you’re looking for more after you finish Art