Cathartic pleasure with Marc Quinn
Garyβs Theme by Bill Evans is playing. Today is a gloomy afternoon diluted in my hot 4pm coffee and the wind that is starting to pick up. Many, many, many months ago I came about this intriguing piece from Marc Quinn, his infamous piece - Self (1991) β the very first of his upcoming series with the same title. The blood bust was looking at me through the screen even if my eyes were shut, and a shiver drivel down my spine as it usually does when I find myself in front of any worth-speaking oeuvre. As a Spanish girl, and a fan of all traditional Spanish painters, I usually donβt dwell too much onto the British art scene, and in doing so in this piece I want to give myself some sort of a challenge.
Therefor, in the next essay β the first of many to come β I will try to depicture all the thoughts, emotions, and ideas whilst investigating this painting and, as I think is needed, Marc Quinn as an artist.
Marc Quinn is one of Britainβs most well-known (maybe even acclaimed) artists of the late 20th century. He came to prominence in the mid-1990s taking part in a great generation of new artists raised in the British art scene (Young British Artists or YBA). The piece being depicted in this essay was first generated or birthed - taking into consideration the mythical yet natural dogma of its creation β in 1991, and it gained a lot of attention in the years to come. Quinn became a highly requested artist and many of his later pieces outraged and fascinated the public; nevertheless, none of his work has ever come to be as shocking and outstanding as Self.
The British artist has worked with many materials and mediums, from bread, DNA, or flowers, but casting portraits has allowed him to develop a sense of personal narrative in which it can be seen his preoccupations, motives, and psique as an artist.
The idea of Self engages with the ephemerality of the art. The head needs a constant freezing environment to be preserved β many issues needed to be dealt with to keep the series alive β yet the use of blood brings an almost biblical meaning to the piece. Blood as the purest form of one, a constant reminder of the human condition as well as a depicter of what makes us a whole, when we fall down, we all bleed.
But almost as a tantrum, Quinn fights the liquid nature of blood and freezes it to gain immortality. Funeral masks have been an artistic motif used in many cultures, perhaps the mask of Agamemnon is one of the most famous. All of them show the collective desire to keep us in image once dead - if possible β and for our soul to be forever preserved, to be able to contain in image of what once was our ephemeral body.
βCertainly Self is about the idea of dependence; that just as the addict is dependent on his drug, so the blood head cannot survive without electricity. Nevertheless, Iβve always thought of this being a piece about life rather than death β there is something interesting about blood, about the way it renews itself; itβs not like chopping a limb off. Itβs this renewal that Iβve focused on in other works involving body partsβ¦β1.
The history of art always begins with religious or ritual alignments. From the Altamira caves to the first East Asian communities, mausoleums, tombs, and portraits have been our first artistic steps. Portraying what is here and now. This need to capture the human is taken to its highest ecstasy with Self, where
Quinn preserves in his image his own body. In the same way that Jesus transformed his blood into wine, Quinn freezes his own and gives us his bust.
That is why Self is a timeless work. Quinn expresses throughout his work an admiration for classical art and its canon. Even in his most controversial and outlandish works, a recognizable identity, and ideal runs through them all. The collective memory of Greek and Roman art shows statues, altarpieces, and busts of gods and men from whom time has been removing legs and arms, leaving them destroyed and forever immortalized in a heroic and apogeic past. Despite all these impurities, a feeling of helplessness creeps over us in the face of the cruel passage of time. As much as Quinn tries to immortalize himself and remain suspended in time, the blood seeks to become liquid again, seeking the body through which it once ran.
βIt depends on my life to be created β itβs made from the substance of me; and so I think of it as the purest form of sculpture β to sculpt your own body, from your own bodyβ¦my art is the culturally-mediated version of an art that is primitive in the best sense of the wordβ1.
Marc Quinnβs work could be easily criticized as performative and provocative just for the sake of shock. Though many might seem his ascends on the art map as planned and fabricated journey I have to question if his intents have not always been β as he himself hints - Β Β classical; had been the ways to make this brutal sculpture available centuries ago, would Quinn still be the first to use blood? Maybe blood would have partnered further before and then Quinnβs head would be just a bust. And in taking or subtracting the blood I have done what Quinn tried to prevent, Iβve killed the piece and by so, I have killed Quinn. Yet nor he or Self are truly eternal, I can not promise in years to come the blood will not finally submit to its nature and return to what it was, laughing at the attempts of the artist to preserve life and therefor interrupting what is made to get killed.
βAn incredibly stressful sculpture to have existingβ1. When I first looked at Self a sense of tranquillity came to mind, I was almost looking at myself, I could recognize the blood as I do when I bleed, and maybe that first reaction of sacral understanding β was I blood or I was only its vehicle β explains my sudden urge to destroy it, ββ¦you unconsciously want it to be liquid againβ¦β but ββ¦were to smash it, would make it seem as if youβd committed murderβ1.
This idea of truly impersonating the piece and humanizing the block of blood furthermore highlights Quinnβs arguments about the suffering of the artist as the great father of art and the voyeurism that subsides in each of us as viewers. ββ¦but at the same time, this [the importance of his works being sold] confirms an outmoded paradigm, the idea that the artist should suffer β while the buyer should pay. It may be that I propose to the collectors that they give me their blood so that I can make a work out of it. That way they both suffer and pay.β1 Self was shown like a trophy in an empty museum room, like a head on a silver platter, only as a silly joke to peasants. It is almost impossible not to think about Juan Bautistaβs tragic death to the wishes of SalomΓ©. Quinn seemly cuts his own head and serves it as a macabre wish. He is both the victim and executioner.
If show, are artists all slaves of their art and we are merely watchers in front of the tortured martyr?
Martin always takes into consideration the public, especially when choosing the designated location of his works and how they are going to be shown. Take a look at All About Love (2016-2017), a collection of statues cast from his and Jenny Bastetβs hugging bodies. The twelve statues came to life at the Sir John Soaneβs Museum in Lincolnβs Inn Fields. The rooms were filled with pasts pieces, the personal collection of Sir John Soane. By this ubication, Quinn enhances his plan to make the viewers see what he intended to portray, being thee the contraposition of past classical canons and forms to his, yet showing a connecting truth in past and contemporary art.
βI think thatβs why people so like the idea of βclassical antiquityβ too because thereβs a kind of sense of lost golden age, yet one somehow still with usβ.2
The new years have brought many forms of art and the constant debate between classical and contemporary art is always on the rise. It is not hard to find an avid hater of what the new age of artists have put out. Although the battle between academia and abstract β although I refuse to believe they ever were nemesis or opposites β has made it difficult for their own viewer to enjoy the cathartic pleasures of art, yet Quinn has a lovely manner to mix both entities β new and old β giving his pieces a sense of dejΓ‘ vu and human understanding.
Once more I bring the idea of life and death into his narrative. Although he so flawlessly ties his way of working with the beauties of life, like in his DNA Garden, or his Eternal Spring, I canβt help but ignore the streams of connections to death. Both life and death have always β and probably will always β be one of the reoccurring and most centrical axes of art inspiration but trying to separate them as opposites seems unrespectful. Are we guilty of trying to express life as the absence of death? Is it not death that makes life or is it life that makes death? How can we look at Quinnβs Self and not think of both? Isnβt it reassuring? The idea of being alive yet aliveness is evidence of our own death. Life and death seen not as a contraposition but as a wave.
βWhat is the emergent property called life, which occurs when a certain matrix of atoms are concentrated in given space? What is it to be alive and to know it, to exist only in this gravity, in this temperatureβ¦. To be born and to die, to interact with othersβ¦. To be a self-fuelling organism, a living processβ¦. To know that the atoms which make up our body will one day make up anotherβ¦what is it all about? Thatβs what itβs all about.β1
Finally, I want to make clear that as much as I admired some of his work and career, I find some of his pieces truly boring and not even worth mentioning. Ever so colossal, his sculptures fall guilty of being desperately out there, as if they are screaming at you. Even so, I believe that the artist's greatness lies in his ability to create such a multifaceted repertoire that continues the same artistic thread and intention. There is something extremely beautiful in the classical yet romantic view of life that his paintings express; each work shows a conceptual simplicity, not inspiring great mysticism or pathetic sentiment. However, he captures in an ideal way the fine line between the terribly sweet and that gothic yearning, few words are left to explain it, something very dark and fearful in his works, something that moves you.
βFor me, that is the purest form of sculpture. It is a miracle. It is like the transubstantiation or the ascension into heaven. Art is [the process of] transforming something before your very eyes.β1
Bibliography:
Cited:
1-Β Β Β Β Bring me the head of Marc Quinn! (s.Β f.). http://marcquinn.com/read/selected-essays/bring-me-the-head-of-marc-quinn
2-Β Β Β Β Squire, M. (2017, 5 diciembre). βCasual Classicismβ: In Conversation with Marc Quinn. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12138-017-0451-9?error=cookies_not_supported&code=4b40b0d0-4eda-4790-bc0b-4500afd3180f
Not cited:
-Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Self. (s.Β f.). http://marcquinn.com/artworks/self
-Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Opening Conversation | Marc Quinn: History Painting +. (s.Β f.). Yale Center for British Art. https://britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/opening-conversation-marc-quinn-history-painting