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Back down to the body: The uncanny, the abject and the carnival

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Back down to the body: The uncanny, the abject and the carnival

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Content BACK DOWN TO THE BODY:
THE UNCANNY, THE ABJECT AND THE CARNIVAL
by
Brian Edmund Cooper
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
August 2002
Copyright 2002 Brian Edmund Cooper
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UMI Number: 1414873
UMI
UMI Microform 1414873
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089-1695
This thesis, written by
under the direction o f h i. 5 thesis committee, and
approved by all its members, has been presented to and
accepted by the Director o f Graduate and Professional
Programs, in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the
degree o f
M fc > T £ K - OF 4 ^ r
Date
Director
A u g u st 6 , 2 0 0 2
Thesis Committee
Chair
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ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures
iii
Abstract
iv
Body
1
Bibliography
16
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: “La Poupee”, Hans Bellmer 2
Figure 2: “Untitled”, Robert Gober 3
Figure 3: “Tufted Wall”, Brian Cooper 4
Figure 4: “Slow Growth”, Brian Cooper Installation View (East) 6
Figure 5: “Slow Growth”, Brian Cooper Installation View (South East) 6
Figure 6: “Slow Growth”, Brian Cooper Installation View (North) 6
Figure 7: “Slow Growth”, Brian Cooper (detail) 6
Figure 8: “Slow Growth”, Brian Cooper (detail) 6
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iv
ABSTRACT
BACK DOWN TO THE BODY:
THE UNCANNY, THE ABJECT AND THE CARNIVAL
Focusing on the artwork of Brian Cooper, the thesis discusses aesthetic concepts that
relate to his work like Freud’s discussion of “The Uncanny”, Julia Kristeva’s writing
about Abjection and Mikhail Bakhtin’s analysis of the Carnival. The thesis goes on to
discuss the intentional ambiguity in Cooper’s work as related to issues of sublimation
and de-sublimation, which has a rich history in Surrealism and many other movements
in 20th Century Art.
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1
When discussing my work, the strongest issue that surfaces is the ambiguity of the
body’s relationship to the mind. Notions of the uncanny, the abject and the
camivalesque also grapple with this notion of the corporeal. These notions complicate
the age-old mind/body split in very peculiar ways that are remarkably similar to my
work. If these concepts and art work deal with issues of the body, then it can be said
that they are also dealing with some sort of regression. The body is not the forward
thinking, high-minded frontier of Reason. Rather, it’s the elementary, primal base of
our consciousness. It is from this vantage point that my work attempts to return to
involving a “tension that incites and simultaneously soothes”.1
To begin, Sigmund Freud’s notion of “The Uncanny” supplants itself as a central
component of my endeavor. In the essay, “ 7 Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-
Night’ : Lacan and the Uncanny” , Mladen Dolar provides thoughtful analysis of
Freud’s definition.
Freud first starts off with a lengthy linguistic discussion of the German
term das Unheimliche.. .The word is the standard negation of heimlich
and is thus supposed to be its opposite. But it turns out that it is actually
directly implied by heimlich, which means familiar, homely, cozy,
intimate, ‘arousing a sense of agreeable restfulness and security as in one
within the four walls of his house’; by extension, what is familiar and
securely tucked away is also hidden, concealed from the outside, secret,
‘kept from sight... withheld from others’; and by a further extension, what
is hidden and secret is also threatening, fearful, and occult,
‘uncomfortable, uneasy, gloomy, dismal... ghastly’ - that is, unheimlich,
uncanny. There is a point where the two meanings directly coincide and
become undistinguishable, and the negation does not count - as indeed it
does not count in the unconscious.2
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2
Dolar goes on to link “The Uncanny” with French psychologist, Jacque Lacan’s term
“The Extimate” which Lacan invented due to fact that there wasn’t an equivalent
word in French that retained the essential ambiguity of “ unheimlich”.
This term {extimate) aims directly at the essential dimension of
psychoanalysis. Putting this simply, one could say that traditional
thought consisted of the constant effort to a clear line between the
interior and the exterior. All the great philosophical conceptual pairs -
essence/appearance, mind/body, subject/object, spirit/matter, etc.- can
be seen as just so many transcriptions of the division between
interiority and exteriority. Now the dimension of extmite blurs this
line. It points neither to the interior nor the exterior, but is located
there where the most intimate interiority coincides with the exterior
and becomes threatening, provoking horror and anxiety. The extimite
is simultaneously the intimate kernel and the foreign body; in a word it
is unheimlich?
“The Uncanny” can be seen within the work of numerous artists throughout the
twentieth Century from Hans Bellmer’s mysterious figural sculptures and photos in
the 1930’s to Robert Gober’s wax corporeal sculptures in the early nineties. In
Bellmer’s “ La Poupee” from 1936 (Fig. 1), nightmarish plaster sculptures of
Figure 1
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3
fragmented body parts of dolls and adolescent girls, were used to highlight the
uncanniness of the physical body. Rosalind Krauss in her book, “ Formless, A Users
Guide” writes,
... Freud described (the automaton) as a double of living beings,
which is nonetheless dead. Indeed the whole of Freud’s text turns on
examples of cases of doubling in which likeness is simulacral in that
the relation between the copy and the original is that of a false
resemblance, for while the two might seem alike to outward
appearances, there is a fundamental dissimilarity at their core... the
feeling of the uncanniness, Freud argues, stems from the recognition
that these doubles are at one and the same time the extreme opposite of
oneself and yet the same as oneself, which is to say both are alive and
dead. If the doll itself comes from this repertory of the uncanny,
Bellmer’s work on it elaborates the idea of doubling as a formal
resource, beginning with his very construction of a doll that is itself
split and doubled, since it is frequently arranged by Bellmer as a
doublepair of legs joined together at the hip and then organized into
symmetrical patterns.4
- * Figure 2
We can also see the uncanny demonstrated in a number of Gober’s works. In a
series of pieces made in 1990 (Fig. 2), all of which are untitled, Gober created wax
sculptures of body parts protruding from the walls of the gallery. In one of these
pieces, Gober painstakingly crafts a lower half of a man’s leg. Made out of yellow
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4
ochre beeswax, the leg is incredibly illustionistic and life-like including hundreds of
leg hairs meticulously adhered to its surface. The leg is dressed with a gray pant leg, a
dark sock and one leather dress shoe. Being that the leg is disembodied, jutting out
from the wall and a direct mimicry of a real body part, it’s difficult not to feel the leg
is “.. .at one and the same time the extreme opposite of oneself and yet the same as
oneself, which is to say both are alive and dead.”5
Figure 3
In regards to my own work, the uncanny manifests itself most significantly in two
of my pieces. The first, “Tufted Wall” (Fig. 3), is a ten feet by four feet vertical strip
of upholstered fabric. It is directly upholstered to the wall. The piece runs from the
floor to the ceiling. The style of the upholstery is a technique known as “tufting”,
where buttons placed on the fabric form diamond shaped patterns or grids across the
upholstery’s surface. The buttons act as anchors, pulling the protruding fabric and
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5
stuffing against the wall. The effect of this is a dramatic topography across its
surface with bulging mounds and deep crevices. The pattern and surface created is
extremely varied. Some tufts are large and deep while others form shallow, tightly
knit clusters. Surprisingly, the overall pattern remains identifiable even though the
effect of the mufti-sized tufts is organic and frenzied. The fabric, itself, is a yellowish,
light brown corduroy. And finally along each vertical edge of the piece runs a two
inch wide molding from floor to ceiling. The wood is raw and simple reminiscent of
furniture’s innards. The use of upholstery is the most obvious signifier to “...the
familiar, homely, cozy, intimate, ‘arousing a sense of agreeable restfulness and
security as in one with in the four walls of one’s house’.”6 Upholstery’s function is to
comfort the body. This particular kind of upholstery is usually experienced within a
living room or domestic space. The piece perverts or contaminates its cozy
upholstery. Instead of providing comfort and relaxation, the upholstery is crucified on
the wall. Its tufts, indiscriminately sized, spew across its surface with wild bulges and
busy clusters of crevices. Its presence is now, also, “... threatening, uncomfortable,
uneasy and ghastly.”7 The familiar and strange have now converged.
The second piece, “ Slow Growth” (Fig. 4-8), consists of several amorphous,
sculptural shapes that are upholstered. They are arranged along the edges and comers
of the walls, ceiling and floor to mimic biological growths like mold, fungi and
tumors. These upholstered structures vary in size from five inches wide to eight feet
tall by ten feet wide. Accompanying them are sheets of wood paneling that cover two
apposing walls in this 30 x 30 ft. space. The gallery is softly lit except for a bright
focal point of light in the middle of the floor.
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Figure 4
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 6
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7
The genesis of this piece derives from an imagined scene or narrative that serves as
a metaphor for its content. I imagine a situation where within the walls of the room, a
“fungus” is growing. It’s seeping into the room through the edges and comers of the
floor, walls, and ceiling. The “fungus” is made of cloth upholstery, similar to living
room couches and recliners. The encroaching “fungus” is slow and mute. Eventually,
it will engulf the entire room. Its potential domination is evident by one enormous
upholstered form, which has grown monstrously larger than the other pieces in the
room. This colonizing entity subtly lingers in the dimly lit periphery of the room,
waiting patiently.
Here, the blur between the secure or intimate with the hidden threat of uneasiness
is evident by the combination of domestic upholstery, wood paneling, warm living
room light with the growing fungus. Furthermore, the upholstered fungal-like pieces
in the installation are also reminiscent of body parts like bulging stomachs, breasts
and buttocks behind tight fitting clothing. The pieces have deeply set buttons and
wrinkly folds that conjure up images of embarrassing navels, anuses and vaginas.
These corporeal forms or objects play a subtle role as a fragmented doubling of the
body similarly to Gober’s wax leg. Freud speaks of this sense of doubling as a
process where “.. .doubles are at one and the same time the extreme opposite of
oneself and yet the same as oneself.”8
This idea of the simultaneity of the foreign and intimate is also strongly related to
contemporary notions of the abject. In the book, “Powers of Horror: An Essay about
Abjection”, Julia Kristeva provides a clear understanding of Abjection. To Kristeva,
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8
the abject is the intermediary position between object and subject. She speaks of
object/ subject relationships as psyche versus soma or conscious being versus its
environment.9 The Abject is neither subject nor object. Kristeva sets up a model
articulated around...
...the arrested passage from subject to object, negation functioning
here like a kind of bone stuck in the throat. Kristeva uses the
psychological term “borderline” to function as a form of explanation
for a condition understood as the inability of a child to separate itself
from its mother, so that caught up with a suffocating, clinging
maternal lining, the mucous-membranous shroud of bodily odors and
substances, the child’s losing battle for autonomy is performed as a
kind of mimicry of the impassability of the body’s own frontier, with
freedom coming only delusively as the convulsive, retching evacuation
of one’s own insides and thus an abjection of oneself... To Kristeva
the abject as intermediary is about uncrossable boundaries and
undifferentiable substances.1 0
We see hints of this intermediary position in my pieces, “Tufted Wall” and “Slow
Growth”. In both pieces, as mentioned before, the upholstery used in them alludes to
the body. Along with its use as a provider of comfort for the body, upholstery itself
mimics the body with its skin of fabric and soft innards of cotton stuffing. This
surrogate of the body is now “traumatized or assaulted which is the primary realm of
abject art.. .it is drawn to the broken boundaries of the violated body.”1 1 The tufts and
buttons of the upholstery act as this sense of the wound or bodily orifice. This sense
of violence and revulsion, to Kristeva, is the moment or place where the abject exists.
The orifice and wound is a literal passage from interior to exterior or from subject to
other (object). Furthermore, both works warp their tufted upholstery into forms that
mimic organic growths like fungi or microscopic tumors. These allusions evoke a
sense of encroaching decay of the body. Decay plays another role in Abjection where
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there is a further exchange between object and subject. Kristeva writes, “...in that
compelling, raw, insolent thing in the morgue’s full sunlight, I behold the breaking
down of a world that has erased its borders... The corpse is death infecting life.”1 2 It’s
this decomposition of the organic matter or “break down” between the interior and
exterior that is the Abject’s main interest in a sense of decay. My work, however,
doesn’t deliver a literal manifestation of the abject. Rather, in installations like “Slow
Growth”, the abject appears in a form that is an artificial construction of it. The piece
feels more like a stage set the abject rather than a venue for literal and real abjection.
Although my work clearly alludes to many notions of the uncanny and the abject, it
frames these ideas through an ever- present aesthetic known as the camivalesque.
In his Essay, “Rabelais and his world”, Mikhail Bakhtin sees the carnival as being...
...both a populist utopian vision of the world seen from below and a
festive critique, through the inversion of hierarchy, of high culture...
Included in the camivalesque are manifestations of comic verbal
compositions such as parodies, travesties and vulgar farce; and it
included various genres of Billingsgate, by which Bakhtin designated
curses, oaths, slang, humor, popular tricks and jokes, scatological
forms, in fact all the low and dirty sorts of folk humor... While
humiliated and mortified, it also revived and renewed.
Grotesque realism uses the material body -flesh conceptualized as corpulent excess-
to represent cosmic, social, topographical and linguistic elements of the world. It
also...
...images the body as multiple, bulging, over- and undersized,
protuberant and incomplete. The openings and orifices of this carnival
body are emphasized, not its closure and finish. It’s an image of
impure corporeal bulk with its orifices (mouth, flared nostrils and
anus) yawning wide and its lower regions (belly, legs, feet, buttocks
and genitals) given priority over its upper regions (head, spirit,
reason). Also, the grotesque body is always in process, it is always
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becoming, it is a mobile and hybrid creature, disproportionate exorbitant,
outgrowing all limits, obscenely de-centered and off balanced, a
figural and symbolic resource for parodic exaggeration and
inversion.1 4
This use of imagery of the body is particularly effective in expressing social relations
and values. Also, a play of linguistic rules is a common practice of the camivalesque.
This is done by transgressing grammatical order to reveal the erotic and obscene. This
is also done by merely materially satisfying counter-meaning. Punning is a good
example of this.1 5
The pun violates and unveils the structure of prevailing convention;
and it provokes laughter. Samuel Beckett’s punning pronouncement
‘In the beginning there was the pun’ sets pun against official word and
at the same time, as puns often do, sets free a chain of other puns. So,
too the carnival sets itself up in a punning relationship with official
culture and enables a plural, unfixed, comic view of the world.1 6
Bakhtin also describes the Classical body, an esthetic antithetical to the grotesque
body. “The classical body denotes the inherent form of the high official culture and
suggests the shape and plasticity of the human body is indissociable from the shape
and plasticity of discursive material and social norm in a collectivity.”1 7 To
demonstrate this difference, Bakhtin uses as examples the classical renaissance statue
versus the body represented in popular festivity. First, the classical statue is ...
.. .always mounted on a plinth- always elevated, static and
monumental. The classical statue is the radiant center of a transcendent
individualism anticipating passive admiration from below. Conversely,
the grotesque body is multiple, teeming, always already part of a
throng. As we gaze up this statue, we are reminded of a heroic past and
are continually faced with the feeling of being a ‘late-comer’ to this
heroic moment. Furthermore the classical statue has no orifices where
as the grotesque costumes and masks emphasize the gaping mouth, the
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protuberant belly and buttocks, the feet and genitals. The Bourgeois
individualist conception of the body finds its image and legitimization
in the classical. We also see the grotesque emphasized as mobile, split,
multiple selves, and a subject of pleasure in processes of exchange and
is never closed off from its social or ecosystemic context where as the
classical keeps its distance.1 8
In pieces like “Slow Growth” and “Tufted Wall” we see many overt usages of this
notion of grotesque realism. In both pieces, the choice of fabric can be considered
low, common, or un-sublimated. It’s not expensive and extravagant like velvet or
leather with an intricate and decorative weave or quality. Also, the color is drab or
plain. It’s not a highly saturated color or excitedly fancy, contemporary and exciting.
This proletariat fabric, when tufted, begins to suggest low elements of the body
strikingly similar to Bakhtin’s observations of... “... an image of impure corporeal
bulk with its orifices (mouth, flared nostrils and anus) yawning wide and its lower
regions (belly, legs, feet, buttocks and genitals) given priority over its upper regions
(head, spirit, reason).”1 9 These works are clearly a “ figural and symbolic resource for
parodic exaggeration and inversion”.2 0 They are both comical, absurd and employ
notions of the burlesque. One strategy of the burlesque used implies the handling of a
serious subject lightly or flippantly. This anxious corporeality is now portrayed in a
three-dimensional comic or cartoon. The parodied shapes of the upholstered fungi in
“Slow Growth” and the absurd use of domestic upholstery to create something as
threatening as a cancerous growth in “Tufted Wall” elicit an unsettling laughter which
mocks the high and mighty notion of the seriousness of art making itself. The work’s
humor subverts its identity as “ fine art”. This subversive nature is a cornerstone of the
camivalesque.
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What’s peculiar about these works is that while they are about the body as
familiar and strange, traumatized and assaulted, low and subversive, the overall
construction and presentation is antithetical to these issues. There is nothing uncanny,
abject or grotesque in its clean, desirable, sublimated and sanitized appearance. We
see these qualities in aspects of both pieces. In “Slow Growth”, each upholstered
form is shaped and placed in the gallery in a very stylized and balanced way that is
pleasing to the eye. There is no awkward, jarring, or off balanced composition to
create some sort of dramatic tension in the piece. And finally, there is an
overwhelming clean, new and seamless quality to the work. All the materials in the
piece were bought off the shelf from fabric and hardware stores. The fabric is clean
and new. The upholstery is constructed with antiseptic precision. There is no ripped
fabric with stuffing billowing out. There aren’t any soiled and faded fabrics with a
multitude of oddly mixed colors and patterns. Plus, the wood paneling in “Slow
Growth” is absent of nail holes and faded rectangles resulting from prior picture
frames and furniture. It’s almost as if this low, ghastly and obscene identity has been
recreated by rules of the Classical aesthetic as previously explained. This
contradiction is essential to the work. The work is not intending to uncover a flaw in
some sort of desired perfection, rather it’s intending to create a “perfect flaw”. The
low and desublimated signs in the work are seen in their “Sunday best”. I’m
interested in this ambiguity. Can these signs still be seen as low even though they are
slick and attractive? Can this seductive presentation override the fact that the forms
themselves are made with mundane fabric and elicit images of bulging bellies and
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13
genitatlia? In the unconscious, according to Freud, ambiguity is its main modus
operendi.
the way in which dreams treat the category of contraries and contra
dictories is highly remarkable. It is simply disregarded. ‘No’ seems not
to exist so far as dreams are concerned. They show a particular
preference for combining contraries into unity or for representing them
as one and the same thing.2 1
Andre Breton, in the second manifesto of surrealism (1930), also speaks of his
attraction to the contradiction and ambiguity between high and low.
Everything tends to make us believe that there is a certain point of the
mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and
future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low,
cease to be perceived as contradictions.2 2
This issue of an area between sublimation and desublimation is dealt with in many
works of modernism like those of Picasso, Pollack, Cy Twombly, Eva Hesse and
many others. This issue is highlighted because “we need this tension - need it to be
treated somehow, both incited and soothed, managed.”2 3
In conclusion, this ambiguity of the status of the body is at the core of my practice.
A regression to the flawed and dumb material being by dressing it in sublimated
forms blurs this line between low and high and is an attempt to remind us of its value
as an essential player in our sense of consciousness. As mentioned earlier, humor is
closely related to the domain of the body. The use of humor furthers a subversive
stance against the authority of the high, heady shine of Reason. Ultimately, these
ideas act as a further example of a dominant aesthetic in my work that attempts to
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14
playfully belittle our heart felt allegiance to classical divisions of
essence/appearance, ideology/materiality, mind/body, subject/object and spirit/matter.
1 Andre Breton, “Second Manifesto of Surrealism” (1930) in Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard
Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), pp.123-24
2 Mladen Dolar, 7 Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-Night’: Lacan and the Uncanny, October 58
(1991): 5
3 Ibid.,6
4 Yve- Alain Bois & Rosalind Krauss, Formless: A User’ s Guide, (New York: Zone Books, 1997)
p. 194
5 Ibid.
6 Mladen Dolar, 7 Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-Night’: Lacan and the Uncanny, October 58
(1991): 5
7 Ibid.
sYve- Alain Bois & Rosalind Krauss, Formless: A User’ s Guide, p. 194
9 Ibid., p.237
1 0 Ibid.
1 1 Hal Foster, The Return of the Real (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996) p. 152
1 2 Julia Kristeva, Powers o f Horror, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press,
1982), p.4
1 3 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, (New York: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 7-8
1 4 Ibid., p.9
1 5 Ibid., p.10
1 6 Ibid., p. 11
1 7 Ibid., p.21
1 8 Ibid. ,pp.21-22
1 9 Ibid., p.9
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15
2 0 Ibid., p.9
21 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), in The Standard Edition, vol. IV, p. 318.
2 2 Andre Breton, “Second Manifesto o f Surrealism” (1930) in Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans.
Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, pp. 123-24
2 3 Hal Foster, The Return o f the Real, pp.270-271
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16
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bataille, Georges. Encyclopedia Aceohalica. London: Atlas Press, 1995
Bois, Yve-Alain and Krauss, Rosalind. Formless: A User’s Guide. New York: Zone Books, 1997.
Breton, Andre. Second Manifesto of Surrealism. Translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972.
Dery, Mark. The Pvrotechnicinsanitarium: American Culture on the Brink. New York: Grove Press,
1999
Dolar, Mladen. ‘“ I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-Night’: Lacan and the Uncanny”. October.
Vol. 58, (1991): 5-23
Foster, Hal. The Return o f the Real. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
Freud, Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams”, in The Standard Edition, vol. IV. 1900.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1982.
Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon. The Politics and Poetics o f Transgression. New York: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1986.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Cooper, Brian Edmund (author)

Core Title Back down to the body: The uncanny, the abject and the carnival

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Fine Arts,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Advisor Page, Setsuko Ann (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-300867

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Document Type Thesis

Rights Cooper, Brian Edmund

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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