Commonplace 87 George & The Male Gaze PART THREE

In 1898, George came to the realisation that unless a miracle happened, he would die a lonely and miserable death having ballsed up most of the opportunities he had been handed in life. Luckily, the Fates had an ace up their sleeves - and Gabrielle Fleury was delivered unto him, and so love blossomed in his heart. Well, that's what he claimed. Afraid Gabrielle would do a runner before she was signed up for the Gissing Rescue Plan, he made his move within days of meeting her, and did some significant back-pedalling in order to convince her he was not a misogynist with outmoded (not to say, erroneous!) ideas of male superiority. George was not the most insightful of men - but he knew some of his more shameful behaviours would take some explaining. In order to obfuscate and stage-manage Gabrielle's perceptions of what she already knew about him from his writings, he committed his literary talent to writing The Crown of Life as a paean of love to Gabrielle. Which is what he told her, but hopefully, she will have realised that was tosh.

Venus, Mars and Vulcan by Tintoretto c 1551 (There is such a lot going on here! Mars, Venus' lover, is hiding under the bench because her husband, Vulcan, has come back to check on her - he has heard she has taken a lover. The faithful dog is about to give the game away by barking at Mars, and Cupid, who acted as the lovers' go-between, is pretending to be asleep.)

In The Crown of Life, the hero, Piers Otway, is a man with a secret - he is illegitimate (an important distinction as this makes him the product of lustful impulses - a form of bad blood). His journey throughout the narrative is to prove to himself, and his love object, Irene Derwent, that this must not be taken as a sign that he is damaged goods. George's own life stuffed full of guilty secrets, needed a spokesperson and Piers is it. Piers is an odd name - it is an upper class British first or surname but George possibly chose it from the story of Piers Plowman click an early text about one man's search for redemption in the Christian life. In Plowman's Passus 17 the protagonist meets the spirit of Hope and learns about the 'Good Samaritan', the prospect of salvation and the meaning of love. Otway - this could have been an homage to Thomas Otway click, the English dramatist who wrote a tragedy: The Unhappy Marriage - which would have resonated with George as he was shackled to Edith at the time he wrote Crown of Life.

The novel opens with Piers walking round London, alone, but not aimlessly - he feels compelled to make his way to the Haymarket and its many Fine Art picture shops:
A window hung with engravings, mostly after picture of the day; some of them very large and attractive to a passing glance. One or two admirable landscapes offered solace to the street-wearied imagination, but upon these Piers did not fix his eye; it was drawn irresistibly to the faces and forms of beautiful women set forth with varied allurement. Some great lady of the passing time lounged in exquisite array amid luxurious furniture lightly suggested; the faint smile of her flattered loveliness hovered about the gazer; the subtle perfume of her presence touched his nerves; the greys of her complexion transmuted themselves through the colour of his blood into life's carnation; whilst he dreamed upon her lips, his breath was caught, as though of a sudden she had smiled for him, and for him alone. 

The male gaze - Piers felt entitled to it, and so did George. When he visited Italy for the first time, in the 1888-89 winter, deep into his readings of John Ruskin on Venice, George surveyed the galleries like he was attending a visual meat market. When he took a look round the Uffizi Gallery Museum in Florence, he decided he preferred Tintoretto to Titian. He went to view Titian's celebrated Venus of Urbino. The male gaze, judging the horse flesh. On Valentine's Day 1889, to Eduard Bertz, he wrote this: To tell you the truth, I suppose Titian's great qualities are mainly technical, & that only an artist can fully appreciate him. Take the celebrated so-called 'Venus' - which isn't a Venus at all - in the Tribuna of the Uffizi. I cannot say it disappointed me as I already knew the picture; but I felt more strongly than ever its value was that of an academical study of the nude - & of colour; nothing more. The woman is not - to me - even beautiful. 

The Venus of Urbino by Titian 1538

First, let's examine the last phrase - its value was that of an academical study of the nude. Well, that's okay, then - he isn't looking at it as a celebration of erotica, he's looking at it as a technical visual aid. A likely story! Talk about rationalising your motives. But, as he was writing to Eduard, his man-wife who was still in the closet, maybe he felt the best thing to do was to deny any arbitrary heterosexual motives. Freud (Sigmund as well as his daughter, Anna), described how we unconsciously manage threats by utilising defence mechanisms click. One of George's most commonly used defence mechanisms is intellectualization, and here we see it being unconsciously used - along with a touch of reaction formation - to pass over what he feels about the painting of a beautiful naked woman and makes it clear, it is he who has the power to decide what is beautiful and what is not - because he owns the gaze that defines her.

The Urbino Venus was famous then as now, as one of the most alluring paintings of a nude female - many a young man on the Grand Tour would seek it out to admire the female form. Mark Twain called it the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses... painted for a bagnio, and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong...in truth, it is a trifle too strong for any place but a public art gallery. 
This is interesting wording - too strong for any place but a public art gallery. The original insult - that the picture is pure filth - is ironic because Twain is talking about the attitudes to it - the debate about Art being above censorship. It is also a nod to the debate about whether or not Art rationalises sexually explicit images by turning them into intellectual erotica. But, again, we have a man telling us what is acceptable, and even how to look at a work of Art. 

The Tribunal of the Uffizi by Thomas Zoffany 1772-8 

George already knows the work, so we can presume he saw it first as a print/reproduction, possibly in the British Library - or in a Haymarket shop window! He did not consider himself to be typical of the young men who might visit this painting. He was a Classics scholar, and lover of all things Rome, someone who read the great writings of the Romans for his own enjoyment and instruction. He could not have approached this painting with an open mind - Venus was already embedded (no pun intended!) in his subconscious, along with all the Roman attitudes to sexual thoughts, behaviours and attitudes. Presumably, George had the idea that a goddess must have a certain look - being superhuman, she must transcend the physical flesh typical of the human experience of erotic love. The Romans loved physical beauty as much as did the Greeks - and they were not afraid of erotica.

Piers Otway, still looking at those nudes:
Near to her was a maiden of Hellas, resting upon a marble seat, her eyes bent towards some AEgean isle, the translucent robe clung about her perfect body; her breast was warm against the white stone; the mazes of her woven hair shone with unguent. The gazer lost himself in memories of epic and idyll, warming through worship to desire. Then his look strayed to the next engraving; a peasant girl, consummate in grace and strength, supreme in chaste pride, cheek and neck soft-glowing from the sunny field, eyes revealing the heart at one with nature. Others there were, women of many worlds, only less beautiful; but by these three the young man was held bound. He could not satisfy himself with looking and musing; he could not pluck himself away. An odd experience; he always lingered by the print shops of the Haymarket, and always went on with troubled blood, with mind rapt above familiar circumstance, dreaming passionately, making wild forecast of his fate.

George's two erotic loves - the Classics and sex with women. And evidence of his dual nature: civilised v feral; sophisticated v naive; middle v working class allure; Classic and contemporary; Mother nature v metropolis. Sacred and profane:

Sacred and Profane Love by Titian 1514

The other name for this picture is Venus and the Bride - the woman on the left is a widow about to be remarried and the figure to the right is Venus, assisting her on her wedding day. What is the picture about? We can go to the Uffizi Gallery Museum website click and read about it.

The Urbino Venus - her erotic charms had been celebrated for four centuries, but George was not going to let her have power over him; he was not the sort to relinquish self control so easily - a case of  'once bitten, twice shy'. When he fell in love with his first wife, he learned the danger of letting go and allowing someone to deeply affect his passions. That didn't go to plan, but it did, perhaps, teach him that he couldn't love deeply, after all. Not like a Shakespeare or a Keats - that his soul, at the very bottom of it, was not the soul of a bohemian - it was the soul of a bourgeois book lover. He never again thought of sexual love as more than functional, hence the ease with which he inflicted himself on Edith when celibacy was driving him mad. Perhaps thoughts of Marianne aka Nell were still in his mind - she was hardly cold in her grave - when he was looking at the Titian Venus.

The painting was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo Il della Rovera, allegedly as a sort of visual aid for his first wife, to give her a few hints of how she should present herself to her husband - to be eternally available, alluring and desirable. The male gaze decides what it wants and offers a prompt. He married his first wife in 1534, when she was eleven, so if this was meant for her benefit, it might now be seen as a man grooming a young girl. But, as it was painted in 1538, four years after the wedding, there is every chance the consummation was delayed - as was the custom with very young brides - until she was fifteen or sixteen.

Guidobaldo
by Angelo Bronzino 1532

Giulia (aged 22) by Titian 1545

Giulia died, childless, in 1547, aged twenty four. The following year, Guidobaldo married Vittoria, the twenty-seven year old daughter of the Duke of Parma. There is some question of which wife the painting was originally made for, but, if this picture was painted in 1538, ten years before he married Vittoria, it can't be her.

So, is it a 'Nuptials for Dummies' piece, painted for Giulia's benefit, the young, possibly overly-modest, timid, virginal wife who was dreading the fulfilment of her impending sexual obligations? If so, the bar was set very high - but that could be because he revered her. Or, might it be something a little less formal? In fact, is it a painting made for a wife, at all?

This Venus is naked, though casually modest, and it looks like the bed has seen some action - those sheets looked wrinkled. In her hand are flowers - roses; they match the fabric of her cushions. Roses are the symbol of the goddess Venus; in mythology, Venus gave a rose to her son, Eros, who passed it on to Harpocrates, the god of secrets and silence and of children. Roses, to the Romans, were symbols of secrets - the term sub rosa (under the rose) was the practice of leaving a rose outside the closed door when secret things were going on inside a room. In the painting, one blossom has come adrift... a warning sign of mishaps to come? The dog at her feet - Romans often gave small dogs to their lovers, as a reminder to be faithful. In traditional European Art, again dogs represent fidelity, but by the Middle Ages, had become associated with lust and procreation... but this spaniel is sleeping. Is the dog sleeping on the side of the bed vacated by the lover - tired out from a bout of strenuous exercise?

Harpocratic Cupid, 100-50 BCE
the model for Harpo Marx?

And, then we have the huge space behind Venus. In the far background, a phallic column and a pretty myrtle bush in a pot, lit by starlight and the coming dawn. Myrtle is associated with Venus and marriage. What are those women up to? One is rummaging about in a chest, and an older woman, fully-clothed and with an elaborate hairstyle, looks like she is in charge. Chests were often given as wedding gifts - perhaps the younger girl is the subject filling her marriage chest for the future - a sort of 'bottom drawer' event, watched over by her mother.

So, would Guidobaldo have asked for a nude painting with his wife as a model? No, there would have been a stunt body double, with Titian making use of a professional model, and then painting in the face of Giulia.  Would Guido have shown it to his wife as the so-called visual aid to what he wanted her to appear to be when he finally got to consummate their union? Was it a celebration of his love for her to prove his devotion? Might it not have been better to symbolise it in a way she would have preferred - a necklace, or a fur, or a tapestry? So, maybe it isn't his young wife after all - perhaps it is his stunningly beautiful mistress, with him as her faithful dog, reassuring her that, even when he is a proper husband to his child bride, he will always adore his lover, his soul mate and muse. And, in the background, the small figure is his wife, the larger woman is her mother or her maid, both busy organising his future.

Have a look at this click to see what Matt Collings has to say about Titian. And click to have a butcher's at more Tintoretto. 

Commonplace 86 George & The Male Gaze PART TWO Diana And Her Nymphs At Play.

The second picture to inflame George's tender sensibilities is 'Diana And Her Nymphs At Play' of 1617 by Domenichino now in the Galleria Borghese click

Paul Delany in his biography of our man points out that George confused the subject and title of this work and refers to it as Susanna, possibly as in Susanna and The Elders also by Domenichino, below. Susanna is the biblical Hebrew girl who was the victim of the male gaze - she was bathing in a stream, in what she took to be privacy. However, she was being watched by some dirty old men. They accused her of being promiscuous, and tried to blackmail her into having sex with them. She refused and was about to be put to death for being a slut, when a defender stepped forward and mounted a challenge to the elders' claims, and defend her honour. Ultimately, justice was served; the dirty old men were executed for their falsehoods and Susanna was freed.

Diana is the Roman goddess of the hunt, childbirth and the moon. She is associated with nature and particularly, woodlands. She also offered support to slaves and plebeians who could claim asylum in her temples. Along with fellow goddesses Minerva and Vesta, she vowed never to marry. She didn't need to - she was a goddess, and had Apollo for a brother. The Greek name for her is Artemis.

The story depicted here is this: Diana/Artemis, when bathing, is being spied on by Actaeon - if you look at the big barking hound just off centre, to its far right, lurking in those bushes, is a watcher/Peeping Tom. Some of the nymphs know he's there - they are alerting their leader to his presence, whilst other nymphs continue to practise their bow-womanship. Has Domenichino captured Diana at the exact moment she has just decided Actaeon's fate - she will turn him into a stag and set her hounds on him to rip him apart? She is about to slay a man because of his male gaze, and she is looking at us - 'we' will be mostly men, because she knows all about who is the watcher and who is the watched in classical Art - and is enjoying that moment of power over 'us'. That's why she is smiling so cheekily, the little minx that she is, and not sexually, She is about to rip a man to pieces! The male gaze is about to be punished!

George said about the painting that he was viewing (that is, the Diana taking a bath with her nymphs): The loathsome 'Susanna' where the woman props herself on her back in shallow water, and is a mere prostitute at play.

Totally different stories: one, a victim of the male gaze; the other is the punisher of the male gaze. An easy mistake to make with the title - but it's more than this. George is guilty of parapraxis - a Freudian slip -  an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of an unconscious (dynamically repressed) subdued wish, conflict, or train of thought guided by the ego and the rules of correct behaviour. click

Diana 

Now, Susanna is a virginal victim of male power and is always taken as not complicit in the offence perpetrated against her. To label her as a prostitute at play - if he mistakes her as Susanna - is the same as saying she had it coming, flashing her body to inflame whoever passed by. How dare she lay there revelling in her nakedness and then complain when men strike?  If he is looking at the picture and is thinking of Diana - and he's just got the name wrong - then perhaps he feels the lash of that female gaze and knows he is just as guilty as Actaeon, and so is stealing something from the goddess - her right to privacy. Might a man feel intimidated by the young woman bathing surrounded by her girlfriends, like a beautiful wild creature in an Arcadian paradise, all man-less and happy on it, not asking a man's permission to be there? Ah, but she is a goddess and mere mortals shouldn't be looking at goddesses - let alone getting a perky from doing so - so she knows she will never be a victim of the male gaze, and men will only have themselves to blame if they end up as the hunted. 

Let's explore the phrase as if George just made a Freudian slip of the tongue, and he really was thinking of Diana - so, why is she loathsome to him? 

Here are some synonyms of 'loathsome': nauseating, abominable, despicable, contemptible, reprehensible, execrable, damnable; 

hideous, ghastly, vile, horrible, nasty, frightful, obnoxious, gross, foul, offensive disagreeable, hateful,  detestable, abhorrent, repulsive, odious, repugnant, repellent, disgusting, revolting, 

sickening.

Look at a close up of Diana's cherubic, cheeky very immature face... is that what you see? So, what is going on in George's mind?

Might he be unconsciously employing Freud's mental mechanism of reaction-formation?  

In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation (German: Reaktionsbildung) is a defensive process (defence mechanism) in which emotions and impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency. The reaction formations belong to neurotic defence mechanisms, which also include intellectualization, dissociation, displacement and repression.click

George clearly finds this Diana sexy - but he feels ashamed and this makes him anxious, and so he claims to find it repulsive. (Think of someone being in thrall to pornography but so ashamed of this that they campaign to have pornography banned - a charge often made against Lord Longford click who had an irrational fear of porn polluting the minds of ordinary folks, which made him spend a great deal of time looking at the stuff).

Why would George be ashamed of looking at a painting? Because nice men shouldn't be looking at girls who like to be naked - and this little Diana is just loving being naked! Classical naked - solemn naked, naked with no enjoyment evident - that was okay. But a happy to be naked girl with sparkling eyes and a cheeky grin was too flagrantly sexy. He does not like to see women free to be little animals enjoying their nakedness - girls who do are, to George, whores. A Roman Patrician 'lady' would never lay back and bask in naked joy and make no attempt to cover herself and avoid the male gaze unless that gaze belonged to her husband - but Diana is a single girl, and she doesn't care what the onlooker thinks - and she is definitely not submissive to the male gaze.

In traditional Art - the sort George looked at - the male gaze determines what is valuable in a woman, and that value is usually based on her appearance, her agreeableness, and her usefulness. Here, George decides what is attractive and what is not in a woman - he is writing to Eduard Bertz (not a man whose gaze fell on many women) of his visit to the Vatican's Sala Rotunda in January 1889:

              

Julia Domna

Plotina 

Faustina the Elder

And in the same Sala Rotunda are three busts of Roman empresses to which I gave close attention. These are (1) Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus; (2) Plotina, the wife of Trajan; (3) the elder Faustina, wife of Antoninus Pius. All are magnificent busts, & representing very different women. Julia Domna is the most pleasing; it is a notably Patrician face; about the fine lips there is a touch of idle scorn & pride, yet not ill-natured. Of rather slow understanding, one would say; a woman to humour and to be friends with. She would take her dignity as a matter of course, but might easily fall below it.  - Plotina is anything but beautiful & scarcely even Patrician; & yet one sees that the bust is idealized, for all that. Very heavy features, high cheek-bones, big mouth & chin. A dull, homely woman, but conscientious; there is even a touch of anxiety on her forehead. She looks like a careful housewife, & one to be trusted in small things & great. - Faustina is an intensely aristocratic type of beauty. The good-nature of Julia is here lacking; on her lips & forehead is a cold pride. She has a splendid coronet of woven hair. A woman to be afraid of, unsubduable.  

A woman to be afraid of, unsubduable. 
Subdue: to overcome, quieten, or bring under control (a feeling or person). To conquer, defeat, vanquish, get the better of, overpower, overwhelm, crush, quash, quell, beat, trounce, subjugate, master, suppress, triumph over, tame, bring to their knees, humble, chasten... An uncharacteristic bit of insight from George - how he fears those strong, unsubduable women! Those women he can't bully into submission. As he was on the run from Edith at the time he took his second trip to Italy, she was very much on his mind. 

This Diana and Her Nymphs would be viewed as unconsciously threatening to George, as one whose power over male sexuality is so complete she can turn them into hunted animals and then kill them when she wants, He cannot accept her right to her sexuality and he has to demean her by insulting her with the words a mere prostitute at play. This Diana would be deeply troubling for a man who has complicated sex needs and harbours unresolved sexual issues. But, we know George liked girls with a hint of danger to them - work girls he considered social inferiors, students he taught, pubescent shop-girls, married landladies, his little sisters' chums, statisticians working for the Board of Trade, middle-aged spinsters with English as a second language... He liked his women submissive, biddable, under his thumb, but he deliberately chose women he would be in conflict with in order to have that sort of power tussle that sadists enjoy. By concentrating his conscious desires on those he considered inferior, he gave free rein to his capacity to wallow in the salubrious and seedy side of life but in a superficial, acceptable way. He made feeble attempts to 'redeem' his first two wives, but he didn't really want a goddess in his bed - she would have intimidated him, He wanted naive and helpless women who knew their place and were grateful for his patronage. But he despised them for not being Patrician aristocrats, whilst unconsciously punishing them for agreeing to marry him. Why else did he abandon Marianne to her fate and why else did he hate Edith so much? Marianne aka Nell was too ill to argue and she stayed well out of his way. Edith put up an heroic fight against his tyranny, and he had to flee the country to stop that particular Diana from turning him into dogs' meat!

JOIN ME IN PART THREE TO LOOK AT THE VENUS GEORGE SAID LEFT HIM COLD AND MARK TWAIN CLAIMED WAS PURE PORN.

Commonplace 85 George & The Male Gaze. PART ONE Roman Orgy.

The Collected Letters and the Diaries offer ample evidence George was an enthusiastic watcher. He walked the streets of wherever he was situated to soak up the atmosphere, gather and think through ideas for books, and snoop on the lives of the disadvantaged. But he was never comfortable in large crowds of happy people - say, at Bank Holidays when the masses took themselves to the seaside, or out on the streets. Possibly because the world became a blur, and sensory overload prevailed, George found it all too vulgar and overwhelming.

To most, looking is an unconscious act, a reflex reaction to visual stimulation, so commonplace as to be almost unnoticed; others derive deep satisfaction from standing outside of things and looking in - on all aspects of life and its conditions. Scopophilia is the term for the act of deriving enjoyment, particularly sexual pleasure, from looking.

What is the 'male gaze'? This is from here click which is referencing the work of feminist Laura Mulvey and her 1975 book 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema':  The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man... The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as for the spectator who is watching the film. The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of 'patriarchal' order...

Carl Boehm in Michael Powell's
1960 film Peeping Tom click

Male renderings of the female nude have been undertaken for a variety of purposes, but all address, either consciously or unconsciously, the way the onlooker considers the subject - the female form. This in fact objectifies women, even when it seeks to exalt them. Of course, there is much Feminist discourse on this, and here is a useful resource to explore click. John Berger, the renowned critic and polymath does a good job at attempting to explain it here click (where would we women be without men explaining the world to us haha).

George was a liker of paintings. He visited Art galleries with almost reverential zeal, but he had very conservative, predictable and bourgeois tastes. We know this because of what he doesn't say he liked/viewed, and of the exhibitions he missed. When he noted, for example, the summer show at the Royal Academy, it was to name-drop that there were portraits on display of Mrs Frederic Harrison or the Lushington girls - people he knew. Despite being alive at the tail-end of the revolution in British painting that was the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and being in Paris at a time of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists, George makes no mention of them. He does say he thinks Turner can't paint landscapes, but that is plainly a lack of knowledge of Turner, and an already outmoded belief landscape should be a prime subject for a painter.

However, he does make reference to two Artworks he felt particularly strongly about. Both tell us a lot more about George than he would have liked.

First, Thomas Couture's 'Romans During The Decadence' aka 'Roman Orgy' of 1847, now in the Musée d'Orsay click. And go to here click to watch a great little Louis Feuillade film from 1911 depicting Emperor Heliogabolus (a very naughty boy) amusing himself at one of his parties, which draws heavily on the painting for visual source material.


George liked all things Roman, and so we can only assume he was okay with orgies, even almost life-sized depictions. Have a look at this at time 9.40 minutes click to see Art critic Waldemar Januszczak stood in front of the massive painting - then carry on and learn all about the genius of Edouard Manet. Note at time 1.16.29 some interesting things about syphilis. But come back here to finish reading this!

George saw this in the Louvre when he visited Paris with his little friend, Mr Plitt in 1888. Astonishingly to me, he wrote this in his Diary:
Thomas Couture's large picture 'Les Romains de la Décadence', gives me pleasure. The central woman's face - noble, satiated, self-dissatisfied - pleases me much. 

Here is a close up of that central woman's face. Now, I'm a woman, and I can't see what he is talking about here - all I can see is sadness in those eyes. What is going on? For a start, she has her clothes on - she is the only woman in the picture fully-clothed. This would seem to imply, to me, she has not yet been engaged in sex, but is about to be ravished. Her face is resignation to the ordeal about to happen - she is a sex slave, doing what she has to do to survive. The man about to grab her - is he reaching his goblet out to receive some sort of substance from the woman who is holding something in her hand - a draught of the Roman equivalent of Viagra? Or Rohypnol? I see absolutely no lascivious anticipation or impending pleasure on the central woman's face - but, as I say, I am a woman. To me, she is looking out at us and asking for our sympathy, our understanding, and it is a sorrowful expression. George completely misreads this picture. He says in his rather weirdly pretentious, Yoda-like way the woman's face... pleases me much. Is he under the impression a woman would volunteer for an orgy and not be forced? Does he assume she has had sex and enjoyed it - but that is patently not the case - or that, not having enjoyed it, she is punished for her sin? Can one be noble, satiated, self-dissatisfied all at the same time? Is he pleased at her sadness? Is George sadistically, albeit unconsciously, rejoicing in her suffering? What is going on in his mind?

First, what was going on in Couture's. He is hoping the onlooker might realise it is an allegory about the impending self-destruction of France and the growing political uprising that will produce the Second Republic of 1848 click - another destructive bout of slaughter and turmoil, for a country not yet over the first Revolution. The central woman figure in the painting - is she not Marianne click, the French icon, surrounded by the selfish marauding destroyers of her beautiful country? She is not triumphant - she is already anticipating more horror. It's written all over her face. (Rome in the time of decadence... Veranilda. Hmm... ) Anyway, here is Marianne again, in a slightly earlier, more optimistic time:

Liberty Leading Her People by Eugene Delacroix 1830

Marianne...? Where have we heard that name before? George's first wife, of course, was called Marianne, though he referred to her, when he wanted her, as Nell, but then she became Helen when he wanted rid of her. Marianne Helen Gissing née Harrison. 1858-1888.

Now, George, we know, liked young girls and he liked to dabble in the sex trade, and he had a strong sex drive. And he was a Sado-masochist. Why else write that the Roman girl seems both satiated and self-dissatisfied, if not to evoke both pleasure and pain? This 'self-dissatisfied' - what on earth does it mean? I have never heard this term before - I know what the self bit and the dissatisfied bit mean, but both together??? Does it refer to sexuality, as in disgusted with herself - as in ashamed? If this is what George intends, it knocks out the air of triumph he has awarded her with the term 'noble'. George makes it so that she has thoroughly enjoyed herself - 'satiated' - an oblique reference to women's sexuality being more animalistic than men's, which is something all men fear, and maybe requiring a throng to satisfy? But here, he is giving her a moment of inner doubt - inner self-doubt? - and sharing it with the viewer. It is George, noting her comeuppance.

What is George up to? Well, let's put it into a Freudian context, but keep it with George's point of view. He is an onlooker on a scene he thinks depicts a sexually satisfied, sexually promiscuous woman sharing some down time with the male onlooker. She is triumphantly in the thick of the scrum, taking a moment out to regroup her resources. She welcomes the male gaze - and George is happy to look on. To spend time in front of the canvas and come up with this interpretation of what he sees implies he approves of her situation, and is in collusion with the males in the picture. Here, we have George unconsciously employing Freud's mental mechanism of projection - the seeing in others those unacceptable feelings or behaviours that actually reside in one's own unconscious click. So, here, we have George wanting to be in the picture, being one of the boys doing the ravishing of the sex slaves, but it's okay, because, in his mind, she is looking out inviting him to get stuck in. If she is (in his mind) agreeable to what is happening to her, can it be so bad to want it, too? Is he debating the moral rightness of wanting it to be real? Or, maybe he is blaming the woman for her active part in the scene of her own debauch - she might be noble and satiated, but she will always be self-dissatisfied. But, back in George's real world, if one weird compound word could sum up our man, it might be 'self-dissatisfied'.

George's trip to Paris with his friend Mr Plitt happened a few months after he became a widower and considered himself marriageable once more. Marianne had died on the last day of February, with George down in Eastbourne and she in her lonely Lambeth room. He'd had his eye on a Miss Curtis - she was the daughter of a tobacconist he used whilst on his holidays. In May of 1888, he writes in his Diary: Thought of Miss Curtis, and longed, longed, that she too might have thought of me. But she turned him down - a lucky escape for Miss Curtis, when you think of what happened to his next wife/sex slave.     

The second picture to inflame George's tender sensibilities is 'Diana And Her Nymphs At Play' of 1617 by Domenichino.

JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 86 TO HAVE A LOOK AT THIS.

Commonplace 84 George & All Art Is Quite Useless.

'All Art is quite useless'.said he.

George considered himself an Artist at a time when literature held more cultural clout than the visual Arts. Anyone of a creative bent wanting to make a name (and a fortune) for themselves might be tempted to gravitate towards writing because it might be seen as less hard work and offer the originator more free time to sit unmolested reading books and thinking up less than life-enhancing poetry. Visual Arts - painting and sculpture in particular - are unforgiving beasts, requiring skill and much practise to perfect. The notion that it is all spectacular feats of serendipitous legerdemain is tosh. Picasso said 'Inspiration exists but it has to find us working'.

Self Portrait Facing Death
by Pablo Picasso 1972 - 
after 90 years of practise.

The Artistic spark might be spontaneous, but the manifestation of it requires endless practise perfecting the process and mentally debating those decisions about what to keep and what to bin. Experienced artists get better at anticipating what will or won't work, and so save on materials. Writers are lucky, in that their materials are relatively cheap - whereas Visual Artists usually waste a lot of expensive gear before they realise they are barking up the wrong tree with marble carving and move to a cheaper medium - such as wood - then settle for working in a bookshop (I didn't put ‘settle for teaching’ there, see? Because teaching is a hard, troublesome and sometimes thankless task and needs more love shown to it haha)). Thus, money usually dictates what Art ismade - as George found out so harshly.

George's decision to abandon all but Art for Art's Sake (about the time he gave up Positivism, c 1883/4) in his work was an economic disaster and an impossible to pull off piece of wonky magical thinking, but it did provide him with an excuse in the unlikely event that no-one understood his work. If something he produced did not go down well, he might be able to claim he was 'misunderstood'; 'ahead of his time'; 'surrounded by philistines'... anything but 'mediocre'.

Selling the work means someone approves of it - which is one of the reasons some people make it. With or without a patron, Artists have always wanted to make money, if only to live and buy paints and materials, and so unless they have a ready-made income, will always have to pander to the market in order to finance their work. It's reactionary stuff constructed from envy and resentment to suggest, as George did, that only one who has starved can truly be an Artist. Some of the most gifted of his contemporaries had never struggled for money, but still came up with the goods: Jacques aka James Tissot, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec or James Abbott McNeill Whistler all came from comfortable financial backgrounds, and look what they managed to turn out - though in the case of Whistler, it couldn't make him a likeable, decent human being. 

This is the infamous James A M Whistler
picture John Ruskin so took against
click to find out more.

The struggle for making or even appreciating Art often starts with a debate about what is good or bad. The creative 'Artistic process' is a series of judgements and corrections based on mysterious forces dictating what to include and what to leave out. Unless there is totally random abstraction, this is so, but I am not aware of any Artist who works in this way - maybe machines do it, and the future cyborgs and robots probably have an app already installed, but the most abstract of artists - say, Jackson Pollock - control their paint, decide its direction, and choose its colours (or colors, in the case of Pollock haha) and deliberate every minute detail.

George made Art - paintings and sketches - in his youth, much as he dabbled with poetry. He left the paints behind, except as a 'weekend' activity-cum-hobby, but carried on making poems, not in the very best interests of Poetry, but because he felt strongly moved to put pen to paper. I know nothing about poetry beyond what moves me, but George's poems are mostly awful, over-long and pompous, merely showing off all he knows about Greek works and their construction, and failing to rise to the appropriate emotional heights. What we want from a poem is monumental in the same way Jim Morrison aka The Lizard King/The Doors' Light My Fire brings the listener to a happy ending click. Robby Krieger in sublime form here. There is a small sketch George did of a tree - which couldn't be less skilled if it tried, or more phallic (or erect!) and could easily have been done by DH Lawrence at his less exuberant.

George was much taken with the many teachings of John Ruskin - he of the above debate over JAMcN Whistler (Jimmy to his friends - if he had any haha). Ruskin was of the mind that Art can only be produced by those with high spiritual sensibilities; George was of the belief that this might be so, but only if those persons were also 'a cultured, highly intelligent & reflective minority' - according to his letter of August 28th 1898. Up to his armpits in the arduous and time-consuming task of wooing Gabrielle Fleury, he took time off to respond to a letter sent to him by a disciple/fan of his, a Russian émigré living in Paris and working as a translator - Il'ja Halperine-Kaminsky click. This young man addressed George as 'Dear Master' - which went down a storm with our man, and made its way into a letter he sent to Gabrielle. Il'ja sent him his translation of a book written by Leo Tolstoy - ' Qu'est-ce que l'Art? (click for full English text)

The Thames by James Tissot 1876 - which caused a furore of protest for being too sexy so he reworked it into this... 

Portsmouth Dockyard by James Tissot 1877 - no doubt Tissot knew that nothing is worn under the kilt! click As the old joke goes: No, nothing is worn under the kilt - it's all in working order! 

Of course, at this time, Tolstoy was a legend, but had lost some of his credibility because of his socialist behaviour - by turning his back on privilege and choosing to live like a peasant, he hoped to lead the way for the rich to redeem their souls by giving away their money and estates and living like simple folk. His thoughts on Art were in sympathy with Ruskin's - distinctly pro-proletariat and democratic and socialistic - three things not much to George's taste.

Tolstoy answered his own question 'What is Art?' with:

The object of this activity is to transmit to others feeling the artist has experienced. 

Such feelings intentionally re-evoked and successfully transmitted to others are the

subject-matter of all art. By certain external signs, movements, lines, colours, sounds, or arrangements of words an artist infects other people so that they share his feelings.

Thus "art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings."

  

This was, of course, written before the rise of Modernism, which might, in the second sentence, substitute 'ideas' for 'feelings'. And with absolutely no regard for females - though the term 'man' or 'men' stood in for 'human' in those days. And the bit about joining them in feelings? Not necessarily, as no two people see the same thing in a painting. Take those gorgeous Tissots as an example, which some blind, unfeeling fools will hate. 

In his response to this, George wrote that he agreed, up to a point, but that he could not agree that Art was the product of the prevailing 'religious spirit of the age', and that morality had nothing to do with Art. Echoes here, of Oscar Wilde's 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written'  (when quizzed about The Picture of Dorian Gray). In his defence of Dorian, Oscar wrote: “An artist has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colours on his palette are to the painter. ” He adds, “If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. ” However, “If a man sees the artistic beauty of a thing, he will probably care very little for its ethical import. ” click

Dynamism of a Dog On A Leash
by Giacomo Balla 1912. 

But where George is most at odds with Tolstoy's view is in deciding that only simple folk - the proletariat - can truly appreciate Art. George writes that the new sentiment (in literature) does not appeal to the uncultured reader, it is recognized only by a highly intelligent & reflective minority, & received very slowly indeed by the world at large. George is not referring to painting here; but is Tolstoy speaking about literature, or is he thinking of the Visual Arts? Literature is always going to be a much more difficult Art form to appreciate because it depends so much on knowing the intricacies of a language with its rules of grammar and punctuation, depth of vocabulary, knowledge of cultural references, rules of composition and genre... and painting and the other Visual Arts can be just as simple as looking. You don't even have to think - you just let it wash over you. Like music.

Where George was in total agreement with Tolstoy is in the matter of Art not being considered a 'trade'. This is a one of the most significant, but subtle, influences on the production of Art - the rise of the Visual Artist as a non-tradesperson. In the Renaissance, the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo were tradespeople, happy to work for anyone and probably paid by the hour - or the yard! JMW Turner regarded himself likewise, and mass-produced his watercolours in an almost industrial way to maximise his ideas and make as much money as he could. At some point, the move to regard Artists as special in a good way - personified by the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren - demanded a distinction between Artists and artisans. It is the difference that exists between journalists and novelists. Artists ceased to be jobbing tradespeople who could decorate an inn sign as readily as paint a church screen, and became the lofty souls we now recognise. William Morris was an artisan because he was principally a designer (amongst other things, of course) - Rossetti was an Artist. Artists do not like to be referred to as artisans. Graphic Arts are looked down on by Fine Artists... Snobbery crept in and elitism followed; Andy Warhol was initially seen as a lesser talent because he started in advertising. Now he is rightly placed at the top table as one of the greatest Artists of all time.

Puppy by Jeff Koons 1992 - one of the great Art works of the twentieth century

The Visual Arts are a universal language which is appreciated by those who 'get' it - you can like an Art work and not know why, and appreciate it without knowing how or why it was made; even when you get the wrong end of the stick about it, you can still find it meaningful. A book requires a particular set of skills and a specific form of knowledge already in place in order to access the stuff to be found in between the pages - and if you haven't got much learning, that can make you feel inadequate. An Art work is 'take it or leave it', and it doesn't judge the onlooker. Everyone has a creative reflex that reacts to Art works - you either like Puppy, or you are indifferent. You are either glad it exists, or you pass it by.

All Art is quite useless? Yes, inasmuch as it doesn't have to fulfil a function - like a teapot or a cushion. That is the difference between Art and craft. 

Commonplace 83 George & Exile - or was it something else?

Dante in Exile by Domenico Peterlini 1860

It should have happened that, post-Owens College, George carried on being a bohemian with eclectic tastes that flame into life at the creative impulse, engaging in existence as a study in possibility, cocking a snook at any censure of his unconventional lifestyle, and loving all things Art and self-expression. As it turned out, that didn't happen. He became narrower, more of a reactionary, and fearful of the world and its potential view of him. The bohemian will always strive to be an outcast who revels in their differences, but it is a position of choice, one with superior motives and ideals, not to be confused with sociopathy, which is another ballgame altogether click. But being an outcast is not quite the same as being an exile. Outcasts exist in all cultures and all times, and are stigmatized when their worth or value is judged against prevailing cultural norms. Exiles are forced out of their group and not allowed to return. George clung to the notion he was the latter because he dreaded the implications of the former. But, can he really claim to have been 'Born in Exile'?

So, what is exile? In the name of clarity, here is Wikipedia's click definition: Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return. It can be a form of punishment and solitude. 

The Journey of a Modern Hero to the Island of Elba 1814 

We might argue that George was an exile from Wakefield - because shame (and snobbery?) kept him from setting up home there. But, as he had no intentions of living anywhere as industrial and far from London's influence as Yorkshire, it wasn't really much of a loss to him to only be there for short holidays. Even being lucky enough to spend a year travelling in the States wasn't really exile - unless he was forced to go. If we accept that it was a journey completed under duress, then that was a year of 'exile' which ended with his unexpected but definitive return, from his own free will. As he seems to have had no intentions of staying in America, and did not make much of an effort to put down roots, it looks like a typical - if early - example of George over-estimating his capabilities, and underestimating the challenges in a situation, then giving up the ghost and losing heart when it suited him.

Notoriously, and if we can believe his version, George's mother sent him packing when he unexpectedly returned from America, so he could view himself as being an exile from his family group. But we know he was in constant contact with them all throughout his life, and didn't ever want to go back to live too closely with them - so not really banishment from the bosom of a loving family, because the whole shooting match of it always revolved around him. Even Algernon's heroic, if desperate, bid for freedom to run a life of his own was dependent on George's material generosity. He claimed to have shared very little with his family in terms of intellectual diversion, and he was not grounded in religious faith as were his mother and sisters, but George did his best to keep them nose to the grindstone of cultural pursuits. Besides, do Artists really want to be understood by their family?

The Outcast by Richard Redgrave 1851

Was George ever truly 'exiled'? It certainly wasn't from any class he was born into - his father ran a shop, which in George's day, was not the sign of success that it is today. The context of the time George's father was making his living in Wakefield has to be kept in mind when we think of George's evolution. Thomas Weller Gissing arrived in the town in the mid-1850s at a time when chemists were not the exalted scientists we now think of when we go to a dispensing pharmacy. This was still a time when physicians were regarded as little more than barber/surgeons, and the Medical Act of 1858 (the year after George's birth) was the first attempt to regulate what it meant to be a doctor. Anyone could set themselves up to be a dispensing chemist - you just bought a copy of Culpeper click, gathered some flowers and bought some lethal chemicals, and let the market do the rest. Thomas Gissing's natural bent was towards science - botany in particular - but we don't know if this was because he sold remedies based on plant extracts and so collected materials for medicines or if he had a truly enquiring mind. As he published works on ferns, it would seem he was very much a scientist at heart, trapped in a shopkeeper's existence (George used this in his writings as a sign that a man was a failure in life). He wrote poetry and was moved by, and acted to counteract, human suffering - and there would have been a lot of that in Wakefield - but, essentially, the Gissings would be seen as incomers, and so different and peculiar - in fact, outcasts. They would not quite fit into either of the social classes with whom they mixed; early experience of this may have shaped George's ability to feel at ease anywhere. But most of us have to face this sort of a challenge, and evolution is all about rising to occasions and adapting, and George was less of an adaptor than might be expected of such an intelligent creature.      

Satan, Summoning His Armies
by Thomas Stothard 1790

When George moved to London, he did so because it was the place to be. It was not a form of exile as he wanted to be there, needed to find work and London offered the most opportunities; besides, where else can you find the British Library but in our nations' capital? That he started his life with Marianne aka Nell in London in relative poverty - very short-lived as he came into a small but useful inheritance in 1879 - was a situation he soon rectified, and so he was forced to endure only temporary dire straits.

George actively chose to be a writer, but he was not content to follow in the footsteps of Dickens, Oscar, or Daudet by supporting himself with journalism whilst writing the Great British Novel in his spare time. This kind of snobbery kept him from making useful contacts and from building an audience, and almost guaranteed  a restricted market for his work. He was 'niche' at a time when it was not fashionable to be so - today, it is all the rage. But even 'niche' does not get you noticed unless you have access to a market that likes your product. George did not want to reach just anyone - he wanted to be read by like-minded souls who shared his world view - he was never strong on defending his argument within the pages of his novels, and lacked the emotional depth to sway converts to his cause by winning their affectionate attachment. By removing himself from the ranks of the popular as if being read by many might somehow cheapen his endeavours, he becomes the author who is to be pitied - as in, poor old George Gissing - all that effort and no-one reads him, let alone pays him for his work. Most readers like to feel at one with their favourite authors - that they share some common ground. From the examples of the fan letters George mentions in his Letters, his devotees were quite like the faithful of today in over-estimating the artistic worth of their hero.

Was this drive towards not being popular engaged in unconsciously because the reverse would have been too hard to deal with, as it might be too invasive of his privacy? If he came out of the shadows and claimed his place beside Meredith and Hardy (as was mooted with some justification) he would have been under scrutiny, and risked being revealed as an ex-con. As the likes of Israel Zangwill always knew he was a former convict, it was a waste of time thinking he was keeping it secret, but the real down side was that it guaranteed he was forever going to act like an outcast because he rejected the things that would have brought him into company and a like-minded social set. Was it really necessary to reject the Frederic Harrisons and move on from Mrs Gaussen because he was fed up with what he regarded as trivia and banality at their social gatherings? It seems a case of intolerance based on arrogance, to think he has nothing in common with these people, after years of sucking up to them. Unless, of course, he was tired of mixing with people who were his equals and more, in terms of their debating skills and intellectual competence...

Intentionally choosing to marry Edith - when he had no intentions of making much of a go at marriage - was an unforgivable demonstration of monstrously selfish egotism, when he knew that if she could not bend to his training, she would be rejected and her life totally ruined. But, marrying her, going off to Exeter, rejecting his friends, was all part of the need he felt to be left out of society - did he think it might make him seem more worthy of sympathy, and ensure everyone would try harder to keep him happy or excuse him his funny little ways? HG Wells made the point that Edith was  - like Marianne - never allowed to be viewed by his friends as a proper wife by entertaining George's friends. George always described his home life in such dreadful terms it was clear he was ashamed of Marianne and Edith but his friends were mostly decent types, who wouldn't have cared much if Edith was working class. Only the truly crass think in such terms as class when they interact with fellow human beings - even in George's time, 'noblesse oblige' was the order of the day, and making others feel comfortable is the bedrock of good manners.

Young Bacchus by Caravaggio 1596/7

George used the word 'exile' on himself, but this is a bit of a con, as it romanticizes his position. There is some sort of nobility in the word 'exile' mainly because it is a state that is earned by rebelliousness or truculence and nonconformity and it can be undone - exiles can be rehabilitated and returned more or less in the state in which they were when they were forced to flee. Outcasts are rejects from society because they don't fit in and can only be brought back when they are no longer beyond the pale - when they have reformed. George - if he ever reformed - did it too late for it to matter. He just kept adding crimes to his status as outcast - and probably realised the more questionable things he did - such as abandon wives and children and endlessly tell lies (all much worse than petty theft IMO), enter into a bigamous/adulterous relationship - the less likely he was to ever be rehabilitated into the class he wanted so much to impress, and so he convinced himself he didn't care what people thought about it because he didn't think anyone (at least, in his lifetime) would join up the dots and make a clear picture of all his mistakes. Fleeing to France was not the act of an exile - it was the act of a man who had made himself an outcast - who had 'cut his own nose off to spite his face'.

Godwin Peak - the 'Exile' George is so often identified with - was, like George an exile mostly in his own mind. Despite his successes at school and at Owens, George never really felt he lived up to the hype of his academic prowess. His kind of hothoused learning generally has no solid basis, and George had enough intelligence to see there were massive gaps in his knowledge of the academic world - he spent his whole life catching up. Perhaps he feared failure and so welcomed it with open arms as a strategy for controlling his fears: paradoxing himself. Was it, for our man (and Godwin), all a question of not having enough money (as George Orwell claimed when he described what George's books were about) that separated George from the world, or was it a gross superiority complex - which has its roots in feelings of inferiority? You decide!

So, what have we learned?

To quote Dr Seuss: Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.