REALISM IS RAMPANT AND EROTICA IS ON THE LOOSE<\/p>\n
.<\/span><\/p>\n 1994<\/p>\n Steven Dwoskin’s latest production, “Ha, ha! La Solution In order to get to grips with this book it is, I have found, A further facet to the title is metaphoric. Within the forward It was, no doubt, one of Dwoskin’s primary concerns to Not being particularly clued up on women’s politics, and it’s Perhaps the problem regarding Dwoskin’s book is not so much Although Dwoskin’s use of photographic montage has partly been * * *<\/p>\n So where were we before we got way laid…? Oh that’s right Dwoskin obviously believes in audience participation, and as Finally when I put the question of mid twentieth century REALISM IS RAMPANT AND EROTICA IS ON THE LOOSE . 1994 Steven Dwoskin’s latest production, “Ha, ha! La Solution Imaginnaire” is a book of photo-montages and poetic prose following the thoughts of a 75 year old man as he searches for a letter. The letter’s significance lies in it’s potential to clarify the identity of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2204","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2204"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2209,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2204\/revisions\/2209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nImaginnaire” is a book of photo-montages and poetic prose following
\nthe thoughts of a 75 year old man as he searches for a letter. The
\nletter’s significance lies in it’s potential to clarify the identity
\nof the man’s first sexual partner. Standing amidst the dusty discarded
\nmemorabilia of his life he is joined only by a fantasy woman floating
\nin mid air beside him. (The sole remnant of a life of relationships
\nbuilt only on perverse “love”). While searching he tries to mentally
\npiece together the contents of the letter. However the action of
\nlooking through books, letters, photos and papers lying amongst the
\ndebris, serve only to confuse an already unclear mind with
\nrecollections of sordid incidents, which either happened or were
\n(are?) the products of his imagination, neither he nor the audience
\nare ever left sure as to which is which. Eventually after a great deal
\nof rambling his original question, (did it happen and with whom?)
\nremains unanswered. Finally he mutters “”Ha,ha!,” as though he meant
\nto say something else…… but he forgot what it was”-XI-<\/p>\n
\nworth spending some time understanding the title “Ha, ha! La Solution
\nImaginaire”. The significance of the word “Ha, ha!” lies in
\nDwoskin’s interest in the potential for absurdity in language.
\nEssentially this is a book about the language of words and images. The
\n“ha ha’s and “mm mms” that make up a large part of every day
\nconversations, and their ambiguous allusions to profound understanding
\nor a complete lack of attention, are the imaginary solution of
\nDwoskin’s title. The term “La Solution Imaginaire” also refers to one
\nof the main driving forces behind the surrealist movement, Alfred
\nJarry. Jarry developed the notions regarding pataphysics, which though
\ntoo lengthy to explain here, formed the basis on which surrealist
\ncultivated their ideas concerning the juxtapositioning of the familiar
\nwith the unfamiliar. With this in mind it is possible to understand
\nDwoskin’s preoccupation with the surrealists, as there is a direct
\ncomparison between the surrealist process, and the every day
\nexperience of being disabled. We, the disabled, are the unfamiliar, in
\nan able-bodied concept of the familiar. When the two worlds meet one
\ncould say that the situation has a surreal quality about it. (Probably
\nnot in the mind of the disabled person, who’s most likely to be just
\npissed off, surreal moment or not.)<\/p>\n
\nof the book, the dictionary definition of an Ha ha is given as a
\ndevice of landscape gardening. It is a ditch that has been used
\ninstead of a fence, with the benefit of not effecting the view. On
\ndiscovering such ditches people would exclaim “Ha, ha!”. It is with
\nthis in mind that Dwoskin’s “Ha, Ha! La Solution Imaginaire” can be
\nseen too as a cut in the landscape of art, a new surprising boundary
\nwhere the beauty of the image is played around with.<\/p>\n
\nchallenge people’s approach to viewing photographs. At present the
\nlanguage of the photographic image is generally limited to being a
\nliteral and inexpressive tool of the journalist and advertisers.
\nTherefore it follows that to deal with the photographic image in any
\nother manner is likely to meet resistance. Unfortunately such
\nresistance will most probably be overshadowed by the fact that all of
\nthe images in Dwoskin’s book are photographic montages of naked women.
\nWith a long history of women being exploited by male photographer’s
\nmany viewers are going to be put on edge. Add to this the fact that
\nDwoskin has edited the images in such a way that the women have
\nessentially been “cut up”, and it is not surprising that many people
\nare going to be angered by the images content before they think about
\nit’s form. In a recent meeting with Dwoskin I asked him why he chose
\nto use women as the subjects of his work. He explained that firstly
\nthe negative reaction was very much an Anglo-Saxon response to the
\nnaked female body. In other countries the feedback had been quite
\ndifferent, except in the United States where it had been men who
\nseemed most enraged. His experience had been that many women found the
\nimages exciting, challenging, attractive and erotic. For him focusing
\non women seemed totally appropriate as for all of us (women and men)
\nit is “woman” that is the centre of being. “Her is the ancient and
\nbasic root of you” -pg76-. His preoccupation with them, he continued,
\nis not motivated by an endeavour to uglify, but search for a new image
\nof beauty in art. The last image in the book is of a pregnant woman.
\nIt should also be noted that any research in to surrealist art is
\ngoing to involve a large amount of images of the female naked body,
\nthe question remains though, as to the relevance of such images in the
\n1990s.<\/p>\n
\ndebatable that as a man I should ever venture over such difficult
\nterrain anyway, I’ll leave the feminist critique to someone more
\nqualified. However what I do wish to raise is a point that relates to
\nall disabled artist. This being the choice one has to make when a
\nconflict of interest arises between one’s art and politics. Taking
\n“the cause” as your guiding principle may lead to artistic
\nlimitations. The history of the constraints of political correctness
\non art has not been a god one, for example The Social Realists, Nazi
\npropaganda, recent blasphemy cases against artist, and the burning of
\nTurners erotic paintings, all demonstrate that political correctness
\nand art do not always go hand in hand. Arguing that good politics will
\nnot bring about a conflict of interest is a fallacy, what’s
\npolitically correct one day is not another. And yet as disabled people
\nwe should be well aware of the potential for politically incorrect art
\nto be deadly dangerous.<\/p>\n
\ncontent but medium. Had his images been painted then reaction to the
\nuse of the naked female body would have been less. Fragmenting images
\nof women has been going on at least ever since the cubists, and while
\npeople recognise that in painting, as in photography, the use of the
\nfemale naked body is, on the whole concerned with male fantasies, it
\nis still generally regarded as acceptable. It is this hypocrisy that I
\nbelieve drives Dwoskin in to pushing the viewer towards a
\nconfrontation. What is it about photographs that make them
\nuntouchables? What difference is there in the quality of voyeurism
\nthat occurs when looking at “page three” photographs of naked women, a
\nVictorian “photo realist” work, Renoir’s “Bathers”, Rembrandt’s nudes,
\nand a large body of other work including Roman, Indian, and Chinese
\nerotic art? All these differ in artistic merit, original intention and
\ncloseness to “appearing real”, yet all of them have been objects of
\nmasturbatory fantasies, yet it’s still “page three” that stands out,
\nand why, because it’s a photograph, it “looks real”.<\/p>\n
\nused to draw attention, shock and challenge his audience, it would be
\na mistake to dismiss his images as not being of great artistic merit.
\nBy fragmenting the photographs Dwoskin creates a multi edged metaphor
\nwhich not only serves in terms of subject matter, but also becomes a
\npowerful artistic device. For instance the image when fragmented is
\nreleased from a particular point in time, and as such takes on a
\ncharacter similar to motion pictures, it also allows movement not only
\nthrough time and space but through subjects too, so that associations
\ncan be shown, in the same way that they are made mentally. In addition
\nto the images working on these levels they also relate to disability,
\nin some instances the women look as if they’re missing limbs.
\nObviously the idea of women without limbs does have a host of perverse
\nmale fantasies attached to it. With no arms to push off an advance,
\nand no legs to make an escape, “she” is rendered relatively powerless.
\nAdd to this classical psycho analytic theories relating to castration
\nanxieties, possession of the breast, and the drive to destroy the
\nunattainable and you could just about obliterate any belief that
\nDwoskin’s motivation could be artistically based. But then the Venus
\nde Milo is an example of beauty in deformity, and Mary Duffy (a women
\nphotographer who uses photographs of her own armless body in her work)
\nare acclaimed all over. Perhaps it is a question of motivation, but in
\nDwoskin’s own words he is trying “to break the stereotypes of how we
\nlook at humans…..It’s how to look at disability”<\/p>\n
\n“…but he forgot where he was”. Dwoskin writes “This is a story of
\nmemory fragmented” where by way of a meandering journey through the
\nmost significant relationships the main character has experienced, a
\nnew synthesised memory develops, involving his mother (possibly his
\nsister, he can’t remember) her friend, and the fantasy women.
\nPortrayed as a lackey to women, who are themselves depicted as seeing
\nhim as their “toy boy”. There is a strong insinuation, (whether it’s
\nDwoskin’s or the character’s is not apparent), that the women are
\ncruel man haters. It’s hinted that the mother is single, possibly
\nlesbian and conceived him through “rage not rape nor love”. “This is
\nthe double edged quality of a mother” says Dwoskin “a child’s future
\nis totally at the mercy of her….Whether it’s Mother Earth, Nature or
\nour own mothers.” In the book the main character is never certain as
\nto whether the mother character was his mother, or one of the many
\n“surrogates”. As with early Freudian oedipal theories one is never
\nsure if the complex is simply part of the child’s imagination or
\npartly triggered by the behaviour of the mother. This lack of
\ndefinition is the nub of Dwoskin’s argument. Without a clear memory of
\nthe past there is no clarity to the present, therefore it follows that
\nour perception of reality is founded on nothing but the wishes and
\nwhims of our subconscious.<\/p>\n
\nregard “Ha, ha! La solution Imginaire” the audience certainly has its
\nwork cut out. This is, putting politics aside, an out standing book
\nartistically speaking. If you like Joyce, Beckett, Dadaism,
\nSurrealism, photo montage, and are interested in the workings of the
\nmind this book is for you.<\/p>\n
\nEuropean art styles being appropriate for the 90’s to Dwoskin he
\nreplied “If Thatcher can look back to Victorian values then I can’t
\nsee the problem!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"