Last fall the Corcoran Gallery was host to a show that has widely been described as one of the worst exhibits DC has ever seen: J. Seward Johnson's "Beyond the Frame: Impressionism Revisited." WaPo art critic Blake Gopnik did not mince words when he said, "This is the worst museum exhibition I've ever seen." Seward's show featured bronze "sets" (created by a team of artists) which revealed the larger world beyond the edges of the most famous Impressionist paintings, often to reveal Seward and company at hand—oh, say, he and Manet enjoying a drink at le Folies-Berger or something. Universally panned would be a gentle summary of the critical reaction to the show. (Except for some ebullient praise from National Review's Meghan Keane, who described the show with words like "enchanting"—vomit! vomit!—but we'll not digress into that whole bad aesthetics/bad ethics correlation today.)
The thing is, of course, the kids loved it. And the Corcoran raked in bazillions. It was the equivalent of an Oscar award-winning actress taking a summer breather with a bad knock-off comic book movie.
But it seems like the Corcoran is gearing up for the red carpet again with Sally Mann's "What Remains" exhibit, which has garnered high praise from critics and probably its share of gasps from family outings. In previous efforts Sally Mann has famously documented her children nude, up until the age at which they no longer felt comfortable modeling. (Not exactly the sort of show that inspires the crowd who thoroughly enjoyed traipsing around Seward's candyland, for which Seward obligingly painted footsteps on the ground to outline an optimal route. I imagine the Corcoran suffered the former show so they could take the financial hit with Mann and other, you know, actual artists.) Mann's current show is bluntly centered on death. She's gone so far as to disinter her year-long dead dog in order to photograph the dying and decaying process. I'm seeing the show next Thursday—I'm kind of scared but I caught a sneak peak anyway from Sarah Boxer's review in the NYT.
Boxer makes the point that Mann has gone from sexualizing her children to thanatizing them. (They make an appearance at the end of the show.) I wonder, actually, if there's much difference. Mann's photography has significant Epicurean undertones—pictures of her children with fruit juice gushing from their mouths, down their prepubescent chests—and thanatizing desire (if you will) was an Epicurean way to negate the pleasures that are threatened by death. In this way she transforms her children from sources of suffering (caused by their deaths, caused by the concept of their deaths) into pleasurable aesthetic objects.
Mann may not grace the pages of Today's Parent any time soon, but she's found one way of side-stepping all that security mom hysteria.
Posted by Kriston at July 23, 2004 2:04 PMwhat does "thanatize" mean?
Posted by: matty at July 23, 2004 6:42 PMI don't have a dictionary around thorough enough to list it, but it's "thanos" or "Thanatos" + "-atize," to make death-like or what have you. (sex : sexualize :: death : thanatize) Should've made that clear in the post.
Posted by: Kriston at July 23, 2004 7:26 PM"Thanatize" is a pretty uncommon word. Try Googling it; the only hit is a Stanford philosophy site:
'To convince ourselves that death cannot harm us, either of two strategies will serve (Luper 1987, 1996). First, we could adopt Epicurus's negative hedonism, and adjust our attitudes accordingly. Second, we could adopt the no-thwarted desires view of happiness, then thanatize our desires, in this sense: abandon all desires that death might thwart . Epicurus does not distinguish between the two approaches, yet they differ. Negative hedonism does encourage us to pare back our desires, but only so as to avoid the painful experiences associated with their being frustrated or to avoid other painful consequences of having them. In particular, it allows us to retain a desire so long as we cannot experience the events by which it might be thwarted, and so long as retaining it is not painful for other reasons. It does not prompt us to drop a desire simply because death might thwart it, since death thwarts desires in ways we cannot experience. Suffering is caused neither by death nor by the thwarting of any desires for which death is responsible. Thanatizing, by contrast, eliminates desires death might thwart. However, it allows us to retain some desires that are discouraged by negative hedonism. Consider, for example, my desire that the moon orbit the earth after I am dead: whether this desire is satisfied is not affected by my being alive or by anything I might do while alive. In this sense it is independent. Thanatizing leaves independent desires in place, yet some of them are discouraged by negative hedonism. The moon's (not) orbiting the earth after I am dead can have no causal impact on me, and hence must be a matter of indifference to me if I am a negative hedonist. [...]
'Arguably, similar remarks apply to people who thanatize their desires (but see Rosenbaum 1989). A thanatized parent cannot sustain real concern for the well-being of her children through independent desires, since such desires leave her indifferent to her children while there is anything that she can do to help her children. At best she can take the attitude, let my children do well so long as I cannot possibly do anything about them, which is so bizarre as to be psychologically impossible, and which falls far short of genuine concern, not to say love, since the latter guarantees the attitude, let my children do well even if I cannot possibly help them. Autarchics, conformists and nihilists are even more callous: they shrug off the suffering of their children (and everyone else) no matter when it occurs.'
And I doubt the Corcoran Gallery can traumatize me any more than I already was by the prospect of sticking a Gehry construction onto a 19th c. building. I like Gehry -- lost $100 trying to get out to Bilbao this summer -- but the mockup the Corcoran has on display looked awful.
Posted by: PG at July 24, 2004 11:25 AMI actually saw the "What Remains" exhibit when I went to check out Norman Rockwell's stuff. It's um, well, at least it will make an impression on you. Let's keep it at that.
Posted by: Erik Kosa at July 24, 2004 12:31 PMSee, look, Epicurus. I can't get that link to work now.
Posted by: Kriston at July 24, 2004 3:29 PMphilosophy sucks.
Posted by: matty at July 24, 2004 6:40 PMI went to the 4 Freedoms with a friend who was limping around on crutches. Making him look at decomposing corposes would have been a little too cruel.
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