On Skulls: Part 5

Andy Warhol Skull 157 1976

 

The Traumatic Real

It has been attempted thus far to present two somewhat contrasting readings of Hirst’s piece; the first, exemplified by the ideas of Sterling, Saxl and to some extent Panofsky, would locate the work as part of a long symbolic tradition of memento mori. Thus it can be viewed as pointing to ideas of mortality and the futility of wealth, to the ancient theme of death having the last laugh. This could be called a referential reading.

However, under a simulacral reading, as discussed above, the work refers only to an ever-receding network of signs in a visually overloaded culture – any real meaning is dissipated in myriad cultural, sub-cultural and pop-cultural associations.

Faced with these two opposing viewpoints, it would seem that they are mutually exclusive – either the work refers to meaning outside of itself, or it is ultimately closed to authentic reference – both cannot be entertained simultaneously. Or can they?

In his essay The Return of the Real Hal Foster argues as much in relation to Andy Warhol’s Death in America series. Foster claims that these works at once permit both readings through a third reading, which he terms ‘traumatic realism’. Viewed thus, Warhol becomes

One who takes on the nature of what shocks him as a mimetic defence against this shock. (Foster, 1996, p.131)

Using ideas rooted in the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, Foster posits Warhol as a traumatised subject who uses the blankness of repetition to disturb, ultimately to point the viewer toward the Real, a sort of fundamental presence or existence which threatens the subject with annihilation even as it beckons them with the core of their own nature. Contemporary artists are similarly caught in a schizophrenic pull between the breakdown of the referential order and the primordial horror of what might lay behind it:

Here artists are drawn not to the highs of the simulacral image but to the lows of the depressive object. If some high modernists sought to transcend the referential figure and some early postmodernists to delight in the sheer image, some later postmodernists want to possess the real thing. (Ibid. p.165)

Portrait of Andy Warhol

For this latter group of artists, Foster claims, truth resides in the traumatic or abject subject, particularly in the damaged body. The ultimately true subject is the corpse. The dead or wounded body is thus taken up by artists as a focus for work in a desperate attempt to re-engage the Real.

One does not need look far for trauma and death in Damien Hirst’s work. It is there in the embalmed and dissected animals, in the tragically beautiful butterflies stuck to the surface of canvasses like jewels, in the photorealist paintings depicting accidents and operations, and of course, in the trademark skulls. Following Foster, this work, including For the Love of God, can be read as simultaneously occupying two apparently contrary positions; the ironic and the genuine. In using the skulls, animal parts and scenes of death, Hirst, like Warhol, is saying ‘It hurts, I can’t feel anything’ (Ibid. p.166).

Comparing Hirst and Warhol seems fitting: both have orchestrated their own careers to dizzying heights. Both have become media superstars, grabbing the limelight and making their lives as colourful as their works. Both have used the language of their contemporary culture to talk about wealth, about banality, about death. Both seem fascinated by the opaque reflectivity of the shining surface of the mass-produced, and about the darker secret that might lurk beneath it.

Douglas Gordon - Forty