Seminar in Visual Culture 2010: The Art of Murder

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Room ST 275
(School of Advanced Study, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square,
WC1B 5DN London)

This series of seminars acts as a forum for practicing artists,
researchers, curators, students, and others interested in visual
culture who are invited to present, discuss and explore a given
theme within the broad field of Visual Culture. In 2010, the theme
of the seminar is "The Art of Murder." Artists and writers have
always been fascinated with the violence of murder and the thrill
and sensationalism that comes with it. Many examine it in critical,
theoretical or creative forms of expression exploring the hidden
fears and desires inherent in breaking the most sacred taboo, the
destruction, and thereby for some the renewal, of life itself.
Thomas de Quincey considered "murder as one of the fine arts",
and the murderer as artist, in his eponymous satirical article
from 1827. W.H. Auden calls murder "negative creation"; and like
the classical rebel-poet/artist Auden's murderer is "the rebel
who claims the right to be omnipotent." According to legend George
Bataille dallied in a more dangerous fashion with the artistic
act of murder.Today, artworks by serial killer John Wayne Gacy
fetch up to $15,000 at auction. In the Washington-based Museum
of Crime and Punishment one can admire art and craft made by Charles
Manson and an online search will provide opportunities to purchase
one of his sock puppets. Marcus Harvey’s portrait of child-murderess
Myra Hindley, which was created from the hand-prints of children,
attracted much criticism, but it also drew the crowds. When crime
writer Patricia Cornwell cut up a painting by Walter Sickert in her
quest to prove that Sickert was Jack the Ripper, the art-world was
outraged. However, whether we believe Cornwell's theory or not,
Sickert's paintings suddenly acquired a new fascination. This
cross-disciplinary seminar series "The Art of Murder" sets out to
explore visual representations of actual murder in fine art, theatre,
film and literature, as well as our relationship with artefacts and
artworks created by criminals.

Participation is free and open to all, but please email me
at ricarda.vidalsas.ac.uk to reserve a seat.

Programme:

Wednesday 27 Jan. 2010, 6.30pm - 8.00pm

Ricarda Vidal, "A brief introduction to murder"
From de Quincey to Orwell and Bataille writers have been concerned
with what constitutes a "good murder" and artists from antiquity to
now have been concerned with how best to visualise it. This talk
endeavours to give an overview of the history of our infatuation
with murder and its aesthetics and thus to lay the groundwork for
the various presentations in the "Art of Murder" seminar series.

Geraldine Swayne, "On Painting Murder"
I've made a lot of work about murders, not because I necessarily
want to make pictures of the act but because I am interested in
the atmosphere of murder scenes; the way terror distorts reality
and the moment when the soul leaves the body.I became interested in
murder as a child and still hold childish supernatural beliefs about
murder being a crime against nature, (and hence the universe),
changing murderers into monsters and turning blossom to ash. The
resonance of murders, (particularly of young women), passes through
me like a kind of medium. When I paint a murderer, what I am asking
is: once you've killed, have you committed another murder on your
own soul; and if you have, can I see it in your eyes

Simon Bacon, "The Two Faces of the Murderous Gaze"
The Dark Doubling of Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula as Seen in
"An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump" by Wright of Derby and
“Triptych May-June 1973” by Francis Bacon Wright of Derby's
painting was produced over a hundred years before the creation of
our two protagonists and Francis Bacon's seventy years later but
both example the murderous gaze implicit in their modus operandi's.
Sherlock Holmes can be seen as the light of Enlightenment reason
uncovering the traces and motivations of the most devious and
diabolical murderers but his cold scientific gaze is not just his
own; in the act of discovery he re-opens the wounds of the victim
to public gaze and consideration. Dark acts are no longer discrete
and individual but become public property in the light of
collective scrutiny. Similarly Wright of Derby's "An Experiment on
a Bird in an Air Pump" (1767-68) shows light being brought forth
from darkness; an attentive audience is invited to watch the
death-throes of an unwitting victim all in the interests of science.
Dracula, even more so than Moriarty, is Holmes' "dark double". His
deathly project is hidden and nefarious, guided not by intellect
but emotions; his lust is for life not scientific stultification.
His murders deflect the public gaze rather than wallow in it, an
act that is personal rather than social. Bacon's "Triptych May-June
1973" (1973) reveals the fleshy nature of demise, solitary and
engulfed in predatory shadows. The artist's brush slashes and
cuts to the bone; in paint no one can hear you scream. Revealed
here are the two sides of the murderous gaze one dissects the other
detects. One deals in light and the other dark; one finds death in
life the other life in death; I'll leave you to decide which is
which.

Wednesday 24 Feb. 2010, 6.30pm - 8.00pm

Roger Cook,
Murder, Myth and Martyrdom: the Death of Pier Paolo Pasolini
Leila Peacock,
"Dis-moi ce que tu manges…" – The Cannibal's Cookbook

Wednesday 24 March 2010, 6.30pm - 8.00pm

Brittain Bright,
"The Aesthetic of the Crime Scene Photograph"
Julia Banwell,
"True Crime: Looking at Violent Death in Mexican Visual Culture"

Wednesday 26 May 2010, 6.30pm - 8.00pm

Sarah Sparkes,
"Never Afraid - Murder at Crimes Town"
Lisa Downing,
"Monochrome Mirror: Representing Dennis Nilsen"

For more information please see: http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/index.php
id=434