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C110 article
CD: Ian Breakwell:
Vocals
Getting humour from tragedy
is not easy, but it's not impossible. Buster Keaton, Samuel Beckett
and Franz Kafka come to mind and now Ian Breakwell comes to my
mind, having listened to the four CDs that make up his collected
audio works.
Of all the desperately difficult undertakings,
trying to analyze why something is funny is top of the list -
but that's what I intend to do. Whenever possible I will insert
a piece by Breakwell into my analysis. Here's his Meat and
clothes.
(I trust my analytical notes help; it's so
easy to get these things wrong.)
When I was poor I wanted meat and
clothes; any meat; any clothes. When I got rich I wanted clothes
and meat; succulent meat; the choicest clothes. Now I live off
the fat of the land, my appetite is jaded, yet still I'm hungry;
hungry for meat; hungry for clothes.
I want clothes made of meat; the
finest cuts; a sirloin suit; a venison waistcoat; a caul - cravat
with a satay tiepin; a chicken-skin shirt with cold-cut cuffs;
raw liver Y fronts and trousers made of pure veal; Chateaubriand
shoes with glazed tongues; a bullock's heart in my buttonhole;
a porkpie hat by day; a crown of lamb at night. Clothed in meat
from scalp to toes.
Breakwell represents the dialectical terror
of our parading the raw meat of our nakedness against our elemental
desire to consume 'the other': signifier here of power, success,
and the ultimate absurdity of Late Capitalism. Barthes' insights
into fashion and Claude Levi Strauss's totemic analysis of the
cooked and raw should not be disregarded as relevant to the inherent
hilarity of this anecdote. In addition...
Bugger beggars. Every tube station
you come out of nowadays there's some miserable youth slumped
against the wall with a begging bowl and a piece of cardboard
round his neck saying "Homeless, Hungry, Thank You." I've seen
six this week. Each one the same fucking sign. "Homeless, Hungry,
Thank You." If they weren't written in felt pen, you'd think
there was a factory printing them up. Fucking monotonous. It's
no wonder they're down on their uppers if they can't think up
an original sign. No initiative at all. Now if it was something
thought-provoking; something snappy, something like "Tubercular
and Traumatised" or "Stalled on the Hard Shoulder of Life" then
I might put my hand in my pocket...Nah, the balls has gone out
of begging...Where's the spark? The spiel? The good gag? Where
have they all gone; those sweet-talking amputees; those honey-tongued
flaunters of open sores; those shipwreck survivors, wheezers
and shakers? When did you last see a top-notch fit-throwing
routine, eh? Not for donkey's years. Nah, they're all so fucking
passive today. Spongers. Fuck 'em I say. Bugger beggars.
Breakwell's scathing metaphor for
the art world, its predictability, its lazy appropriations, its
charmless appeal to our emotions, represents a pre-YBA paradigm
that needed such an exemplar to spark it into new life. The irony
that Breakwell was doing the 'new attitudes' work for years must
raise a chuckle. Who now are "those honey tongued flaunters of
open sores"? Some names that come immediately to mind; Tracey...
The woman in the blue trouser suit
walks around the thickly carpeted Bond Street Gallery inspecting
the prints on the walls. She ignores the small longhaired dachshund
which grips the bottom of her right trouser leg with its teeth.
She drags the dog along the carpet as she moves from print to
print.
The categorical imperative to edit reality
in order to make or receive most art - noticeably absent from
Breakwell's practice - is humourously depicted here in the figure
of the little dog. Is it Bosnia? Third World Debt? China? A resurgent
Germany (dachshund!)? World Famine? or is it just Africa's catastrophe
in general? We'll never know of course, but you can't help laughing.
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Ian Breakwell:
Vocals, 2003, back cover of audio CD; courtesy Anthony
Reynolds Gallery
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I hope my notes have been helpful. But enough.
There's 'wit' and 'irony' - easy - and then there is 'funny'.
'Funny' is hard, but Breakwell gets it time and time again in
this superb collection.
He describes his diary entries as "side events
of daily life which are often overlooked." They are, by turns,
mundane, curious, bleak, erotic, tender, vicious, cunning, stupid,
ambiguous or absurd.
9th September 1975. London. A public
lavatory, Theobald's Road. In the lavatory bowl a used piece
of sandpaper.
Breakwell has a wonderful voice that cherishes
the English language; sounding the final gs, getting the
pace and weight right, doing the voices of his characters so artfully
that you see as well as hear them. That he is a visual artist
is everywhere evident; aficionado of Fluxus, Surrealism and the
plain-English style, he catches the everyday; pins and fixes it
in all its glory. It is reported that André Breton, while walking
down Fifth Avenue in New York, was attacked by a butterfly. Stuff
like that happens to Breakwell all the time, as his Diary entries
(1970-80) testify. It's all true; it's humourous and in a
funny way it is a history of England that gives a clearer look
into that culture than an annual subscription to, let's say, The
Spectator. It's life just as we know it - it's just that we
didn't know we knew it until Breakwell wrote it.
The woman in the corner seat wears
a green velvet coat trimmed with imitation fur and knee-length
maroon suede boots. She falls asleep, sinking into the corner
of the seat. Her red velvet skirt slides up around her thighs.
Her mouth falls open and is reflected in the window, superimposed
on the night landscape outside. The train runs parallel with
the motorway. Cars and lorries rush into her mouth, their headlights
on full. She wakes up. Coughing.
Flann O'Brien had it that 'getting a laugh
out of it' is perhaps our best revenge on life;
Breakwell gets this. If my extracts sound
flat, well, you'd have to have been there. Get the CDs.
Noel Sheridan is an artist working
in various media.
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