Painting Seduction (Extract 1)
MA Fine Art Central St Martins thesis - 2007
Resurgence
What is an emotion? Where does it come from? How does it manifest itself? I have the feeling I am getting closer to understanding the relationship I have with my work…if seduction, memory and emotion are interlaced, then seduction might be this space I am longing to define.
Jean-Paul Sartres in Sketch on the Theory of Emotions[1], investigates the notion of emotion. For him, an emotion is an escape from a situation which cannot be faced. It is provoked by the opposition between the positive attraction of the aim and the negative repulsion of the obstacle:
“We can now conceive what an emotion is. It is a transformation of the world. When the paths before us become too difficult, or when we cannot see our way, we can no longer put up with such an exacting and difficult world. All ways are barred and nevertheless we must act. […] that is, to live it as though the relations between things and their potentialities were not governed by deterministic processes but by magic. […] Note also that our effort is not conscious of what it is, for then it would be the object of a reflection.” [2]
The ‘in-between’, the edge in front of the abyss, is there again: positive-negative, desire-disgust, attraction-repulsion. Emotions create the same in-between space, a space of tension that I am trying to fill with my food memories. These food memories are about emotions buried deep in my unconscious, but I wonder that they might be more about memories of emotions.
What can be defined as a memory of emotions?
According to Avishai Margalit in The ethics of memory [3], memory of past emotions is a way of knowing how the things we remember were felt at the time – a way of grasping the sense and the sensibility of past events needed for understanding and assessing the things we care about in the present. Moral emotions motivate our moral behaviour not just through the way the emotions are experienced but through the way they are remembered.
What are we supposed to remember: the emotion itself, or how we viewed the emotion in the past, or both? Each possibility has important implications on how we assess our life, past and present.
“Part of my account has to do with remembering past emotions and reliving them in the present. Another part relates emotions and their memory to living in an enchanted world. […] Memory as a project of gaining some form of immortality in a community of memory can take the form of something akin to revivification.”[4]
This reference to magic echoes Jean-Paul Sartres’ interpretation of emotion as an uncontrolled moment where everything can happen.
Is it the unknown nature of these memories of emotions which makes them magic or enchanted? As often experienced with fairy tales, an enchanted world can be seductive as well as frightening. Is it where my fear of painting comes from? Could it be the fear of facing these memories of emotions more than the memories themselves?
In other words, seduction creates an emotional dialogue with this enchanted world. And as with any enchanted world, it is hard to resist, even though one has to face the unknown. Seduction creates an edge where one faces the uneasiness of having to make a decision.
An emotion can take several forms: anger, joy, sadness, disgust, frustration… I see the emotion, which I relate to as being one, a whole - ‘The Emotion’ - which unites all emotions and consequently becomes unexplainable and unarticulated. It is as if different languages are spoken at the same time and create a rumble, an indecipherable noise. My emotion can only belong to the realm of the ‘felt’.
This emotion is punctual; it is a moment, an uncontrolled, intense moment, a short space in time, a space which has a beginning and an end, which is driven by the unconscious and memories.
When I start a painting, I experience this notion of temporality. I have to paint quickly and in one go. I have to grab the moment. The moment where I lose control and where my emotions invade me. My paintings are the expression of this emotion, they have to be painted as an emotion, they become an emotion, they are ‘The Emotion’. The painting has a life of its own.
Memories and emotions seem ungraspable. They cannot be seen. They can only be felt. Seduction reflects their evidence. How can I paint seduction if it is an illusion?
[1] Sartre, Jean-Paul, Sketch for a theory of the emotions, London: Methuen, 1971.
[2] Sartre, Jean-Paul, Sketch for a theory of the emotions, London: Methuen, 1971, p.63.
[3] Margalit, Avishai, The ethics of memory, Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2002.
[4] Ibid, p.108.