Interview with Lexie Mountain, Part 2

Continued from Part 1...

Booze Clooze: Yeah, your lobster is not the red lobster, for sure. Have you ever checked out the monograph on Harnett that Doreen Bolger put together? He is one of my favorites, too. OK, one more question. You've written and spoken about how you want to use the lobster to represent the female body. I can certainly see why you'd want to get beyond the mere representation of luxury. The underlying theme that provides a counterpoint to the luxury in the Kalf and the Harnett is the vanitas. All that good stuff is so fleeting. Do you feel like the vanitas theme is relevant to what you are trying to do?

 

Lexie Mountain:   Sorry this has taken me so long to get to. This is really fun though and I like the conversation! Its kind of funny that you mention Doreen because she came to an open studio and I had a slideshow of references going and she came and talked to me because she noticed that one of the slides was Harnett. She told me about that monograph and I am dying to read it. I feel like a tool because I havent gotten to it and I'm really glad you reminded me. Do you know of any good writings about trompe l'oeil?

 Detail from the Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio. Francesco di Giorgio Martini, 1478-82. Walnut, beech, rosewood, oak and fruitwoods in walnut base.

      To the extent that still-lifes are a sort of symbols game I definitely think that vanitas plays a significant part. One can't look at a lobster without thinking of it being dead, served up, given over for consumption. The very symbol of the lobster is consumption. I had dinner at Red Lobster the other night and when we left, I noticed that one of the lobsters in their lobby tank was dead. I asked the hostesses if I could have the dead lobster and then it turned into this big thing, two hostesses being really polite, a head chef on the horn to HQ, general bewilderment about why any sane person would want a lobster that you couldn't eat. Suffice to say I did not get the lobster but it did drive home that you don't often see a dead lobster that isn't red, isnt cooked, is just a sort of in its natural state of mottled blackish. Its natural state of deadishness! Consumption in the fullness of time, not artificially imposed. I suppose that calls into question what is artificial about sets of symbols. Vanitas and luxury go hand in hand, in the way they revel in a sumptuousness of image in what is commonly thought of as still life. So often when I see images of sumptuousness and luxury I also immediately see lack and mortality in a really stark way, and probably a lot of those images of luxury are preying on my death-fears. And lurking in the corner is Catholicism and its attendant cans of various wormage, and suddenly still-lifes seems like a really insane party of glossy signifiers hanging out together, sometimes in dazzling profusion. All real grotesqueries and magical elucidations of nature, modified by constructs to fit our specific cosmologies, ready to be rewritten for whatever is happening now, too. So to answer your question, yes?

 

Detail of grapes from Sick Bacchus, by Caravaggio. 1593.

BC:      No problem, maybe that makes it better. Like if it was a recorded vocal conversation, you wouldn't have as much time to ruminate on things or for new experiences to happen. Doreen's book is very good. A lot of the essays have postmodern themes and the reproductions are really excellent. My girlfriend Jess has a copy, she might let you borrow it.
      Did you know that still-lifes and trompe l'oeil were conisdered some of the lowest art forms at the time? Harnett had to hang his work in the hall outside of the annual salon at the National Academy of Design because they wouldn't let it in the formal space of the exhibition.
       Have you read the Baudrillard essay called "The Trompe-L'Oeil"? I think it is really fascinating. I can't find it online anywhere, but I have a photocopy of it. It is in a book called Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France. (Cambridge University Press. 1988, pp.27-52).  For him, trompe l'oeil is distinct from still-life and even painting. It is the beginning of his concept of the simulacrum. He makes a Marxist point about how Renaissance princes would have these little studiolos with trompe l'oeil decorations at the heart of their palaces. That those little rooms were the secret to their power because that's the trick of power, knowing that the outside world isn't real either. Like to be a Pope you have to know that God isn't real or to be a banker you have to know that money isn't real.

       Red Lobster probably thought you were from 60 Minutes or some kind of grifter, or maybe both. Whenever I see dead lobsters like that I figure that they must have died from depression, so I was googling "lobsters depression" but "lobsters immortality" came up in the search bar. You probably already know this, but it turns out that unless something eats them, lobsters maybe don't die. They keep growing and get more fertile because of some weird enzyme they have called telomerase. So that kind of blew my mind, especially in light of what we have been talking about.

LM:    Ha ha I still have to give you your copy of Air Guitar back, don't I? Man I am terrible at giving books back, it is a very bad habit. Borrowing things and not returning them. I'm more careful than I used to be, but not by much! I am always thankful when anyone trusts me with anything. 

Venus Rising From the Sea--A Deception. Raphaelle Peale, circa 1822. Oil on canvas.

I would love to read that Baudrillard essay. I've been asking people for more writings on trompe l'oeil and this sounds like just the thing. There seems to be only one account - Pliny?  Do you know another? of the first "best" painter, like the ancient Greeks were sitting around arguing about who was the most objectively good painter and so they had a duel of trickery to see who could dupe each other. The first painting duped the birds, but the second painting duped the judges, and there's no lasting evidence of the painting itself so it does not remain in our consciousness except as an anecdote. We have to provide the painting for our minds, but since we may assume it was both still-life (fruit to fool the birds) AND trompe l'oeil (curtains to fool the judges) it is easy for our minds to supply the image in some way. (Pliny's Natural History describes this contest between Zeuxis and Parhassios. This contest was touched on in Lacan's lecture Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a--Ed.) Then there are cave paintings, which are perfectly preserved yet we have no anecdotes, we have to reconstruct the lore of the picture from context clues in a thrilling way. Maybe it's a question of how we want to build these pieces of art in our minds, the way it satisfies cravings for mystery AND elucidation, we want to be titillated by mystery and when a painting explains everything to us, just so apparently seems to give up the punch line so readily, or maybe we want the thrill of discovery for ourselves. I like the idea that it is simulacrum because they are not exact realities, they can't possibly be. Technically no image is actually the thing that it is or appears to be. 

The "Venus" of Chauvet Cave, France. 30,000–32,000 BP

The idea? fact? that lobsters do not die is definitely one of the most fascinating things about them. Civilization's relationship with mortality constantly reframes the debate according to its own market, as opposed to a more natural relationship with death as a process. Possibly not in opposition to some idea or concept of nature, but as a response to its own impression of what natural processes are, like a mirror tunnel. Capitalism is kind of a mirror tunnel of self-reassurance, I say as a modern person who may or may not reap its benefits. Lobsters came before us by a stretch of over a millions years, and as far as we can tell they appear to be relatively unchanged. Their design as such was already perfect, and we impose this redness onto it. How better to negotiate endless life than to deify its death mask, the red shell outline symbol. Very few other organisms can claim a perfect design from the start: we really have to work towards perfection, and its constantly negotiated by the consciousness that we impose. Do lobsters have consciousness? They have a grasshopper nervous system and not much of a brain but what if the whole lobster is the brain? We tend to give the brain a lot of authority. Sure, the human brain made skyscrapers, but the human brain also made skyscrapers. 

My favorite part of the Wikipedia entry for lobsters is the part that says they exhibit "negligible senescence". Apparently many organisms exhibit negligible senescence, like tortoises and certain clams, and science cant seem to figure out whether its a dead end or a an advancement. Many species die as soon as their reproductive capacity exhausts itself, and lobsters grow more fertile with age, so theoretically they could live forever under optimal conditions. One of the ironic tragedies of tracking negligible senescence is that often in order to determine the age of an organism it must be killed and dissected, instead of just being perfect and old and somehow ageless.