... The title 'Beyond Taste' implies that art is
not about 'good' taste or 'bad' taste. Nothing to do with taste. Here
Yeadon's subject is bodily fluids; the images are of semen and the ejaculation
stands in for paint, as in the in Congeries Carnis series, where the
ejaculated white streaks on the pictures are a direct 'blasphemous'
reference to Jackson Pollock's 'drip' paintings. This work attempts
to exploit the contradiction between the 'beautiful' and the 'ugly'.
[As defined by Aristotle - "...though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representation of them in art, the forms for example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies."] The 'spilt seed' is dead or dying stuff, not to be given another thought, but wiped up, possibly in disgrace, shamefully with embarrassment or guilt. Bodily fluids feature strongly in the imagery of the Christian tradition and the sowing of seed is characteristic of medieval art forms representing human fertility. In grotesque realist terms Yeadon's work brings down to a material element that which is ideal and abstract. The conceit of his use of the devises of modernism and abstraction is an ironic contradiction or insult. This section also includes later developments of parallel themes of 2005.The portraits titled 'Laetitia' [Latin - rapture, joy] are based on images of orgasms from masturbating 'models' in pornography and Rococo paintings of religious ecstasy. (Laetitia Spiritualis). However,
these photographs are not of guys masturbating, but of models imagining
that someone has trod in their foot! [As directed by Yeadon]. The pain
is fake; as is the orgasm. The images also refer to forensic photographs
of cadavers on the slab. The ambivalence and contradiction of bliss
and death. MM5 |