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| A Marxist Aesthetician Oil on canvas. 66 x 41cms. |
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what a Marxist Aesthetician is, although I may have been one back in the 1970's with the rest of my London palls. Things were different then. No one in their right mind would claim to be a Marxist now.
This painting had a long gestation. In the late 1980's I was living in Edinburgh and making prints at Edinburgh Printmakers. The local waterhole was Mathers Bar at the top of Broughton Street. There was a guy who drank there with a face like a pale half moon who wore thick specs and a purple corduroy cap with a Soviet red star on it. I thought of him as the Marxist Aesthetician because he put together an exhibition about consumerism which was worthy but a bit boring. I made a small painting and a wood cut based on him The painting wasn't a success but I sold two or three of the prints, which wasn't bad as I'd only editioned five.
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| a Marxist Aesthetician Woodcut on Paper |
One thing I've learned is that my brain has a compartment reserved for unresolved projects. A couple of years ago the idea of a painting of a Marxist Aesthetician popped up again, this time a full figure. I also had a memory from my London days which was a bit like a ludicrous dream. One evening I had gone to a small, dark hall in north London for a debate about Marxism and Culture. This was completely boring and a waste of time but I came away with the bizarre image of the three Marxist academics that were sitting on the stage as the learned panel. They were identically dressed in sports jackets, shirts and ties, corduroy trousers and stout tan brogues. This was unremarkable but what was astounding was the fact that they all sported large beards. I immediately realised this was because they were disciples of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, both great proponents of the Power Beard.
Anyone who is a student of portraiture will realise that male facial hair goes in and out of fashion. The Georgians hated it. The ruddy faced gentlemen portrayed by Raeburn all had good barbers. They would not be seen in public without a powdered wig and a close shave. Modern research suggests that even the Jacobite army of 1745, usually regarded as a column of monstrous hairiness was, for the most part, clean shaven. Shaving stood for civilization but beards were barbarous and degenerate.
The Victorians changed all that. Surprisingly, the engine of change was the British Army, an institution not normally associated with fashion. During the Crimean campaign the winter conditions were so harsh that the soldiers were excused shaving. Returning veterans with their luxuriant beards were regarded as heroes and civilians took up the fashion in emulation. Things got out of hand and beard growing turned into a sport which I call Power Bearding. The Victorians bestrode the World and saw themselves as Old Testament prophets, booming there wisdom through hairy lips. Darwin had a beard, as did Charles Dickens. The poets Tennyson and Browning grew beards as did Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Across the Atlantic Abraham Lincoln grew a beard as did the poet Walt Whitman and the author of Moby Dick, Herman Melville. In Russia, Tolstoy grew a beard and in France the painters Claude Monet and Toulouse Lautrec. Even Sigmund Freud grew a well manicured beard but the psychology of male facial hair seems to have escaped him.
This explains the power beard of the Marxist Aesthetician. He has the intense, short sighted gaze of the zealot, wears a workers denim jacket to show solidarity with the proletariat and of course, wears red socks and scarf. His portfolio is decorated with the inevitable symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a portrait of the poster boy of the fashionable left, Che Guevara. Up above, in a Communist Heaven, Marx and Engels look pityingly down on him
