[The third and final contribution from Lucia Noisenbach...]
I smell an obsession. It was Nikolai Gogol who started it all off, back in 1836. In 1897, Edmond Rostand cashed in on this previous writer’s sense. Shostakovich, as anyone knows, joined the party in 1929. In 1967, the French historian Marcel Proboso provided a retrospective of the tradition, kick-starting a re-nose-sance. During the 70s and 80s there were no less than forty two novels on the subject, culminating with Hermann Husch’s pungently inspiring debut Ho Ho Rosy Nose, in 1989. We must turn now our heads to Luxembourg to catch the lingering scent of this creative fixation. Last year’s Weiner Prize included work by the Polish painter Jueri Kwòjescik, the centrepiece of which was his four-part canvas Eight Nose Holes – a lyrical evocation of his own snout, seen from the perspective of his top lip. Now, in 2006, the young Luxembourgian artist Walter Driska enters the fray – and answers the Pole’s challenge – with an equally poetic nasal portrait, a photographic triptych (or trilogy as the artist calls it) entitled The Runny Nose of Luxembourg.
‘The Runny Nose of Luxembourg’
Walter Driska, 2006
Except that ‘runny’ isn’t the word for it, in my opinion. The three noses of Driska’s work emit a seemingly tactile substance: one which does not dribble, like snot, but falls, unsteadily, like a stream of syrup. I would call it string, except for the fact that it catches the light; glistening, as if wet. Spaghetti also comes to mind, but it would be foolish to imagine the use of such a material from a Luxembourgian photographer (at least, not after the ‘Ravioli Arts Affair’ of 1996). No, I cannot tell exactly what this substance is – but runny, as such, it isn’t. For where runny suggests intermittent action; all three of the noses photographed here appear to be subject to consistent spillage. These noses aren’t so much leaking as bursting in a flow, like a tap or stream.
Driska’s photographs and Kwòjescik’s paintings have much in common. Indeed, they have so much in common that many critics have suggested that the two artists are merely one artist going under two different names. This seems highly unlikely to me; yet another pathetic attempt to undermine Luxembourg’s already unstable cultural identity. Sufficed to say, there are many under-confident artists who play about with pseudonyms – but those that do usually invent a new name in order to work within a different style. My argument is this: Driska and Kwòjescik’s work is so similar, they must be different people.
There is, yet, at least one obvious dissimilarity. Kwòjescik is a painter, Driska is a photographer. Where the former paints photographically inspired paintings, the latter takes painterly photographs. They both like to focus in on facial details, asking the viewer to reconsider a familiar object from a different angle. However, they are prone to taking different angles themselves, as we can see quite clearly from a comparison of Kwòjescik’s Eight Nose Holes (below) and Driska’s The Runny Nose of Luxembourg (above). The painter’s attention is very much on the nostrils, around which he manufactures a variety of romantic atmospheres, primarily with the use of colour. The photographer, meanwhile, takes a more familiar perspective, but supplements it with the inclusion of a foreign object (or foreign liquid) gushing from the partially obscured nostrils. He does not use colour, but romanticises his subject with a soft focus and (in the first and second images) heavy shadowing. Notice, however, that both artists have chosen to present their noses in groups: an intriguing decision, which no doubt has something to do either with a desire to puzzle their audience, or to highlight the self-evident abstract qualities of their compositions.
It is similarities such as these that have led to suggestions that the artists are or have been working in close proximity to one another. So far as I know, however, they have never met. If they are part of the same tradition (which they are) they have reached it via alternative paths, coming from countries far apart. The timing with which they have entered this tradition is, yet, fortunate – and the comparison between them owes much to their respective successes within the presently receptive arena of European cultural competitions. Kwòjescik, of course, was a finalist in The Weiner Prize of 2005-6. Driska, meanwhile, is one of two photographers short-listed for the most prestigious photography award in Luxembourg: the semi-legendary Copper Frog Cup.
‘Eight Nose Holes’
Jueri Kwòjescik, 2005
It is my hope that Driska will win this contest, thus sealing the full emergence of the nose as one of the most vital subjects in the European arts canon. He faces stiff competition, however. His rival Jean-Baptiste Rabbeton may not be contributing to as worthy a tradition, but his quietly political work Red Shoes has, nevertheless, excited one or two (which is to say all) of the Luxembourg critics. I say quietly political, but by Luxembourgian standards, this is rather a clangorous statement. A tiny country with a high standard of living and few signs of political strife, it may be fair to say that Luxembourg is unused to its artists taking issue with contemporary society. Driska’s confrontation of a thoroughly universal theme – the human nose – is typical. Rabbeton, however, owns more disillusioned soul. He has taken a peek at the heart of Luxembourgian life, and he isn’t altogether impressed at the sight. No more than a simple glance at the product of his dissatisfaction will go some way to proving my point.
‘Red Shoes’
Jean-Baptiste Rabbeton, 2007
The most obvious elements of this composition are designed to react against each other; to form a visual, albeit literary, opinionated dialogue. Red shoes are, of course, a positive symbol. You may recognise them either as the homely motif in the not-unpleasantly-saccharine film The Wizard of Oz, or as the agents of Coco Papa’s timely ascent in Maurice Moika’s Circus Comes to San Josef . Here, as elsewhere, they retain their quasi-magical or idealistic (perhaps even heroically homely) powers, holding in their crimson soles the hopes of a million scarlet hearts.
A positive start. Yet in Rabbeton’s image they are juxtaposed in front of (and therefore in opposition with) a series of grey horizontal lines. This is a cattle grid seen from above; a practical rural device provocatively reimagined as a set of prison bars; a simple yet effective bovine trap threatening the security of brightly-shoed humanity. But the bars themselves are not the real trap. No, the real trap lies below: in the scattered assortment of modern accouterments; the chaotic collection of festering, but by no means decomposing, remnants of human food-and-drinkstuffs. And though it remains a backdrop to our red shoes, there is every sign that the rot is spreading: the bars which once were green have long lost their viridian lustre and the light brown tendrils that curl around the litter creep ominously towards the proud shoes, as if to pull the anonymous person under. The fate of the shoes seems clear; though they may float above the rubbish at present – a class point, perhaps, representing the habit of the bourgeoisie to categorise the consumption and false dissemination of fizzy drinks as a working class disease – the days ahead are most likely to be dark ones. We are going to the dogs, most likely on an express train. It is only a matter of time before those red shoes are hanging with the wrong crowd; loitering with ill intent amongst the debris of so much man-made matter.
A univeral message perhaps, but also one which relates to a series of specifically Luxembourgian political directives, thought by some (Rabbeton clearly among them) to be undermining a programme of environmentally friendly iniatives set in place some time in the last decade. As hot issues go, it’s near the top of the list – and exhibition goers are all too aware of it. Red Shoes has been kicking up a storm, inciting debate in a way that only minor European photography can. That this was its primary purpose cannot be doubted. The image itself belies this; foreshadowing the future that such debate will probably provoke. And in this sense at least, it is not an entirely negative image. Self consciously, it both anticipates its role and notes the positive consequences of its provocative effect. To the right of the litter lying under the shoes, green shoots push their quiet way through: a counter offensive against the encroaching dirt. That this green means to unite itself with its neutral colour-chart-partner (red) is self-evident. That it will not do so unless an effort is made to consider the nature of the browns (the habitually messy by-product of red and green) is equally clear.
Red Shoes is a clever little photograph. Personally, however, it’s not for me. Its clear relation to a contemporary historical situation denies the possibility of its ever gaining true international recognition; whereas The Runny Nose of Luxembourg has about it an aura of eternity, of immediate international relevance, of sublime universality, which can never be overlooked. I notice that the critics, overexcited by their detection of the political nature of Red Shoes, have doubled back on themselves in trying to impose a similar structure upon Driska’s image. To this concept I can only present one word, and that word is ‘poppycock’. The Runny Nose of Luxembourg is not a political piece. It is not an exposé of a ‘runny’ democracy or an exposition of a ‘snotty’ society. It is a photograph of three somewhat unfortunate noses. It seems to me laughable to even hint at the possibility that this image contains some kind of political subtext. That some people have strayed a step or two down this stoney path makes a mockery of this our noble trade of art criticism.
Needless to say, even further mockery will be needlessly thrown in the faces of all and sundry if Walter Driska does not go home later this month holding the Copper Frog Cup (so named, incidentally, on account of its being copper and looking a bit like a frog). I’m not saying that Rabbeton’s work isn’t an interesting addition to an otherwise slumbersome Luxembourgian artworld; merely that Driska’s is a far superior image, connecting as it does with the criminally neglected tradition of European artistic endeavour that centres itself around the nose. And god knows there’s more in one nose than in a thousand photographs of pretty much anything else (excepting perhaps the ears, little toes and the hollow at the back of someone’s knee). For this reason alone, I anticipate Driska’s victory: any other result would be nonsense.
Lucia Noisenbach
Further Reading:
Photography in Focus by Lucia Noisenbach (The Great Mouse)
Photography in Focus by Lucia Noisenbach (The Last Judgement)
