ART AND IDEAS

VERY UNPLEASANTLY BEAUTIFUL

Salvador Dali, Guillermo Del Toro, Christian Rex Van Minnen

By Annaleah Gregoire

Not what we want to see, maybe

There is no set definition of the grotesque, though its primary concerns are the distortion and transgression of boundaries. These boundaries can be physical, as well as psychological and metaphysical. Whatever it is, it’s too explicit to take in and doesn’t fit any standard of beauty. When we are confronted with images and experiences that defy our normal aesthetic conventions, we label them as grotesque. It seems the more violent one’s repulsion, the more apparent it is that we have come across something that is societally and culturally unresolved. Historically, extreme violence and those with body deformations are labeled as “freakish, because they are seen as outside the bounds of what is acceptable and possible. By confronting these issues, artists change our ideas of what’s grotesque and bring into the general cultural what had previously been outside of the realm of representation.

Discomfort is a key aspect of the grotesque because it’s loosely defined as what we can’t bear to witness. The unconscious is synonymous with what is outside of our awareness. This explains why definitions of the grotesque are always incomplete: because what we aren’t aware of, we can’t describe and what we can’t describe is always changing. It’s only when artists come in and make it beautiful that we can start to rethink and confront our prejudices. Rather than searching for a definitive definition of the grotesque, we should be looking for how artists make it real.

                                                              DALI

Aaron Ross, an art critic from BYU makes this exact point in relation to the art of Salvador Dali:

We may achieve an insight into our own evaluations, integrating the structure of perception itself into consciousness. This does not necessarily negate one's emotional reaction to a thing; indeed, the formal incongruity may be so marked as to preclude psychic tolerance. Yet it is within our power to examine our own reactions and fit the grotesque experience within a conceptual framework, thus removing some of its sting, and learning a bit about ourselves in the process.

If we look at Dali’s painting Soft Construction with Boiled Beans we can see his ability to represent the most violent and socially unacceptable aspects of the unconscious and make it beautiful. Dali’s treatise on art, the “paranoic-critical method” describes a process whereby the interpretive disorder of paranoia is simulated to produce alternative forms of knowledge not ordinarily available to consciousness. As ridiculous as this sounds, Dali employs it to great effect in this 1936 painting. Here is the contorted anatomy of a colossal creature that mirrors the outlines of Spain, a combination of images that at once distorts the country and what we might consider human.

Let's look at this closely

Dali depicts the monster destroying itself by tearing violently at its own limbs. The manner in which the creature's bony hand grips at its own breast and how it seems to be writhing in pain, its taut neck muscles uncomfortably in view, makes the image almost impossible to fully digest. It’s a monument to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and how it fragmented the country, both physically and psychologically. The enormous mass of flesh represents the fallen soldiers. The monster’s physical presence almost surpasses concrete rationality, much in the same way that the Spanish Civil war erupted and tore the country apart.

For Dali, aesthetic beauty is synonymous with, as he calls it, “edibility” or the ability to be devoured. This definition of beauty is coupled with a desire to possess, and, indeed, merge with the object.1 The monster in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans is close to human, its flesh and body parts are familiar to what we know and desire. The background is a picturesque landscape of the Spanish countryside. By making the scene beautiful and familiar, the viewer is able to digest and even participate in the grotesque image of Dali’s fragmented view of Spain. If something is edible, it isn’t disgusting, but actually rather appealing. As Aaron Ross explains, employing the grotesque in art removes some of its sting and invites the viewers to question and even learn a bit about our own perceptions.

GUILLERMO DEL TORO

Guillermo Del Toro's 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth depicts the horrific realities of the Spanish Civil War from the perspective of a child, Ofelia. She is both scared and enchanted by what she sees and it is these twin impulses that make this film so captivating. To avoid dealing with the death of her mother and her violent step-father, Ofelia escapes to a magical labyrinth which proves to be just as horrifying as the horrifying real world she wants to escape.

Pan's Labyrinth: where two worlds meet

Ofelia’s imagination distorts the line that separates fairy tale monsters from everyday people. And at times there is essentially no separation between the two, which makes Ofelia’s situation terrifying and realistic. For instance, the rebels resist fascist rule by disobeying orders, which parallels Ofelia’s tendency to make choices based on what she feels is right rather than what others tell her to do. When the Faun requests drawing a small amount of her baby brother's blood to complete the final task in opening the portal to the underworld, Ofelia refuses because it might harm her brother. Captain Vidal, Ofelia’s new stepdad, an officer for the fascists, arrives as the Faun leaves, takes the baby, and shoots Ofelia. Drops of Ofelia’s blood trickle down into the labyrinth onto an altar, opening the underworld. The King of the Underworld tells her that by choosing to spill her own blood rather than that of another innocent, she passed the final test.

This mirrors the actions of the rebels, specifically Mercedes, Videl’s housekeeper. She and Ofelia attempt an escape, are caught, and Mercedes is interrogated and tortured, but never goes against her beliefs before freeing herself, stabbing Vidal, and re-joining the rebels Del Toro seems to believe that trusting your feelings and intuition over authority results in a purer sense of morality.

In an interview that came out with the release of the movie, Del Toro discusses the relationship of the film to dark fairytales. He points out:

The rebels are like the woodsmen rescuing Little Red Riding Hood from the big bad fascist wolf. In a similar manner, the fantastical elements that Ofelia witnesses can be seen as her way of making sense of the world around her, the same way that fairytales are used to explain complex concepts in a more easily digestible manner.

Tough to see

Del Toro is a master at simultaneously both violating the viewer and making them feel empathetic. If fact, his use of empathy comes directly from a sense of violation. The Pale Man, featured above, is a child-eating monster with fleshy yet skeletal wrinkles and eyes in his hands instead of on his face. In Pan’s Labyrinth, the grotesque functions similarly to Dali’s monster Because of how close he is to a real human being, his distortions are disturbing and that is the first thing we feel upon seeing him. What Del Toro shows is that identification with the grotesque is a way of relating to reality and the truth.

CHRISTIAN REX VAN MINNEN

I have always been attracted to the grotesque because there is a truth and beauty that is inseparable from what is immediately unpleasant… I don’t paint these things with the intent to produce something explicitly unpleasant or for shock value, but at the same time it is my tendency to “enter the forest where it is darkest.” – Christian Rex van Minnen

Van Minnen’s paintings are a combination of the technical precision of medical text books on anatomy and old master classicism. The effect makes for an uncanny, stomach-turning, semi-computer-generated horror show. His portraits and still lives are part of an easily recognizable tradition; however, what he does with those traditions is almost unrecognizable and certainly grotesque. We are suddenly ripped out of one’s assumed historical place and time, and thrown into late 20th and early 21st century disasters. It’s not surprising that when questioned about his interest in film during an interview with Jacob Hicks in 2017, Van Minnen states that his favorite directors are David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog and David Lynch.

I’ve always loved directors who intentionally aim to destabilize the viewer in a benevolent sort of way. Disturbance is ok, but if it isn’t followed with some heart and good intentions, you’re just an asshole.

Robert Storr’s essay Disparities as Deformations: Our Grotesque describes the grotesque as “an eruption of things systematically denied: like subconscious thought, like minorities by majorities.” He continues by writing that the task of identifying the grotesque of the 21st century is the acknowledgement and redemption of varying sensibilities and values in art: it questions and challenges the assumed set of rules.

A nice dinner

At first glance, Van Minnen’s 2014 painting VOC Jellyfish Fry greatly resembles a rich spread of food on a marble table, a scene found frequently in classical historical oil paintings. Upon closer inspection, one can recognize an unappetizing fish head and candy-like grapes. It’s as if the longer you look, the appetizing buffet before you transform into unidentifiable gelatinous forms that are charred and smoking. Bone-like and intestinal textures begin to emerge from the food. A white and blue object on the right side of the painting is patterned similarly to traditional Chinese ceramic vessels; however, these vessels bubble and slump unlike any ceramic works I know.

The grotesque often blows apart notions of beauty. It challenges the assumed value that beauty is perfection and asks us to instead consider the possibility that beauty is ugly and that which is outside our realm of understanding might be worthwhile, or to borrow Dali’s term, “edible.” There’s not a lot of people who would consider VOC Jellyfish Fry edible on the first or second or third look, but perhaps the fourth? That need to look again is perhaps one of the hallmarks of the grotesque.

Sometimes I don't look so good, maybe

The grotesque aims to simultaneously elicit our empathy and disgust. It draws its power from combining the familiar and the unfamiliar and asking us to reconsider our tastes, In Annie Van Den Oever's article, “The Medium-Sensitive Experience and the Paradigmatic Experience of the Grotesque,” she explains that grotesque art creates a disruption of the perceptual process, a destabilization of cognitive routines, and an instant emotional response. The experience of the destabilization of the perceptual-cognitive routines by the use of new techniques creating a distinct experience of distortion of the natural order or constitutive of the category of the grotesque understood as an aesthetic category. . . this should remind us that the relatively short intervals in history in which the grotesque bloomed need to be reconceptualized as medium-sensitive intervals in history, which typically destabilize the ontological stability of mimetic tradition and produce new art, new insights and a new episteme in their wake.

Art helps us digest that which is indigestible. The destabilizing of tradition in an effort to produce new insights is perhaps the most valuable aspect of the grotesque.

©Annaleah Gregoire and the CCA Arts Review