Seductive Monsters

S E D U C T I V E M O N S T E R S:

( D E ) F O R M I N G T H E B L O B

Louise Zhang !

BFA Honours 2013

College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales

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DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my

knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person,

or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any

other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where

due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research

by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly

acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is

the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the

project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is

acknowledged.

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CONTENTS

Introduct ion ………………………………………………………………… 4

What’s in a Blob? …………………………………………………………. 7

The Monstrous Cute and the Ambivalent Other ……………………. 17

Seductive Monsters: (De)Forming the Blob ……………….………… 30

Acknowledgements !………………………………………….……….….. 37

Bibl iography !………………………………………….……………………. 38

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INTRODUCTION

This thesis engages with notions of indeterminacy, ambivalence, and the oscillation

between the monstrous and the cute. The blob is adopted as a vehicle for these

expressions and explorations. Through painting’s processes and materiality, the blob

is registered as a transformative, playful yet repulsive deformation and an inchoate

biomorphic form.

The blob has constructive potential: through my studio-based practice this

ambiguous, primitive and bestial matter is cultivated in painting and transformed in

sculpture. Married with the artificial candy palette of the cute and the pretty, a tension

is created between this state and its perceived monstrous nature.

If we examine the monstrous cute linguistically, the word ‘cute’ is derived from the

word acute, and the Latin word acutus, meaning sharp. Cuteness therefore involves

the sharpness of the senses and attention of the mind (Richard, 2001). According to

Maja Brzozowska-Brywczyska, sharpness is cunning, and cunning is synonymous

with the cheeky and charming, hence its evolution and current usage: ‘attractive in a

pretty or endearing way’ (Brzozowska-Brywczyska, 2007). Konrad Lorenz asserts

that the attractiveness of the ‘cute’ is in its infantile associations—playfulness and

naivety—bound with the vulnerable and the pathetic; both of which are evoked by

deformities, such as disproportionately large heads, oversized eyes, and soft and

round features (Lorenz, 1971).

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The word ‘monstrous’ is derived from monstrum, a synonym for something

marvellous, and a divining portent (Brzozowska-Brywczyska, 2007). The

contemporary definition of monstrosity is no longer to indicate the divine, but rather

employed to describe the terrible, immoral or repulsive. Nonetheless, both definitions

suggest strangeness and wonder.

What transports the cute towards otherness and indeterminacy is its ability to be

present in both the attractive/pathetic and the unattractive/repulsive spheres. It has

the capacity to be grotesque. Brzozowska-Brywczyska describes this as the

monstrous cute:

Monstrous cute is—following this trait—a cute as read through its thesaurus

(endearing, loveable, delightful, darling, pretty) and then re-read through the

notion of strangeness and marvel (something that is not as it seems,

something that suffers from innate contradictions); to read cute as monstrous

is—in brief—to read it as an Other. (Brzozowska-Brywczyska, 2007)

The deformation of the blob emphasises its biomorphic organic nature, teasing and

bringing the familiar into a realm of the monstrous other. Such disparities place the

blob in the grotesque. Nancy Hightower frames the grotesque as such:

[The grotesque is] …not a thing in itself. It’s not a genre or trope or an “ism”

that can be qualified by a time period. It is an operation, a process that

occurs when one is caught in between a moment of humor and horror, or

horror and beauty  —  held in perfect suspension so that neither overrides the

Other. (Baade et al., 2011: 4)

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It is this potential of 'in between-ness', of indeterminacy, that is fundamental to the

nature of—and one's understanding and expression of—the blob: this is the focus of

my investigation.

This thesis is divided into four chapters, interconnected through ideas and works

generated in studio practice. Chapter 1: What’s in a Blob? explores the definition and

manifestation of the blob within painting and sculpture. These are contextualised

through biomorphism and the grotesque, with focus on the practices of artists such

as Yves Tanguy, Ernesto Neto, Greg Simkins and Noel Skrzypczak, who construct a

compendium of notions that communicate the idea of the blob.

Chapter 2: Monstrous Cute And The Ambivalent Otherness investigates the theory of

the monstrous cute contextualised through the dissection of Patricia Piccinini’s and

John Wesley’s practices. Figures of popular culture and children’s cartoons such as

Hello Kitty and Spongebob Squarepants (1999) also express the indulgences of the

monstrous cute through deformations and exaggerations.

Chapter 3: Seductive Monsters: (De)Forming The Blob, investigates my practice

both conceptually and aesthetically in relation to the monstrous cute and its

ambivalent otherness, with focus on the deformation of the painterly as a catalyst for

the monstrous cute.

The aim of this research and practice is to engage with the blob's paradoxical

identity—its playfulness, its seductiveness, its strangeness—its grotesque and

convulsive beauty—its enchanting yet disruptive and disturbing otherworldliness—its

protean character and contradictory uncertain certainty.

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WHAT’S IN A BLOB?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word ‘blob’ refers to an indeterminate

roundish mass or form, or a drop of thick or viscous substance (Oxford Dictionaries).

The word, however, is less common in other languages, where terms such as

‘indistinct’ or ‘form’ are privileged. The word ‘blob’ can be traced back to late Middle

English and was shaped to be symbolic of a drop of liquid (Oxford Dictionaries).

Though a fluid and mobile essence the blob is both an identity and entity.

The rise of the blob (its forms, metaphors and symbolism) in painting can be credited

to the increasing popularity of biomorphism. Geoffery Grigson in The Arts Today

(1935) coined the term ‘biomorphism’, which was popularized by Alfred H. Barr in his

Cubism and Abstract Art (1936) (Moore et al., 2003). Biomorphism is used to

describe art influenced by and evocative of organic and biological forms, such as

bacteria and amoebas.

Surrealism utilised the mutable essence within biomorphism as both subject and

practice (Chilvers and Glaves-Smith, 2009) (Moore et al., 2003). The art of Yves

Tanguy, Max Ernst and Jean Arp are fitting examples of biomorphism, their abstract

shapes speaking of natural forms while still maintaining ambiguity. This notion of

tangibility and intangibility has been pivotal in developing my definition, description,

and visual expression of the blob.

Blobs are the inhabitants of Tanguy’s peculiar, infinite landscapes. His abstract forms

(established through automatism) are defined by the use of shadows. They are non-

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representational, mutable, plastic, amoebic entities. Contemporary artist Ernesto

Neto expands Tanguy’s biomorphic world, and the role of the blob, through his

interactive soft sculptures and installations. With his neo-concretist influences, Neto

emphasizes the animation of the organismal through the act of participation. Neto’s

works often possess fissured, appendaged, womblike or membranous interiors and

exteriors that envelop audience participants. His 2006 installation, The Malmö

Experience (Fig.1), pulsates with a sensual tactility and aesthetic intensity that invites

physical play and an emotional pleasure that is almost childlike. Yet, there are

seductive, sexual, and more darkly visceral undertones. Neto hybridizes the natural

with the artificial, vesting the blob with an otherworldly—foreign yet inviting—potency.

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Fig. 1 Ernesto Neto, The Malmö Experience, 2006, various textiles, Malmö, Sweden.

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The success of biomorphic art lies in the perceptual teasing of the familiar (the

organic and natural) with the unfamiliar (the otherworldly and artificial). From this

realm of fusion the grotesque emerges. As Hegel argued, “Painting […] opens the

way for the first time to the principle of finite and inherently infinite subjectivity, the

principle of our own life and existence, and in paintings we see what is effective and

active in ourselves” (Hegel, 1975: 797). It is this human tendency to project and find

relations (perception) that allow the blob to become grotesque. Geoffrey Galt

Harpham posits that the grotesque is an oscillation of seemingly contradictory

elements, “marked by such an affinity/antagonism, by the co-presence of the

normative, fully formed, ‘high’ or ideal, and the abnormal, unformed, degenerate,

‘low’ or material” (Harpham, 2006: 9). This union of elements in effect creates

indeterminacy and ambivalence. Harpham also asserts that Leonardo’s grotesque

heads are “barely but recognizably human, they grade towards some species lower

down on the evolutionary or ontological scale, towards a principle of formlessness,

primitivism, or bestiality. The result is a compromise, a taboo, a non-thing” (Harpham,

2006: 9). As Leonardo’s grotesques heads are primitive, so is the blob primordial.

What accentuates the grotesqueness of the blob even further is its persistence in

staying formless. The blob can be any shape. It is capable of encompassing an array

of ambiguous descriptions. Artist Tony Oursler, in his text Blob, speculates that the

blob is alive, transformative and unspecified:

Blob is a funny word, an ugly thing. […] Maybe it came from outer space or it

came from a science experiment gone bad or from pollution or from the sea

or out of a really sick body. It never stops moving, moving all around with no

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place to go. When will it die. It can't die by any means known to man at this

moment. What's your gut reaction? "Gut reaction" is an American term for

your first response to things before you examine the facts intellectually. When

you see the blob your gut reaction is: you want it to be gone, you want it to

die” (Oursler, 2005).

The blob challenges the ideal and the normative. The blob might be unwished for, or

best forgotten. Hightower asserts that the grotesque is present to challenge rather

than destroy our subjectivity, by insisting that ambivalence is both seductive and

frightening, and yet, that it is not a threat (Baade et al., 2011: 4). Russian philosopher

Mikhail Bakhtin in his Rabelais and His World, claims the grotesque (in reference to

the carnivalesque–grotesque) is “always becoming. It is never finished, never

completed: it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body”

(Bakhtin, 1984: 317). The core of the grotesque, like the blob, is its continuality.

Harpham asserts:

The interval of the grotesque is the one in which, although we have

recognized a number of different forms in the object, we have not yet

developed a clear sense of the dominant principle that defines it and

organizes it into various elements […] Resisting closure, the grotesque object

impales us on the present moment, emptying the past and forestalling the

future” (Harpham, 2006: 16).

The grotesque is moving in the way of the uncanny—into the “world of things that are

now given life and essence” (Hightower, 2013).

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This aspect of the grotesque branches away from visual indeterminacy towards the

realm of ‘potential images’, a term coined by Art Historian Dario Gamboni (2002).

These are images that rely upon the beholder for their readings and actualizations,

though the artist’s intention is still primary in establishing a range of possible

interpretations. As Gamboni argued, ‘potential images’ are not to be confused with

‘accidental’ images (those made by chance) or ‘hidden’ (cryptic) images (Gamboni,

2002:16-18) Potential images are created with the intention to produce multiple

interpretations, while still maintaining representational character. Like Gamboni’s

potential images, the blob’s (de)formation can be many things: any likeness, and any

embodiment. But for the grotesque to function it must play by some rules of the

normative (the representational), or at least have some familiar semblance (it cannot

be entirely abstracted), in order to allow for sympathy (Harpham, 2006:17).

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Fig. 2 Greg Simkins, The Puppet Pathos, 2009, acrylic on canvas

Fig. 3 Noel Skrzypczak, Monsoon, 2006, acrylic on gallery wall, (5.5 m x 15 m).

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Artist Greg Simkin’s paintings incorporate a pop surrealist aesthetic to produce a

kitschier rendering of the grotesque. In The Puppet Pathos, 2009 (fig.2), Simkin’s

corporeal creatures morph and transform into one another. Bodily masses eject from

different orifices, birthing new creatures reminiscent of the antagonist alien in John

Carpenter’s The Thing (Carpenter, 1982). The alien known as the ‘thing’ assimilates

and imitates other organisms, eventually mutating into a complex hybrid of all it has

consumed. In both The Thing and The Puppet Pathos, familiar traits of the human

and the animalistic are disrupted by the ‘other’—that which is alien, mythical—to

produce a hybrid identity. Movement is also suggested, producing both fear and

fascination.

Implied movement is also present in the work of Noel Skrzypczak. Skrzypczak

drapes paint across the gallery, intersecting painting and architectural space. In her

piece, Monsoon, 2006 (fig.3), the painting suggests animation, as though it is sliding

across and down the wall. The large scale provides the illusion of paint as an airborne

element hovering above, yet stretching towards the viewer (Coates et al., 2006).

Monsoon suggests the presence of something darker: poisonous, mutative and

monstrous. In her 2011 installation, Talking To Strangers (fig.4), Skrzypczak expands

the potentially of painting into the three-dimensional realm of sculpture. Her

sculptures, or blobs, allude to forms found in the natural world, though they are

streaked with artificiality and Baroque excess. Using paint, glass, polyurethane and

soap, Skrzypczak creates rich textures and levels of transparency/opacity, hyper-

realizing her paintings towards a biomorphic formless form, which invades the gallery

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space. Her works are simultaneously strange and beautiful, alluring and evocative of

a painterly otherworldliness.

In recognizing and combining biomorphic and grotesque influences from film,

animation and painting (within its expanded field), a tension arises. Further, there is a

tension between the presence/awareness of one’s physical self in relation to the

work, and the speculative reaction and probing initiated by the visual magnetism of

the work, which allows for the experience of ‘otherness’ (Petersen et al., 2010). While

deliberating and speculating, the blob’s grotesqueness is amplified. It is a monstrous

yet seductive form of matter.

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Fig. 4 Noel Skrzypczak, Talking To Strangers installation, 2011, Soap, glass and silicone, 183 x 132 x 30cm

Fig. 5 Noel Skrzypczak, Talking To Strangers installation, 2011 (installation view)

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THE MONSTROUS CUTE AND THE AMBIVALENT OTHER

The ‘monstrous cute’ is a term used to describe the intersections between cuteness

and monstrosity and the realm in which these two notions compliment and assist

understanding of each other. Brzozowska-Brywczyska’s account of the monstrous

cute has been principal in my investigations, as I explore the shift of the cute into the

realm of the monstrous, through the blob.

If we etymologically dissect the word ‘monster’, we discover its root is from the “late

Middle English: from Old French monstre, from Latin monstrum 'portent or monster',

from monere 'warn'” (Oxford Dictionaries). Jeffrey Jerome Cohen in Monster Theory:

Reading Culture argues that as a “construct and a projection, the monsters exists

only to be read, like a warning ‘that which reveals’ that which warns… like a letter on

the page, the monster signifies something Other than itself” (Cohen, 1996: 4). The

monster is a sign, a warning, but of what?

Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness (2007) historically analyses the monster, discovering its

use is to define the unknowing or divine—symbolic of the ineffable nature and

powerful actions or messages from God or the gods. The benevolent monster as

portent can be traced to classical times. What separates the unknowing with

ambivalence is best described by John Langan:

It’s not merely that we discover that the world works in ways we hadn’t

understood; traumatic as that might be, there’s the possibility of adjusting to

those new ways, of adapting. With the appearance of the monster, we

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realize that the world is to some degree permanently beyond our

understanding (Langan, 2012).

Monsters within contemporary visual culture (such as vampires, zombie and aliens)

no longer fundamentally posses their historical identity, as they are no longer seen as

mysterious and benevolent messages or messengers from God. Rather, they are fear

inducing and monstrous in their foreignness or ‘otherness’. Eco refers to Marco

Polo’s Travels and his encounter with the then-newly discovered rhinoceros as an

example of this deterioration and change. Polo’s identification of the rhinoceros was

affected by his cultural knowledge of the unicorn: through an ‘imaginative’ and

(ir)rational process, the rhinoceros is a unicorn in his account of the creature (Eco,

2007: 127). What Polo’s rhinoceros is to the unicorn, the monster is to the ‘other’.

What makes the cute transform into the monstrous is its capacity for otherness.

Frances Richard in his Fifteen Theses on the Cute states that:

Cute might be thought of as a watered-down version of pretty; which is a

watered-down version of beautiful; which is a watered-down version of

sublime; which is a watered-down version of terrifying. In this regard, the cute

is akin to the ridiculous, which is a watered-down version of the absurd,

which is again a watered-down version of that which terrifies. By extension,

this suggests that all representation, whatever its stylistic bent is tinged with

the experience of terror: the terror of the convincingly ersatz, the killing

disjuncture of the Otherized, the pseudo-real (Richard, 2001).

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What transforms it to otherness is the deformity inherent in the cute; to emphasize

the cute as monstrous is to read ‘cute’ as ‘freak’. Take Japanese popular culture

icon Hello Kitty as an example; what makes this character cute is its fingerless and

stubby armed, mouth-less and oversized head and rounded body. (Kinsella, 1995) It

is absent of any orifices—reduced and smoothed to softness. Bzozowska-

Brywczyska speculates that this state is free from potential surprises or secrecy; this

feature-reduction “can hide no private thoughts from the viewer – nothing between

their legs, pot bellies, swollen legs and pigeon feet – if they have feet at all”

(Brzozowska-Brywczyska, 2007: 4) (Kinsella, 1995: 236).

Fig. 6 Hello Kitty. Fig. 7 Person in Hello Kitty suit.

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The cute is manufactured by manipulating infantilism as “raw material” (Bzozowska-

Brywczyska, 2007:5). This ‘cute material’ is manufactured through caricaturing and

exaggeration, producing an anatomically incorrect and thus deformed subject. As a

result, the cute is simultaneously pretty and ugly. Hello Kitty, among other similar

characters, is handicapped, and in effect harmless—that they are not threatening

adds to their appeal. In comparing fig. 6 and fig. 7, the cartoon Hello Kitty is simple,

smooth—it is a cute illustration—however, in refiguring it, transposing it to human

scale, proportions, and morphology, the deformities of Hello Kitty become apparent.

Brzozowska-Brywczyska argues that, to an extent, “physical and psychical

weakness and disability” are fundamental to the cute aesthetic (Brzozowska-

Brywczyska, 2007: 5). Kinsella cites the culture of ‘kawaii’, the Japanese term

meaning ‘cute’, educing its childishness as celebratory of the “sweet, adorable,

innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak, and inexperienced”

(Kinsella, 1995: 220). Much like the grotesque, it is this experience and exploitation of

familiar childlike qualities that shifts the cute to the monstrous ‘other’.

Artist Patricia Piccinini engages with the exploitation of the familiar through the notion

of the maternal. In Piccinini’s The Young Family, 2002 (fig. 8), we are confronted with

a fleshy mother–creature and her offspring. There are enough anthropomorphic traits

to distinguish the mother from the child figures; however, the physical distortion from

the ordinary mother and child successfully brings it into the realm of the grotesque.

These creatures’ eyes are gleaming, round and most of all, human. Their bodies are

also of human proportions. Piccinini’s practice explores the ambivalent attitude

towards technology and its increasing power and presence within society. Her works

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act as a platform through which to discuss the impact of technology upon life:

specifically, biotechnology. On The Young Family, Piccinini states:

So if we look at The Young Family we see a mother creature with her babies.

Her facial expression is very thoughtful. I imagine this creature to be bred for

organ transplants. At the moment we are trying to do such a thing with pigs,

so I gave her some pig-like features. That is the purpose humanity has

chosen for her. Yet she has children of her own that she nurtures and loves.

That is a side-effect beyond our control, as there will always be (Piccinini,

2002).

Piccinini plays with the power of ambivalence through familiarity and empathy. When

viewed through the monstrous cute lens, The Young Family ‘scene’ exudes an

animated comical air found in children’s cartoons. The mother-creature becomes the

cuddly, endearing benevolent unknown species one can empathise with. Her large

ears emphasise the cartoon quality, reiterated through her offspring. Some little

creatures snuggle and suckle their mother hungrily while another plays with their

toes, eyes fixed on their mother. Anitra Gross-Hunter describes Piccinini’s monsters

as “slippery mutants” which are “not only monstrous; their ample curves, dimples,

high-gloss finishes, large eyes and synthetic material display a cuteness that, for the

most part, would be welcomed on the drawing boards of both Disney studios and

Hallmark, Inc” (Goriss‐Hunter, 2004).

When comparing Patricia Piccinni’s The Young Family to John Wesley’s Olive Oyl,

1973 (fig. 9), this ‘comical air’ is magnified. Influenced by comic strips such as

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Popeye and Blondie, the cartoon reduction of the ‘young family’ is stylized and they

are portrayed as “grotesquely exaggerated outsiders” (Nakas et al., 2004). Wesley’s

use of a reduced pastel palette manipulates the cuteness of the mother figure and

her offspring, producing a tension of both the cute and ugly or grotesque—the

monstrous cute (Nakas et al., 2004).

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Fig. 8 Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2002, silicone, acrylic, human hair, leather, timber,

80.0 x 150.0 x 110.0 cm.

Fig. 9 John Wesley, Olive Oyl, 1973, acrylic on canvas.

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The monstrous cute further migrates into popular culture through children’s cartoons,

such as SpongeBob Squarepants, 1999. If we take the characters of Spongebob

and Patrick Star, the ‘cute material’ in their case is a sea sponge shaped like a

kitchen sponge, and a starfish, anthropomorphized and smoothed to a comical form.

These characters produce a childish attitude and personality; softened yet

exaggerated features are the result of caricaturing through deformation.

When analysed through the television trope of the ‘ugly cute’, these characters are

stylistically strange, malformed yet also endearing and sweet. It is the retention of the

overt cuteness and physical awkwardness that allows the acceptance of any trait of

physical disgust (TV Tropes Foundation, 2013). Thus in this context, the ‘ugly cute’

trope is synonymous with the monstrous cute. Throughout the series, ‘gross-up

close-ups’ are spliced throughout. ‘Gross-up close-ups’ are close up shots of

something disgusting often possessing a more detailed rendering of the subject in

focus (TV Tropes Foundation, 2013.) Much like the two Hello Kitty comparisons, the

cute appearance of Spongebob (fig. 10) is skewed by the sudden insertion of the

‘gross-up close up’ of Spongebob (fig. 11), bringing forth the monstrosity of the cute.

As explored through Langan in the previous chapter, the monster is transformed into

a metaphor for the other—a bestial symptom of psychopathology (Langan, 2012).

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Fig.10 Spongebob

Squarepants.

Fig. 11 Spongebob Squarepants gross-up close

up.

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The monstrous cute in relation to one’s self is further expanded by Harpham’s

analysis of Martin Schöngauer’s engraving of The Temptation of St. Anthony, c. 1470

(fig. 12). Harpham demonstrates how the monstrous and the grotesque challenges

our interpretations and rationalizations:

The spiky, snouted figure on the far left, for example, cannot be gathered into

a single noun, for it is part porcupine, part anteater, part fish (and part fish-

hook in the tail): and, in its limbs, its expression, and its sense of

intentionality, part human. This is, of course, a terribly inadequate description,

for the whole is, if not more than, at least very different from the sum of its

parts. But it is the only kind of description possible. The Other monsters

present us with fanciful inventory of animal parts, a sickening jumble of

scales, wings, claws, antlers, hooves, feathers, and hands. They are

grotesque not because they are hideous…but because, in the midst of an

overwhelming impression of monstrousness there is much we can recognize,

much corrupted or shuffled familiarity (Harpham, 2006: 5).

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Fig. 12 Martin Schongauer, The Temptation of St Anthony, a copperplate engraving, Germany, AD 1470s (state II)

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The grotesque monster according to Hightower is not to be dismissed purely as

fantasy or science fiction. The grotesque aims to reconcile our beliefs that are “held

tightly in our doubled-up fists. The tighter we hold, the more power the grotesque

has to play with our boundaries” (Baade et al., 2011: 4).

Bzozowska-Brywczyska unifies this familiarizing tendency with that which cannot be

understood or accepted and in turn suggests the notion of ‘Alien Nation’, the

monstrous cute does not belong to this world. The power of the monstrous cute is its

ability to shift or merge the dichotomy of the known and separate unknown.

Ambivalence becomes another form of order where paradox is structure and answer.

Bzozowska-Brywczyska states postmodern culture “is all about transgression and

ambivalence” (Brzozowska-Brywczyska, 2007: 12). Boris Groys in his Comrades Of

Time discusses the contemporary culture of ambivalence:

The contemporary is actually constituted by doubt, hesitation, uncertainty,

indecision—by the need for prolonged reflection, for a delay. We want to

postpone our decision and actions in order to have more time for analysis,

reflection, and consideration [...] Thus, contemporary art can be seen as art

that is involved in the reconsideration of the modern… we now live of

indecision, of delay—a boring time’ (Groys, 2009).

The hesitations that we have over—and the curiousity aroused by—the unification of

‘fascination’ and ‘repulsion’ is appropriate in describing the ‘other’. Ambivalence is a

way of coping with the reality of the blob, its strangeness, otherness and ‘out there-

ness’. Bzozowska-Brywczyska states the “intangible Outerspace - the fluffy, light-

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hearted, sugary childhood (purged from bogeymen and monsters)”—the cute—is a

form of otherness itself (Brzozowska-Brywczyska, 2007: 14).

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SEDUCTIVE MONSTERS: (DE)FORMING THE BLOB

Seductive Monsters: (De)Forming the Blob is the title of this thesis and its

accompanying exhibition. Seductive Monsters was chosen to emphasise the

oscillation and ambivalence generated by seduction/repulsion of the monstrous cute,

both conceptually and aesthetically. ‘Seduction’ is something that is ‘tempting and

attractive; enticing’ which is founded in the charm of cute (Oxford Dictionaries).

‘Monsters’ was chosen to affirm these blobs as entitles and painterly creatures, or,

monstrous cuties.

The blob can also be seen as both an entity and a source of creation, a compound that is

ready to be intervened with and modelled. This amorphousness is perfectly expressed

through the viscosity of paint: its materiality is comparable to the characteristics of the

blob; paint might be thought of as primordial, manipulable, transmutable, fluid and

tactile. It is important to emphasise Seductive Monsters: (De)Forming The Blob as a

painting project.

The painterly is present within the materiality of epoxy resin. This is evocative of

confectionery—the gooey, the sticky, and the sensation of sweets melting. Painted

and sculptural blobs are transformed into delicious, sickly-sweet cute entities, coated

in various pigmented resin (some entirely constructed of it), possessing lustre

founded in freshly licked hard-boiled candy (fig. 15). The blobs thus have a decadent

aesthetic of the sugar-loaded, over indulgent excesses of the Baroque and Rococo.

In developing and cultivating an aesthetic that is seductive, tactile and soft, the blob

meets the cute, “intangible Outerspace - the fluffy, light-hearted, sugary childhood”—

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where the seduction of sweets is at its height of allure (Brzozowska-Brywczyska,

2007: 14). Tempering, tinting and manipulating the use of white as a method of

levelling opacity, I generate a palette that is primarily pastel, a palette inherent in the

aesthetic of the cute. Pastels soften the toxicity of harsher elements present, such as

the venomous, or, monstrous and artificial fluorescent palette, and the rigid plasticity

of resin.

The blobs otherness is surfaced through its inchoate qualities. These forms present

throughout the body of work are not recognizable shapes in the known world, aside

from the basic evocation of primordial slime through the painterly. Consequently,

these works project the essence of objects that precede shape; nascent forms that

we are yet to fully understand. There is no category for them—yet.

Spray paints are employed to realise the nascent blob (whilst also adding spatial

dimensionality to the paintings). Through manipulating gradients, a sense of painterly

infectiousness travels deep throughout the works. Artist Katarina Grosse asserts:

Spraying paint […] has a very different effect on the working method than

using a paintbrush.[…]The brush not only feeds back the disposition of the

surface linking the painter more strongly to the surface’s construction but it

also covers what is being painted that very moment. The painter only sees a

little later what they did a moment before. The spray gun’s movement is less

related to body or support but it allows the activity of painting and looking to

happen at the same time and to coincide. The movement of the spray gun is

more related to the movement of the eyes than to the movement of the body

  32  

in space. (Petersen et al., 2010: 103)

In spray-painting surfaces such as the blob sculptures, canvas and acrylic sheets, I

mimic the action of light illuminating the surface. In controlling the directionality of

spray and angulating the surface, the spray acts as a ‘highlight’—suggesting

movement similar to Tauba Auerbach’s ‘fold’ paintings (fig. 16). Thus fissures,

shadows and silhouettes are emphasised and a trompe l’oeil effect is produced,

bridging flatness and three-dimensionality.

The blob’s amorphous silhouette is echoed throughout Seductive Monsters:

(De)Forming the Blob, as sculptures and paintings are produced/trimmed in a free

form manner further meeting the borders of the ‘in between’, nascent blob. The

placement of smaller paintings on canvas and acrylic sheets form a relationship

between the work on the floor (the installation) and the walls. This relationship acts as

a reflection or infection, as if blobs are migrating from the wall to the floor or vice

versa.

In chapter 1, the monstrosity of the blob is realised through the allusions of the

familiar and normative (our own bodies), which induce empathy thus escalating its

uncanny experience (Harpham, 2006). The blob sculptures echo the familiar further—

imbedded with curiousity and temptation of wanting to ingest them due to its candy

appeal—walking the borderline of attraction and repulsion.

The blob is playful yet repulsive, allowing for further indeterminacy and thus

accentuating the paradoxical notions found in the grotesque—the bestiality of the

cute blob. As Tony Oursler stated in Blob, one does not know where the blob stems

  33  

from or if it will disappear. (Oursler, 2005) Consequently, it can be anything. Oursler

further describes the blob:

The blob's movements are alien yet oddly familiar. Pulling and stretching. Like

peristaltic movement. Like the way things move through your body by

contractions which result in locomotion. You understand this is linked to your

bowels and intestines because even though this motion is involuntary, it is

conscious on some level. It is essentially a wave, the universal form of energy

transmission divided into peeks and troughs like a bad ocean. Unending

waves, wave after wave, wash away your shape. Now formless. You are the

blob (Oursler, 2005).

Oursler’s description conjures up an image of Piccinini’s Still Life With Stem Cells,

2002 (fig. 13). Still Life With Stem Cells focuses on the still life of a child interacting

with flesh lumps, or, blobs. These blobs are grotesque yet comical. Although

Piccinini’s blobs are made from plastics, they are detailed with the realism of human

features such as skin with veins and hair. (McDonald and Wales, 2002). Stem cells

represent the potentiality of life. Scientific experimentations like organ growth are

reminiscent of the constructive potentiality of the blob. Piccinini’s blobs are given their

own characteristics and are animated through the notion of stem cells as a form of

“infinite becoming”, similar to the ambivalence of the blob (McDonald and Wales,

2002). However, when viewed through the lens of the monstrous cute, Oursler’s

description is also playful, evocative of the action and texture found in pulling a body

of taffy—even the act of ingesting it (fig. 14).

  34  

Seductive Monsters: (De)Forming The Blob is installed as an integrated, painterly

artwork. This consists of a main floor installation constructed of paintings on un-

stretched canvases, acrylic sheets, sand and blob sculptures, and smaller paintings,

installations and sculptures that surround the floor installation. The main floor piece

hovers between painting (which is diagrammatic of the blob) and three-

dimensionality. Paint and epoxy medium combined with the use of palette and

texture (e.g. coloured sand), creates cohesion between painting, objects and floor.

The paintings appear on both upstretched canvas and acrylic sheets, trimmed and

layered, resonant of puddles of painterly ponds. These trimmed paintings act both as

paintings as well as platforms in which blob sculptures arise and reside, they are

suggestive of new organic life emerging from a swamp, the amoeba involving into

some kind of land creature.

The goal of Seductive Monsters: (De)Forming the Blob has been to produce a body

of work where both painterly and sculptural materials support a construction and

(de)formation of the blob—indeed blobs—that oscillate between the cute and the

monstrous: that is, grotesque. The monstrous cute, of course, is also an ambivalent

‘otherness’. This exploration is part of a developing field of personal research that

can be contextualized within various contemporary discourses, both popular and

Fine Art. In alluding to Maja Brzozowska-Brywczyska closing comment in her account

Monstrous/Cute. Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness, and to acknowledge the

cult movie, ‘Beware of the cute’… Beware of the blob.

  35  

Fig. 13 Patricia Piccinini, !Still Life With Stem Cells, 2002, ! silicone, polyurethane, clothing, human hair !, variable

dimensions.

Fig. 14 Woman pulling taffy on a taffy puller.

  36  

Fig. 16 Tauba Auerbach’s ‘fold’ paintings, Tetrachromat, 2012, installation view.

Fig. 15 Louise Zhang, Blob, 2013, expanding polyurethane, gap filler, enamel spray, epoxy resin (front and back view).

  37  

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the following people for their time, patience, guidance and support:

Kurt Schranzer, Mimi Tong, Andrew Frost, Oliver Watts, Sally Clarke,

David Eastwood, Gary Sangster, Gary Carsley, Boo Patricks, Terrence Combos,

Georgia Fanning, Ainsley Wilcock, Samuel Kirby.

With special thanks to my lecturer Oliver Watts,

my supervisors Kurt Schranzer and Mimi Tong,

and my editor Boo Patrick.

  38  

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