David O’Halloran — Backmasking: the Art of Stieg Persson

Death as a sub­ject, is writ large in the his­to­ry of art from ancient times, to the present. Giot­to, Bosch, Vasari, Car­avag­gio, Rem­brandt, Blake, Goya, Frei­drich, Picas­so, Bacon and con­tem­po­rary artist Anselm Kiefer have all cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant art­works that address the sub­ject. Almost any Euro­pean-influ­enced artist of the first half of this cen­tu­ry has dealt at length with the impli­ca­tions of this sub­ject for the indi­vid­ual (ques­tions of the body, of psy­chol­o­gy, of moral­i­ty, faith, phi­los­o­phy) and in terms of the impli­ca­tions of social and polit­i­cal events. Giv­en two world wars and a cat­a­stroph­ic eco­nom­ic depres­sion how it could it be oth­er­wise? More recent con­cerns — the threat of nuclear anni­hi­la­tion (with its panacea doc­trine of mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion), irre­versible and sus­tained eco­log­i­cal degra­da­tion, genet­ic engi­neer­ing, viral muta­tion HIV/AIDS — sup­ply no short­age of issues capa­ble of con­cen­trat­ing the mind upon the pres­ence of death-in-life. It is hard­ly sur­pris­ing then that many of the most influ­en­tial philoso­phers and artists of this cen­tu­ry should have tak­en issue with the ratio­nal­i­sa­tions pro­vid­ed by ide­ol­o­gy and reli­gion for why the world should appear as it is. And it is equal­ly unsur­pris­ing that two of the pre­dom­i­nant modes of artis­tic response to this fact should take the form of irony and melancholia.1

Nev­er­the­less these are tra­di­tion­al modes, well cel­e­brat­ed and remarked upon in the his­to­ry of visu­al cul­ture: it is to post-struc­tur­al semi­otics, that I wish to turn — in order to under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance which obtains to arti­fice, to frag­men­ta­tion, rep­e­ti­tion, sim­u­lacra, mime­sis and sta­sis with­in much recent con­tem­po­rary art. It is this post­mod­ern debate that informs the emer­gence and devel­op­ment of the paint­ings of Stieg Pers­son.

By 1986 Yve-Alain Bois was to claim the fol­low­ing: “Noth­ing seems more com­mon in our present sit­u­a­tion than a mil­lenar­i­an­ist feel­ing of clo­sure. Whether cel­e­bra­to­ry or melan­cholic one hears end­less diag­noses of death: death of ide­olo­gies (Lyotard); of indus­tri­al soci­ety (Bell); of the real (Bau­drillard); of author­ship (Barthes); of man (Fou­cault); of his­to­ry (Kojeve) and of course, of mod­ernism (all of us when we use the word post-modern).”2

Or, as post­mod­ernist crit­ic Thomas Law­son puts it, “It all boils down to a ques­tion of faith.”3 Com­ment­ing on the work of artist David Salle, Law­son wrote,
“He makes paint­ings, but they are dead, inert rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the impos­si­bil­i­ty of pas­sion in a cul­ture that has insti­tu­tion­alised self-expres­sion. They take the most com­pelling sign for per­son­al authen­tic­i­ty that our cul­ture can pro­vide, and attempt to stop it, to reveal its false­ness. The paint­ings look real but they are fake. They oper­ate by stealth, insu­at­ing a crip­pling doubt into the faith that sup­ports and binds our ide­o­log­i­cal institutions.”4

Indeed with­in this con­text the cen­tral ques­tion for many artists in the 1980s was how to con­tin­ue to believe in mak­ing art, how to cre­ate space for art to live again. This space was achieved, in part, through the ‘decon­struc­tion’ of some of the Roman­tic myths prop­ping up the insti­tu­tion of art itself – par­tic­u­lar­ly those
attach­ing to the ideas of sub­lim­i­ty and tran­scen­dence. Neitzsche’s uber­men­sch con­tem­plat­ing awful nature describes a fan­ta­sy of lib­er­at­ing tran­scen­dence dear to the total­i­tar­i­an imag­i­na­tion, itself the tar­get of attack by intel­lec­tu­als such as Fou­cault. But it is a fan­ta­sy expe­ri­enced by many Post­mod­ern artists simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as nos­tal­gia and dread, a per­fect foil to the twin fail­ure of Marx­ist ide­ol­o­gy and the Mod­ernist project of rad­i­cal cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion.

Two ear­ly paint­ings by Pers­son includ­ed in this exhi­bi­tion, Land­scape Cov­etous, 1983, and Cheap Myths, 1984, embody this com­plex response to Roman­ti­cism: in these works var­i­ous icon­ic images such as stars, light­hous­es, light­ning and land­scape frag­ments are treat­ed as mere illus­tra­tions. The images are paint­ed as if they were cut­tings from a mag­a­zine – as pre-exist­ing visu­al ele­ments from dis­parate loca­tions thrown togeth­er on the can­vas – look at the ser­rat­ed edge 4/5 of the way across Cheap Myths, 1984. It is an approach which owes much to Roland Barthes’s ideas con­cern­ing the death of orig­i­nal­i­ty (‘Death of the Author’), in propos­ing the work of art as a text con­struct­ed from many dif­fer­ent voic­es, as well as to Duchamp’s notion of the ‘ready­made’ or ‘found’ object. As texts then, Persson’s works are built from frag­ments which include quo­ta­tions appro­pri­at­ed from sources over­looked or mar­gin­alised by art crit­ics and his­to­ri­ans, such as the pulp fic­tion romance nov­el, as well as ele­ments drawn from pop­u­lar music cul­ture and ‘fine art’. Thus we find in his works bor­rowed images from sources as diverse as Gus­tave Dore and Julia Mar­garet Cameron (Our Faith, 1986) as well as heavy met­al iconog­ra­phy. This approach also owes much to Sur­re­al­ist col­lage (think, for exam­ple of Max Ernst’s Femme de 100 Tetes) and indeed, for the Sur­re­al­ists too, col­lage was a means of evad­ing petit bour­geois claims upon ‘truth’ and ‘beau­ty’ in favour of the gen­er­a­tion of new forms – though Persson’s work appears not to cham­pi­on uncon­scious process­es at the expense of seman­tic mean­ing.

In Cheap Myths, a rose, the icon­ic, ambigu­ous, sign of Euro­pean romance, is out­lined by white sten­cilled lines against a dark brood­ing land­scape with a radi­ant set­ting sun. Pers­son, an Aus­tralian-born artist with a Swedish name, invokes the great cliché of Scan­di­na­vian art — North­ern light – though the light is fleet­ing and will soon give way to unremit­ting Nordic dark­ness.

The radi­ant light in Cheap Myths and Roman­tic Paint­ing offers no hope of tran­scen­dence, no por­tal to the sub­lime. The white of the light is here mere­ly raw unpaint­ed can­vas. These works are paint­ed to look like an illus­tra­tion some­what like a boys own man­u­al cir­ca 1960, or an etch­ing from even ear­li­er times. The images are sto­ry­book, faux didac­tic imagery, from ‘low art’ sources. Both paint­ings eschew the tra­di­tions of fine art such as the build­ing up of lay­ers of paint and the prim­ing and prepa­ra­tion of can­vas. Roman­tic Paint­ing even does with­out the stretch­er – the tra­di­tion­al frame over which the can­vas is stretched.5

Anoth­er impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of these ear­li­er works is the pref­er­ence dis­played for black, fur­ther rein­forc­ing this notion of the work of art as a text to be deci­phered. Persson’s use of black and white ref­er­ences writ­ing — both as the print­ed word of insti­tu­tion­al pow­er (the law) and the indi­vid­ual sig­na­ture. The unfurled ban­ner-like scrolls we see in Our Faith, 1986 appear on the edge of deci­pher­abil­i­ty as writ­ing, and our desire, as view­ers, to ascribe mean­ing to these swirling arabesques, is almost irre­sistible – even as we acknowl­edge their sheer ele­gance as forms. The use of black also recalls the cartoonist’s felt-tipped pen, the calligrapher’s brush and ink, and the illustrator’s pen (indeed, illus­tra­tion as a craft is poised some­where between writ­ing and draw­ing).

Black car­ries many oth­er sym­bol­ic asso­ci­a­tions of course – notably with depres­sion, evil and all things neg­a­tive. How­ev­er, as Peter Timms has point­ed out, it is also asso­ci­at­ed with mys­tery, myth and romance.6 Black of night sig­ni­fies the myth­i­cal and the roman­tic – time of dan­ger, obscu­ri­ty, and mys­tery: “in the dark of night; the forces of chaos are strongest”.7 Night is also the time for lovers and Bac­cha­na­lian rev­el­ry: “under the cov­er of night every­thing that is repressed by the respectable world can come forth.”8 And it would seem Persson’s use of black sig­ni­fies a fur­ther painter­ly irony too, in that it is not a colour at all but a tone – indeed, black is the absence of colour (though there is such a thing as a chro­mat­ic black – achieved by mix­ing all the colours togeth­er). Colour is an effect of light – itself defined as the part of the elec­tro-mag­net­ic spec­trum vis­i­ble to the naked eye. This ref­er­ence to vision then gives rise to a more trou­bling sub­lim­i­nal asso­ci­a­tion, that of blind­ness, which we might define sim­i­lar­ly as the absence of vision. And final­ly there is a more gen­er­alised kind of phan­tas­magoric, filmic dimen­sion to this use of black – a kind of ghost pres­ence, say of The Island of Dr Mur­nau or The Cab­i­net of Dr Cali­gari.

As Charles Green has not­ed, the word ‘sim­u­lacrum’, a key con­cept in Jean Baudrillard’s writ­ing, sug­gests both like­ness, and phan­tom, or shadow.9 This con­cept of phan­tom, a crea­ture of dark­ness, is also an impor­tant key to under­stand­ing some of the more painter­ly or for­mal con­cerns which Stieg Pers­son deals with in his paint­ings. In Paint­ing 1987 – And Men and Mir­rors Loved Her, he reveals, through means of an X- ray image, part of the tim­ber sup­port struc­ture or ‘stretch­er’ for the can­vas, in so doing affirm­ing the phys­i­cal mate­ri­al­i­ty of the paint­ing whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly defus­ing its mys­ti­cal and roman­tic cul­tur­al asso­ci­a­tions. Pers­son fol­lowed these works in 1988 with col­lages of dis­card­ed X-rays (pro­duced, of course, by means of a part of the invis­i­ble por­tion of the elec­tro-mag­net­ic spec­trum pass­ing through mat­ter). Persson’s X-ray’s are use­less — diag­nos­ti­cal­ly redun­dant – appar­ent­ly now mere­ly part of the aes­thet­ic realm. Like the arabesque scrolls, they tease us by sug­gest­ing a mean­ing they no longer pos­sess and which we are not com­pe­tent to pro­vide. Or could Pers­son be sug­gest­ing a diag­no­sis of the well being (or oth­er­wise) of paint­ing: is paint­ing dead or alive? It is pos­si­ble, after all, that if one were trained in inter­pret­ing these images one might be able to spot the pres­ence of a malig­nant growth – to warn or to com­mis­er­ate, even cel­e­brate. Instead, we can only mute­ly observe, wait­ing for the next set of symp­toms to man­i­fest.

Persson’s focus upon death and mor­tal­i­ty sharp­ens still fur­ther in the ‘John Donne’ paint­ings under­tak­en in 1989/90. Donne, a 17th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish meta­phys­i­cal poet, torn between two faiths, Angli­can & Catholi­cism, wrote a series of poems in which he med­i­tates upon the themes of dis­tance from God, love and ill­ness. Persson’s Paint­ing 1989 – The Patient takes his bed, one of a series, was con­ceived after the X-Ray works referred to in the pre­ced­ing para­graph, and, like these, is con­struct­ed in reverse, as the result of begin­ning with a black sur­face rather than a white one. With the black oil­paint still wet, Persson’s approach involved remov­ing areas of paint from the sur­face of the can­vas with tur­pen­tine-soaked rags. This rub­bing away of the paint­ing by the artist could be called a process of dema­te­ri­al­i­sa­tion, the oppo­site of the nor­mal approach. It is as if the image were under­go­ing some kind of chem­i­cal ther­a­py, and indeed, some of the paint­ings in this series look as if they might be rep­re­sen­ta­tions of can­cer – high­ly appro­pri­ate to Donne’s theme of mor­tal fear.

More recent­ly Pers­son has com­plet­ed a series of images in 1995 draw­ing upon icono­graph­ic ref­er­ences bor­rowed from Heavy and Death Met­al pop cul­ture, a genre which fits with all the artist’s pre­vi­ous­ly expressed inter­ests – lib­er­al use of the black, a fas­ci­na­tion with death, and a deter­mined­ly mar­gin­alised sta­tus in rela­tion to ‘high art’ forms (indeed, Heavy and Death Met­al are maligned even with­in the world of pop music itself). There is evi­dent in the iconog­ra­phy of Death Met­al a per­sis­tent desire to return to “open the gates to dark medieval times” – not to court­ly love how­ev­er, but a “land of ele­men­tary and out­law feelings”.10 Brico­laged images of mutant nature and apoc­a­lyp­tic destruc­tion are employed to cre­ate delib­er­ate­ly hor­ri­fy­ing, high­ly roman­ti­cised, scenes of car­nage and decay. Death Met­al artists them­selves appro­pri­ate, with appro­pri­ate dis­re­gard, images from the high art tra­di­tion – show­ing par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for those by artists such as Gus­tave Dore, Hierony­mous Bosch and Matthias Grunewald. In the world of Met­al there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of redemp­tion – and hell is mere­ly a ram­pant tan­gle of cliched Goth­ic detail.

Appar­ent­ly some fans still believe the phrase at the end of Led Zeppelin’s song Stair­way To Heav­en: “There is still time to change the road you’re on”, played back­wards sounds like “Here’s to my sweet Satan”. This play­ing of songs back­wards, called ‘back­mask­ing’, recalls the prac­tice of witch­es mock­ing Chris­t­ian prayers
by recit­ing them back­wards. Indeed, it is pos­si­ble to see many par­al­lels between Death Met­al art and Persson’s own art, par­tic­u­lar­ly in prac­tice of paint­ing ‘back­wards’, and in his ban­ner-like prayer scrolls, which, in form­ing an elab­o­rate kind of writ­ing are akin to the inter­twin­ing sym­met­ri­cal pat­terns char­ac­ter­is­tic
of the depic­tion of Heavy Met­al band names on CD and album cov­ers. As Pers­son him­self notes of Death and Heavy Met­al graph­ic logos: “the text buried in these forms is so heav­i­ly stylised and inte­grat­ed into the pat­tern it is almost always illeg­i­ble, mak­ing it pos­si­ble only for afi­ciona­dos to iden­ti­fy a band’s name.”11

There are oth­er appo­site rela­tions between Stieg Persson’s works and Heavy and Death Met­al art. Accord­ing to soci­ol­o­gist Deena Wein­stein, “Heavy met­al was born amidst the ash­es of the failed youth revolution”.12 If this is cor­rect then both Post­mod­ern art and Heavy Met­al are to be seen as a reac­tion to the fail­ure of utopi­an pro­grams – ide­o­log­i­cal and artis­tic alike. “As Anto­nio Gram­sci observed in his prison
note­books, a peri­od lack­ing cer­tain­ty is bedev­illed by a pletho­ra of mor­bid symptoms.”13

In 1996 Stieg Pers­son vis­it­ed Swe­den to under­take a res­i­den­cy in Gothen­berg. Pers­son was already well aware of Scan­di­na­vian ‘hard core’ Death Met­al bands – regard­ed by many in the Met­al scene as the most ‘authen­tic’. Pers­son recounts the sto­ry of Varg Vikernes, the gui­tarist from the band Emper­or, who mur­dered Oys­tein Aarseth, gui­tarist with rival band May­hem. When Police searched Vikernes’s home they found a large quan­ti­ty of dyna­mite he had been plan­ning to use to blow up Scandinavia’s largest medieval church. Faust, Emperor’s drum­mer, bragged that “ the old bands just sang about it – today’s bands do it.”14 In the works that result­ed from this res­i­den­cy, Gothen­berg I, 1996/7, Gothen­berg II, 1996/7, Pers­son brings togeth­er the icons of city and state, along­side the iconog­ra­phy of those the state and the city are least proud, Sweden’s Heavy Met­al bands and fans. That ordered utopia of the Swedish state, with its high tax­es deliv­er­ing extra­or­di­nary lev­els of social wel­fare ser­vices and mid­dle class uni­ty should pro­duce kids with such mor­dant inter­ests is an irony of no small inter­est to Pers­son. Respectable soci­ety tries to repress chaos – Met­al makes it hap­pen.

Per­haps we should return to the world of high art for a final word: Horace and Vir­gil offer to us lit­er­ary images of the rose’s bloom and decay as a metaphor for the brevi­ty of human life. In this, our Gar­den State of the 21st cen­tu­ry, Pers­son paints plants not in the full­ness of bloom, but as already dead. These are the obses­sive­ly man­i­cured plants and herba­ceous bor­ders of our own ordered sub­ur­ban streets. The ordi­nary
ren­dered iron­i­cal­ly sub­lime through the archa­ic tra­di­tion of oil paint­ing.

David O’Halloran, 2001

Notes
1. Accord­ing to John B. Rave­nal, cura­tor of “Van­i­tas- Med­i­ta­tions on Life and Death in Con­tem­po­rary Art”, Vir­ginia Muse­um of Fine Arts, 2000 “There is “a deep cur­rent of ele­gy in the con­tem­po­rary art of the last decade.” There has been no short­age of recent Mil­len­ni­al exhi­bi­tions which touch upon the sub­ject of death, includ­ing “Goth­ic- Trans­mu­ta­tion of Hor­ror in Late Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry Art, Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Boston, 1997, “Noto­ri­ous, Alfred Hitch­cock and Con­tem­po­rary Art”, Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, Oxford, 1999. I con­tributed to this trend too by curat­ing “Spooky- Ghosts, Spir­its and the Uncan­ny” for the Glen Eira City Gallery in 2000

2. Yve-Alain Bois, “Paint­ing: The Task of Mourn­ing”, Endgame, Ref­er­ence and Sim­u­la­tion in Recent Paint­ing and Sculp­ture, MIT Press,
Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, 1986, p29

3.Thomas Law­son, “Last Exit”, Art After Mod­ernism, Re-think­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, p153, New Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, 1984.
Reprint­ed from Art­fo­rum Vol 20, No 2 Octo­ber 1981

4.Thomas Law­son, ibid, p160

5.Stretcher. “A wood­en frame over which can­vas is stretched. Appli­ance of can­vas stretched on an oblong frame, for car­ry­ing dis­abled or dead per­son on.” The Aus­tralian Con­cise Oxford Dic­tio­nary, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Mel­bourne, 1987

6.“The Black Show”, Curator’s essay by Peter Timms, Gee­long Art Gallery, 1994

7. Deena Wein­stein, Heavy Met­al: A Cul­tur­al Soci­ol­o­gy, p45

8.Weinstein, ibid

9.Charles Green, p71

10. Stieg Pers­son, Supreme Nordic Art-Images of Death Met­al, Mas­ter of Fine Art The­sis, 1998, VCA, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mel­bourne

11. Pers­son, ibid, p13

12. Wein­stein, op cit, p13

13. Law­son, op cit, p156

14. Pers­son, op cit, p3