Joseph Campbell

In the previous post I suggested that it was perhaps time to devote a post to Joseph Campbell and his work. I first read Joseph Campbell's four volumes of The Masks of God when I was teaching on the foundation course at Leeds. The first of these, Primitive Mythology examined the roots of myth in hunter-gatherer and tribal societies, looking at psychoanalysis and early human history. Oriental Mythology explored the mythic traditions and philosophies of Asia, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and Shinto. Occidental Mythology focused on Western mythology from the Near East and ancient Europe through the classical era and the Middle Ages and finally I read Creative Mythology which focused on the modern era, tracking the evolution of the individual myth-maker from the twelfth-century troubadours to modern literature and art. These books had a profound influence on me at the time and their relevance it seems to me becomes more and more important as I get older. In particular in a time when people of different religions set themselves against each other, without looking for that commonality that lies beneath their beliefs and which forms links between us all.

Campbell set out to explore what lay behind the various myths of as many cultures as he could. He went back as far as archeology let him and gradually made his way towards where we are now, pointing out that each myth had a 'local' construction, i.e. aspects of each myth were specifically to do with the time and place the myth was constructed within. These 'local' aspects were often to do with how the people organised themselves as a unit and often set out rules of behaviour. However, each myth also had universal significance, whereby it reflected the common reality of the human condition, which allowed people to come to terms with birth, growth, maturity and death, these things being aspects of everyone's lives no matter where they came from and when. By breaking myth down into these two different categories it became much easier to see how conflicts arose. Basically it was the local differences that caused difficulties. A religion developed in a specific area of the world, during a specific time, would have local issues related to what the conditions of life were at that time and place. If people continued to believe the same set of rules for hundreds of years, those rules would begin to appear arbitrary. For instance a belief that the world was created let's say 6,000 years ago, might have been feasible to people that lived 2,000 years ago, but the solid evidence of the more recent science of geology disputes this and tells us that the world was created four and a half billion years ago. A book that was written when knowledge of the history of the planet was very sketchy, should not be used as a sort of equal truth in relation to constantly updated real evidence about reality. But Biblical creationists still believe that the universe and all life were directly created by God in the exact manner described in the Book of Genesis.
In Primitive Mythology, Campbell tells a story of the commonality of our underlying nature, it develops a narrative centred on how we make sense of what it is to be human. He uses anthropology, archaeology, and psychology to show that all humans share a fundamental core of spiritual history. Not only does he do this but he proposes that the mythological stories that give meaning to our human lives, are composed much like a great symphony. His book looks at how early humans expressed religious awe, as well as how the continuing rituals of certain still existing tribes, help us to understand how and why religious awe is significant in the establishment of meaningful social codes of behaviour. He also explains how humanity's oldest spiritual worldview emerged; the practice of animism, a belief that all things possess living spirits, be they animal, plant or substance, such as a landscape, a star or a force like the wind. This is something that I have come to believe myself, which helps me to find a very personal connection with those early modern humans. Early peoples must have had a hard time surviving, but perhaps some times were harder than others. Those who strove to find forms that could express and communicate their religious reverence of and interconnection with the surrounding world, must have believed very strongly in a reason to do so, as to make a carving such as the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, would have taken up a lot of energy, which otherwise could have been devoted to hunting or fishing. Perhaps a figure like this might have been made during a time of excess, such as when fruit was in plentiful supply, but the fact that the figure is carved from the tusk of a mammoth suggests that it was made during a time of long winters, when elephants needed thick hairy coats to survive the cold.

Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel

I have pointed out in an earlier post that archaeologists think that early humans viewed cave walls as thin, permeable membranes that separated their physical world from the spirit realm. Painting on the surfaces of these cave walls being a way to interact directly with the animal spirits believed to dwell within.

Lascaux Cave

This concern with ideas whereby spirits could move between things, is highlighted by that hybrid figure of the "Lion-Man"; a 40,000-year-old ivory sculpture that is half-human, half-animal. The sculpture is a physical manifestation of the act of a human transforming into an animal or channeling the raw power of a cave lion.
This sculpture is a model I often think about when drawing. The form was found within the shape of the mammoth tusk, the curve of the lion man's body echoing the curve of the tusk. Just as when you are making a drawing, the image often emerges out of the way drawing materials suggest form. Of course this is also the case when I'm making ceramic objects, the clay itself will feel as if it needs to go in one direction more than another and as it does the implication of a new form begins to reveal itself.
I have a drawing led practice, i. e. that it is in drawing that I find manifestations of imagery that guide my practice. I have used a wide range of media, including screen based approaches and whether I am using pencil on paper, a finger pushing through charcoal dust on a floor, chalk on a blackboard, tape on a wall, a stick on a beach or a mouse and computer screen or a drawing tablet and computer monitor, each media will suggest new and different forms. There is some sort of exchange principle that moves back and forth between myself as an organic entity and the substances I engage with to create meanings. This process I find very similar to animism, the spirit of an idea being passed between myself and the media I use to materialise my thoughts.

A drawing made using computer software: 1990s

In the image above made many years ago, I can still see the influence of Campbell's books. At the time I was excited to see how using a computer as a drawing tool would help shape ideas; the then heavy pixilation of screens meant that diagonal lines and curves looked like jagged staircases. This fact coupled with a need to 'paint' colour blocks using a 'fill' tool, meant that there was no blending or smoothness of surface available. I also found I could use a 'wax layer' printer as an output device. This meant putting through a printer wax impregnated papers, one after another; the printer then heated the areas where it was lifted off onto the print paper. The wax papers were cyan, magenta, yellow and black and at the time I really thought the limitations were leading me to discover fascinating image potential. Looking back on those images I see that the hybrid human/animal form was part of my image bank then and it still is. Joseph Campbell had viewed hybrid human-animal figures, 'therianthropes', as profound psychological and spiritual symbols, that reflected the earliest stages of the human mythic imagination. He explained that rather than separating humans from nature, ancient mythologies used hybrid figures to bridge the gap between our inner consciousness and the external 'natural' world. Which is something I find I'm still thinking about as I strive to find forms for interoceptual experiences.
Early humans developed a visionary framework centred around shamanism, whereby individuals with spiritual knowledge could enter ecstatic trance states. These altered states could be achieved through rhythmic chanting, dancing or sensory deprivation, states that allowed them to believe that they were traveling to otherworldly dimensions to commune with animist entities. The first indications that we have in archeological evidence of such early spiritual thought is that people began to purposefully bury their dead. Bodies were often arranged in deliberate positions (such as facing the rising sun) and buried with flowers, animal bones, or precious tools. This clear conceptualisation of an afterlife, must have also included a surrounding set of rituals, such as the widespread use of red ochre to colour the bones of the deceased. This use implies a very early symbolic connection to blood, the representation of a life force through the use of a painted colour and in the painting of these bones there must have been sought some sort of spiritual transition.
In addition to rituals surrounding death, early hunter-gatherers felt a profound and direct kinship with their environment. They worshiped the immediate forces of the landscape that surrounded them. Unusual landscape features like waterfalls, ancient groves of trees, thermal springs, and high mountain peaks were treated as being sacred. They were in awe of the creatures they hunted, developing concepts of animal guardians and related deities who could protect the souls of both humans and other animals. Out of these beliefs myths arose, narratives that could act as guides and give clues to human spiritual potential, helping individuals and the tribe to connect with the deep experience of being alive.
Primitive Mythology was not I soon realised 'primitive' and it had a profound effect. I remember reading it in sections on my way to work. In those days I caught a bus in the morning and it took the best part of an hour to get where I needed to be, so Campbell and many other authors were consumed during a time I felt would be otherwise wasted. This meant that I was primed to enthuse my teaching with what I was reading and of course it was also influencing what I was trying to make as an artist. Campbell's ideas of 'enthusiasms' were a guiding light for both. When asked by an interviewer how do we find the God within us, Campbell replied, "Look to see what makes you enthusiastic? Then follow it." He then pointed out that the word 'enthusiastic' comes from the Ancient Greek word enthousiastikos, which literally means "possessed or inspired by a god".

Joseph Campbell in conversation

I also read Campbell's other books but non of them had the impact of Primitive Mythology; Creative Mythology though did give me a clue as to what I should be doing as a practitioner, his thoughts on James Joyce's Ulysses I often passed on when talking to students. In particular the idea that one day in someone's life could become as mythic a journey as Homer's epic poem, The Voyage of Ulysses; which was a great reminder that everything we experience in our daily 'normal' lives has the potential to be mythic. 

I was during this time a young father and the activities undertaken by my daughter and son were huge influences. They seemed to be able to tap into the deep mysteries of a mythological condition by just doing what they did, they did not need to learn about this, they knew it. This made me very aware that in our society education in many ways was designed to iron out the creases of ancient myths that we all inherited. We had to learn to put on new clothes and discard old ones, even if the old ones were still serviceable. 

My daughter as a bird: An image worked on over 3 sheets of A1 paper: 1987

The drawing above is from the time when my daughter was a girl, back in the 1980s. We lived in a back to back terraced house and the children at that time could play in the street. She used to dress up as a bird; my wife had made her a costume which included a bird head/hat and she would 'fly' in and out of the house and up and down the street, totally inhabiting her bird persona. It was for myself a realisation of how deeply embedded into our nature Campbell's ideas about animism were, that we needed to find ways for our spirit to travel into other forms if we were to release ourselves from the prison of our current existence. Both my son and my daughter developed aspects of their young lives that demonstrated how this could still be done. As an artist I tried to record this, the warping of the street being an attempt to draw what it must have looked like to a humanbirdgirl flying through it. Much of the work from that time has been lost, but the struggle to find imagery that might help us to come to terms with or be a portal through which we might find at least one of the masks of God, continues. 

Another more recent hybrid

See also:

Drawing and spirituality

The tattoo: Drawing on the body

For Patrick: Potting the 8 ball  A reminder of how when teaching we used to embed everyday experiences into mythic consequences

Bringing the inanimate to life

The art of memory

Why I'm making animist images

We are an expression of the universe

The embodied cosmos

I have recently been writing an article that explores relationships between my ideas of the body and how we think about landscape. In particular I was looking at how our understanding of the features of landscape begins in a knowledge of our own bodies and that at the same time, our imaginative awareness of our internal interoceptual world, is fuelled by our experiences of the environments we inhabit. They are interconnected; one becoming informed or shaped by the other. This type of idea is not new and in my article perhaps I should have pointed out that it is a concept deeply indebted to a personal reading of Spinoza. I admit here that all my thinking on his influence is a very subjective interpretation by myself and others. As always I take from my various readings what I feel is useful and believe that Spinoza's ideas of God (even if misinterpreted by myself) remain relevant today and I'm not the only one. Albert Einstein stated when asked if he believed in God, "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." Spinoza in my understanding, argues that we are not separate from nature and that we are all interconnected. He points out that if God is in everything then our reality is God, therefore Nature is God and God is Nature. I. e. Spinoza in my mind, is saying that it is nature itself, which is self forming and in self forming one of the things it self forms is consciousness, which suggests that you are the universe experiencing itself. Another way to look at this in a more materialist sense, is that at one point in time I was star stuff, my physical make-up being related intimately to those stars I see at night in the sky. So is everything around me, the landscape is as much a star born idea as I am. This approach reminds us that our logical minds tend to draw boundaries between things, especially when we use words to name them, but in reality we are enfolded into everything. Mind and matter are two different expressions of the same reality. Every living and non-living thing is interdependent, woven together into a fabric that becomes for Spinoza, proof that reality is holy.

This type of thinking is I believe becoming more and more relevant to those of us living in a society whereby belief in a 'big Other' is often questioned or old rigid religious systems and beliefs blindly adhered to. I use the term 'big Other' in relation to Jacques Lacan's definition, who used it to refer to people's assumption that an invisible, overarching authority or symbolic system exists to guarantee meaning and truth and that this belief system should be used as a basis on which the rules of society are built. The big Other is not one actual God or pantheon of gods, it is a belief framework that encompasses language, law, culture and the social norms that structure our human reality. We psychologically need a big Other, it reassures us that there is in the end some sort of meaning to life. Part of my work as an artist is I believe to provide evidence that some sort of big Other exists, or at least to create a doorway one can step into as a way towards accepting that everything is meaningful. In my case I strongly believe in certain animist principles, a belief system that in the way I personally understand it, gives an equal value to all the things in my universe, be these people or animals, or plants or landscapes or forces such as energy or the flow of waves or the wind. However to make the doorway memorable, an artist's job is perhaps to find that meaning in the most surprising things. Trying to scratch an itch, being perhaps just as important in the grand scheme of things as a star exploding; in our minds both exist at the same time as qualia. As information hits our brains it is in effect qualia what we are experiencing, whether this information comes from actual external perception such as a sound or internal feeling such as a stomach ache or a powerful idea. 

As an artist I can make images that try to reflect this view. Like the image at the top of this post, which is one of several whereby I was trying to suggest that our lineage is spread out amongst the stars. But also in the image below which is simply a drawing of a broken concrete part of an old sea defence system. As I drew this broken landscape I also felt it in my body, the forms of wire, concrete and wood, talking directly to my flesh, bones and sinews. At the same time I was thinking of those old myths of ancient Albion, such as of Gogmagog, being defeated by Corineus and thrown off the cliffs of Cornwall. In old British myths it was believed that his broken bones for many years afterwards were to be found protruding from the sea.

 

Broken sea defences West Wittering

My latest project whereby I have installed large ceramic ears into a newly uncovered graveyard, being another attempt to raise people's awareness of animist possibilities; the ears being portals that allow people to begin a conversation with both nature and the ancestral population that still lies beneath the ground of the graveyard. 

Details from an installation: St Michael's and All saints Church: Headingley: Leeds

In this sense my work is no different to other religious artists, whether these be Hindu, Christian, Buddhist or shamanistic, images are used as portals into ways of thinking about mythology. Indeed Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, stated that mythology begins in the body, believing that myth was a function of biology, where physical bodily energies and organic impulses inspired the imagination, which is itself he believed, a biological function.

Vishvarupa 

Vishvarupa is considered the supreme form of Vishnu, where the whole universe is described as contained within him. This is just one of the Hindu cosmic forms. Perhaps the most well known is Om or AUM as a cosmic form that is regarded as the first vibration, the primordial cosmic sound that represents ultimate reality. Campbell believed that just as dreams bubble up from a subconscious that resides within a physical state, mythological symbols also originate from deep within our biological impulses. He referred to mythology as "the song" and the "flight of the imagination, inspired by the energies of the body". This song is how mythology reflects the needs of the physical body to harmonise its experiences of basic organic impulses, hungers, and fears, such as birth, growth, and death; and in doing so it attempts to align life with reality; myths being ways to put our human mind into an accord with our body and create a way of life, in accord with the dictates of nature. Campbell also believed that mythology was a way for the deeper biological self to control the conscious ego; for instance in Buddhism the conscious ego is seen not as a powerful controlling thing for us to be proud of, but as a fluid, illusory mental construct built on attachment and ignorance that causes human suffering.

Cosmic Buddha

The term "Cosmic Buddha" refers to Vairocana, a primordial and universal Buddha who embodies the entire universe and the ultimate truth of existence. This particular personification of Buddha is to be found in Mahayana and Esoteric Buddhism. I also think it is vitally important to reflect upon how Mahayana teaches that all things lack an independent self or permanent core essence and exist only through interdependent relationships. Within such a concept, it is then possible to see how emptiness' or 'Sunyata' can also be an expression of the universe. As nothing exists completely on its own or in isolation, very object, person and thought is temporary and changes constantly. Everything arises and exists only because of a web of causes, conditions and relationships. For example, a tree depends on soil, water and sunlight to exist. This 'void' or 'emptiness', does not mean life is meaningless or that nothing exists. Things still function and appear, but they lack a fixed, permanent core or essence; meaning emerging from the contemplation of the wonderful interconnectedness of everything. 

The "Cosmic Buddha" is not a variant of a monotheistic God, as in Christianity, Vairocana is not the creator of the universe, nor a personal deity who takes action in this world from a transcendent location behind it. Nor does the Buddha communicate with humans through revelation. This aspect of the Buddha is the universe, which in itself is a set of interdependent actions or processes, not an independently existing agent that can do things. This concept also reflects the fact that human beings are also no more than, and yet wonderfully operating, as sets of intrinsically interlinked processes, rather than independent agents. Therefore each of us can be thought of as a subset of the universe’s function; our awareness of this being part of reality’s self-knowing. We eventually within a deep contemplation of this state, find that I, we, you are all terms that describe the universe experiencing itself. 

Several aspects of this issue are unpicked in Chopra and Kafatos (2018). In their book 'You are the universe' they explore these types of concepts and attempt to align them with contemporary physics. Eventually however they look to Walt Whitman, who I was thinking about recently in my post on 'Drawing the multitudes within us' quoting him thus;

I celebrate myself and I sing myself.

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

As they quote Whitman I'm minded to feel he communicated these ideas far more succinctly. Poetry, rather than the prose of academic text, seeming far more suited to these revelations. 

The writer on mythology Joseph Campbell, was the first person I came across who initiated me into a way of thinking about religion and mythology as ways to get to grips with reality and I still find him one of the clearest and deepest interrogators of these things, so perhaps he is worth a post to himself. 

Reference

Chopra, D. and Kafatos, M.C.(2018.)You are the universe: Discovering your cosmic self and why it matters. Harmony.

See also:

Qualia

Drawing the multitudes within us

The topology of dreams

Drawing the void

The fold

The fragmented body

Some thoughts on Hegel An essay I wrote some time ago, but which still has relevance in terms of my thoughts about how art might still matter. 

Past, present and future

A while ago I had a badge made, it was a very simple idea but for myself at the time it represented something fundamental. It was an artwork that could work as a portal for people who wore it, to enter into an alternative way of thinking, in this case the idea was to help people to think about time in a different way. Time appears to flow from the known past, to the present and onwards to an unknown future. But not all cultures have seen time in this way.
For instance, the indigenous Māori concept of time known as wā, is non-linear.  Their experience of time is of a continuous unfolding whereby the living exist alongside their ancestors, making history and the present contiguous. This has been described as spiralling time, which is in constant, expansive motion. Whilst in the Amazon rainforest, the Pirahã tribe live with an unbroken sense of the immediate present. Their language lacks a past tense entirely and they do not have a sense of history or future-past constructs. For them, time is not a sequence of past, present, future, but an immediate condition of things as they are. 

In quantum physics the past, present, and future also exist at the same time. The block universe theory, as supported by Einstein's theory of relativity, describes a four-dimensional block, whereby space and time combine into the single four-dimensional structure of spacetime. The feeling of time moving is just how humans experience it; yesterday, today and tomorrow are all equally real, much like different locations exist even if you cannot see them.

The Block Universe

There is also a cyclical view of time.  Cyclical patterns of change are often embedded into mythologies, especially because we live on a planet that revolves, thus setting up an idea of constant return. Day follows night, autumn follows summer, spring follows winter. However, some cultures have much longer or more cosmic ideas of time than others, such as the Taoist idea of "the blue sea becomes mulberry fields". 

In the ancient Taoist text 'Shenxian Zhuan', compiled by the Eastern Jin dynasty scholar Ge Hong in the 4th century, a story is told by the immortals that illustrates how immense the passage of time can be. 
When the immortal Wang Fangping asks another immortal, Magu to visit, she notes that since they last met, the celestial eastern sea has already turned into mulberry fields. In the story Magu explains that she looked down and saw that the sea had dried up and transformed into farmland and she suspects it will soon turn back into an ocean again. This idea of vast cyclical change is used to describe massive, sweeping and irreversible transformations that happen over far longer spans of time than human lives. 

I also had to think about colour. The combination of blue, green and purple is an analogous colour scheme, i. e. the colours are adjacent to each other within a colour wheel. The tonality of each colour is adjusted so that each value is similar, a series of choices which I hoped would create a calm, harmonious feeling.

I was at the same time aware of colour symbology, but I did not try to fix anything, except to be cognisant of blue in my mind standing for calm, peace and spirituality, green for nature, growth, and renewal and purple for wisdom, and creativity, but I did not want to label these, as each culture has its own colour symbology. 

The spiral form is one often used to represent spiritual transformation; it represents a cycling closer to higher consciousness over time, as well as mimicking natural patterns found in galaxies, shells, whirlwinds, and whirlpools.

My badge is small, my attempt in as compact a form as possible, to form a doorway into thinking about these things. I still have some left and give them away as a reminder that art does not have to be massive or grand in order to be effective. If you would like one e mail me on garry.barker@leeds-art.ac.uk

See also:

Robert Morris: Blind time drawings

Time and drawing

More thoughts on drawing time

Portraits and time

The spiral

Drawing the multitudes within us

Interoceptual portrait

The phrase, "I am large, I contain multitudes" is taken from Walt Whitman's famous poem 'Song of Myself'. It is a beautiful celebration of human complexity, meaning we all possess multifaceted, often contradictory personalities and emotions that evolve over time. 

I contain multitudes: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan would more recently follow in Whitman's footsteps, constructing a song that is also a meditation on personal identity seen as a complex mix of contradictions, history and shifting roles, rather than a single, fixed persona. I've become very aware of this as I make interoceptual portraits. People are not fixed identities, their feelings swirl around and one day the feeling tone I'm trying to realise is one particular shape or colour and on another day it changes. Whether this is a change in myself or in the person I'm thinking about I'm not sure, but change is happening and the interpersonal communication is shifting as I attempt to follow or grasp that change using drawing or colour. On the outside we may look the same but inside we are constantly morphing, or at least it seems like this to me. This situation is compounded by the fact that our surrounding social structures are also changing; Zygmunt Bauman in 'Liquid Modernity' describes our contemporary society, as one where all social structures, relationships and institutions are constantly morphing into new formats and concepts. 

For the DC comic Doom Patrol, Grant Morrison and the artist Richard Case invented the character Crazy Jane, the dominant alternate personality of the character Kay Challis. The idea that Morrison and Case were trying to work with was to construct a character who had dissociative identity disorder, in this instance, a person with a total of 64 unique identities. When I was reading Doom Patrol, Crazy Jane was the dominant alter ego or host. They were playing I thought at the time a dangerous game, as in order for this character to be so disturbed, she had had to have had a previous life of deep trauma. This emerged as a story of childhood abuse, and although I could see where Morrison was going with this, it still felt awkward. He was interested in the brain's psychic power. He was also interested and I presume still is, in magic. The magician's ability to seek power over things by using sympathetic magic, involves the transforming of spiritual energy into different forms, so that it can 'inhabit' a fetish or other magical object. This overlaps it seems to me with the power of an art object to hold within it an externalised thought. This boundary or edgeland, being a territory not unlike the wall of the shaman's cave. I have been looking at paleopoetry as an idea recently; pre-linguistic thinking and the split between our old and new brains. The old brain being able to intuitively grasp thoughts without the need for logic. This old brain is still with us and magical thinking is perhaps something that can harness it, leaving the more recent one to worry about what happened. The unconscious is a minefield and one artists have often gone into without any safeguards, because it seems to offer answers that sit totally outside current ideas of how the world ought to behave. It is at times like these that logic seems to fail us. Powerful forces seem at work that are nothing to do with rational thought. I can see why during the first world war Dada came into being; logic seemed to have failed the world, so artists had to turn to illogic or ways of working that owed nothing to the processes of thinking that had led to carnage and the death of millions. 

Although I was worried by Morrison and Case's idea, at the same time it fascinated me and still does. I suspect Morrison and Case had seen 'The Three Faces of Eve'. Christine Costner Sizemore was an American woman who, in the 1950s, was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder. Her diagnosis became the kernel around which the character 'Eve' was developed for the book and 1957 film. In the film, Eve White a timid, self-effacing woman goes to see a psychiatrist and while there, a "new personality", the wild, fun-loving Eve Black, emerges. Eve Black knows everything about Eve White, but Eve White is unaware of Eve Black. The film depicts Dr. Luther's attempts to understand and deal with these two faces of Eve. Under hypnosis at one session, a third personality emerges, a relatively stable woman but with no name and little memory of her past. She chooses to take the name Jane. who remembers a traumatic event in Eve's childhood. This event had led to the creation of her different personalities. Following this recollection, Jane remembers her entire past and believes the other personalities are gone. During my 1950s comic reading there was also another fictional character who on a daily basis operated as if he had a split personality and that was Superman/Clark Kent. The mild mannered reporter who in a moment could change into the hero, Superman; a split that has been represented as the tension between our private vulnerabilities and our public responsibilities and before that we had Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a tale about the struggle between the good and evil living inside every single person. 

Two Face: Matt Wagner design for DC Comics

In the DC franchise Batman comics, 'Two-Face' employs a similar good/evil duality, but this time the duality is plain to see, as his exterior appearance reflects how his interior personality has changed.

The popularity of these characters, I believe reflects our own awareness of having to contain multitudes. I am a 76 year old man with failing knees, but that doesn't stop me in my head, scoring a great goal for West Bromwich Albion, as they go on to win the FA Cup. For a brief moment I am a recreated Jeff Astle, the last man to score a cup final goal for the Albion. One day I can be a positive, outward going creative and the next day an inward looking, tired has-been. I'm interested, I'm bored, I'm lethargic, I'm excited, I'm drunk, I'm sober, I'm frightened of the future, I'm positive about where everything is going, I'm lonely, I'm nervous of crowds, I'm in love, I'm cold hearted, I'm all of these things and many more, so what does an honest portrait of myself look like? 

Interoceptual portraits

Not a pretty sight, but perhaps they do touch a certain nerve. Our unconscious selves are hard to control, we may think our conscious minds lead the way, but if this is the case why are so many people across the world fighting each other, accusing each other of wrongs, responding to slights that are often imaginary, beginning wars because of rumour and attacking people because of some sort of perceived difference and undertaking weaponised behaviour to justify harm. We sure are messed up. 

Maybe we are all more like Crazy Jane than we would like to think. 

Crazy Jane as envisioned by Richard Case

As Whitman put it, amongst many other lines;

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,

Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine,

Whitman's words are a reminder to beware of that best selfie shot, because that is not you. Neither is the winning painting in that portrait competition, so many avidly watch on Sky television. Beware of a good likeness of whatever personality is sent out to have their portrait painted; it is unlikely to have captured anything of their inner reality. A frozen moment of an external appearance may be captured, but we all know we have a 'good side' and a 'bad side' and if our thought dreams could be seen, as Bob put it, they would probably put our heads in a guillotine and how do we capture all of that in one image?

Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernity London: Polity

Whitman, W. (2016) Song of myself: with a complete commentary. University of Iowa Press.

See also:

What is a portrait anyway?

Self portrait drawings

The portrait as stereotype  

The portrait as witness and control

Portraits and time

Portraits mass and time

The Lamed Vavniks 

Visualising pain