Victorian Visual Culture

There have been multiple times this semester when something I’ve learned in one of my other classes has made me think of topics we’ve covered in this class (or vice versa). One of these times was in my Spanish class (which focuses on violence, gender, and queer identity in Latin America), when we had class in the art museum and watched a short film called Silueta Sangrienta (bloody silhouette) by Ana Mendieta. It’s a two-minute video that shows a human-shaped hole in the ground, filled with what appears to be blood, then shows the artist lying in the hole. (Unfortunately I could not find a link to the video, but I have included a screenshot of it below.) It’s part of Mendieta’s Siluetas series, a long-term project that consists of over 200 images and videos of human silhouettes in various natural settings.

A lot of the connections that I’ve made between this class and others have been fairly loose, and this is definitely one of them. Mendieta’s work isn’t directly related to any kind of Victorian art or culture, but Silueta Sangrienta (and the Siluetas series in general) made me think about some of the ideas about visual culture that we’ve discussed in this course. Mendieta’s silhouette images are often deliberately unsettling; I wasn’t quite sure how to respond or what to think about them, and I’m sure that effect was intentional. The disquieting effect of the images made me think of different disturbing images, such as the famine photographs we viewed. The basic emotions of discomfort that I felt were similar with both sets of images, but the context for those emotions was very different. There are obviously a lot of ethical issues with visual representations of tragedy and suffering, and part of the discomfort (at least for me, and I’m sure for many other people as well) comes not only from the disturbing images themselves but also from the knowledge that, in many cases, the people in question didn’t consent to their suffering being exploited in this way. Mendieta’s images, on the other hand, are created entirely by her; she is in control of what is being portrayed and how. Her photographs that depict blood, fire, and other things that may imply violence are certainly disturbing, but in a way that emphasizes the artist’s agency and her relationship with her body and the land.

Another thing about Silueta Sangrienta that I found interesting was the video format. Most of the entries in the Siluetas are solely photographed, while this one is a video but is silent and largely portraying one consistent image. The overall effect is uniquely unnerving, and made me uncomfortably aware of my role as an observer. In a way the film walks the line between video and photograph, and I felt strange and almost voyeuristic looking at it. It was an interesting experience that made me think about the evolution from painting to photography to video recording, and the different ways that things can be portrayed in these formats.

Artnet. “Ana Mendieta.” http://www.artnet.com/artists/ana-mendieta/

TW/CW: Crime scene photos containing blood, a deceased person and detailed descriptions of deceased persons

Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914) was a French photographer credited with standardizing the mugshot in the 1880s but became well known for being one of the first to photograph crime scenes, revolutionizing the documentation used in law enforcement. His father was a physician, likely lending a hand to Bertillon’s stomach for gruesome crime scenes, like one where a victim is decomposed and bloated, eyes bulging while it hangs off the edge of a bed. Bertillon was frustrated with the way law enforcement documented and organized information and photos of criminals, so he developed the first mugshot styles and an anthropometric identification system for criminals. Of course, this method proved to be ineffective in future years and embroiled him in the Dreyfus affair in which his handwriting analysis of a suspect led to the conviction of an innocent man. The conviction was overturned, and eventually, Bertillon moved on to be one of the first crime scene photographers. 

The following are two of Bertillon’s crime scene photos from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There are elaborate furnishings, including window hangings and an ornate bed frame with a mini canopy hanging over the head of the bed, looming over a pillow with a lacy cover. A nicely upholstered chair is on the left, catty-cornered between two windows. A short sitting bench and a washbasin are away from the foot of the bed. This is the bedroom of someone with a moderate amount of wealth and could be a point of interest to law enforcement. There is some disarray of the sheets and blankets on the bed, indicating someone having recently woken up. A chair is knocked over, mostly concealed by the bed, and a pillow is on the floor. The eye is quickly drawn to the framed Birth of Venus print on the back wall, unusually tilted, and the large bloodstain on the pillows at the head of the bed.

The second picture reveals Madame Debeinche, the victim. She is lying between the bed and the back wall. A second chair is knocked over. The body of Madame Debeinche is posed eerily similar to the Venus in the painting above her. Her fingers and toes are dark from livor mortis, suggesting she had been dead for six to 12 hours before the photo was taken. She is still wearing her nightclothes, now stained with her blood spatters. Coming from the bottom left corner of the photo is the bottom half of the first tipped chair, pointing directly at the deceased. Despite the coincidence, there is an irony in the painting being the birth of Venus while the death of a woman happened right below it. The positioning of the chairs and tilted picture suggests a struggle between Madame Debeinche and her killer, though the delicate, tall table in the corner holding a vase of flowers remains untouched. 

While generally used for legal purposes, photographs of victims of crimes were treated differently than some others. Notorious outlaw Jesse James and Jack the Ripper victim Mary Kelly were seen as “others” in relation to other victims. In her book Photography and Death: Framing Death Throughout History, Racheal Harris says, “publication and dissemination of the slain criminal body was a tool through which law enforcement might indicate the consequences for criminal behavior” (Harris 36). Jesse James was a bank and train robber and the leader of a gang, highly sought after by law enforcement. When he was caught and killed by the police, his post-mortem was very different from what we see in others. There are no flowers or other adornments in his coffin, he’s not wearing what would be considered his best clothes, and there are officials surrounding him, to indicate he was in fact a criminal. The release of these photos were probably trying to deter anyone else from doing something similar meeting the same fate. Other killed criminals were pictured at the scene of their death, wearing the same clothing they died in, showing a lack of compassion from those involved (Harris 36-37). 

Mary Kelly wasn’t the same kind of criminal that James was. Though sex work was and still mostly remains illegal, Kelly could still be considered the same level of criminal as James. Mary Kelly was the only Ripper victim whose whole body was photographed. She is mutilated beyond recognition from head to toe and some of her organs are set on her side table. Her head is turned toward the camera. Megha Anwer, author of “Murder in Black and White: Victorian Crime Scenes and the Ripper Photographs” details the journalistic aftermath when it was discovered that one of Kelly’s organs, her heart, was missing. The journalists took this information and ran, disregarding the way in which Kelly had been murdered. “To focus on the absent body part becomes a self-deluding detour that allows us to turn a blind eye to the remnants of the savaged body left behind by the murderer,” Anwer says (438). Officials and journalists treated Kelly’s brutal murder as less important and sensationalized it more simply because she was a sex worker. Many consider sex work immoral and degrading to one’s reputation and in society, they are not seen as worthy of the compassion and respect as others. The photograph of Kelly is haunting and gruesome and a stark reminder of why Jack got his Ripper moniker. 

Works Cited

Anwer, Megha. “Murder in Black and White: Victorian Crime Scenes and the Ripper Photographs.” Victorian Studies, vol. 56, no. 3, 2014, pp. 433–441., https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.56.3.433.

Bertillon, Alphonse. “Album of Paris Crime Scenes.” Metmuseum.org, Metropolitain Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/284718.

Harris, Racheal. “Romance: Post-Mortem Photography.” Photography and Death: Framing Death throughout History, 2020, pp. 19–39., https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-045-520201002.

Jones, Richard. “The Mary Kelly Photo Gallery.” The Mary Kelly Photo Gallery., https://www.jack-the-ripper.org/mary-kelly-gallery.htm.

When viewing Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations for Salomé, I was struck by a strange sense of familiarity, but was initially unable to figure out why. As I scrolled through them, however, I realized that they reminded me somewhat of the illustrations of American artist and writer Edward Gorey. When I was a child, my family had a copy of Gorey’s short story collection Amphigorey that I read over and over again, morbidly fascinated by the dark content and somewhat unsettling ink drawings. Beardsley’s illustrations inspired me to revisit some of Gorey’s work, and I was intrigued by its similarity to some of what we’ve covered in this class, including Salomé itself.

While Edward Gorey was not alive during the Victorian era (he was born in 1925 and died in 2000), his work often portrays Victorian settings and characters, and in fact he did cover illustrations for various books including Bleak House. He also wrote many books, often formatted like children’s picture books, that depict individuals in Victorian dress meeting dark, gruesome fates. For instance, his 1963 picture book The Gashlycrumb Tinies, or, After the Outing is a rhyming alphabet book telling of the grisly deaths of 26 young children, many of whom look as though they could be characters in a story like Bleak House or Alice in Wonderland. The book begins, “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs; B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clara who wasted away; D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh.” The book continues through the whole alphabet, with each section accompanied by an ink drawing of the death in question. The violent content and dark, sketchy illustrations contrast with the expectations one would typically have of an alphabet book, creating a chilling overall effect.

There are multiple different reasons that reading Salomé and viewing Beardsley’s illustrations made me think of Gorey’s work. For one thing, while Beardsley’s drawings are more detailed and finished-looking than Gorey’s, they have a similarly unnerving quality to them. The dark ink, hunched figures, and vaguely surreal imagery of Beardsley’s work reminded me fairly strongly of Gorey’s work that I had seen in the past. Additionally, the content of the play itself reminded me in some ways of the stories that Gorey tells. His stories and illustrations are designed to disturb and unsettle the viewer, and the deliberately unpleasant content of Salomé reminded me of this. Much of the dialogue of Salomé is also written in blunt, straightforward sentences, which are somewhat reminiscent of the simple, gruesome statements found in Gorey’s work. Reading the play and viewing Beardsley’s illustrations felt almost like an evolution of reading Amphigorey as a child, and in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Beardsley’s work was an inspiration for Gorey.

Gorey, Edward. The Gashlycrumb Tinies. 1963. Bloomsbury, 2019.

Wilde, Oscar.  Salome: a tragedy in one act / translated from the French of Oscar Wilde, with sixteen drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. John Lane London; New York, 1920.

We started our ENG-325 course with Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess,’ discussing the poem’s commentary on portraiture and what this visual tool says about society. While sifting back through the course material, I noticed how ‘My Last Duchess’ has a lot to say regarding gaze, be it of the viewer or the subject, especially when the latter is female. For Browning, it successfully reveals the social economy of gender and control in English society. He brings to light the dark underbelly of Victorian society and the place of gaze in particularly determining the patriarchal culture of inherence and marriage.

‘My Last Duchess,’ in brief, is a poem following a Duke as he introduces an unnamed visitor to a portrait of his late wife. The power of the male viewer’s gaze begins here. The Duke has total control over the portrait of the Duchess, which he hides behind a curtain and decides who gets to gaze upon. The portrait becomes instrumental in exposing the patriarchal structure that controls the Duchess’ life, both when she was alive and now. The Duchess, who has no agency of her own in the poem, is the property of the Duke, who governs her life and words. It is left to him how he wants to describe her and what he wants to discuss about her. This gaze is very different from how the Duke describes the female gaze of the Duchess. This latter gaze is seen as dangerous and not deserving of agency. The Duke describes how the glances and looks of the Duchess led to her infidelity and relationship with the painter, Fra Pandolf. He states how the Duchess “liked whate’er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.” The female gaze lacks control and leads to damage.

Browning’s poem says a lot about the privilege of looking in Renaissance and Victorian society along the lines of gender. Men have the rationality and power to decide the functions of gaze. On the other hand, women become mere objects of the male gaze. They cannot even tell their own stories or determine how they are portrayed.

While not directly linked to Browning’s poem and his discussion, I wonder how this idea of gaze and its relationship with gender has changed over the years. Where can we see some examples of women breaking through to gain power over their visual representation? One thing that got me thinking about an evolved history is the place of self-portraiture by female artists over the years. This art form allows subjects to change how they are seen and give them agency and control over their stories, unlike the Duchess in Browning’s poem.

For example, Freida Kahlo discusses how “I paint self-portraits because I am often so alone, because I am the person I know best.” Kahlo drew several self-portraits over her lifetime, using vivid colors, brushstrokes and usually gazing straight through the portrait to the viewer. Kahlo uses subtle artistic choices in her paintings that reveal her deeper psychological narrative and portray her experiences from the inside. As a result, she can use the medium to express her sexuality and suffering as she has experienced it. Kahlo establishes control over the gaze of the subject and the viewer. She paints herself to look at the camera directly, confronting her viewer to look into her life and see her story. In this process, she also has directed the viewer’s gaze in seeing what she wants them to see.

Kahlo is not alone. Women across cultures and the world have broken free from the gaze and power of men to establish their own narratives. Amrita-Sher-Gil, dubbed the Indian Freida Kahlo, is one of them. Sher-Gil is known for revolutionizing the artistic depiction of Indian women, giving voice to their inner experiences, and her self-portraits become the entry point into this. Her portraits capture her cultural identity Indian and Hungarian, and her accompanying range of personal emotions and experiences, such as her quest for belonging and troubles with loneliness and hopelessness. For example, Sher-Gil’s Self-Portrait as a Tahitian’ captures a nude Sher-Gil wearing a somber expression and staring into the distance. Her portrayal of her body here liberates the female body and sexuality from previous gender conventions and towards how she sees herself. 

Cindy Sherman is a more modern example of an artist who has used photographic self-portraits to reorient viewers’ gazes. Sherman is particularly fascinating to consider as she uses cinematic tools to transform herself into different possible representations. She constructs her portraits around certain female stereotypes but adds a twist. For example, prosthetics, wigs, and makeup are all worn incorrectly, challenging the conventions often set for how women were meant to be seen and perceived. Sherman does a lot more in challenging the portrayal of women in visual culture, paying attention to the ugly and ungroomed. Below are a few examples of her artwork that have depicted her boldness and confrontation of gendered conventions.

While these are among the few female artists who challenged gender convention and redirected the viewer’s gaze, the list is far from exhaustive. In addition, these examples are solely reliant on art and portraiture. With the danger of sounding tangential, I also wonder how technology today in 2021 has further changed self-representation. With our phones and easy access to camera (taking selfies, for example), I think it’s interesting to look at how this might have changed ideas on how we market ourselves and further redirect gaze as well.

Works Cited 

1. Browning, Robert. “My Last Duchess.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43768/my-last-duchess. 
2. “10 Self-Portraits by Women Artists – Google Arts & Culture.” Google, Google, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/10-self-portraits-by-women-artists/nAJyCun4qsH7Jg.
3. “Frida Kahlo.” Frida Kahlo – The Complete Works, https://www.frida-kahlo-foundation.org/. 
4. “Amrita Sher-Gil – Google Arts & Culture.” Google, Google, https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/amrita-sher-gil/m09sphm?hl=en. 
5. “Overlooked No More: Amrita Sher-Gil, a Pioneer of Indian Art.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 June 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/obituaries/amrita-shergil-dead.html. 
6. “Amrita Sher-Gil.” Obelisk Art History, https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/amrita-sher-gil/.
7. “Cindy Sherman: Moma.” The Museum of Modern Art, https://www.moma.org/artists/5392. 
8. “How Cindy Sherman Redefined Self-Portraiture (7 Artworks).” TheCollector, 29 Oct. 2021, https://www.thecollector.com/cindy-sherman-self-portraits/. 

In this class, we’ve explored aspects of the Victorian cult of death, particularly post-mortem photography, which afforded loved ones a last opportunity to immortalize the body of the deceased. Victorians were highly sentimental and preoccupied with death, and photography was not their only method of preservation. Some Victorians kept their loved ones’ teeth, but one of the most striking examples of post-mortem preservation are hairworks – artwork or jewelry made from a lock of the deceased’s hair. Hairworks allowed loved ones to carry their remains around with them – as bracelets, necklaces, and hairclips. When people die, they leave objects and memories behind, but hairworks far surpass earthly possessions or abstract memories as commemorative instruments. They are tangible pieces of their bodies.

Hair was an ideal medium, as it can last for centuries without losing its pigmentation. Most fascinating is how the Victorians saw hair as a suitable stand-in for the person’s essence. It goes farther than a photograph or artistic representation of their likeness: it contains actual organic material from their bodies, therein keeping them alive in-part (no matter that hair is technically dead to begin with). Some pieces combine post-mortem photography with hairworks, framing the photographs with floral wreaths made from hair to create a more holistic representation of the departed.

Another intriguing aspect of hairworks was their usage as talismans that could connect the living to the dead. In The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture, Deborah Lutz explores the usage of Hairworks in Wuthering Heights. Upon Catherine’s death, Heathcliff steals into her room and replaces the lock of Edward’s hair in her locket with his own. He desires a part of his presence to go with her to whenever it is that she goes, and believes that connecting a piece of his body to hers would make it easier to find her on the other side. Lutz says that Heathcliff believes that “Catherine’s death doesn’t mean she has disappeared, but rather that she has become temporarily unlocatable.” Hairworks, then, are more than mere memorials; they are evidence of a soul still in existence, a mortal tether to a person who hasn’t ceased to exist, but has simply gone somewhere inaccessible to the living.

Sources:

Lutz, Deborah. “The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 39, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 127–42, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41307854.