Double Standards

The initial catalyst for political activism with artistic ambitions was probably when the Art Workers Coalition requisitioned the room in the Museum of Modern Art where Picasso's Guernica was hanging. It was of course a demonstration against the Vietnam War and the propaganda material that was brought along on that 8 January was gleaned from the arsenal of horror. It consisted of a photograph that the war correspondent Ron Haeberle shot after American soldiers had killed all of the inhabitants of a village. This document of the My Lai Massacre was captioned with two lines taken from a radio interview with one of the perpetrators, Paul Meadlo. When the reporter asked: "And babies, too?" Meadlo answered correctly: "Yes, and babies." It was also evident from Haeberle's photo that small children had also been victims of the mayhem. The picture and the text intensified each other's rhetoric - and the AWC, naturally, saw itself as standing on the side of righteousness.

However, righteousness - and, ironically, in this respect both the opponents of the Vietnam War and the hawks in the Pentagon shared the same dilemma - is often based on a double standard. Of course, it was a scandal that helpless children were among the victims: but is it any less scandalous that grown men were killed? To kill new-born babies is patently wrong: but to kill adults is, after all, the custom of war. Should these martial conventions be condoned? Babies are innocent: are the dead men by definition guilty and, hence, were they legitimately massacred? Whatever way one looks at it: totalitarianism and the readiness to accept violence in order to achieve a vision, an obsession or an utopia, lurks uneasily behind the point of view that the killing of children is a greater crime than killing adults.

It may seem cynical to draw a parallel between the AWC's slogan and images of chubby-cheeked roly-poly babies, as Matthias Herrmann does in his cycle of baby photos. It even seems that the motto has been made to look banal - so Herrmann also photographs babies. The idea of presenting them naked, and to have no qualms about showing them to be masculine and thus under the sway of sexuality from the beginning, is completely consistent with Herrmann's normal practice. Yes, it even appears that babies, too, can be coveted by a gaze that is wont to dwell on drastic images. One could cry pornography, even child pornography. Such apprehensions would be in keeping with the mechanisms mentioned above, which are fuelled by double standards. Babies like to wallow in innocent nudity: does this mean that Herrmann is searching for a shameful form of nudity?

Illusion

Herrmann undoubtedly indulges in the pornographic gaze in his works and the quarry of his forays along the avenues of the body is generally himself. Homo-eroticism and auto-stimulation: the constant ability to have an erection and to ejaculate is self-referential. It is not an excerpt from an individual existence, nor the pars pro toto of a subject seen in its entirety, that Herrmann captures in the close-ups of himself. There is, to paraphrase Jacques Lacan, no signifié in this plethora of significiants.

Lacan puts forward the example of mimesis: animals change the colour of their skins to merge in with their surroundings and become invisible to any gaze that tries to penetrate this environment. This mechanism, according to Lacan, works in exactly the same way as the self-constitution of the ego: one is convinced that one is a subject, but in reality the individual just enters into someone's field of vision. The upshot of this is not an emphatic ego, but an image that merely occupies a place on the "screen" that represents how someone else sees the world. This is an illusion. Herrmann's self-enactment corresponds exactly to the way the attention the oft-cited other can be commanded to perceive one's self - not as a totality, but as an as perfectly arranged a phenomenon as possible.

As for the babies: in total consistency with his previous work, Herrmann directs our gaze to those life forms, that evolve per se out of mimetic activity. To grab others' attention is the constant - if not sole - concern of little children. The willingness to allow oneself to be clothed and to reproduce behaviour is carried out by them as a matter of course. Whether the idea of subjectivity develops as a result of this, or whether this aim (as Lacan is convinced) is foregone all along, is actually only of secondary importance. The idea of infancy alone offers the necessary frame of reference and is responsible for perceptibility, for the entry into the gaze. If pornography is an enactment of desire on the "screen" through which another sees the world: well, then all behaviour of small children is pornographic.

Tableau Vivant

Herrmann above all indulges in the photographic gaze. Auto-eroticism and self-reflection: the photographs that Herrmann produces are not exactly innocent. The visual experience always makes itself felt, perception goes right through the objects and enters into the archive of pictorial conventions. The little cowboy who aims his rifle towards the sky is reminiscent of Robert Mapplethorpe's portrait of Burroughs; another calls to mind Bruce Weber as he gazes into the distance in an outdoor picture. The way in which the children are set in front of the camera recalls (more or less) famous images; they represent photographs of "living" pictures, examples of the idea of the tableau vivant. What was probably the first tableau vivant in the history of western culture also had to do with a baby. According to legend, St. Francis of Assisi was celebrating Christmas mass in the Umbrian town of Greccio. Living animals, oxen and donkeys, were positioned in front of the altar and a new Bethlehem for the daily lives of the country people was postulated. Suddenly, according to the hagiography, all present saw a child - naturally, the Divine Child. It became known as the "Miracle of the Cradle": the saint's powers of evocation, together with his very real powers of enactment, had given rise to a living picture.

The visible and its associations: Herrmann's techniques of using babies as a motif is similar to those of Judy Fox, who produces three-dimensional life-size models of children and makes them assume poses that stem from art history, e.g. Bernini's St. Theresa or Manet's Olympia. This is a classic example of "double reading": the principle of literalness in pornography being undermined by the supplementary interpretations supplied by the traditions of the métier (and here Herrmann definitely favours the traditional concept of art). The suspicion of pornography, it finally transpires, is the result of a lack of judgmental conventions. In the final analysis, this falls back on the viewer: double standards and ignorance go hand in hand. Herrmann's perspectives on his object, however, transcend such artlessness.

Rainer Metzger

Published in 4 Publications 1997