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Necrophilia is not a routine topic in art. Consequently, some years ago, I was shocked to discover Gabriel von Max’s canvas The Anatomist on prominent display at Munich’s Neue Pinakothek—no apology, no trigger warning. It was painted in 1869, six years after Manet’s Olympia—when Freud was still in short pants. The anatomist (or coroner) is a bearded middle-aged man, formally attired, respectable. He’s a creature of darkness, barely there. In the privacy of his rooms, he meditates on a dead girl, drawing back the sheet to perv on her breast. She’s incandescent, hauntingly beautiful, creamy pale (but with lips and eyelids turning blue). Gift-wrapped in a body-hugging sheet, as if in bed rather than on the slab, she has been described as ‘like a bride’. We’re prompted to imagine the tragic circumstances that brought her here, so young. Drowning, by the looks. But was it foul play, suicide, or accident? Her corpse may be fresh, but an attentive moth reminds us that she will soon be food for worms; but not before the anatomist has satisfied his curiosities. Conflating the male gaze and the medical one, Von Max’s painting implictes us in its prurience—that breast is being uncovered for our benefit too. His painting generates its creepy frisson from the contrast between its risqué, taboo subject and conservative, academic painting style—an effect greatly enhanced when we gaze on its depicted intimate-private space from the bustling-public one of a museum.
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Last weekend, in Dane Mitchell’s show Letters and Documents at the Adam Art Gallery (on until 16 August 2020), I encountered my past in the form of a relic—Artspace’s old sandwich board. It had become an artwork, titled Artspace Totem.

I became Artspace Director at the end of 1996. I was only thirty-three, but I’d already worked as a curator in three museums and was seen by young artists as ‘the establishment’—fair game. It didn’t help that in Metro I was accused of corporatising Artspace—which will seem ludicrous to anyone who has seen how I dress. That said, one of my first acts had been to tart up the Artspace logo, reversing out Mary-Louise Browne’s original type from a black box to make it ‘smarter’. And, I did love the daily ritual of putting out my branded sandwich board on K Road, like a grocer.

In January 1999 or thereabouts, the sandwich board disappeared. I had no idea why. It turned out that two young artists, Dane Mitchell and Tim Checkley, had stolen it and taken it on a road trip. They photographed it at various stops—at Lake Taupo, the Desert Road, Te Papa, and somewhere between Westport and Arthurs Pass on the West Coast—before publicly presenting it in an old railways cottage in Otira as part of the exhibition Oblique: The Otira Project. After they’d had their fun, Mitchell phoned me, fessing up and proposing to return the sign to ‘neutral territory’—whatever that meant. I got impatient, stroppy, shrill. I didn’t know he was taping the conversation.

Later that year, Mitchell featured in Artspace’s emerging-artist show Only the Lonely. He presented a DJ desk, where visitors could mix a record of our phone call (with some added beats) with one of another prank call to Auckland Art Gallery Director Chris Saines. I insisted on using the Desert Road image for the exhibition invite, as I wanted to look like a good sport. But I did get tired of pretending not to care when the kids took potshots.

Actually, I took the mockery personally, even though it wasn’t clear to me what Mitchell and Checkley’s issue was or why this should be so funny. Perhaps the sign was my Achilles heel, and I was the last to realise. Maybe that’s why they redesignated it a ‘totem’, suggesting it had been mistakenly invested with mojo.

It was odd to see the sandwich board again. I’m surprised it still exists. Where has it been all my life? It may be a shadow of its former self—the vinyl logo has gone, leaving ghostly traces—but I’d know it anywhere. Reunited with it in Mitchell’s show in Tina Barton’s gallery, I was tempted to steal it back, wipe the smirk off both their faces, and take it on a road trip of my own. But I can’t run as fast as I used to.
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[IMAGE: Tim Checkley and Dane Mitchell stealing the Artspace sign, 1999.]
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There’s a memorable scene in John Ford’s 1956 western The Searchers. Ethan (John Wayne) is on a mission. He’s trying to rescue his niece (Natalie Wood) from the Comanche, who abducted her. While on their trail, he discovers the corpse of one of them and shoots out his eyes. The Reverend Clayton scolds him for being needlessly violent, but doesn’t know the half of it. The sadistic Ethan explains that he wanted to guarantee that the dead man could not pass into the afterlife, saying, ‘But what that Comanche believes, ain’t got no eyes, he can’t enter the spirit land. Has to wander forever between the winds. You get it, Reverend?’ It is a reminder that while understanding one another can enable greater sensitivity it can also enable greater insensitivity—or is it a more culturally sensitive insensitivity?
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