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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Sleeping Beauty

  
 
Mourne Kransky
16:09 / 01.05.04
Nipped in to the NPG today to have a look at this new portrait of faithless Golden Balls. One hour film loop of DB having a siesta after a hard session's training. Crowded, darkened little room, full of people staring at the sleeping David on a moderately sized screen.

Curiously hypnotic and restful to be standing there, taking a breather from the shopper-filled streets, gazing at this iconic image, waiting for a cheek to tremble or his tongue to dart quickly round dry lips.

But, also, incredibly sexy. I find him a tasty morsel, I admit, and such as Ganesh, who doesn't, might not find the experience so voyeuristically fulfilling, but the situation is damned odd. Felt a bit like watching the tv in the sitting room as a kid, when something sexually flagrant would be shown and a miasma of embarrassed unease would descend.

Oddly compelling. I shall go back soon to see what exciting rapid eye movements or myoclonic jerks occur in the other fifty minutes. Lovely forearms. Crap tattoos.
 
 
Tom Coates
19:19 / 02.05.04
The bits I've seen are strangely beautiful and - of course - he's terribly attractive and everything, but I'm a bit unsure about the whole thing. Two things - kind of at odds at each other actually - seem to be stuck in my head here. Firstly there's my reaction to him as a person/celebrity/vague figure of attraction - where I have to say I was surprised by how childish he appears when asleep and it's slightly altered my perception of him as an individual. The other thing that this piece has stirred up in my head is what would happen if this wasn't of him but of some other run of the mill model or individual off the street. Clearly the art is in some way dismantling the difference between his very public persona and his most private one, and clearly that's partly about him being a celebrity. But there seems to be just as much publicity-seeking high-profile look-at-me-ness going on here on the part of the artist as there is art in that exposure.
 
 
Linus Dunce
22:31 / 02.05.04
I've not seen it, except for the stills in the paper. STW's no stranger to self portaits but what do you mean, Tom, when you say the artist is attention-seeking?
 
 
Tom Coates
10:34 / 03.05.04
I suppose what I'm saying is that when you use celebrities in your art you are inevitably making art of their celebrity (potentially good) and also exploiting the celebrity for publicity (potentially lame). This could be a complete red herring - after all pre-photograph all we had were paintings of people, and I'm sure there was considerable prestige associated with painting famous people, and an attached kudos and inflation of the importance of the artist as a result. I suppose I wonder whether or not the art is enhanced by the presence of celebrity or diminished by it.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
14:14 / 05.05.04
I do wander into the Portrait Gallery every now and then and just see what's new and see a few old favourites, so I would have come across this piece in time anyway, but I did make a special effort to go see the new Beckham "portrait" because of the publicity. So the fact that it was art involving Beckham was already the most important aspect of the work, for me.

And it's in the National Portrait Gallery where the one guaranteed thing is that the model will be someone of some celebrity and the art is likely to be figurative. A lot of the work in there has little to redeem it but for its legendary subject.

Increasingly, new portraits are braver in the way they represent the sitter, and there is a lot of stuff in there now that deserves a place on grounds of intrinsic artistic worth, rather than for its celebrity subject.

The artist might be as celebrated as the subject and maybe that means the celebrity of the sitter becomes less an issue. There was an interesting Lucian Freud painting on display, for instance, of David Hockney. Their respective reputations informed any reading of the painting, even for a comparative aesthetic thicko like me.

I think the celebrity of the subject can cause some crap to be painted or made but all the great painters have had rich patrons and many of their greatest works have been of contemporary "celebrities" without any diminution of their powers as painters, imho.

So, back to Beckham. It's a while since I've seen it but there was a Warhol film, one of his first, comprising six or seven hours of a man sleeping. Called "Sleep" iirc and the subject was John Giorno, a stockbroker turned boho whom Warhol was in lust with.

I liked Sam Taylor Wood's piece much better. It's shorter, sharper and altogether more technically competent work. But all of that is, I suspect, besides the point. I think those of use who have strong reactions to the Beckham image, the contemporary icon, take that to the portrait and STW has cleverly given us a sleeping icon to read as we will.

Had he been engaging in any activity, it would have begun to govern our interaction with the image, I think. Show him kicking a ball about and I'd have lost interest. Show him eating tapas and wooing his PA and I'd be moderately interested. Show him on the catwalk and I've have thought "like the clothes".

I think STW has cleverly captured some of the mythic and the sexualised (and the infantile too, that you mentioned Tom) aspects of the Beckham image with her choices.

I think it's an interesting bit of art, shaking hands with the Zeitgeist, which is appropriate for the NPG. I need to drag Ganesh along so I can see if it has any merit for those who didn't already think about him entirely too much.
 
  
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