Порочная Жизнь

To me things could be both ugly and beautiful – the paradox of beautiful ugliness. Ugliness was simply inverted beauty: individuals’ flaws and scars are their unique features, their identity: that beauty is my preference – the broken nose, the twisted mouth, the missing teeth. I identified with struggle. This kind of beauty also translated into sexuality, with its idiosyncrasies and conundrums. The freaks in my work were equally special, and I knew too that their missing limbs were sexually stimulating to some people. Their freakishness was the essence of their specialness, and offered validation of the something special in all of us. Personally I have always found conventional beauty boring, aesthetic conventions bland, perfection sexless. I love the broken parts of our bodies and souls, the misshapes, the flaws, the ugly traits of a personality, and so am drawn to the damaged, the displaced, the socially lost. It’s what I was, and what I could so easily have remained (as to some people I have).

Stop me if my scepticism is turning into cynicism. It’s not that I’m still trying to be anti-establishment — I’m just realistic. I know that any artist who’s been around for a while automatically becomes establishment. Even the most rebellious artists are tamed with time, or else die. We all sell out in the end. Some of us may struggle and resist that bit longer, but it’s ultimately futile. However anti-establishment you are at the beginning, that becomes just part of your marketability. Whether Germaine Greer or the Sex Pistols, the establishment absorbs you, and eventually you become seen as simply harmlessly eccentric, or emasculated.