I love neon, so I was interested in Peter Conrad’s recent piece in the Observer, especially this–
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Across the clinical white walls of the gallery, Emin scribbled a maudlin love note in pink neon tubes that looked like extracts from her tangled intestines: “Oh Christ I just wanted You/to Fuck me/And Then/I Became Greedy, I wanted/You to Love me”. … Neon is a medium for public pronouncements; Emin the exhibitionist made it broadcast a private confession. Jenny Holzer has done something braver and more altruistic, employing neon to denounce the commercial orgy of Times Square: her installation there during the 1980s re-educated the signs, curing them of their consumerism. “PROTECT ME,” said a devout revolutionary prayer that blazed on the side of a skyscraper, “FROM WHAT I WANT.”
The deep grammar of those two statements is so spookily, so almost unbearably similar that I want to understand why. Both women are brave. Both women have extracted ironies from neon. (Emin by playing private against public purpose, Holzer by playing advertising against itself.) Both women have come to an understanding about desire. The fact that the private & political grammars are so entangled must be a clue. & while Emin seems to be a political lost cause, nevertheless she understands something important, which is that though the British find loathsome every aspect of the physical & emotional life they can’t control or belittle (or control by belittling), what they loathe most is the display of vulnerability. That’s such a taboo insight we can’t even admit when someone’s had it.
you know I never really got Emin’s stuff—perhaps its because I didn’t understand the British context its speaking from–Holtzer on the other hand always has been lucidity itself for me…especially seeing her words on bus stops and in Times Square
I like the emotional rawness of her. I like that she won’t let me weasel out of eye contact. It’s three am & there’s going to be a row in the bathroom; things are going to be said that everyone will regret, except that TE won’t regret them & she won’t allow you to forget them either. I like that she’s unreasonable & well able to enforce that position. I’d prefer to sweep her concerns under the carpet & TE out of my life, but I’m glad she just refuses to be swept. I get the feeling that most men are less glad.
All progress depends on the unreasonable woman?
I wish I hadn’t said “unreasonable” now, because it automatically implies the primacy of reason. Emotional behaviour isn’t unreasonable in its own terms; while “reasonable” behaviour is always unreasonable in emotional terms.
If I had my time again, I’d cut the middle two sentences of that comment & say: “I like the emotional rawness of her. I like that she won’t let me weasel out of eye contact. I’d prefer to sweep her concerns under the carpet & TE out of my life, but I’m glad she just refuses to be swept.” I’d drop the last sentence too, because it’s such shorthand it looks like a cheap shot.
I don’t know that progress comes into it. That’s one of a whole suite of concepts too reasonable to be applied here. Either you can fully experience your own rage, frustration, vulnerability & sense of despair, or you can give in to the demand that you act reasonably & sweep it all under the carpet (probably for someone else’s convenience). That’s Emin’s point. Either you get it or you don’t.