Sophie Calle - Exquisite Pain

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The second part of the exhibition pairs Calle’s story, told repeatedly from several different angles, with others’ recollections of pain and heartache. The stories are embroidered on linen and presented as twenty-one diptychs, with one version of Calle’s story (on dark grey linen) accompanying an anonymous story (on white linen). Over each embroidery is a photograph illustrating an aspect of the memory being retold. In the case of the artist’s story, the same photograph is repeated: that of a red telephone in a hotel room, the telephone from which she heard that her love affair had ended. People have described the pain and heartache in these circumstances as unbearable. As it turns out, loving someone who is already taken will cause emotional heartache for the person whose love is unreciprocated. The church is very atmospheric, and although not all of it is 13th century because it has been restored several times, there’s enough sense of its ancient origins and splendid architecture to create a compelling mood as you wander through the building. A man and a woman tell stories of ordinary and not-so-ordinary heart-break, each story accompanied by a single iconic image. A red telephone on a hotel bed. A subway station. The view from a window. A green Mercedes.

I decided to continue… until I had got over my pain by comparing it with other people’s, or had worn out my own story through sheer repetition” Yet skin was often a magic ingredient, and so it’s not wholly outrageous to wonder whether or not there’s something esoteric about the familiar image of Bartholomew: the living man standing with all of his muscles and viscera exposed, holding his skin. If we want to read it as symbolic, we could say that the skin simply represents the outer part of the person; once you remove that and you expose yourself entirely to God (or to oneself), then certainly change takes place. In the 18th century, the church fell into disrepair and bits of it were used for commercial purposes. An interesting bit of history is that Benjamin Franklin worked in the printer’s shop there. In 1984 I was awarded a grant to go to Japan for three months. I left on October 25, not knowing that this date marked the beginning of a 92-day countdown to the end of a love affair—nothing unusual, but for me then the unhappiest moment of my whole life.What is the connexion between Titian and Damien Hirst here? Well one of Titian’s most fascinating paintings, which was not part of the ‘Titian: Love Desire And Death’ exhibition, is Titian’s Flaying Of Marsyas, which is in the collection at Museum Kroměříž, Archbishopric Castle Kroměříž in Czechia. This is a very exciting and accomplished work. We are immensely fortunate to be able to exhibit it in the Priory Church. Our great gratitude goes to the artist and to his very supportive team.

the apocryphal literature involving Bartholomew is highly peculiar: one episode consists of the apostle learning secret cosmic knowledge from Mary the mother of Jesus, despite her warning that to disclose this information will destroy the world; another work, attributed to Bartholomew, has Jesus battling the six serpent sons of Death; another, The Acts of Philip, in which Bartholomew co-stars, features the apostles coming across a talking baby goat and leopard, who adorably take Communion together; yet another appears to involve, of all things, a werewolf.” [1] Saint Bartholomew the Great This painting is in the tradition of Titian’s Poesies, the mythological paintings he did towards the end of his life. However, it is very different from the paintings that he did for Phillip of Spain, which I discussed in my previous post. Marsyas is a much darker picture, and it shows the satyr Marsyas being flayed alive by the God Apollo. According to the myth, Marsyas had the hubris to challenge Apollo, who was God of music as well as many other things. Apollo was particularly offended. Archbishopric Castle Kroměříž Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaying_of_Marsyas_(Titian) However, fearing a possible relapse, I decided not to exploit the experience artistically. By the time I returned to it, fifteen years had gone by. I asked my friend what to do with the items I wanted to add, now, to that Google Doc. “Publish them,” she said. So, I began writing. St Bartholomew, one of the original twelve disciples, was sent as an Apostle to Armenia, where he was killed by being skinned alive. The classic iconography of the saint sees him naked, his muscles exposed, his skin hanging over his arm – and in his hands, the instruments of his torture. This statue sees Damien Hirst conform to this imagery, but give it a unique twist: the instrument in his hand is not a standard knife, but a scalpel, used in the hospital across the road which also bears the saint’s name.

As a very lapsed Catholic, I’m fascinated by Saints, but I don’t know that much about them, so I can’t promise anything I say here coheres with Christian doctrine. Bartholomew was one of Christ’s disciples, one of the 12 apostles who were with him Jane the crucifixion and witnessed the Ascension. After the Ascension, Bartholomew travelled to India and then Armenia as a missionary preaching the gospel. At some point, he fell foul of the authorities. He was executed in Armenia, though unsurprisingly, there is absolutely no record of him nor of anybody being flayed alive for religious reasons in that region. Anyway, whether it’s true or not (and I think we have to take the stories of the Saints with a hefty pinch of salt), it did leave us with a particularly gruesome image that has been replicated in art many times: a man flayed alive. As we’ve seen, flaying, although not particularly common, is featured in the Marsyas myth and was depicted by Titian. However, Titian’s picture of the satyr is very much more of an alchemical image based on esoterica, magic and the occult than the overtly Christian imagery surrounding Bartholomew. More on flaying – which is fascinating as well as horrid is here.