Chapter Three: The Sinister Innocence

I am now going to analyse how the theme of the wounding and the depiction of bodies undergoing transformation have been elaborated in the work of Trevor Brown, an "underground" artist whose popularity is growing at a very rapid pace. One of the central elements of Brown's art is the fetishization of bruises and wounds; the artist's paintings and illustrations primarily focus around a representation of unresolved violence by portraying scenes of a (mainly fetishistic or sadomasochist) sexual nature in which abuses appear most of the times "suspended": they have just taken place or are just about to happen. It is not an easy task to discuss the work of this English-born artist due to its sometimes ambiguous and obscure characteristics: it depicts situations which run along the borders between the game and real violence, between consent and abuse, between the childishness of the subjects it describes and the adultness of the themes it concerns. Bodies (mostly those of child-like dolls) are portrayed in the act of being tortured, sexually violated, penetrated, beaten, opened up, and explored in their surfaces through the use of sex toys or other uncommon devices. Bodies are put under the spotlight, they become part of Deleuzian's assemblages; they are assembled through objects (being it the love toys, torture devices or something different) and are furthermore connected one to the other by the bruises they have been inscribed on the skin: these might be read as a symbol of ownership, as if they represent the mark of the Master on the Servant's skin; but they also come to constitute a permanent sign of the Master's fantasy, and could also stand as witnesses of the Servant's desire, of his/her will to become part of the Masterës fantasy. The bruise is "the Master that is not there".

As for David Cronenberg's cinema (where bruises and wounds were to be connected to a non-linear view of evolution) the work of Trevor Brown explores the possibility of employing our bodies in manners which are not self-evident. It represents desire which rebels against biology, assuming perverted forms and investing each body part with the liberating power of excitement.

It has been stated several times that Trevor Brown's art is terribly controversial: I feel this expression does not represent carefully (nor honestly) the contents of his work; actually this "labelling" constitutes an oversimplification of his complexity and originality, it selects one of the themes touched by the artist's work (that of sadomasochism and, more generally, sexuality) and neglects the others (such as the beauty and the charm of the wounded body, and the theme of the "sinister innocence"). For sure each of his paintings generates questions and demands for answers which seldom directly come to mind, and which definitely are not offered by the artist himself. If staring at Brown's work we look for perversion we might end up encountering the sweet innocence of a child-like doll (as in "Susie"); similarly, if seeking politically correctness in his portrayals of infancy and puberty we might clash against the bruises and blisters marking a teenager's skin. Brown twists the given nature of objects and transforms them following his own fantasy: similarly he allows wounded bodies to regain their harmony and the respect they have been neglected in the eyes of society. There is in fact a terrible beauty and innocence hidden behind the abrasions, the blisters, the black eyes, and the broken legs of Brown's paintings: it is the beauty of suffering, whose elegance and innocence which seem to pulsate out from the canvases.

We live in a world in which it is essential to be safe and avoid "being hurt": we are obsessed with surveillance and crime, since we tend to envision victimisation as the worst possible tragedy which we could be forced to face. Being the victim of theft is tragic enough, but having to endure a violent attack probably is Western's society's most scary nightmare. The West shares a curious fascination with serial killing which is exemplar of our innate fear of violent crime: people are obsessed with these types of offences, since they escape our capacity of understanding. We refuse to consider it possible for a "normal" human being to commit a homicide without a reasonable motive (being it starvation, vengeance, or even simple greed). Stranger-killing, the killing which has no motive, is something which we associate to "pure evil", and that we fear more than anything else in the world. There are several excellent examples of this morbid fascination, especially in the world of cinema: some of the most "relevant" contemporary blockbusters deal with the theme of serial killing (Ridley Scott's "Hannibal" and "The Silence of the Lambs", David Fincher's "Seven", Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", Mary Harron's "American Psycho").

Our prayers seem to acknowledge our fear, so that today's society screams loud asking for protection: "God bless our souls, and please protect us from the Evil outside, protect us from being victims, it is something we are not able to cope with, it is our worst possible destiny". It is not my intention to underestimate the burden which a sexual attack can oppress a victim with, neither I am here trying to deem people's fear of crime as unacceptable or not justified: what I would like to point out is the effect this enormous concern with victimisation has on the actual victims. There often is a "second abuse" which they are forced to suffer: it is the weight of eternally being considered "victims", the "immanence" of the wound which is perpetrated by their being neglected the possibility to overcome the trauma, as a result of the permanent changes in the behaviour of those who surround them. In our society victimisation is a "taint", it stains a person depriving him/her of his/her innocence, of his/her "normality", and of his/her previous existence. Nothing is the same anymore after an abuse takes place. In some cases nothing is literally allowed to be the same due to the actions and responses of those who are familiar with the person who has been attacked. Often, this situation becomes really heavy to bear.

Watching Trevor Brown's painting I see something different from pity or disrespect towards the anthropomorphic dolls he portrays. First of all we might want to argue that his work is concerned with representing consensual intercourses, despite the fact that this view would probably encounter several objections due to the ambiguous nature of the scenes represented in the paintings. What I regard as central to Brown's artistic production is rather the light adopted by the artist in describing an act of violence. There is no vulgarity in the paintings, even in the crudest ones. There is, instead, beauty and innocence, a sinister one maybe. For ironic it might seem, I believe victims are given back some form of respect this way: this happens simply though the acknowledgement of their beauty, of their charm, of their being "girls", "women" (or "dolls" maybe) before than simply being "victims".

I found it particularly interesting to read the messages of Brown's fans. In the booklet contained in "The Black Box" (2000) I found the letter of an abused girl thanking Trevor Brown for allowing her to deal with the trauma of being raped in her childhood by a man who was later convicted of twelve killings of minors. Alongside this letter I encountered several menaces and insults coming from various people, the press, Christian groups and other "social" movements battling for Brown's work to be banned, and for the artist to be convicted (and worse). Art has the task of provoking sensations, "affects" and emotions of ANY kind; it should try and evoke colours, smells, images and atmospheres. Real violence is not hidden underneath the blisters of a wounded skin, neither it lies behind the bruises of a deranged body; real violence is somewhere else, and we should question in the first place why we are so offended by the representation of abuses in art and specific fringes of popular culture, but we are nevertheless so willing to deal with it within the "safe" environment of soap operas, TV-news and TV-series. Society seems to need some guarantee of "a happy ending", a filter or a catharsis when themes such as rape, violence and victimisation are involved. Censorship is suddenly advocated when our culture (and the artistic forms it promotes) decides to focus on these topics. But we should keep in mind that abuses are still taking place (and with increasing frequency) in the "real world". Kids are beaten: they get scarred and bruised. Luckily sometimes they remain capable of smiling as in Brown's "Target". 

We encounter two major themes in Trevor Brown's paintings: that of the "sinister innocence" and that of sadomasochism and fetishism. Both of them revolve around the body, a body whose surface is inscribed with marks, blisters and wounds.

S/M practices and submission also undergo a re-writing on behalf of the artist: Brown shares an interest in sadomasochism, bondage and fetishism, however he strives to characterise each of these themes within his work with a playful and innocent character (but without ever recurring to a moralising and "politically correct" glance): this is particularly evident if we take into consideration pieces such as "Bondage Tape" (in which a bondage videotape is turned into a rope-like constriction which is wrapped on a doll's body) or "Playground" (in which a little girl's toys are used to tie her to a park's toy).

In "LoveLove" Brown portrays two Siamese dolls kissing each other in an auto-erotic hug. The dolls share the arms, the torso and one leg but their condition seem to be enhancing rather than limiting their intercourse. Siamese are generally seen as sharing a handicap which limits their existences until their status of twins is resolved through surgery: this definitely is not the case in this painting. Instead of being depicted as two organism deprived of the possibility of being independent one from the other, the dolls seem to suggest that their being Siamese might become a blessing, their being "other" than human might be equivalent to be "more" then human (better or simply different) more likely to creatively employ their body in order to make contact with stimuli of any kind. The Siamese dolls are making love to themselves and to something different at the same time; their intercourse seems to be a rebellion against Nature and the moral code. As in Cronenberg's "M. Butterfly" sexuality becomes in Brown's art an arena for experimentation, subversion and creativity to be ignited and for boundaries and limits to be overcome.

Trevor Brown's work explores several typologies of bodies and different ways through which sex and desire is expressed: coherently with Deleuze & Guattari's view of sadomasochism, Trevor Brown envisions the body as a surface for connection; sexual intercourse therefore stops being "limited" to the involvement of specific and designated areas of a body (such as the genital one) but is extended to invest every part of the body and its skin as a whole. In Brown's work we have a body ready for connection in every inch of its surface, a body which actually asks for these connections to take place, for desire to travel through its surface and its organs. These are "Bodies without Organs", they have become employable as a network for desire to pass through, stop, be redirected and transformed; they rebel to the dogmas of nature and the linear path of a Darwinian evolution (as in the case of the foetus giving birth he portrayed in "Too Negative Babies") they overcome natural "straight-sex" and choose to indulge, to explore and experiment with what the human body can offer in terms of sexual connections.