"When people look upon Alison Jackson's images as satiric, I feel they have profoundly missed the point."
Alison Jackson. Confidential. From the essay by Will Self.
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These are scenes of neurosis, domesticity, bodily functions, playfulness, birth, and death. Before mirrors, the wearers of the masks contemplate themselves; on padded benches they undergo painful cosmetic procedures. By being jolted into seeing the Gods as exactly the same sort of barnyard fowl as ourselves—a perception even the most hardheaded among us cannot resist—Jackson drives us to contemplate the very ordinary weal of common humanity: our neuroses, our domesticity, our bodily functions, our births and our deaths.
To me, these are the true vanitas paintings of the modern era. Like those arrangements of effulgent—but rotting—fruit and flowers; those extravagant boards, groaning with gold plate and glass; those coded symbols—the guttering candle, the hourglass, the stopped watch: the glimpsed lives of Jackson's subjects are profoundly still, and fraught with symbolism. These are things that we covet—indeed, they are not things at all, but people. This is the grainy, quotidian reality we turn away from to lose ourselves in gloss and matte betrayals.
Poor Pete and Kate, poor Tom and Katie, poor Prince Wills and Bill Gates, poor hacked-about Michael Jackson, and poor, dumb Dubya. Poor Tony, whose legacy will be dust mixed with dried blood. Poor all of them—and poor us, for, just as the flowers and the fruit in vanitas paintings were depicted rotting, so we are all in a process of decay, our faces being corroded either by our fame or our obscurity.
—Will Self is the author of five novels, four collections of short stories, three novellas and five non-fiction books. He is also a contributor to a plethora of publications as a journalist, and a columnist for the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers in London, where he lives. His latest novel is The Book of Dave.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
These are scenes of neurosis, domesticity, bodily functions, playfulness, birth, and death. Before mirrors, the wearers of the masks contemplate themselves; on padded benches they undergo painful cosmetic procedures. By being jolted into seeing the Gods as exactly the same sort of barnyard fowl as ourselves—a perception even the most hardheaded among us cannot resist—Jackson drives us to contemplate the very ordinary weal of common humanity: our neuroses, our domesticity, our bodily functions, our births and our deaths.
To me, these are the true vanitas paintings of the modern era. Like those arrangements of effulgent—but rotting—fruit and flowers; those extravagant boards, groaning with gold plate and glass; those coded symbols—the guttering candle, the hourglass, the stopped watch: the glimpsed lives of Jackson's subjects are profoundly still, and fraught with symbolism. These are things that we covet—indeed, they are not things at all, but people. This is the grainy, quotidian reality we turn away from to lose ourselves in gloss and matte betrayals.
Poor Pete and Kate, poor Tom and Katie, poor Prince Wills and Bill Gates, poor hacked-about Michael Jackson, and poor, dumb Dubya. Poor Tony, whose legacy will be dust mixed with dried blood. Poor all of them—and poor us, for, just as the flowers and the fruit in vanitas paintings were depicted rotting, so we are all in a process of decay, our faces being corroded either by our fame or our obscurity.
—Will Self is the author of five novels, four collections of short stories, three novellas and five non-fiction books. He is also a contributor to a plethora of publications as a journalist, and a columnist for the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers in London, where he lives. His latest novel is The Book of Dave.
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Jackson
Hardcover, 23.1 x 28.9 cm (9.1 x 11.4 in.), 264 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
Don’t believe your eyes—truly incredible “celebrity” portraits
(c) Alison Jackson