This was painted by myself and two brothers back in the sixties; I can still remember who painted which bits, mother did a bit too. Double click on the image for an enlargement.The old man painted the figure head; definitely a self portrait, I then named the ship (even my signwriting is angry). most of the crew seem now to be jumping ship apart from the very gay 'pole dancing' matelot on the foremast.
Suppressed sexuality is most definitely symbolised by the preening mermaid; again the old man's work. god knows what the octopus symbolises.
I've a feeling that some of my French readers might enjoy this... Any comments will be gleefully received.
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Part 1
French Grey can confirm the rumour recently circulating that Doctor Freud has returned, Lazarus-like from the tomb of unconscious meanings, to interpret the important artefact of mid 20th Century family life recently having surfaced in a damp sea locker: only reluctantly handed over by a dealer in maritime antiquities. Now the public has been invited to look into this splendid object of drawn credentials, and who can blame the clamour that hardly satisfies itself? All afternoon in a near masturbatory frenzy of ‘double clicking’ to aid image enlargement, the present section of the French contingent has only avoided tendonitis of the long shanks, thanks to a half-hitch of the boson’s knot.
It is my opinion that some aspects of interpretation are sociological rather than psychoanalytical. It is known that there was a land locked mermaid in Cheltenham who rendered several young guns as angry young men in the 1950s, including seamen that she captured and at least one promising airman who landed in her lap without a properly functioning parachute. Looking back in anger is a stern reminder, as the painting shows in graphic script, and it is a curious fact that at least one of these chaps grew angry after he had blunder busted indiscriminately, and not, as might be expected by war games experts, before the broadside canon’s blast.
Part 2
The meaning of the Octopus was a challenge put to a hastily assembled team of French Oceanographers, hauled up from the briny, wet-suited and slimy, and plied with a light luncheon of squid stuffed with semiotics. It was unanimously acknowledged to be Octopus Volgaris, a common demon of the deep and a beast of great interest to the Vienna School of latent meaning and late interpretation. It is commonly acknowledged that the four sets of matching arms are a signifying practice - semaphore signals to Freud’s flag wavers - representing an archetype of the mid-20th Century nuclear family. The way they thrash about it hugely instructive to diviners of sense and non-sense. The deeper one goes into the oceanic depths of the diver into the unconscious, so the deeper the meanings meander and the deeper the depths it is necessary to plumb: the ‘Big Deep’ itself is a chasm filled with family fun.
The sea-borne imagery is especially rich in associations where the 8 signifying elements, the tenuous drawn octapoid tentacles, represent the primary parental relationship: the 2 long ambiguous tentacles, and the 6 sibling suckers. Sibling associations may become entangled and must be untangled and read in association with gender studies; another kettle of fish and one that goes off after only 4 days. And according to the mathematicians who have overtaken genealogy, there are particularities where, as in this case, the gender balance is in equivalence: and the three female siblings are preceded by three male siblings (the named artists themselves) and amongst the female siblings there is one set of twins. No attempt has been made in this artistic representation of the family - a family all at sea, for that is what it is - to distinguish specific family members as defined elements of Octopus Volgaris. In consequence this must remain only a tentative theory of tentacles. However, evidence of jumping ship is clear enough and must be interpreted to represent an attempt at ‘going sane’.
Part 3
Disconfirming evidence of bastardy at sea is present in the skull and crossbones flag, symbolically set against a chequered background; sailing into the wind. Wish fulfilment, the expunging of skeletons in the cupboard, and their rendering as symbols of piracy is a common enough element in studies of family life: where this simple cipher represents the hand of a patar familias who has concerns and anxieties about power, wealth and control. The fact that the image of the family all at sea is fashioned only in black and white is, of course, to render the meaning unambiguous. It is to remove all colourful interpretations, or to insist that it is beyond the realms of art therapy and a million miles distant from patriarchal precedent and the colluding hands of others, bound with hidden filaments spun in time and filial associations.
As this is the first diagnostic analysis of this important mid-century art work, no mention has been made of the historically anticipatory male pole dancer, gyrating on the windward side of the vessel. There is the suggestion, hopefully refuted through a proposed X-ray survey that will get under the skin of the subject, so to speak, that the horny horn-piper is a later addition added by some wag for adult hetro- or homo-erotic titillation.
All in all a very worthwhile inclusion in the British Museum’s ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’.
Splendid analysis Heads... By the way, my self portrait was the crew member diving from the stern while the captain looked the other way through a very dodgy bent telescope.
On further reflection the 'gay' matelot on the foremast was in fact painted by my mother...Self portrait?
The Birmingham School find some useful ideas in the words of Heads, whosoever he be (?) however, in concentrating so heavily on the freudian symbolism of the octopus we fear he has overlooked the child standing just in front of the quarter deck.
Surely this child, standing as he does on a pair of breasts, with erect penis probably grasped in his hot little hidden hand, represents the very apotheosis of the kleinian child subsumed with rage at the breast that refuses to feed him – otherwise, why is he stamping on them and waving a cutlass so menacingly? A somewhat worrying start in life for a little boy – wouldn’t you agree?
Definitely a troubled boy-child, possibly one who is raring to go off the rails, and probably the sort of child who would leave a raincoat lying around somewhere too.
Tut Tut.
Historians say that the Birmingham School was closed down some years ago and that the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was de-centred in order to change the subject. Staying with the subject for a moment longer, it has been noted that some of the ejected luminaries could no longer be relied upon to follow the country code when entering the field of multiple meanings; where close readings were required for more than mere maps and troublesome topographies. Hence a little revision of footpaths is required to get back on track.
The figure recently alluded to, bashing the shit out of his symbolic mother, was in fact a hapless stow-away from a completely different and unrelated family. His sin, as the angry anonymous commentator urges us to understand was one of omission (or perhaps emission), but not that he had left his raincoat unattended, rather that he had abandoned something much, much more precious. This was undoubted; and especially deemed a shame as beatification was the purpose of his presence on the vessel. But he had lost his way in the company of the Pirates of Penzance, presumed to be the Pilgrim Fathers, but in any case heading for the mermaids on the treacherous rocks off the shores of the New World.
Who would have thought that such a ship would set sail in such a sea of contested meanings, and perform functional cleansings unheard of before Dyson invented his powerful vacuum cleaners?
Hard to believe that the ‘Angry Man’ should continue to be a productive vessel but in an uncharted sea, why not? Not keeping a ship’s log but I can still date the event because it was just last Tuesday, two days ago, when a number of coincidences coalesced out of the deep blue yonder and left me without my sea legs. Thirty-five miles from the Mediterranean, sitting on the shaded terrace of number 22, taking notes from a second reading of Blake Morrison’s ‘And when did you last see your father?’, when English voices penetrated the studious mind above the din of the cicadas. Putting aside the memoir, stepping into the sun and heat of the midday and meeting the Anglophones full on, it became clear that the couple tramping up the hill beside the house were on their annual round of sneaking a look into Eden; peering around the gate and into the garden beyond for the third year running.
Who could this be? No need to wait for the obligatory postcard with its written answer as the answer must indeed relate to the continuing theme of the ship adrift in the sea of meanings. The unannounced visitor, a man presently writing his memoir of the 1950s, with his second partner beaming for good company, was living near Arles and camping just along the Jaur Valley to escape the worst of the heat of the Camargue. An annual pilgrimage every August for a month. The stranger at my door was Stuart Holroyd, one of that coterie of chaps collectively known as the ‘Angry Young Men’, middle-class fellows who shook up the literary world when I was still in shorts and shaking up tadpoles. There was some evident ambivalence in their alluding to this historical fact: the boons and brickbats of a transient notoriety
Only it has to be reported that this once angry young man, who has survived many of his stroppy contemporaries, appears to be a quite contented sort of man in his late 70s. A quick bibliographical check results in the presence of a fully illustrated sex manual from several decades ago, co-authored with his first wife; hence the anger dissipated and passion ascended. Freudians were doubtless mindful and pleased at the outcome. His new partner, Gyll, looked contented too, as we sat down to a glass of cool water and spoke about the possibility of lunch when they next visit Eden.
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