Skip to content

Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Innocence and Experience’.

A Fortnightly Review of

Innocence and Experience.
Curated by Marianne Faithfull and John Dunbar
Tate Gallery Liverpool.
21 April to 2 September 2012

 By Denis Joe.

THE MANNER IN which Marianne Faithfull’s exhibition in the DLA Piper Series at the Tate Liverpool is laid out is rather like reading a picture book  and not an entirely innocent one, either. The photographic works of Robert Mapplethorpe, for example, have always had voyeuristic quality about them. His portraits of Arnold Schwarzenegger  and the cover of Patti Smith’s debut album are some of the most memorable images here.

But of the four Mapplethorpe images on display, it is the well-known portrait of Marianne Faithfull that is the most striking. In contrast to the celebrities of today who fall over themselves to present their fears and weaknesses, Mapplethorpe’s Faithfull, perched precariously on a banister, seems awkward, defiant and frightened. The beauty of the picture is that it shows us a young woman who is not the extra in a picture of Mick Jagger. Instead, she is the story in the photo. It’s an insightful portrait because she looks just as she must have often felt – a vulnerable woman trying to maintain a sense of balance.

THERE ARE OTHER works that question the reality of stardom. Pauline Boty’s The Only Blond In The World shows us Marilyn Monroe trapped inside what looks like some kind of traffic sign. Of course, it could be any blonde stopping traffic. But the piece is well suited to this exhibition, not simply because Boty was a pioneer of Pop art but also because she consistently attacked the idea of the objectification of women, particularly when they were part of the celebrity circus. Faithfull herself was very much seen in this light and I feel that, although the Mapplethorpe portrait contrasts with Botys’ portrayals, they also complement each other and remind us that humans, even stars, are much more than appearances. The inclusion of Edward Ruscha’s humorous Roughly 92% Angel but about 8% Devil also suggests that complexity is at the heart of humanity.

And it is this that captures the meaning of William Blake’s poetry, that gives this exhibition its name. Apparently, neither Faithfull nor Dunbar – to whom she was married before her affair with Jagger – view innocence as simply a trait of childhood. Instead, ‘innocence’ is seen as the simple absence of experience. This becomes clear as we make our way around an exhibition which has no sequential order – there are no labels that say, helpfully, ‘this is “innocence” and this is “experience”‘.  Instead we are given obvious examples. Nan Goldin’s Greer and Robert on the bed, NYC, for instance, is quite a harrowing image: the woman, Greer, is at the centre of the portrayal, whilst Robert is looking away from the camera – and from Greer. His pose suggests a lack of understanding of the situation, whilst garish masks, hanging playfully from the bare-brick wall, look down teasingly, as if daring us to make sense of the experience of looking at these two lonely, very urban people.

Yet for me the highlight of the exhibition is the inclusion of the installation The Spring Recordings by David Tremlett. I first encountered this shelf of cassettes of nature recordings about 10 years ago at the Tate Liverpool and fell in love with them. The recordings were made in mainly rural areas and last roughly 15 minutes each. The notable exception is a recording made in London. Whilst the work succeeds as a ‘geographical mapping of the national landscape in sound’ it also captures a sense of contemplation of both the world within us and about us and takes us far from Greer and Robert and their world of masks and despair.

PERHAPS SIMILARLY THE placing of Richard Hamilton’s collage Swingeing London 67 – poster provides the viewer with a brief narrative of the  ’60s including Marianne Faithfull’s part in it. The images might suggest a view of her coming to terms with this experience – and there is a feeling that she looks out of place in the newspaper photos – but this is not the defining image of Marianne Faithfull. It’s just one of many. The ’60s and the decades that followed were filled with such images.

Her work of self-definition is still in progress. Ultimately, the strength of the Innocence and Experience exhibition lies in the conceit that this is a biographical exhibition that tells us something about Marianne Faithfull through works of art that have meaning to her. I found that the selection and the arrangement of the exhibition allows us to see the interior world of Faithfull. Admitting that Blake and Richard Dadd – and all of the other artists who fascinated ’60s celebrities to the point that they became clichés – are artists who still have resonance and significance is a brave thing to do; the art world loves esoterica and often dismisses public tastes. So there is a certain humility about Innocence and Experience in that Faithfull allows herself to be seen as a person for whom the past is revisited not to elicit pity or empathy, but as a guide showing us some of the steps she has taken on her own road from innocence to experience.


Denis Joe is a poet living in Liverpool. He is a regular reviewer for the Manchester Salon Discussion Group.

More: Anthony Howell’s memoir of his lifelong friend, Marianne Faithfull, in the Fortnightly

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x