Ugly

Curly Head, Georg Baselitz, 1967

I'm interested in painting and poetry that embrace "the ugly." (I'm looking at that which is intentionally so, not that which is simply by some poor person with no artistic ability. Side note: if you're procrastinating, check out Elizabeth Bishop's "Large Bad Painting:" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/large-bad-picture/).

The Baselitz (above) is hanging in Harvard's Sackler museum, and every time I go in (which somehow seems to be a lot,) I can't help staring at it. It's just so disconcerting. The fractured, disproportionate figure is painted in ruddy flesh and mud tones, with some blood reds at the top (which you might not be able to see in this photograph.) It's crudely done, with inch-thick brush strokes and sketchy, unfinished edges. There is a heaviness to the painting, with its crowded, confused background/figure and dulled hues. At the bottom, the tree trunk and fat, puffy feet are painted with the same palette, suggesting almost a conflation of person and environment. There's also a face at the right (which could be a human, or possibly a tiger?) that adds a sense of danger to the painting, with its shifted eyes and shadowing.


Now read this (amazing) poem by Seamus Heaney.

Death of a Naturalist

All the year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampots full of the jellied
Specks to range on the window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

To me, this conjures some of the same feelings as Baselitz's piece. Heaney's language is so rich, yet that richness is achieved through rotting flax, "rank" cow dung, "warm thick slobber / Of frogspawn" and "blunt heads farting." I love this poem-- the intensity of the language; the way it perfectly reflects what it's describing. We are as revolted as the narrator, and I don't know about you, but the last line makes my stomach clench a little. Really, though, would it be truthful to write a pretty poem about frogspawn?

Questions: Does anyone have ideas about what Baselitz is trying to achieve with "Curly Head?"

Also, does anyone have any suggestions for other paintings/poems with similarly "ugly" approaches to their subject matter?