Liz Vernon: 16th Century Metalhead?

As regular readers will appreciate, this blog eschews the portentous, self important or indeed sententious in favour of scholarship worn so lightly as to take flight, or indeed fright, in the slightest breeze. So it is to be hoped that, on this occasion, they will allow a departure onto more serious terrain given the potentially ground breaking work undertaken by this blog over many minutes which seeks to follow humbly in the revisionist footsteps that writers on art history of the stamp of Dan Brown have developed in recent years.

The point of departure for what can, sadly, only be the merest apercu is a picture currently to be seen hanging innocently in the back room of this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

The subject is Elizabeth Vernon, the Countess of Southampton at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I but to distinguish her from the monarch we shall hereafter call her 'Liz' which we feel is also more in keeping with the style to which she aspired and of the all consuming passion to which we believe she was secretly an adept.

Looked at quickly and in an unsuspecting manner one might simply see another example of just how extraordinarily oddly proportioned Tudor people must have been. We do indeed have to be thankful for the subsequent development of the human form that has allowed our bodies to catch up with our heads.

One might also see in Liz, perhaps with some justification, the kind of annoying self regarding head girl qualities of the proto Sloane.

But we ask you to look more closely since all of that disguises something else. For this is an example par excellence of hiding in plain sight.

For we consider Liz to have been a secret and early devotee of what was then only emerging as a cult for the most recondite minds in the country. Not the first movement towards Arminianism in the English church. Nor indeed any dalliance with the Earl of Essex (Liz was in any case too busy with her own dalliances to have time for such an obvious loser).

No, we believe that the picture hides a yet deeper secret and one that she was desperate to signal to the small number of followers of the cult that over successive generations, and aided in particular by the much later development of the automobile industry in the West Midlands, flourished into what we now know as heavy metal.

Look at the way that she holds her left hand. Those devil horns are now the collective signifier of the metal aficionado. At the time this was incredibly dangerous. The country was riven by concern about atheism. After all only a few short years before Richard Baines had testified against Christopher Marlowe and others and the Privy Council saw signs of distemper throughout the land. So Liz was being bold, one might even say courageous, in being so open.

Then there is the problem of the comb. Art historians have puzzled for decades over why an upper class woman was seemingly unable to know which way round to hold what would have been an everyday object.

There are several possible explanations.

One is that bored with sitting for the portrait she had just finished an extravagant upwards sweep with the comb and was flourishing it in jubilation. Maybe too this was an outward signal of rebelliousness generally kept more carefully under wraps. But we think not. After all this was a woman bold enough to contract a secret marriage.

Or perhaps she was indicating the availability of the comb to her husband, Henry Wriothsley, to whom we should now turn. It is clear from one look at him that a comb would be an important part of his wardrobe.

But we think the hair is again an example of hiding in plain sight. For it hard to imagine that Liz could have kept her secret with someone other than a soul mate. Indeed, one can now see with the benefit of hindsight how decades of hair metallers have modelled themselves on him. Dave Lee Roth indeed might even make sense when one looks at antecedents like Henry.

What we don't know is whether in later years he moved more in the direction of a more rigorous cropped head and goatee. But it boots little. For those who know where to look the signs are obvious.

However, we think the deeper meaning of the comb lies with the fascination that Liz had with mirrors. One constantly hears of Tudor noble women spending hours on their appearance. But we think that with Liz there was more to it than just looking one's best. We think that she was an early practitioner of reciting lyrics in front of a mirror. Indeed, so overtaken with this was she that when sitting for the portrait she was holding the comb in the manner that might have made more sense when seen in reflection.

Again, this would have been obvious only to the chosen few.

There is more, so much more, that could be said but we hope that these insights will allow readers to look afresh on Liz now that it is safe for her secret to be revealed. For she was an early example of the kind of posho sophisticate who wants to be at the cutting edge simply because that's as far as it is possible to be from the hoi polloi. One can only wonder what she would now make of a cult that extends its reach to millions across the globe. We hope that she would be pleased that it remains utterly incomprehensible to everyone else.

This article is deeply indebted to exchanges with Geraldine Rowe and to a couple of glasses of red wine. All opinions expressed are, of course, entirely unreliable.

Shunga: Not Setting The House On Fire

One of the more interesting aspects of this exhibition at the British Museum of the Japanese erotic art form generically called shunga, is the rather peculiar notion that shunga calligraphy and script was considered to be capable of protecting your house from catching fire. Whilst that would be a clear benefit in 18th century Japan, it is less welcome in the context of a show in which something catching fire would frankly be a blessing.

I'm quite surprised at how positively this exhibition has been reviewed, including in my own newspaper of choice. It just seems to me be rather relentless; just how many drawings of various exaggerated and/or energetic activity can you take before it all becomes, well, just a bit dull?

Afficionados and art historians would certainly argue that shunga occupies a space with which the West has always struggled, hovering between art and pornography. 

However, if looked at in terms of the latter, this show rather reinforces the sense that pornography is generally very repetitive and frankly boring precisely because it completely ignores the kind of emotional engagement which provides excitement and interest.

On this I'm with some of those who have commented on the positive reviews including one person saying: 'It is pornography and like much of its kind it often has to pose couples in unnaturally contorted positions in order to display the relevant bits'. 

So most of the action does look forced and it is salutary to remember that the society in which this stuff was produced was massively patriarchal in structural terms.

The elements which really spark are those which illustrate how shunga was used to parody. Such parodies could be very rude indeed but are frequently very amusing. It is perhaps not too surprising that when the art makes you smile rather than sigh about yet another extraordinarily detailed and meticulously depicted bout of po faced activity the whole thing comes to life.

On the other hand, if looked at in terms of the former, this is one occasion on which a defence of artistic merit is easy to make. The skill and attention to detail is extraordinary. Indeed, towards the back of the exhibition there is a profoundly depressing example of how shunga was overtaken in the early 20th century by photography which produced dull, unimaginatively naturalistic images completely lacking in skill and foreshadowing the kind of stuff turned out in industrial quantities with which we are now all too depressingly familiar. The quality of the beautifully designed shunga from earlier periods has been entirely lost.

Finally, there are some walk on parts for cats. They often look bored and they may well be asleep. But on occasion they look as though they are having a better time than the humans.