The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Life Itself Is an Art
By: Roger D'Hondt - Aug 02, 2013
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has opened an exhibition with 100 works by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950) entitled 'S / HE IS HER / E'. Genesis P-Orridge refers with 'S / HE IS HER / E.' It refers to to his inseparable relationship with Lady Jaye, an artist, born Jacqueline Breyer (1969-2007).
The connection between these two people was not only made on the base of feelings they have for each other, but also by plastic surgery and hormone therapy with the ultimate goal that they have come to resemble each other.
According to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, in various interviews, they efface their identity through a third being to create or achieve the ultimate love story. To come to this decision it was necessary to integrate the minds of both and take note of what one has ever been. Never before have artists gone so far in the move away from the reality in which they were born. I can imagine that an artist like Andy Warhol living far from reality wanted to explain that pop star David Bowie, in various guises, has disguised and therefore could liberate temporarily itself from its own original character.
Artist duos like Ulay and Abramovic or Gilbert and George together create art works, but 'S / HE IS HERE / E' is a choice in which two people take away from their original identity and are unable to return because they are simply themselves intellectually and physically as part of creation. It can be seen as creating the ultimate work of art, assumed as a new reality. History can confirm this.
The exhibition shows works from the period of 1969 where Genesis P-Orrdige with Cosey Fanni Tutti (Hull, 1951) formed the basis of the performance group 'COUM Transmissions’ (London). From COUM, originally also made part Peter Christopherson (1955-2010) and Chris Carter (1953) but they focussed primarily on music. Along with Genesis and Cosey their music would lead to the creation of Throbbing Gristle, pioneers of industrial music.
In 1975 COUM, conducted Genesis and Cosey, perform in New Reform (Aalst and Antwerp, Belgium) "Omissions". My interest in both artists was piqued after a meeting in London and an expanded mail art movement, in which Genesis used his youth and operated as an artwork.
When all was (were) Genesis P-Orrdige and Cosey Fanni Tutti engaged in the sale, it washed away from personal reality and existed without mental and social constraints. The performance was by no means meant to listen to the exhibition but demanded of those present an empathy with another unknown world with many barriers.
This attitude has been confirmed through the works of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. The next day we went to the city park of Aalst, where they performed a meditative / ritual performance without a public announcement. Undoubtedly there were connections of Genesis with the influential writers William S. Burroughs, co-founder of the Beat Generation, and Brion Gysin which rose to far-reaching investigation into human behavior and a turning away from social reality.
With the industrial bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV plays Genesis P-Orridge in the technological developments that bring forth a new society of ethics. Plastic surgery is part of these new developments. The move to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge seems logical but requires both artists's, Genesis P-Orrdige and Jacqueline Breyer, groundbreaking behavior. For these transformations we cannot estimate the Impact.
Because Jacqueline Breyer died in Brooklyn in 2007 from a heart defect Genesis Breyer P-Orridge remains the physical embodiment of an amalgamation. Their creation seems even more valuable than before.
The exhibition at the Andy Warhol museum confirms a trend that has been taking place since birth of Genesis P-Orridge. From the information of images, which were sent to me, the exhibition reveals this evolution as quite obviously provocative. It tends towards the most natural social evolution as we usually experience it. The criticism of Genesis P-Orridige to these conservative evolution is another aspect of his practiice as an artist. Starting with the portraits of his parents he swaps by calling his mother as his father and dad as mother.
Kurt Shaw, art critic for Trib Total Media, calls the collages, assemblages and installations a synthesis of the merger of Genesis and Lady Jaye.
Roger D’Hondt
Art critic, founder of New Reform, Belgium
Interview with Nicholas Chambers, the Milton Fine curator of art at The Warhol Museum.
RD: Is there a relationship with the life of Andy Warhol?
NC: While the artists never met, there are numerous intersections between their practices. The nature of identity and the self, for example, was an important question for both artists and, as Genesis would attest, Warhol’s oeuvre, and what he represented in popular culture, were a major influence on h/er own development as an artist.
One aspect that we have picked up on in particular is Warhol and BREYER P-ORRIDGE’s use of Polaroid photography. Both artists produced Polaroids as an end in themselves, while also using them as a point of departure for creating larger works in other media. During our research for the exhibition, Genesis spent a day looking at the museum’s vast collection of Warhol Polaroids and selected a group of images that had interesting sympathies with h/er own works. Instead of the well-known images of celebrities, s/he focused on pictures of abstracted bodies and everyday objects imbued with ritualistic or fetishistic overtones. S/he also included a little known portrait of William Burroughs, the American writer who helped introduce h/er to the “cut-up” technique that lies at the very heart of her artistic process.
RD : The exhibition is conceived as an overview of the oeuvre ?
NC: The exhibition focuses on a particular body of work, the Pandrogyne Project, and uses it as a means to explore reoccurring ideas in BREYER P-ORRIDGE’S oeuvre over the course of almost four decades. This particular curatorial approach was informed by the fact that while the concept of pandrogeny was formalized in 2003, in an essay by BREYER P-ORRIDGE titled ‘Breaking Sex’, premonitions of the idea can be found in performances, sculptures, collages and photographs from earlier decades.
RD : Do you have the works in a certain context exhibited or just according to the data of creation?
NC :The exhibition includes pieces from the 1970s up to the present but their display is not strictly chronological. The installation moves in an associative manner – one that is more concerned with elucidating particular themes and motifs rather than attempting to establish an overarching narrative.
RD : Where can the work of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge be placed in actual history of art?
NC: Well, I think Genesis’s work resists this kind of question. One might point to h/er relationship to the development of performance art in the 1970s, to Fluxus or to the mail art network but, then again, much of h/er production took place outside of what we might think of as the ‘art world’. Several of the pieces in the exhibition were originally conceived for private audiences rather than the broader public afforded by an art museum.
Photo : Coum Performance ‘Omissions’, New Reform 1975