Mahmoud ZainiDonna de la PerriereWriting-204 Nov 2014

Anorexic Spirituality

"The Golden Road To Enlightenment" by British Sculptor Marc

Quinn.

My conceptual interests have always circulated around

the metaphysical human experience and how it can be

represented through works of art. Instead of analyzing a

piece as constituting its own finite individual reality, I

tend to observe it within an infinite structure instead.

That is why, for this assignment, I chose from our readings

Frank Bidarts’ piece, Ellen West. Analogous to Bidarts’

piece, I found a work by British sculptor Marc Quinn called:

The Golden Road to enlightenment. I found Quinns’ piece as very

symbolic to my interpretation of Ellen West. A connection

between food and spirit is very noticeable, both works have

a subject matter relating to a metaphysical struggle, they

both use juxtaposition between elements to highlight it, and

intertextuality to support it.

In the piece Ellen West, the writer brings a sad story

about a woman and her desire not to eat. He breaks down his

piece into two perspectives: one from the point of view of

Ellen, and the other is the doctors’ perspective. Ellen is

deeply perplexed about the nature of herself and the odd

association her soul has with flesh. She refuses to eat due

to the trivial nature of such an act and it’s invaluable

outcome. Her poems reflect an everlasting metaphysical

struggle that comes with the realization of ones

separateness from the physical world, yet a destined

attachment to it. “Perhaps the opposite. Perhaps her spirit

loathed the unending struggle to embody itself, to manifest

itself, on a stage whose mechanics and suffocating customs

seemed expressly designed to annihilate spirit”(Bidart 21).

Ellen West describes the world as this mechanical entity

that only hopes for annihilating the spirit, which further

shows her inner battles. In many incidents Ellen will call

her soul a burden due to its heavy impact on her body. In a

very powerful part of this poem, when Ellen compares her

condition with Callas, some doctors said that Callas had a

tapeworm that sucked nutrition from her stomach so Ellen

writes, “The tapeworm was her soul…” (Bidart 20) In the poem

the emphasis Ellen makes on this existential crisis through

the subject matter of food and hunger is really analogous to

the sculpture The Golden Road to Enlightenment by Marc Quinn. He

sculpted a British super model Kate Moss in anorexic form,

sitting down in a Meditation Buddha pose, with drapery

falling down each side of her boney body, all covered in

gold. Quinn explains the theory behind his sculpture in an

interview on a blog online. He explains: “In The Golden Road to

Enlightenment you have the other ascetic extreme where the

body is withering but the face is unchanging, that idea that

people live in the fourth dimension of time, where images

are out of time.” (Fergurson, “The Road To Enlightenment in

Montreal”). Many ancient mystical practices were concerned

with the idea of the withering physical body. In their

fasting they were able to move away their attention from the

physical to the abstract instead of being stuck within the

cycle of nutrition, which can then lead to over consumption.

The ascetics when they mastered this were able to

consciously remain serene without the need for physical

energy. Marc then explains that this practice is still being

done today due to spiritual thirst, yet this time taken to

the extreme. “However in a modern, fucked up sort of way,

that ascetic impulse has been corrupted into the idea of

being thin and extreme anorexia, which is an addiction to

control really and of course our bodies and lives are really

out of our control.  In that way we can't stop time, we have

to roll with it” (Fergurson, “The Road To Enlightenment in

Montreal”). Marc Quinn further demonstrates through the

emotion his piece gives that this identity which craves

control is an identity worth avoiding. “In the Buddha life

story there is a part where the Buddha to be joins a group

of Ascetics and renounces food to the point almost of death

but then rejects this as a road to enlightenment and chooses

the middle way.” (Fergurson, “The Road To Enlightenment in

Montreal”). He makes the argument that physical

disassociation to the point of suffering is absurd by using

the striking contrast between a meditative Buddha pose and

an anorexic body. Bidarts’ metafictional piece and Marc

Quins’ sculpture both represent a struggle and a questioning

that is evident in their subject matter.

In The Golden Road to Enlightenment one can notice that the

figure is very alienated, and unrealistic. The under

nourished body is exaggerated to a point where the stomach

area is a void. A stomach so exaggeratedly emptied touches

on the point of extreme physical deprivation, while the

healthy face shows serenity. This voidness that lies in her

stomach is not only a physical one but also an inner one.

This point is clearly evident in Bidarts’ piece as well.

Ellen West fills her mental void with a physical void by not

consuming food. Which is a paradox in essence, because by

trying to take your mind off of food and physical needs with

anorexic extremism, physical needs will be the only thing

your mind will think about. “ –How eager I have been to

compromise, to kill this refuser,- but each compromise, each

attempt to poison an ideal which often seemed to me sterile

and unreal, heightens my hunger” (Bidart 27). This bizarre

paradox does not heal or cure the metaphysical struggle, yet

only worsens it. When Quinn talks about Buddha and his path

towards enlightenment, the ascetics decided to create a

physical void within them, yet Buddha understood the paradox

of trying to fill a metaphysical void with a physical one,

hence chose the middle path. “that she was an idiot ever to

think anything material wholly could satisfy?..” (Bidart 22)

Hyper consumption, and anorexia are two extremes that keep

you internally stuck with food and physical limitations. “ I

know that I am intelligent; therefore the inability not to

fear food day-and-night; this unending hunger ten minutes

after I have eaten…Bread for days on end drives all real

thought from my brain…” (Bidart 23) Marc Quinn disfigured

his sculpture in such a way to show the extreme void that

anorexia creates when it unsuccessfully tries to cure an

inner void. This voidness is also evident in the way Ellen

writes her poem. Ellen saw herself reflected in Callas when

she described the relationship between her anorexia and art.

“-How her soul, uncompromising. Insatiable, must have loved

eating the flesh from her bones, revealing this

extraordinarily mercurial; fragile, masterly

creature…”(Bidart 20) Ellen’s voidness could have

contributed to her poetry writing. Artistic mastery can fill

emptiness yet according to what Quinn’s piece addresses only

a spiritual substance of infinite nature can lead to

enlightenment and contentment. The void is another element

that is related to the metaphysical strife that both pieces

highlight and share.

When it comes to the style Bidart used in Ellen West we

notice an interesting way of constructing. The piece goes

back and forth between two different perspectives. It starts

with a subjective point of view through Ellens’ poetry it

then breaks to an objective point of view with the doctors’

notes about her. The juxtaposition between these two modes

really immerses the reader in a state of intense awareness.

The reader is both affected by the personal experience Ellen

is going through, and then is detached from it by the

doctors’ diagnostic notes. In an interesting part Ellen

writes: “.. trying to stop my hunger with food is like

trying to appease thirst with ink” (Bidart 24). yet then

right after that very deep metaphysical statement we are

shifted towards a doctors note: “March 30 result of the

consultation: … We therefore resolved to give in to the

patient’s demand for discharge”(Bidart 24) This sudden

abrupt juxtaposition between the two perspectives really

highlights the state that Ellen is in, it shows that her

situation is deeply an inner trouble that is incurable, or

how she personally describes as: “trying to appease thirst

with ink.” You sympathize at one point with her personal

poetry, yet you then observe her objectively, which helps in

creating the balance that highlights her inner battle even

more. Marc Quinn also highlights in his sculpture a struggle

through the juxtaposition between Gold, Kate Moss, and

Buddhist enlightenment. An enlightened path usually is clear

from physical finite pleasures like gold or luxury. When

Buddha decided to leave the worldly behind; the first thing

he left was gold and luxury, therefore juxtaposing gold with

enlightenment and then the super model Kate Moss with Buddha

creates a fluctuation between the objective and subjective.

Gold is objective, material, and physical while

Enlightenment is subjective, metaphysical, and abstract.

Kate Moss is a super model that was known for her skinny

appearance and superficial lifestyle, while some knew Buddha

as a manifestation of god, a prophet, or a wise enlightened

teacher. The switching between objectivity and subjectivity

resembles consciousness in a way that really helps in

immersing the reader within these polarized works, and

understands the spiritual struggle through juxtaposition.

One of the techniques Marc Quinn and Bidart use is

Intertextuality, which is very postmodern. In order to

observe these two pieces even more adequately I think

mentioning the contextual time frame that they both exist in

is also necessary. Marc Quinn relies on the viewer’s

knowledge of Buddha and a famous British model to convey his

message. Bidart on the other hand displays constant

referencing that the doctor writes about his patient.

“January 21, Has been reading Faust again. In her diary,

writes that art is the “mutual permeation” of the “world of

the body and the “world of the spirit” (Bidart 19) The act

of referencing shows a relationship that is reliant on

others information in order to argue for a personal point.

The doctor references Ellens’ behavior and direct quotations

from her poetry to emphasize that this girl is going through

an inner sickness that is hard to diagnose and cannot be

medically treated. This way of referencing also stresses on

the juxtaposition between the objective doctor and his

patient by turning her into a case study. In the beginning

of the poem Ellen describes how that feels: “Only to my

husband I’m not simply a “case” But he is a fool. He married

meat, and thought it was a wife” (Bidart 15 ). Marc Quinn

used intertextuality to support his argument about the

relationship between food and spirit while Bidart used it in

order to emphasize the nature of the relationship between

the doctor and his patient.

Mystics have long tried to reach enlightenment by

fasting and reducing their physical intake of any kind. This

need to fill an inner void (reaching enlightenment) cannot

be accomplished by either food consuming extremes. In Frank

Bidarts work one can notice a stylistic form of writing that

creates an immersion in a conflicted consciousness through

his use of devices like juxtaposition and intertextuality.

On the other hand Marc Quinn visually immerses the viewer

within the relationship between food and spirit by using the

same devices. The connection between Anorexia and

spirituality is very evident for me, and both the works

through their subject matter, juxtaposition, and use of

intertextuality underline that connection.

Works Cited:

(1): Quinn, Marc. "In a Creative Context." Interview byDiane Fergurson. Web log post. : Artist Marc Quinn's "The Road ToEnlightenment" in Montreal. In a Creative Context, 5 Aug. 2011.Web. 23 Oct. 2014.