The Bad Art Cafe

A Perverse Peter Pan, a look at Scott Heim's novel Mysterious Skin

Perverse: Directed away from what is right or good
Peter Pan:a storybook boy who could fly and never wanted to grow up.

“His eyebrows met ominously in his forehead’s middle. Up close, I could smell him. The odor swelled, like something hot. If I weren’t so eager to touch him again, I would have shrunk from it. . . . ‘But you’re a tough queer, right?’”
-Wendy Peterson to Neil McCormick, Mysterious Skin

“Edie was looking for an alternative. Andy Warhol was a kind of alternative convention. . . .Edie felt a strong sexual relationship to our father. But was impossible. The same thing was true with Warhol. It was impossible. He was androgynous, as Edie herself was. [Warhol was] A kind of perverse Peter Pan.” Saucie Sedgwick on Edie, her underground movie star sister.

the Suffering Box, again

The Suffering Box from the novel In Awe is much more complex than first set down here an entry ago.

Boris, the recipient of the Suffering Box, considers it a masterpiece, a piece of first rate sculpture. Sarah made it in high school, back in the days when her and Marshall hung together and tried to seduce the same guy together. The Box is “ constructed with ribs of wood, animal bone, wrapped clumps of chicken wire. Inside rests more bones, unthreaded needles, glass shards, feathers, rosebush thorns, and various mementos from the distant and recent past.”

Sarah told Boris it’s an ongoing work, keep adding to it, since the suffering never stops, you know that . . . .

The Suffering Box

There's an artist who lives in Kansas near the University, which is Lawrence. Her claim to fame is a cigar box she gives to Boris, called the Suffering Box. It was something Sarah created as a teenager in the school for wayward children that Boris now attends. She has passed the mantel of fear onto Boris, and he accepts it gratefully.

The Suffering Box, a central image in In Awe, the second novel by Scott Heim (among many, many central images taken from many, many art & literary sources) contains pins and needles and pictures and anything Sarah considers symbolic about suffering. She ought to know, because this chick is the queen of pain. At 32 she has left her misspent youth far behind her, but she still plays out being a queen of pain, a misplaced artist, and a drama junkie, an attendant at the local gas station. Sarah's whole life is fabricated to her own specifications. She has some good stories. Maybe her life is one long performance art, including the end of the novel.

Artists: Some all-time favorites, (of author Scott Heim):

Artists: Some all-time favorites, (of author Scott Heim):
Vincent Van Gogh,
Egon Schiele,
Caravaggio,
Francis Bacon
Cindy Sherman,
Henry Darger,
Alberto Giacometti,
Diane Arbus,
Oskar Kokoschka,
Andres Serrano,
Larry Clark,
Sally Mann,
Gilbert & George,
Edward Steichen,
Bernd & Hilla Becher,
Andy Warhol,
Jules Bastien-LePage,
Andrew Wyeth,
Frank Hurley,
Jean Debuffet,
James McNeill Whistler,
Julia Margaret Cameron,
James Ensor,
Max Beckmann,
Gerrit van Honthorst.

Scott Heim & Keith Haring

Right now, I'm concerned with comparing Scott Heim (American author) to Keith Haring (American painter). They are "Neo-Expressionist" or "Neo-Pop Artist" (depending on who you read) of the 1980's Strange comparison, but probably an accurate one.

Right off the top of my head, Scott & Keith were both highly influenced by the Pop Art Movement. (Does that make the author Scott Heim a Pop Artist?) Sometimes I think if you try to regulate authors to an art movement, well, okay, then probably Scott would be regulated to the role of Jeff Koons of literature.

Scott never painted graffiti – but he does have characters who do.

An Art Critic from Kansas

Time: Summer, 1991
Place: Kreem Kup (diner) somewhere in the middle of Kansas
Source: Mysterious Skin, a novel by Scott Heim
Narrator: Eric Preston, a gay teenager in eyeliner

“We were half finished before the assholes at the neighboring table mustered enough courage to approach. One of them accepted some sort of dare and walked toward our booth. His front tooth was chipped. He wore a studded leather armband, black cowboy boots, ripped jeans, and a t-shirt showing an intricate drawing by some German “artist” who’d been popular with kids in art class at school. In the drawing, stairs spiraled and wound around and between and across each other, creating an optical illusion. The was the exact opposite of Kansas’ elementary landscapes.”