The Art of Lying Down
Erica Barnes analyses the “art” behind a trending photo of Jacob Rees-Mogg lounging on a bench in Parliament
Brexit is everywhere, like an ugly case of chickenpox. If it were a virus then Jacob Rees-Mogg is the anti-vax mother. Searching for relief is perfectly human – and comedy is perhaps the most human form. The current flavour of laughs is memes.
Writing about memes is inherently uncool. However, the recent mockery of Jacob Rees-Mogg reclining in Parliament is as politically relevant as any Guardian cartoon. In the words of sculptor Anish Kapoor, “artists are part of the story of a response”. Memes are a refusal to take chauvinistic politics seriously — a laugh in its face.
We lie down when we’re tired, relaxed, or trying to emotionally process that Boris Johnson is our Prime Minister.
Art does not need recognition from high society. Yet, what better tool to show how degrading his pose was than his own Etonian culture? Lying down is an agelong artistic motif. We lie down when we’re tired, relaxed, or trying to emotionally process that Boris Johnson is our Prime Minister. Most prominently in early art, lying down has portrayed death. Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian art emphasised upright bodies; in times of deprived medical care, vitality was valued. Ancient Greek art marks the emergence of a foppish death fit for the rise of Western theatre. The Dying Gaul is a Roman remake of a Greek bronze sculpture. It is the figure of a gladiator, slumped over himself, legs sprawled. On his right flank is a gash — presumably mortal.
It is naïve to read Rees-Mogg’s slouch as defeat, not smugness. What else is expected from the ghost of a Victorian Poor House owner? The Dying Gaul’s wound is beautiful; it’s neat and it’s hidden. It says nothing of the slavery of gladiators beyond the rope at his throat. This is what lying down has come to symbolise in art —the freedom to not work or suffer.
Yet somehow, and perhaps not deliberately, it is a perfect protest.
Take a walk round any stuffy stately home and gawp up at the oil portraits. Sir Peter Lely’s grandiose painting of Sir Christopher Wren is a staged pat on the back from rich white guy to another. Wren reclines inside a golden frame over Industrial London. He points a colonialist finger at a globe; this is how Jacob Rees-Mogg sees himself in the mirror. It’s aggravating. We’re staring down the barrel of food and medication shortages, with our European neighbours left high and dry and refugees left wet and drowning. All whilst one of the perpetrators of it all slouches back on the fine pine benches of Parliament like a well-fed cat.
Look back to Anish Kapoor; art is resistance. Lely’s century also saw the rise of “peasant” Realism. Artists like Van Gogh and Gustave Coubert (see ‘The Stone Breakers’) depicted rigid worker bodies. In a period of rapid Industrialisation, they painted ragged farmers, knotted hands, and bagged eyes.
We live in a reactive age of satire and irony. For example, “Leeks-Mogg” is an innocent, delightfully crafted copy of Rees-Mogg’s slouch made of leeks, which came second in a Gloucestershire vegetable show. It’s so British it will make your eyes water. Rees-Mogg may have replied to it on Twitter in glee — memes can be reductive, making jokes until we forget something’s severity. Yet somehow, and perhaps not deliberately, it is a perfect protest. Its sculptor held a country fair in middle England, the most Mogg-ian of events, hostage in her mockery. This is attacking him on his own turf.
By Erica Barnes
