GERALD LAING

Selected Citations and Comments

The habits and maquillage of the femme fatale distance her from her prisoners, providing the same function in the same way as any other uniform. The prisoners’ genitals are hidden by abstract art.
The banality of this art - I refer in this case to the American painter Josef Albers, but much other art of this type is equally meaningless - is elided with the prurient disguising of the sexual organs.
This in turn distances us from the actuality of the events depicted. Thus everyone involved is to some degree depersonalised.
The woman guard in her particular role remains far more artificial (in the sense of personal dishonesty) than do her victims, whose images disclose themselves more slowly, more subtly, and in greater detail.

Gerald Laing, 'Artist's Notes on War Paintings', unpublished manuscript, 2004