Self mutilation or art?

Many of you would of seen, perhaps through your hands covering your face, Marc Quinn's blood head. 

A trip to the doctors is a nuisance for many of us, dolefully waiting in a stagnant sitting area, surrounded by the ill and partially living dead. The cold touch of a stethoscope is bearable, an awkward discussion about personal issues, not so. But one heavily disregarded task to delegate is a blood test. Using a hypodermic needle to suck out your own raw fluid to be taken away and tested on. Imagine, however, if you chose to have this blood removed. Routinely and voluntarily drawing out your own cells. Knowing that the smarting stinging sensation which is far too close to your major arteries for comfort was your decision, this foreign object drawing out your precious red plasma was just a fresh idea for your new art project. This is the self sacrifice or perhaps hypochondriac martyrdom that Marc Quinn set out on in 1991 and has continued up until now in his series of blood filled sculptures named ‘Self’.

  Any artist will understand the credentials necessary in order to produce a viable piece of work: dedication, effort and time with a dose of creativity. 4.5L was removed from this artists body to create a mould of his own face. Over a period of five months this total of liquid would be removed in order to shape and freeze for each of the  four sculptures he had fashioned. Usually only half a litre is taken in blood donations before waiting 16 weeks to take more.   A 2.5L loss  is enough to induce death and 4.5L is the average total amount in a human’s body. Quinn has created a doppelganger.  While some may call this glorified self mutilation, Quinn certainly reaches the dedicated goal and ticks time as well -  since 1991 he has made a sculpture every five years and plans to keep doing so – this year will be the birth of his next bloody head.

Aside from its gory and horrifically enthralling appeal, it must be seen as what it is – art. Rugged and imperfect, it translates the flawed aestetic quality of something natural with the most biological medium possible. One may recoil from the porous skin, the unsightly features and even frown at the messy craftsman’s ship leaving such craggy edges but this just highlights one of its messages: the pointless nature of beauty. How can one judge the pleasing aesthetic quality of this piece when it’s made from such a wondrous material, the liquid of life. It however offers a paradox, a piece which essentially hails the vitality of life, a homage to the versatility to that which courses through our veins . But the  series ‘self’ tracks Quinn’s own ageing and deterioration – the sagging of his jowls as the process he seems to appreciate slowly takes his life. However, Quinn himself confessed this lack of accuracy that ‘five sculptures could be done in one day and they’d all look different’. Perhaps it is this ambiguity between the younger the older, the indistinguishable manner which brings them together – a timeline of life and blood, equal in form and regardless of appearance. The sculptures themselves, which came together in 2009 in an haemoglobin frenzy, must be kept in a temperature controlled column in order to retain their original quality. Switched off, they could become a mass of blood and disappointment. Quinn here shows the fragility of his art and indeed life. His sculpture is kept on life-support, tentatively clinging to its solid form. But while the desire is the keep it refrigerated, preserve the hard work and toil of them there is an opposite pull – for the true form of blood to be restored, to see it rush and flow. But the irony is, these pieces of life and hope, are already dead. Frozen blood, without the tricky chemical and time pressured practices used in transfusions, is useless. This liquid of life, is inactive. For a piece evaluated at £350 000, it’s almost in limbo – liquid gold hovered over a drain. Its state is even threatened with the freezer on, the first piece in 1991 is older, a decaying colour of mild orange compared to the crimson of his 2006 piece. But here, Quinn has brought his own immortality into the question, showing life in the balance and you can almost hear a satirical chuckle at the expense of the economics of art.