Pennie for the thoughts behind your disguise

John Squire is deeply interested in symbolism, as the final answer of this feature from 'Modern Painters' magazine (March 2010) illustrates. Office chairs are a feature of Squire's 2009 Aperture series: "When it comes to trying to represent the mundane as a visual image, you can't do much better than an office swivel chair."

As a previous essay illustrates, John Squire has a strong interest in the artist, Francis Bacon. In the following photo, I propose that Ian and John are recreating a 1933 Bacon work entitled 'Crucifixion.'

 

 

Top left: 'Crucifixion' (1933) by Francis Bacon, showing Christ's 'shadow' on a cross.
Top right: John, with arms outstretched, faces the wall, while Ian faces the camera. This photo was taken beside the YMCA, London in 1989. Ian's body acts as the 'shadow' against a backdrop of John's 'cross'; that John is looking at the number '1' - 'The One' - gives a further indication of the religious undertones of this photoshoot.
Second row: John LeKay ('This Is My Body, This Is My Blood', 1987, left) and Damien Hirst ('In Nomine Patris', 2005, right) would each revitalise Bacon's vision. Jonathan Demme's The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) brought it to the cinematic screen with the slaughter of Lieutenant Boyle (Charles Napier) in Hannibal Lecter's cage.
Third row: Kate Bush, Running Up That Hill (1985).
Fourth and fifth rows: The Jesus and Mary Chain would have sparked an interest in Squire in religious symbolic appropriation. In the 'Just Like Honey' video (1985), the band play with imagery in front of a spotlight. William Reid forms a 'crucifixion silhouette' on the wall with his outstretched arms, while brother Jim 'prays' at the centre of this 'trinity.'
Bottom row: Manic Street Preachers photoshoot.

Squire's use of Jackson Pollock in Stone Roses photoshoots and artwork has been well documented. I propose that Squire is also drawing upon the work of other artists to shape some of the band's photoshoots, predominantly those involving Pennie Smith. When asked in a Smash Hits (July 1990) interview to describe his room, Squire replies:

"Got a telly, a video, books... erm, an impressional painting by Degas of a woman drying herself after a bath."

Top: The iconic 1989 NME front cover.
Bottom: 'After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself' (c. 1890 - 1895) by Edgar Degas. This densely worked pastel is executed on several pieces of paper mounted on cardboard. Degas seems to have extended the composition while working on it, hence the need for additional pieces of paper. This work is one of a series of similar subjects dating from this period, when bathers and dancers were the artist's principal themes. Here, Degas has exploited the flexibility of the pastel medium, creating sumptuous textures and blurred contours which emphasise the movement of the figure.

The following Pennie Smith photos bear the influence of two illustrations. The first is by British artist, Joseph Edward Southall (1861 - 1944), while the second is 'Sketchbook Sheet' by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684 - 1721).

 

 

Top left: One of a series of illustrations from 1894 for the story of Bluebeard, by Joseph Edward Southall.
Top right: The Stone Roses in London, January 1995. Reni was absent for this photoshoot.
Bottom left: 'Sketchbook Sheet' by Jean-Antoine Watteau.
Bottom right: John is the equivalent figure on the top left, Ian the figure next to him. Notice how John places part of his head behind Ian to recreate the positions of the respective two figures in the Watteau illustration. The space for another head between Ian and Mani is to signify the absence of Reni. Mani is the figure on the right, looking across the other three.

I propose that 'Target With Four Faces' by Jasper Johns influenced the concept of the following Pennie Smith photo.

 

Left: 'Target With Four Faces' (1955) by Jasper Johns.
Right: Pennie Smith photo of The Stone Roses.

One possible influence on Squire staging works of art in photoshoots may have been the 1981 debut album cover, 'See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah! City All Over! Go Ape Crazy!' by Bow Wow Wow, which recreated 'Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe' by Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883). This act itself has been parodied several times since, for example in Paul McCartney's 'Give My Regards to Broad Street' (1984). John Squire undoubtedly attempts to embed meaning within photoshoots. The Pennie Smith photo of The Stone Roses, below, is a visual representation of the 'See No Hear No Speak No Evil' adage: See No (Mani's eyes are covered), Hear No (Ian's ears are closed by the heads of Mani and John), Speak No (John's mouth has tape across it). This adage most likely stems from the religious principle, "If we do not hear, see, or speak evil, we ourselves shall be spared all evil."

 

 

Top left: The Stone Roses in 1995. The clown in this photo is not Reni, but a studio tech stand-in; no-one outside band circles knew that Reni had left the band at that point and thus perhaps the subliminal message is that the band were keeping quiet about Reni.
Top right: The Nikko Toshogu Shrine in Japan has a carving of the Three Wise Monkeys.
Bottom row: The Manic Street Preachers in 2004, promoting the release of their 'Lifeblood' album. Sean Moore's mouth is covered by his outstretched hand (speak no), while the eyes and mouths of Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield are also hidden from view (see no, speak no). The 'hear no' aspect of the adage is perhaps naturally represented by the hair of Moore covering his ears.

In a June 2011 interview with online music magazine, live4ever, Ian Tilton revealed that one of his earliest sessions with The Stone Roses took inspiration from a Pennie Smith Clash photo:

"They were all majorly influenced by The Clash, as well as their use of the stenciling which also had an impact on them. What a great band to be influenced by, in every way; sound, politics, the whole ethics fitted in with what they were doing.

An early session with them, the second one with Mani, I actually said to them let's do a kind of copy of a Pennie Smith Clash picture, so I got a great shot of them all lined up together at my studio, all real tight-in with each other and they looked cool as fuck with like S-shaped bends to their collective image. Although it was influenced it wasn't a copy and it's a great picture in its own right because no two pictures look the same anyway due to light and settings."

Bibliography:

Berger, John. Ways of seeing (London: Penguin books, 1972).

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Paul McAuley

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