From YBA to Yookay: Alexander Adams's Naked Spur
By Samuel Wild
Can Britain still sustain an artistic culture? Do independent artists have any role in contemporary society? Is there any scope in the Yookay for art as we have traditionally known it? A very pessimistic no is given by Alexander Adams in his debut novel The Naked Spur.
The novel follows the career of a wide-eyed and impressionable young artist simply named ‘A.’ as he tries to make it as a painter in the London of the early 00s. Although it had already peaked, the real London of this time was still buzzing from the excitement of the ‘YBAs’ (Young British Artists). In the late eighties the students of Michael Craig-Martin’s Goldsmiths, figures such as Damien Hirst, took advantage of the cheap and disused property of the decrepit London Docklands to put on shows such as the 1988 Freeze, where Charles Saatchi first came across these enterprising young conceptual artists. More of a confected phenomenon than a movement, the YBAs recycled dadaist and surrealism methods with a 90s tabloid twist. The movement was capped by the Sensation show in 1997, ushering in the Blairite millennial and displaying Hirst’s infamous posthumous shark in formaldehyde.
It bears stressing how this was in actuality a huge bubble manufactured by the Saatchi advertising firm because The Naked Spur’s hapless A. exists on the periphery of this world. A world that refuses to let him in, if it really exists at all, A. is straddled with the challenge of having to manoeuvre around potential gatekeepers to this milieu, each one taking advantage of him in some way. From the diabolical Mack who tries to con A. into making his art into a kind of early Only Fans, to time-wasting contemporary gallery assistants. The question we ask as we follow A. in his unfortunate dealings is, does the art market which he is trying to access actually exist? How is one pleased with a contemporary ‘installation’ for example? What does it really mean to be an ‘Iranian video artist’? All of the figures in Adams’s 00s London art world are somehow insubstantial beings, like the characters of Brett Eaton Ellis’s American Psycho.
In contrast to the exciting world of the YBAs the reality that A. really inhabits is a seedy world of social decay and mutual exploitation. The London of The Naked Spur, and the novel is a book about London as much as about art, is a city of uncompromising smut and moral confusion, which only seems to get worse as A. himself is progressively broken by it.
At the beginning of the novel A. is working for the aptly named ‘Malaysian Telecoms Systems Inc.’ as he tries to negotiate exploitative studio landlords. When working late his colleagues describe the city they inhabit:
“‘Seeing the City like this’ said the large man. ‘It’s like seeing this woman who’s got this harsh, unforgiving face during the day go to sleep. Once she’s asleep, the lines smooth away and you’re left with this tranquil, beautiful woman.’
The large man rocked back in his chair, a half smile playing on his lips.
‘Yeah’ said the grey-haired man. ‘Then you stick your cock in her.’
They laughed.”
The Naked Spur, pp. 140
This sums up the moral universe of the novel’s London portrayed in the novel, as well as its contemporary art world, one that doesn’t seem an entirely inaccurate description of the times.
Adams creates a fascinating character in his hero A., at once passive and observant, he is almost Christ-like in being inflicted constant suffering from the devils of the art world. It all starts well enough when his friend Theresa models for him. She is the humanity in the novel, and A. seems to be consummating what it means to be an artist as he carefully paints her. Both he and Theresa are naifs. Their enjoyment of each other's company and the thoughts they share are authentic and original to them, and both learn and grow from interacting with each other. Theresa shares with A. one of her perceptions:
“‘After sex, sometimes I look back and see my outline in the sheets where I was lying and I think, my God, that was me. That was me getting fucked. All there is now is a shape in the sheets. Then I pull the sheet tight and the shape disappears. Maybe everyone thinks things like this but no one talks about it.’
After a moment, she gave a laugh.
‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this. We should have an intellectual conversation about art or music or something.’
She rolled her head to look at A.
‘I’m a bright girl, you know?’”
The Naked Spur, pp.66
After this sadly brief relationship the honesty and openness of their interaction isn’t reproduced with the other characters of the book. There is the potential for a friendship with an Ethiopian room-mate, yet that character's obvious identity-crisis and superficiality preclude anything like A.'s relationship with Theresa. In complete contrast, A. has a brief and seedy relationship with the professional but alienating Elizabeth. Throughout the book A. is further and further isolated by a world that is committed to superficiality as it is to decay. This culminates in A.’s bungled suicide attempt, after which her decides to flee London and find seek beauty elsewhere.
With Theresa, the intimacy of their exchange as well the shared oddities of their perceptions stress the authenticity and frank honesty of their relationship. This is something that pervades the book in slight and pleasing variations. Adams is particularly sharp about those strange, unspoken observations we all have but which we do not usually enunciate. The character of A. is almost schizoid in the way he does this yet simultaneously incapable of characterising his own inner states - his motives, feelings, etc. One cannot help but interpret these portrayals to some statement about the nature of art, or to Adams’s work as a painter. An aesthetic vision that prioritises articulating, visually or verbally, the peculiar, the absurd, and the prohibited in as much objective accuracy as possible. Although A. does not demonstrate this within his own internal narrative, no doubt a conscious choice by the author, and this lack of self-understanding and reflection being A.’s fatal flaw, he is penetratingly accurate in describing his observations of London and the world around him. The effect is to give one a sense of disturbing emptiness to the character’s experiences, which concords wonderfully with the portrayal of London. The only moment of traditional beauty in the novel being the last passage as A. decides to leave the city behind.
“It was snowing. It fell heavily and clung to the leaves and overhead wires. It started to collect on the railway tracks. In the yard, two Vietnamese girls played gloveless, flakes catching in their dark hair. They threw handfuls of snow up into the air. A train arrived at the London-bound platform. Figures left shelters to board the train. One of the girls gripped the chain-link fence beside the platform and shook it. Lines of snow were dislodged and caught in the wind which broke them into pieces, lifted the particles high and dispersed them. The train pulled out of the station. A gust stirred snow from leylandii.
The girls were gone.”
The Naked Spur, pp. 304
There is in the end of the narrative a transformation of A., or perhaps more accurately a redemption, which, though concordant with his character, changes the nature of his consciousness. In the monochrome silence of a cold, snowy scene A.’s exacting and attentive perception has opened up to possibility of a greater beauty in things.
The conclusion one reaches when reflecting on this narrative is that the London, and by extension Britain, of the oft cited ‘Unipolar Moment’ was, in spite of appearances, a culture in deep crisis. The only art this era could authentically consume was pornography, directly or indirectly. It had an horrifically unhealthy fixation with the Baudrillardian image over any sense of reality or authenticity. The disturbing grin of Tony Blair, the unreal images of armies invading sandy deserts, the senseless tabloid paparazzi, all speak to a kind of abjection, a sickening lack of groundedness. Most of the characters in The Naked Spur, including A., are wrestling with this culture. A. is ironically saved from it by naivety and sense of the truth, yet in real world of contemporary Britain we can see how the abject world of New Labour transmogrified into the dustbin of the Yookay, where there is no longer an anxiety regarding cultural collapse but a realisation that culture has collapsed.
The Naked Spur is a fascinating book for all those that are interested in the relationship between art, British culture and how the perceptive human mind can cope with both, and is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand how we got to where we are.
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