And yet I recall most vividly that it was, in fact, in Villiers Street, near Charing Cross, in a restaurant long since vanished (there was shadowy corner lined with fake books) that the suggestion of a Convulsionist Group was proposed for the very first time. I only wish I could remember the name of the place, but I expect it was a Golden Egg, as the interior decor was elaborate and colourful. We can all agree, I think, that Convulsionism emerged in 1967 for the simple reason that the poem ‘Birth of Convulsion’ dates from that year and no earlier testimonials survive: for a very few the Summer of Love was also the Summer of Convulsion.
It was late afternoon when, walking towards Villiers Street, through the Victoria Embankment Gardens, I came across that embodiment of the Convulsive Aesthetic, or one sharply defined facet of such an aesthetic: the Sullivan Memorial by W. Goscombe John. It was ‘the mourning girl’; an allegory of music grieving for a dead composer that, at that epiphanic moment, caused a veritable frisson of the imagination. This mild shock evoked in turn a quotation from Rider Haggard’s She, which I am very sure read as follows:
…with a convulsive movement that somehow gave the impression of a despairing energy, the woman rose to her feet and cast the dark cloak from her.
It was natural that I then recalled the famous passage from Against Nature where Huysmans decibes Salome's gesture in Gustave Moreau's watercolour The Apparation:
with a gesture of horror, Salome tries to thrust away the terrifying vision which holds her nailed to the spot, balanced on the tips of her toes, her eyes dilated, her right hand clawing convulsively at her throat..
By word association I next recalled an amusing anecdote recounted in a book on Art Nouveau by John Russell Taylor which recorded how, when Burne-Jones admitted that he wished he had seen Blake’s Behemoth as a teenager, a friend exclaimed "My dear, you would have been carried off in convulsions!"
Obsessed with Decadence, I felt the sensual ‘wave-line’ of Art Nouveau, the frisson a l’unison of the ‘Cantique de Saint Jean,’ and certain details of Beardsley’s Salome drawings exemplified the notion of a Convulsive force in a manner that complimented Breton’s eloge du cristal, or Dali’s ‘The Phenomenon of Ecsasty’. Eine linie ist eine Kraft (‘a line is a force’) wrote Henry van de Velde in some forgotten artistic treatise published in the fin de siecle era. Here, I thought, was a kind of continuity, linking the ‘magnetic force’ of Rider Haggard’s awesome Queen of Kor with the Surrealist principle of Convulsive Beauty via the sinuous, ectoplasmic wave forms of Art Nouveau and the galvanic posture of an allegory of music as sculpted for the memorial before me. It was the birth of Convulsion from an allegory of music.
There were others that evening who, because they despised Dali, and for other reasons, argued that Ernst's ‘The Eye of Silence’ (currently on the cover of Ballard’s The Crystal World) and ‘The Robing of the Bride’ epitomised the true spirit of present day Convulsion in art. Together with the ‘secret festivals’ of Leonor Fini and the multiple perspectives of the ‘unconscious anatomy’ described by Hans Bellmer, it was, in the final analysis, Max Ernst who was the guiding light on our quest to become cartographers of 'inner space'. Notwithstanding the still-living presence of Elizabeth Siddal, who seemed, for at least one of us, a more than fleeting presence, Gothic Convulsion in art was exemplified by Rossetti’s absolutely uncanny ‘How They Met Themselves’ (his ‘bogey picture’) while some, even more ambitious, claimed Crivelli, Goya and even Leonardo (think of his crumbling, oracular wall), as precursors.
Yet another asserted the importance of the echoing spaces and voids depicted in Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum (this, despite the anti-clericalism of Convulsion), or the tortured, Expressionist sprechstimme of Pierrot Lunaire, to show that Convulsion pervades the universe of music. Convulsion in music certainly existed, it was said, despite the intentions of composers who were, as we knew, often behind the times. Of course the ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan was always cited in such conversations together with some works by Varese and Bartok, while on other occasions, it was permissible to assert that ‘classical’ music (whatever that was) was no longer ‘it’. Quite rightly, to ‘get Convulsion now’, you should listen to ‘Rocket 69’ by Connie Allen, or The Doors’ ‘Horse Latitudes’/ ‘Moonlight Drive’/ ‘People Are Strange’ – well the whole album actually. Jimi Hendrix and his Experience was certainly Convulsive among the ladies, so were Tropicalia, Brian Auger and anything by Charles Mingus, but especially ‘Ysabel’s Table Dance’ from Tijuana Moods.
Above all, I thought of Wifredo Lam’s hieratic and sinister Altar for La Chevelure de Falmer exhibited in 1947 but not illustrated in Waldberg’s book, and certain images from a television programme called The Debussy Film (1965). It was an unquestioned axiom of dogma, a basic tenet of theory, that every utterance and written word by Antonin Artaud was ‘intrinsically Convulsive’ and ditto Marcel Duchamp. The same was true of every move and gesture by Conrad Veidt in the (‘totally Convulsive’) role of Cesare the Somnambulist or, more obscurely, as the eponymous student in The Student of Prague.
But of course, wishing, for obvious reasons, to elevate some film star or super-model to iconic status, most of us, inspired by The Phantom Of Sex Appeal, undoubtedly defined Convulsive Beauty in the context of ‘the internal (or, sometimes, ‘infernal’) feminine’. Candidates for this iconic role would include Charlotte Rampling for her portrayal of the doomed Elizabeth Thallman in Visconti’s The Damned (1968) or – very seriously – Fenella Fielding; and not just for her appearance as Valeria Watt in Carry On Screaming (1966). There was a positive mania for this kind of nomination with candidates ranging from Louise Brooks to Elsa Lanchester, Veronica Lake, Barbara Steele, Verushka, Jean Shrimpton, (not Twiggy) and Catherine Deneuve. One image, of the model Donyale Luna in Qui etes-vous Polly Maggoo?, became the ultimate icon, although a ‘Convulsive moment’ from Fortunata’s dance (Magali Noel in Fellini Satyricon) was also a close contender. At that time I had not seen a film called The Flesh and the Fiends or, without hesitation, I would have added the names of Billie Whitelaw to the list.
From very different perspectives there were other modes of Convulsion, including Lyrical Convulsion which was a style of ultra-decadent ‘Yellow Nineties’ poetry influenced by the naturalism of Arthur Symons, and Hermetic Convulsion requiring a knowledge of Alchemy but exclusively ‘under the poetic angle’. There were Convulsive Objects (instamatic cameras, cash machines, dictaphones, car stereos, audiocassette players), and Convulsive Places and Buildings (The Hellfire Caves, Museum Street, Centre Point, The Post Office Tower, Liverpool Street Station and Hungerford Bridge among others). Macabre Convulsion drew inspiration from Mervyn Peake's Fuschia Groan, Edgar Allan Poe and Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, while Absurd Convulsion was definitely both Pataphysical (Faustroll, Ubu Roi) and contemporary – as in the ‘Convulsively funny’ dinner party from Carry On Up the Khyber (1968). Radio 1 was definitely not Convulsive at all, and neither was The Liverpool Scene. The Gernreich topless dress was Convulsive but Post-Painterly Abstraction was not – well, not usually. William Burroughs was ‘in’ but Jack Kerouac was ‘out’… and what about Union Jack sunglasses, and all those sort of things? Well, no, not particularly, even though floral or Op Art ties were sometimes worn to Convulsive parties or gatherings at Le Macabre, a coffee house in Meard Street, or the sordid wine-cellar of Dirty Dicks on Bishopsgate. While writing practice was often 'under guerrilla conditions' (cut-ups inspired by Nova Express), the ideal Convulsive fashion style avoided blue jeans and aspired to attain an Essex Exi-gangster look, via Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
An amalgam of Surrealism and Decadence with an element of the Mod-Pop axis mixed with pure fantasy, Convulsionism valued the imagination and automatism above everything – the ideal Convulsive 'moment' is always inadvertent. In their book Surrealism: Permanent Revelation (1970) Cardinal & Short said correctly:
Surrealism has established its own ‘aesthetics’ by defining beauty in terms of a purely affective response to phenomena.
That this ‘excitation of the nerves’ as Angela Carter defined the concept sometime later, was in fact an extension into the mid-twentieth century of the Decadent idea of the frisson nouveau or crise de nerfs was the clever but not necessarily original basis for the Convulsionist aesthetic. It was an aesthetic that flourished obscurely during the era known by some as 'that decade of convulsion', but, more specifically, The Swinging Sixties, and which, in the long term, I suspect influenced no one but myself.
Illustration: Cantique de St Jean, 1968
