Hazardous beauty ================ * Anne Marie Todkill The three main occupational hazards of any serious artist are exposure to toxic materials, poverty, and bad reviews. Poverty was certainly the lot of Vincent van Gogh, whose art-dealer brother, Theo, kept him fed, housed and supplied with paints but only ever managed to sell one of his canvases. No articles were published on van Gogh's work until six months before he died; an ecstatic review, it made him "uneasy" just the same. [1] As for toxic exposures, in madness or despair van Gogh swallowed turpentine and pigments, although it appears that he poisoned himself more thoroughly with absinthe. [2] Toxicity, an exhibition now on view at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, assembles work from the Levy Bequest in the gallery's permanent collection to explore the artist's engagement with hazardous materials. The show is in part a reconsideration of the nineteenth-century aesthetic of "the sublime" - that is, beauty that inspires both admiration and terror. Oblivion (1995) by Anish Kapoor, a leading player in the "British New Sculpture" movement of the 1980s, is an indented fibreglass ball coated in pure prussian blue pigment. The velvety surface and saturated colour are intensely sensual, and the aperture pressed into one side, like a giant thumbprint in a lump of dough, makes the object look innocuously malleable. The viewer must resist the impulse to touch, knowing that contact with the pigment is ill advised. The chain-link fence depicted in Zaun (Mutlangen) (1986) by German artist Sigmar Polke is rendered on a cotton canvas soaked with artificial resins and covered with various toxic substances such as ground metals and tellurium dust. Mutlangen is the site of a military base in Germany used to hold cruise missiles during the Cold War. The image of a fence cannot be extricated from only slightly less recent memories of concentration camps, and the random configuration of the pigmented materials is in itself menacing, evoking the senselessness of violence and oppression. The wire fence can be peered through but not transgressed: through the spilled paint two soldiers carrying guns are dimly visible. Two other works in the show exploit the properties of lead, a substance whose great utility - it does not rust, it can be hammered flat or rolled into pipes, it shields against radiation and gives brilliancy to glass - belies the fact that it is poison. As Primo Levi's lead-prospector muses, "[I]f one goes beyond appearances, lead is actually the metal of death: because it brings on death, because its weight is a desire to fall, and to fall is a property of corpses." [3] The painting Yggdrasil (1985-1991) by German artist Anselm Kiefer invokes the Norse myth of the tree of life, whose three roots reached to the underworld, the earth and the realm of the gods, and which remained standing through all assaults. The canvas is worked in emulsion, charred acrylic paint and melted lead. A powerful image of environmental degradation, the archetypal tree is also an emblem of regeneration and the elemental forces of earth and fire. Figure 1 ![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/161/1/64/F1.medium.gif) [Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/161/1/64/F1) Figure 1. Anselm Kiefer, Yggdrasil (1985-1991). Emulsion, acrylic (partly charred) and melted English artist Antony Gormley gives the properties of lead a more personal application in Proof (1983-1984). This sculpture is a cast of the artist's body made with plaster and fibreglass and coated with lead; the title suggests an imperfect or experimental rendering as well as an insistence upon personal being. The solder lines give the appearance of a nutshell that might be cracked open, while the sealed eyes, ears, mouth and nostrils suggest suffocation: the viewer may be put in mind of the archaic use of lead to line coffins. The curatorial notes observe: "This body is still, but not serene. Alert, taut, concentrating, it seems to perform a most basic corporeal function: defecation, an action which constitutes irrefutable proof of existence and which may keep terror at bay." [4] The Toxicity exhibition includes a number of other challenging works from the McMaster collection and continues until August 15. Figure 2, Figure 3 ![Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/161/1/64/F2.medium.gif) [Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/161/1/64/F2) Figure 2. Toxicity installation (detail). Left: Sigmar Polke, Zaun (Mutlangen) (1986). Synthetic resin, acrylic medium, metallic and graphic pigments on cotton canvas. Right: Anish Kapoor, Oblivion (1995). Fibreglass and pigment. ![Figure3](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/161/1/64/F3.medium.gif) [Figure3](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/161/1/64/F3) Figure 3. Toxicity installation (detail). Left: Antony Gormley, Proof (1983-1984). Lead fibreglass and plastic. Right: Anselm Kiefer, Yggdrasil. Emulsion, acrylic (partly charred) Anne Marie Todkill Editor, The Left Atrium ## References 1. 1. de Leeuw R, editor. The letters of Vincent van Gogh [Translated by Pomerans A]. London: Allen Lane; 1996. p. 479. 2. 2. Martin HA. La maladie de Van Gogh. Paris: Editions Buchet/Chastel; 1994. p. 139. 3. 3. Levi P. Lead. In: The periodic table. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Schocken Books; 1984. p. 79-95. 4. 4. McMaster Museum of Art. The Levy Legacy. Hamilton (Ont): McMaster University Press; 1996. p. 102.