Taking a Bath

The driving force that motivates these
drawings is a kind of wild and more or less
uncontrollable gestural reflex.

In the chapters 'the Painter who Destroys
his own Work' and 'the Gambler who is Taking
a Bath' of his book on the negative affects,
psychologist Silvan Tomkins describes really
well that what I believe is the psychology
behind this gesture:(1)

the Painter who Destroys his own Work
"A painter has elaborated long on a canvas.
It has been difficult but he has made
progress to a certain point. Then everything
he does seems to be wrong.
The painting goes from bad to worse, and the
painter, feeling more and more incompetent
and disgusted with himself, struggles
against the feeling of hopelessness until at
a critical moment he dips his brush into his
palette indiscriminately and disfigures his
painting in an explosion of anger and humiliation.
The feeling of humiliation is profound and
complete. Ultimately he recovers and begins
again."

the Gambler who is Taking a Bath
"Despite iron self-discipline among professional gamblers, there are few who have not experienced what is known as "taking a bath". (..)

The phenomenon (..) depends upon the failure
of a reparative strategy (of investing very
heavily on an apparently save venture in an
attempt at a quick reversal of previous
loss).
"If the gambler (..)should now a second time
suffer and unexpected and in his view
unmerited loss, he may now be overwhelmed
with shame, with self-contempt, with anger
and with distress, compounded not only by
the new loss but by the breakdown of his
self-control and his deteriorating judgment.

It is at just such a moment that he is a
candidate for "taking a bath," which will
"clean" him and purify his soul by bathing
him in total defeat.
He is driven now to magnify his humiliation
so that he may wallow in it that eventually
he may be purified.
At this point he will take all of his money, which it may have taken him years of hard work to accumulate, and invest it in what appears, even to him, to be at best only a remote possibility, in order to "get it over with."
If he wins now, which he regards as
improbable although desirable, he will not
only recoup his losses but make a very large
profit. He will have turned defeat into the
greatest of his victories. If he loses,
which he expects, and in part hopes he will,
his humiliation will be magnified, his
defeat total.
He resorts to such an extreme, self-
defeating tactic because he feels he cannot
reduce his feelings of humiliation and loss
otherwise than by magnifying them so that he
is utterly consumed and finally purified,
"cleaned," "bathed." It is as though he said
to himself, "If I have been stupid, I may as
well go the whole way." After this complete
loss many gamblers report a feeling of
peace, that the struggle is over, that they
have hit bottom and can suffer no longer.
Some gamblers, however, do not attain the
nirvana state until several hours later,
after having immersed themselves completely
in their despair."

Tomkins' use of 'nirvana' hints at the
presence of a spiritual pathway.

In the drawings on this site, instead of
starting over with his original painting,
Painter took the explosive gesture that was
laden with anger, humiliation and shame and
repeats it over and over.
This gradually transforms the explosive
gesture into a creative process of
variations on a theme.

taking a bath

The repetition distributes the affective
charge over multiple actions.
It weakens the negative affects without
obscuring them, and gives a level of
control without totalizing it.
This site also tries to develop some methods
to summon the charge without the risk of
material loss, like an actor playing out a
dramatic scene without suffering the real
consequences.
Their reward is like a mild version of the
enlightened state of the gambler in the
bathtub

lalalalalala

(1)Silvan Tomkins
Affect Imagery Consciousness
Volume II: The Negative Affects