Guignol

Guignol (pronounced guin-yholl)

(1) A puppet, especially a hand puppet.

(2) A puppet show.

(3) As Grand-Guignol, a theatrical production featuring melodramatic tension, horror, and shock.

(4) A French insult meaning one is an “oaf” or “buffoon”.

Early 1800s: A borrowing from Modern French, the origin (in this context) reputedly the name of a silk weaver of Lyon which was the central character of the puppet theatre which French puppeteer Laurent Mourguet installed there for the earliest performance (in 1795) of French puppet shows.  Because of the origin, the word is sometimes capitalized and some historians suggest there may be a link with guigner (to wink), nictation one of the puppet’s signature gestures.  Guignol is a noun, the noun plural is guignols.

Guignol’s creation was serendipitous and a matter of economic necessity.  The silk weaver Laurent Mourguet (1769–1844) from Lyon had been forced from his trade by the economic convulsions in the wake of the French Revolution (1789) and by 1797, after for some time scratching-out a living as an itinerant peddler, he took to the business of teeth pulling (the origins of dentistry), one of the attractions being one required little equipment other than a chair and several pairs of pliers.  It certainly required no qualifications but unlike today’s dentists, there were no fees and his income came from the sale of the potions and herbal preparations he sold a pain relievers, some apparently at least temporarily effective.  Seeking a marketing edge, as an advertising gimmick, he set up a puppet show in front of the chair on which he performed his gruesome procedures.

History doesn’t record how well regarded Monsieur Mourguet was for his dentistry but within a short time his puppetry had attracted such a following he gave up all things odontic and became a professional puppeteer, one who would these days be called a social realist because his performances focused on the cares and concerns of his working class audience, matters he knew well from his own humble background.  His following grew because of the topicality of his material which referenced the scandals and corruption then so often in the news.  In another modern touch (which would much appeal to later French deconstructionists), he created an ensemble cast of characters, the best known of which were the silk weaver Monsieur Guignol and his wife Madelon and while some things were constant (such as Guignol’s fondness for drink), there was fluidity about the roles the others would from time to time play and while they all were there to entertain, politics, poverty and the of the travails of the working class existence were always the underlying themes.  Despite that however, what characterized his work was the good humor and happy endings, the French use of “Guignol” as an insult meaning something like “oaf” or “buffoon” is something like the use of “muppet” in much of the English-speaking world; the muppet puppets weren’t stupid, they just looked as if they were.

The later performance genre was Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (The Theatre of the Great Puppet) and usually referred to as Grand-Guignol (pronounced gron guin-yholl).  Grand-Guignol was a Parisian theatre which specialized in grotesque horror shows in which the puppets sometimes dripped blood, accounting for the phrase “grand-guignol” being used of any film, book or other production packed with blood and gore.  The theatre proper existed between 1897-1962 and featured a succession of naturalistic horror shows which relied for their appeal on the sort of spectacle then not available in any other form of public performance.  Sometimes there we happy endings and sometimes not and really it mattered little, the point being the death toll and the gruesomeness of the mean of dispatch and it was a comment more on the audience attracted than the storylines that most seemed to find Grand-Guignol entertaining rather than shocking as initially it was intended to be.  The modern version of all this gratuitous violence is the “splatter movie” though that doesn't mean Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol can be blamed for I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

The blood soaked Grand-Guignol is notable for the graphic art its advertising spawned and these pieces influenced film studios around the world, their motifs still used today.

It was remarkable Grand-Guignol lasted as long as it did because the audience numbers had been in decline since the end of World War II (1939-1945) and it never came close to regaining the popularity the theatre enjoyed in the inter-war years.  Much has been made of the decline of interest being linked to the revelations of the horrors perpetrated during the holocaust, the argument being that whatever the puppets depicted (which once would have been thought unthinkable in modern, civilized Europe) could be as awful as the gas chambers and crematoria of the Third Reich’s death camps.  It was something in the vein of (the often misquoted) 1949 dictum of German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969): “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”.  However, it was during those years of declining interest that television reached critical mass and relaxations in censorship meant what was able to be shown in French cinemas could be more confronting than the sanitized stuff to which distributors were once restricted.  The competition for eyeballs had become fierce.

Not all puppets are so gruesome: Lindsay Lohan interviewed by Air New Zealand’s Rico the puppet for one of the airline’s infomercials, Los Angeles 2014.

Splatter

Splatter (pronounced splat-er)

(1) To splash and scatter upon impact.

(2) An act or instance of splattering, typically a spray of mud, paint, blood or other liquids which results in many small blobs, some of which may coalesce.

(3) The quantity or the residue of something so splattered; An uneven shape (or mess) created by something dispersing on impact.

(4) In film as “splatter film” or “splatter movie”, a production characterized by gory imagery, often for its own sake (something of this the type often referred to as “a splatterfest”).  Splatterpunk is either a fork or synonym depending on interpretation.  In film, the splatter ecosystem is treated by those who take such things seriously as a sub-set of the horror genre.

(5) In modern art, as “splatter art” or “splatter painting”, a technique in which paint is (variously) dripped thrown, squirted, flicked etc onto the surface (although because of its history, “drip painting” to often treated as a separate stream (or drip)).

(6) In radio, spurious emissions resulting from an abrupt change in a transmitted signal.

1760s: The origin is uncertain but it’s presumed to be a portmanteau word, the construct being spla(sh) + (spa)tter.  Splash was probably a variant of the Middle English plasch & plasche, from the Old English plæsċ (pool, puddle) and thought likely an imitative form.  It was cognate with the Dutch plas (pool, watering hole) and related to the West Frisian plaskje (to splash, splatter), the Dutch plassen (to splash, splatter) and the German platschen (to splash).  The construct of spatter was probably the Middle Low German or Dutch spatt(en) (to spout, burst) +‎ -er (the frequentative suffix) and related to spit (saliva).  Splatter, splatterdash & splattering are nouns & verbs, splatterer & splatterfest are nouns, splattered is a verb and splattery is an adjective; the noun plural is splatters.

The verb in the sense of “splash; scatter about; make a noise as of splashing water” developed from the noun and was in use by at least 1784 but the earlier splatterdash (thought a variant of spatterdash) was noted a decade-odd earlier, a development of the noun spatterdash (leather covering for the lower leg to protect from mud) from the late seventeenth century.  Splatterdash meant “in a haphazard manner; work performed in a disorganized way” and was thought (either by intent or mistake) to have evolved from or been influenced by the earlier slapdash.  The early eighteenth century splatter-faced (having a broad, flat face) was probably a perversion of platter-faced, the modern version being “plate-faced”.  Splatterpunk was in 1986 apparently coined by award-winning US writer David J Schow (b 1955), noted for his many contributions to the horror industry and the splatter fork in particular. The first known reference to its use was during his celebrated appearance at the Twelfth World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island.  Devoted fans of the splatter movie genre often self-identify as splatterpunks.

I Know Who Killed Me (2007) was for years was a fixture on "Worst Movie Ever" lists but more recently it has built a cult following (for reasons right and wrong) and the longevity in the interest it sustains has made it one of the genre's more enduring (and profitable) titles.  It was an example of a splatter movie "cross-over" in that the splatter aspect was ancillary to the crime-focused plot.  IKWKM often appears in "midnight screenings".

The evolution of the splatter movie becomes obvious from around the early 1960s when graphical depictions of violence and increasing volumes of (fake) blood began to appear.  The censorship in most parts of the world was for most of the twentieth century quite rigorous and unlike the attitude of the authorities towards nudity & sex where some jurisdictions tended to be more permissive, the attitude towards violence in films was more restrictive.  The French Grand Guignol (1897-1962) theatre had staged naturalistic dramas in which the gore was said to be “most realistic” but it was unusual and tolerated as an example of intellectual Parisian bohemianism and in early cinema, about the only graphic depictions seen of blood and gore were those in battlefield scenes or anything intended to illustrate the savagery of non-white races.  The trend towards gratuitous violence in film grew in the post-war years and directors in the 1960s pushed the boundaries, something accommodated by different versions of films being released in different markets, some more cut than others.  Such was the flow of violent cinema that the authorities began banning distribution and it wasn’t until the 1990s the practice became uncommon in the West, the classification system restricting to adults those thought most disturbing thought sufficient.  If there’s a convenient watershed in the business, it might be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) which lived up to its name; after that, all splatter movies can be considered a variation on the theme.

Freier Stress (Stress Free), Oil on linen by Albert Oehlen (b 1954).

Some regards splatter art as something distinct from drip painting (or action painting) while many claim not to be able to tell the difference although because drip painting has an establish place in modern art (one quite respectable according to many including those who pay millions for works by some of the most famous artists), it’s usually treated as something distinct.  As can be imagined, “splatter” is something within the rubric of abstract; throwing paint at a surface, sometimes from a distance of several feet rather than using a brush or even some form of spray, is going to results in something which, even if recognizably something, is at least at the margins going to be chaotic.

Lepanto, Panel 6, oil on canvas by Cy Twombly (1928-2011)

When drip painting burst (splattered?) upon the art world in the early post war years it was a novelty and at least since the late nineteenth century there had among the Western avant-garde been a thirst for the new and the shocking.  At the time first referred to as a form of abstract expressionism, what the early works did manage to convey was the feeling of something spontaneous, the relationship between what appears on the canvas and the physicality of the technique.  There had long been painters working in oil able to represent the gestures of their brush-strokes, usually with a graduated thickness in the layers on the surface but flinging the stuff around the room obviously brought a new violence to art.  Experimentation (and market differentiation) soon following and apart from the drippers and flingers, there were soon flickers, injectors (the use of syringes presumably thought a bit edgy), squeezers (wringing the paint from a soaked cloth), bursters (paint-filled balloons either thrown at the surface or popped from above) and even the odd spitter (paint ejected from the mouth).

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) at work, dripping.  To the untrained eye, it's really not possible to work out where the dripping ends and the splatter begins or if it matters or if a distinction between cause and effect is helpful.  The most famous of the drip painters and one of art's genuine celebrities, Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) claimed he was “...the greatest painter since Picasso.”

Number 17A (1948), oil on fiberboard by Jackson Pollock.  In 2015 it sold for US$200 million which made it then the world's fifth most expensive painting.  An early work, it's thought one of the purest examples of drip painting and as soon as it appeared in the August 1949 edition of Life magazine, Jackson Pollock became famous.   

One thing about splatter art which simultaneously is (for practitioners) an attraction and (for detractors) a damnation is that the conventional skills traditionally needed by painters are not only not required but are simply irrelevant.  One of the most common complaints of the form by an unimpressed public was usually something like “That’s not art, anyone could do that.”  In terms of the techniques that’s certainly true in that anyone can drip, fling, flick, inject, squeeze or burst (most might draw the line at the spit) but the matter for judgment remains what was produced, not how it was done.  It’s the critics who rule on these things and those specializing in splatter (and related techniques) claim the ability to tell the good form the bad and the masterpiece for everything else.  Of course the language used between such critics is something like that of a sect in that while the words might be familiar, the meanings conveyed and the knowledge known secrets concealed from all but the chosen few and their views can be the difference between a piece being worthless or selling at auction for a sex figure sum.  We really have to take their word for it.

Times Square (2022), oil on canvas being painted by Paul Kenton (b 1968).

Paul Kenton describes himself as a “cityscape artist” and combines variations of splatter techniques with some more traditional forms of “editing” to produce works which are closer to the more traditional forms of abstract expressionism than the drip genre defined by Pollock.