To describe a specific sensation or object for which there’s no actual word, there’s the temptation to invent one. Douglas Adams’s 80s parlour-game-cum-dictionary, ‘The Meaning Of Liff’, solved this dilemma using existing place names. For instance:
IPSWICH (n.)
The sound at the other end of the telephone which tells you that the automatic exchange is working very hard but is intending not actually to connect you this time, merely to let you know how difficult it is.
I once gave a talk where I wondered out aloud what the hairdo equivalent for ‘namesake’ was, given I’m often compared to others purely on the basis on my hair (Andy Warhol, Boris Johnson, etc). I was duly grateful when Ms Kate St Clair shouted out ‘manesake!’.
Today I found myself experiencing a state of:
TATECARDLESSNESS (n.)
The particular mix of consumer frustration and disappointment when realising an art gallery’s shop doesn’t stock your favourite painting as a postcard.
At the Tate Britain shop today, quite a few people are audibly tatecardless, whining to the assistant with what must be a Frequently Asked Question – why isn’t there a postcard for the main painting of the current exhibition? The show is ‘Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination’, and revolves around Mr Fuseli’s famous 1781 work The Nightmare, depicting a sleeping woman in an ambiguous pose: part sexual abandonment, part rape victim, part murder victim. Her back is arched over the edge of the bed, long tresses to the floor. And some kind of unhuman creature is squatting over her helpless form, with nameless intent. It’s an image that was shocking at the time, becoming a popular print, inspiring the Gothic Romantic genre (hence the exhibition) and parodied even then by Mr Gillray and the other cartoonists of the age. They would substitute the usual ugly politician for the monster, and the girl would become ‘Foreign Policy’ or something like that.
Mr Freud had a copy of The Nightmare on his study wall, and no one was in the least bit surprised. As the exhibition illustrates with a cinema booth, the first great horror movies such as Mr Whale’s Frankenstein and Nosferatu (the first Dracula) paid direct homage to Mr Fuseli’s painting. If it’s got a young women in bed at the mercy of a monster, it’s this painting’s fault.
At the Tate shop, there’s postcards of many other works in the show, but not of the main draw. Often this is down to reproduction rights, remote ownership of the painting, and other such copyright complications. I ask, and it transpires on this occasion the postcard is normally available: but they’ve underestimated the demand and sold out. On top of which, I also can’t purchase an similarly inexpensive souvenir of my favourite Blake in the show: Satan in his Original Glory: ‘Thou wast Perfect till Iniquity was Found in Thee’. I am doubly tatecardless.
I know that these days you can usually find the image online, and assuming you have enough colour ink, print out your own cards (for non-profit, private use, naturally), but it’s not the same thing. When I see a painting I like in a gallery that sells postcards, I want to buy a postcard of it. For me, there’s no greater satisfaction to a day out than perusing a well-stocked Gift Shop. And no greater frustration than finding the shop doesn’t stock the one item you actually want.
The Natural History Museum doesn’t do dinosaur Sellotape, either.
