Acrylic and paper on glass 30 x 10 cm 2023

LOUISE BROOKS I did not realise until I saw Pandora’s Box in 1956 how marvelouslly Mr. Pabst’s perfect costume sense symbolised Lulu’s character and her destruction. There is not a single spot of blood on the pure white bridal satin in which she kills her husband. Making love to her wearing the clean white peignoir, Alwa asks,

‘Do you love me, Lulu?’

‘I? Never a soul!’

It is in the worn and filthy garments of the streetwalker that she feels passion for the first time she comes to life so that she may die. When she picks up Jack the Ripper on the foggy London street and he tells her he has no money to pay her, she says, ‘Never mind, I like you.’ It is Christmas Eve and she is about to receive the gift which has been her dream since childhood. Death by a sexual maniac.

Naked on my goat was the name Louise gave to her autobiography which was thrown in the incinerator instead she wrote

Why I will never write my memoir

in which she summed herself up as a prototypical Midwesterner ‘born in the bible belt of anglo saxon farmers, who prayed in the parlor and practiced incest in the barn.’

Although her sexual education had been conducted in Paris London Berlin and NY her pleasure was she wrote ‘ restricted by the inbred shackles of sin and guilt’

In writing the history of a life I believe absolutely that the reader cannot understand the character and deeds of the subject unless he is given a basic understanding of that persons sexual loves  and hates and conflicts…it is the only way the reader can  make sense out of the innumerable apparently senseless actions…

then she writes of the exposee that is written to shock to excite to make money

and the serious book where characters remain baffling.

I too am unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make a life worth reading. I cannot unbuckle the bible belt.

I’ve never been in love

She receives a picture sent to her from a neighbour

That picture brought back something I’d blacked out for thirty seven years

When I was nine years old Mr Flowers molested me sexually ..he must have had a great deal to do with shaping my attitude towards sexual pleasure.

She senses the buried trauma in the parts she plays but she still doesn’t join up the dots

Until she receives the photograph and then she starts unbuckling the belt

Mr Flowers was her rosebud

Annihilation was her real passion

Christmas has come early

If I bore you it’ ll be with a knife

Louise’s own words from Lulu In Hollywood.