Transitional Toys (Security Objects) / Jouets transitionnels

Description

“Pourquoi?

C’est qu’il y a une joie immanente au désir, comme s’il se remplissait de soi-même et de ses contemplations, et qui n’implique aucun manque, aucune impossibilité, qui ne se mesure pas davantage au plaisir, puisque c’est cette joie qui distribuera les intensités du plaisir et les empêchera d’être pénétrées d’angoisse, de honte, de culpabilité

– Deleuze et Guattari, Mille Plateaux, p.192.

 

Why?

There is a joy inherent in desire, which seems brim-full of itself and its contemplations, where nothing is lacking, or impossible, or to be gauged in terms of pleasure, since it is that joy which metes out the intensities of pleasure and will not allow them to be spoiled by anxiety or shame or guilt.

 

Really?

Actually it was my mistake. I was having tea and buns in the Café Gandolfi with the poet David Kinloch, telling him about Samuel Beckett and Donald Winnicot. With its designer driftwood furniture, the place itself is a transitional object, a time machine parked in Albion Street for 40 years now. Probably the first real piece of style since Mackintosh’s Willow Tea Rooms. Cafés and bars have to make you feel at home, or that you are in someone else’s movie, or even both at once. Otherwise you won’t go back. No one has ever asked me what my favourite rock song is, though I’ve had the answer ready for just as long: it’s ‘Wild Child’, from Lou Reed’s first solo album, (‘I was talking to Ed who’d been reported dead by a mutual friend; he thought it was funny that I had no money to spend on him…’): hip and hilarious, but a hair-raising whoop in the middle to let you know – this woman Lorraine that they’re talking about, she’s really worth Steve Howe’s guitar work. Anyway, I was telling him that Wilfred Bion, Beckett’s psychiatrist, had written a book about the psychological function of cuddly toys. Well yes and no: he was Beckett’s analyst, but it was Winnicot, not him, who wrote the book. Still, it got us both musing what manner of object old Sam would have cuddled as a toddler (or pointedly ignored). We wondered about a number of unlikely objects and unrequited writers, which led to the idea of asking living artists for their take on the subject.”

 

More on the Transitional Toys exhibitions:

Objects