Byron Society Lecture Series

Color Me Mad and Bad: Byron in Contemporary Art and the Representation of Byronic Affect

Years ago––2018 on Saint Valentine's Day, in fact––I did a radio interview for some friends of mine in the West Village of New York City. The piece was for their show Bar the Shouting "Show 26 - From Byron With Love.” Not that many people were talking about Byron in New York at the time, but as I am me––and I am always talking about Byron––my friends and hospitality colleagues wanted to do a special edition in celebration of the commercial Day of love. We thought, why do we love Lord Byron? Why did anyone love Byron? Was it his image, his aura, his expressions of subject-hood and voice in poetry that captivate and inspire us? Yes. Yes! People love Byron. Still. Today. And I––as always––want to know how and why. Partially to justify his importance to folks who––for some reason do not love him––but more significantly to understand the intricacies of artistic inspiration that are shared across individual experiences.

           This query was reignited when I went to see a new play this past November 2022, Jose Alvarez's XOXO, Lord Byron which debuted in New York City. As I sat down in the theater and observed the details of his set design, the enthusiastic audience members, and the program's explanation of Alvarez's background and sources for the play, I thought: it's happening! The importance of Byron's influence is trickling down through the streets of New York City and about have their song heard by new, fresh, keen ears. Of course, I curbed my own enthusiasm until the play started, as one can never know if the production about to be witnessed will be any good at all. I quickly hopped over that curb as soon as Alvarez walked onto the stage. A happy, unique, and modern iteration of Byron unlike what I had anticipated. This production showcased what Alvarez calls "a collage made up of Lord Byron's life experiences" that weave in his interpretations of Byronic techniques for producing shock and what lies behind the different masks we put on that perform the multifaceted personae through genre, gender, artistic mediums, and intrapersonal interactions. The play was fun. That word sounds like a short, empty phrase, but it is nothing but. The play held all of our attentions through its humor, its actions, its pauses, and even if a member of the audience knew nothing about the poet when they walked in, they were able to engage with some very significant moments known to some of us through his words and see what seems to be a more inclusive language of life. What I took away from that evening was that another, very young artist has found that unique pull in Byron has that pushes us to want to make our own art.

The lecture I gave for the Byron Society’s Lecture Series in February 2023, came out of past engagements I had with fellow artists––all of whom were new to me too before their works came into my view. The conversations I had with some these artists who were similarly inspired to explore themselves through shaping works of our dear Lord were also the base for papers I gave in 2019 both in Venice and Chicago for the bicentennial of Don Juan’s early Cantos. When Emily Paterson-Morgan from the Byron Society in London asked if I would be interested in giving another talk on Byron in art, I couldn't have been more excited to continue the work and search for new individuals that have cropped up over the past years. The majority of these works are paintings and drawings. One artist's sketches are part of a larger project bringing Byron’s work into film. Some have been painting Byron since the 1960s. I also included the woks of a 16-year old artist who I discovered even more recently through Twitter, whose fervent posts caught my attention only months ago. I showed some images I selected from the vast array of work and guided my audience even into the realm of computer generation, capturing something even more contemporary in ai's ways of pulling information housed in databases carrying Byron into yet another future. Talk about adding a new source to Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." I walked the attendees through the pieces and read some bios from the artists’ websites. Many of the artists shared their responses with me themselves pertaining to their techniques and methodologies. Some questions I posed to these artists––what was it that drew them to Byron and in what ways did moments erupt in their own lives that were worked out on canvas and paper because of Byron? Their replies illuminate a line tracing attraction whose resulting artworks capture a distinct presence of Byronic aura. By reading Byron’s texts, letters, and biographies, these artists developed a desire to touch, to paint, to linger in his lines through creating their own translation of experiencing identification with the poet. The uncanniness in similarities of all artists––even in the diversity of their expressions––is what I most enjoy sharing with the Byron community to honor and celebrate the continuation Byron's influence in contemporary art.