Some saw Sorenson’s work as derivative of the earlier Young British Artists (YBAs), and coterminous with the type of shock tactics deployed in the UK by this group. Although she personally declared herself to be “unmoved” by the YBAs’ work and processes, this seems somewhat disingenuous, as she was collected and championed by Manhattan socialite Mitford, in much the same way the YBAs had enjoyed the patronage of Charles Saatchi a decade earlier.
Though Sorenson’s paintings would enthrall collectors, critics remained unimpressed, and the artist herself declared that she herself was dissatisfied with results, expressing a wish to move into sculpture.
Future Human
(2009) was the result. The sculptures of the evolved humans, adapting to the environment of a toxic Earth by scuttling like rats or feeding like flies on garbage mounds, moved collectors even more than the paintings. Sorenson’s figures have been influenced by the bronze sculptures of Germaine Richier, particularly
Man of the Night,
the batlike Alien/Predator precursor of her effigies. This sculpture is on exhibit in Sorenson’s alma mater, the Art Institute of Chicago. Like many of Sorenson’s sculptures and paintings, the
Man
also has a prominent phallus. Her male figures are always strongly endowed to suggest a sexual potency and perhaps even high reproductive fertility, yet, paradoxically, there are many illustrations of dead babies. Thus we assume that Sorenson’s humans are like rabbits; they must breed prolifically in order to ensure the future of the species. It is like medieval times, and the opposite of where we are at now, in that it is accepted that we are breeding and consuming toward our own extinction.
The critical establishment remains largely hostile, and in their exasperated, often ungracious and even vitriolic comments, one senses a genuine incomprehension of exactly why Sorenson has achieved such prominence. The phantom frustration in the words of Max Steinbloom is never far from the surface of their reactions: “Lena Sorenson should be in Hollywood making models for the big studios in their next productions of
Aliens
or
Predators.
Whatever else she is, she clearly is not an artist. She uses the gimmick of animal bones. That’s all it is.”
While Sorenson’s work has often been decried by art critics (“speculative, of its nature fantastical, and thus bearing no relation to the human experience of today, other than serving as a rather trite warning about the stock ecological threats to the planet”), her series of sculptures of futuristic man, using the bones of small mammals and reptiles fused together in molds and resins, have nonetheless proved popular collectors’ items. One of the pieces,
Plaything
(2009), where a mother cradles a dead or dying infant, while a male figure, presumably the father, looks on in bemused concern, garnered almost unprecedented attention and was purchased by a private collector for a reputed $14 million.
Lena Sorenson has now relocated to Miami, where she stated her appreciation of the work of Hong Kong-born Englishman Mark Handforth, who was the first Miami-based artist to exhibit at MOCA in 1996. It was his work that was said to have encouraged Sorenson to make her models and sculptures on a larger scale. “Small models lend a work no human perspective. The power of art like Mark Handforth’s comes as much from scale as from concept. That was a valuable lesson for me.” This indicates her desire to work on those larger, life-sized future humans.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: My program is not about “whipping self-indulgent lardasses into shape”!
Lucy,
I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here, because I really appreciate your zeal in the battle against obesity. But I think you must have a little more empathy with your clients!
These are people who have somehow lost their way in life, and have grown depressed and demotivated and then sought refuge in comfort food in order to give them a short-term spike.
They didn’t get that way overnight, and it is often a long and painful road back to health for them. Yes, you need to be firm, but you need to look at the history, the needs and big life events for each client, including this artist lady. Remember, respect and love are the cornerstones of success!
I appreciate that programs have to be tailored toward individual needs, but I really do strongly recommend that you adopt the device of Morning Pages for this client. If you can get her to write 750 words every morning, then these might be able to form the basis of a discussion—though I stress that this has to come from her, as they are her property. This woman is hurting psychologically. If you get to the source of that pain, then you’re pushing at an open door. Morning Pages can be an invaluable tool in helping you do that. Try it! Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been having problems. The media can be both fickle and cruel.
Best,
Michelle
IT’S “UNSEASONABLY HOT”
today, as those assholes on the weather channel keep trumpeting. It said 92 on my cellphone weather app, and I believe it. Thankfully, there’s a cool breeze coming off the ocean. I’m running backward slowly down the track in Lummus Park, barking encouragement at the waddling Sorenson, who pants, groans, and sweats. — Go on, Lena! No room for quitters!
— Yes . . .
I burst into an impromptu chant. — Sack that bullshit, we ain’t gon-na fucking quit! C’mon, Lena!
— Sack . . . that . . . bull . . . shhh . . . Sorenson pathetically gasps, her dull, unfocused cow eyes indicating a soul vacationing in limbo.
What’s the story, Morning Pages?
I start to get that song, the one about Nelson Mandela, into my head.
For ten years a prisoner of obese-i-tee . . . it make her so blind that she cannot see
. . . — Free-ee-hee-hee Len-na Saw-ren-son . . . sing it in your heart, baby, I roar at the side of her head, — I know why the caged bird sings!
Sorenson just trudges along in confusion. I’m trotting alongside her, almost in reverse; by God she’s fucking slow, but at least she’s doing it. — We ain’t gon-na . . . darn well . . . quit . . .
It’s the food. Eating. That’s her main problem. We’re just wasting our fucking time unless I can get her brain rewired to stop swallowing goddamn excrement. But there is hope. It’s about educating their taste buds, weaning them off that constant diet of sugar, salt, corn syrup, and chemicals they’ve been subjected to since childhood, usually by their lazy, tightwad, dumbassed mothers.
We finish up and the bitch is gushing like a Southie hydrant in a heatwave. Once she recovers I take her for a salad at my favorite spot on Washington. Juice & Java is a small, brightly lit cafe, with cream walls and a pink-tiled floor. We sit in the high chairs in the large windows, as the light streams in. The clientele are generally, with the exception of Sorenson, in magnificent shape. It’s very rare to come in here and see somebody who isn’t fuckable. Sorenson’s pores discharge bullets of sweat due to the air conditioning. Gross.
I peruse the menu: these salads are so flavorful and filling, the traditional lardass rabbit-food defense can’t hold up. — This is the shit you should be eating, and I start taking pictures of the menu on my iPhone, instantly emailing them to her. — Those food groups. No excuses!
I order a grilled tofu salad; Lena follows suit. — That’s 380 cal, plenty of protein, fiber, low but complex carbs and the fats present are good ones, I explain. — With a twelve-ounce glass of water they will fill
anybody
up for four hours!
Then Sorenson’s telling me about growing up in Potters Prairie, Otter County, Minnesota. It’s all fresh, piney woods, adorable trash-raiding black bears, and Momma’s apple pie. (Double helpings with loads of cream, no doubt.) The last I buy, the rest . . . sorry, Lena, you just ain’t cutting it, you chunky Scandinavian depressive, you. When did the Pop-Tarts start to get swallowed like M&M’s? What happened? I await the disclosure; the stepdad’s creepy touch, the dysfunctional alco mom, or the psycho kid’s bullying mob. Fuck them. But no. Sorenson ain’t moving from
The Little House on the Potters Prairie
script, and with a reasonably wealthy papa thrown in, just to suck any sting out of that rustic poverty.
The food arrives, and as she starts shoveling it away, Sorenson’s evidently impressed. — This is soooo good, she bleats, as a couple of skinny uberbitches give the oblivious blimp a disgusted once-over.
— Glad you like.
Then Sorenson moves on to Chicago, and her time spent at the Art Insitute. — It was my town, my place, my time; that was where I met Jerry . . .
Nee-naw . . . warning bells . . .
I’m all fucking ears now. We’ve been building up to this. Since I first heard that name mentioned by the bathroom scale. I let her tell the story of her and this “Jerry” character. It seems Sorenson left Minnesota for art college in Chicago, met this guy, got fucked properly for the first time, and partied like hell. The big problem, although she can’t quite bring herself to say it, was that he just happened to be a total asshole. This became more apparent when Sorenson and lover-boy Jerry went to Miami, him freeloading into an art scene that embraced Lena because of her talent.
— I had an acclaimed exhibition in Chicago, then New York—
— Can I say something here? I cut in. Sorenson looks at me, as if I’m about to violate her pussy, then her ass, with a vibrating, jumbo-sized dildo. But yet her eyes are telling me
she fucking wants it.
— Sounds to me like you let your own considerable talent go to waste in order to support this gutless leech who couldn’t get arrested if he tried to exhibit himself outside the gates of a junior high, I tell her. Somehow, when I think of this Jerry asshole, I get an image of that chicken-hearted pedophile fuck Winter, whom the pussy McCandless ought to have wasted. And that bastard in the park, from high school, the one I should have fucking laid to waste like the sick little insect he was. THE PARK THE PARK THE FUCKING PARK.
— But—
I raise a hand, and shake my head in the negative. — Hear me out. Maybe I’m outta line here, but I saw this book on you, up at that Books & Books store on Lincoln. You have talent, Lena. You’re fucking famous, for chrissakes!
Now
she
is shaking her head, her timid eyes nervously flitting under those bangs. Like a fucking retarded thirteen-year-old. — No. It was just a time when that thing was vogue. I was lucky. I had a lot of criticism from people in the art wor—
— From jealous, talentless fucks, who’ve never made a fucking dime from their shit! And you sold a little sculpture of bird bones and fiberglass that made you eight million big ones!
Of course
you had critics!
I’m
your fucking critic, you lucky bitch, and I punch her on the arm. — And that fact doesn’t make
you
a bad artist, it makes
me
one jealous motherfucker! Own your talent, Lena. Not facing up to your own unique and special gifts is what’s killing you. Junk food is just the device: your own personal little weapon of self-destruction. It could as easily be drugs or booze, and she nods grimly in agreement. — This Jerry character, he never had a book about his work, did he?
— No, she says, a little smile playing across her lips. It transforms her: she looks so fucking cute.
— But I’ll bet he preened around like a pompous asshole, thinking he was some sick shit. Right?
Lena smiles, shaking her head, then, as if worried about appearing disloyal by badmouthing this prick, says, — But Jerry has real talent as a photographer—
— Fuck that noise! I know jack about that stuff, but even I get that photography isn’t art! It’s just fucking around with light. Good photographers are like pigeons here in Miami Beach, I tell her, picking a piece of nut out from between my teeth.
Sorenson gives a collusive smile, before doubt slams home, almost jackknifing her. — I know how it looks . . . but you don’t understand, she begs, then sniffs, raising a napkin to her moist eyes, — Jerry wasn’t just bad . . . there was more to him than that. There was more to
us
than that!
— I’m sure there was, but that’s gone now, Lena, I’m whispering urgently. — It’s the outcome you gotta think about. Him, playing you for a fool, then probably going off and fucking some model bitch . . . I can see the truth in that one as Sorenson takes a sharp inhalation of breath, — . . . and you, mutilating yourself, cause that’s what it is Lena—self-mutilation with sugar and fat!
A defiant pout, as Sorenson sweeps back her bangs. — Have you ever been in love, Lucy?
What the fuck has that got to do with anything?
— Yeah, I have. And yeah, sometimes it sucks, sometimes it ends bad, I tell her, and I’m thinking of Jon Pallota. We had something, but were both a little too fiery to make it work on a day-to-day basis. I always thought that maybe we’d get back together sometime, but that was before the big fish came along to fuck up his dick and his head. — But it never has
any chance
of working out if you don’t love yourself, and go into a relationship looking for the other person to affirm your fucking existence!
— Jerry gave me so much!
— And took plenty, I’ll wager. I meet those sad green eyes. — Lena, it’s obvious his art stuff sucked serious ass, and nobody gave a flying fuck. I don’t need your coy shrugs to tell me what happened next—seen that shit a million times before. This Jerry creep undermined you, didn’t he, Lena?
— He could be so fucking cruel, she spits, back to riding her anger.
— While spending your money, I’m betting, I tell her, as the two bony-assed uberbitches settle up and leave. One shoots a nakedly hateful glance at Sorenson, catches me catching her, and we exchange flashbulb screwed-up controlling smiles. Fucking bitch.
Sorenson is sitting in a livid silence, tapping a fork against the table. I swear if this Jerry creep walked in here right now, she’d gouge his fucking eyes out of his head.