Paper short abstract:

My starting point is the painting of Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) where the human figure appears as itself a form of movement. Can I draw links between Spencer and a cosmopolitanism that deems movement to be a human birthright? Anyone’s life-project is a future created as a personal work of art.

Paper long abstract:

My approach to the study of movement is via the art of Stanley Spencer (1891-1959). Spencer painted the human figure as itself a form of movement. I find the paradox intriguing: as if Spencer sought to overcome the physical conundrum of identity as a point in space as against identity as a process, a flow. Spencer wanted to paint the human figure in its authenticity and to do so he felt he had to paint the human figure in movement or as movement.

As well as this, Spencer wanted to paint the human figure—and every other object, too, from cabbage leaves to broken teapots—in what he termed a 'redeemed' state. As for Thomas Hobbes, it seems that for Stanley Spencer movement carried a moral quality. The moving human figure on his canvas embodied a 'heavenly' truth, beauty and propriety beyond outward and 'static' appearance. Spencer wished to do justice to the identity of worldly objects by allowing for the movement of their forms.

I am not only intrigued by Stanley Spencer's art for its own sake. I also wonder whether I can draw links between his emphases and insights and a cosmopolitanism that deems movement to be a human birthright. Anyone moves through a life-project. By right. No one is to be trapped in the stasis of social-structural categories that someone else has dreamed up: 'woman', 'Muslim', 'apostate', 'pure'. Anyone's birthright is a futurity towards which and through which Anyone moves as a personal work of art.