Peter Michael Martin's Corporeal Visions: Love, Death, and Democracy in Moby-Dick

Abstract

Abstract: Moby-Dick has been the near-exclusive focus of artist Peter Michael Martin's prolific output—in woodblock print, papercut, sculpture, and photograph—over the past decade. By examining Martin's depictions of bodies—in isolation, in pairs, in collectives—this essay provides a primer on Martin's recent works. The essay begins by considering Martin's portraits of Ishmael, Queequeg, and Ahab in two series of black-and-white photographs, Altered Visions and Call me Ahab. Altered Visions illustrates the union of Queequeg and Ishmael as their embrace transcends physical and social divisions. Call Me Ahab , conversely, emphasizes Ahab's solitude, as he communes only with the "naught beyond" (Melville 159). Juxtaposing scenes of intimacy with emblems of death, these works consider the body as a site of both connection and isolation, friendship and subjugation. The second half of this essay discusses two of Martin's larger-scale works (the mixed-media assemblage Trumped Up Optimism and the woodblock print Above the Rest ), designed for display in public spaces. These works depict bodies en masse as deindividuated crowds under the control of a sole leader, recasting the social visions of Ishmael and Ahab as a conflict between democracy and totalitarianism. Ultimately, I argue, in the nude form, Martin finds an allegory for artistic vulnerability, which enables the radical self-expression Melville champions through Ishmael. Thus, in his depictions of bodies, Martin probes tensions between individual and collective agency and advances "Melvillean vulnerability" as a strategy for social transformation.