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Natalie Severn
Chief Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 557
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 5:32 am: |       |
This is slightly off at a tangent from the last few posts,all of which I have found instructive and helpful.
The picture I hold of Sickert from reading some of his biographical details here and there
is of a man who loved to have a lot of drama in his life and if it wasnt there naturally he would just invent it or pepper it up
or engineer some drama by fair means or foul.
This is how I see the hoax letters [if he wrote them].If he was determined to get as close as he possibly could to this enormous "Drama" with a world wide interest and there was a possibility of him whipping up some more hysteria over it then he MAY have thought I"m going to go for this
and see what happens.
Take Picasso at ninety in tiny shorts and little string vests with all those young girls he painted
Brigitte Bardot among them.
He was another consumate "show off" and although he wasnt much interested in murders [he was ofcourse profoundly moved by Guernica which vividly displays the murder of women and children in the Spanish civil war]
in general he can show a callous disregard for the feelings of the women he tired of in the hideous way he depicted them.They really are worth taking a look at for the cruel way he presented them.Which is not to say he isnt a great artist possibly the greatest[all round] who has ever lived!
So I dont feel Sickert was much different from say Picasso in his desire to shock,show off and depict the violence inherent in human behaviour.
Natalie |
Glenn L Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 1378
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 7:55 am: | |
I absolutely agree, Natalie.
Well put.
All the best
Glenn Gustaf Lauritz Andersson
Crime historian, Sweden |
Sarah Long
Chief Inspector
Username: Sarah
Post Number: 997
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:09 am: | |
M.Mc,
Sorry for getting your sex confused. Honest mistake.
Glenn/Natalie,
Completely agree.
Sarah |
M.Mc.
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 10:36 pm: | |
Thank you, that's my point! What was Salvador Dali trying to say in his art? I want to twist people inside out? 
http://www.dali-gallery.com/
Yeah right! Okay maybe we better keep a close eye on "Steven King" who is one dark SOB. Think about it!
http://www.malakoff.com/sking.htm
All these writers of HORROR MOVIES must be killers right? (Sighs) I don't think so!
Some people in the public eye do become killers but how often? Robert Blake, O.J. Simpson perhaps but nothing they did in the public eye could be used as a real clue to either case. O.J. Simpson a football player and hack actor. Oh yes, there must be some clue in that dumb police movie O.J. was in. (SCOFFS) Please? What about Fatty Arbuckle? Gee is my point getting anywhere here? To believe Sickert was Jack the Ripper because of his art is just silly. I think the only thing Cornwell may have proven is that Sicket likely wrote some HOAX Ripper letters. So did a few other people, so what? He painted a few painting that look like some of the photos taken of the victims. Maybe he paid someone off to see them on the police force or something. None of the painting look like the victims as Jack the Ripper killed them that I've seen. If Sickert was indeed JTR would the painting not have a sharp knife being used on a woman? Or perhaps a bleeding woman on the street who was posed such as the Ripper victims were? Where are these paintings? Hello? If anything Sickert made is like this then I might change my mind about him being the Ripper. So far I'm not buying it. 
Sickert had a twisted take on humor no doubt. However that still does NOT PROVE SICKERT WAS THE RIPPER. Sorry it's lame, too lame for me to suspect Sickert. Show me more than anything Cornwell has shown us so far. It's just ot enough for me. Sorry if you feel it is but in a court of law this would be scoffed at.  |
Dan Norder
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 10:32 pm: | |
Tommy wrote:
"First, like any other object it can contain fingerprints and DNA. "
True... but I haven't seen anything that would make me believe that these issues are relevant to the JtR case.
"Second, a painting (photo, video etc) can show something from a scene of crime that only the police or the criminal could know. "
Possibly... but that involves interpreting the painting to try to figure out what it is that the police or the criminal would supposedly only know. Cornwell's beliefs that Sickert's paintings are of Ripper victims are entirely subjective, and often ludicrously so. She also makes several untrue claims about what type of things only the police or the Ripper would know. For example, she states that nobody knew what the victims looked like in the morgue photos when drawings had been widely published throughout London and the world within a few days and the actual photos had been published in books within a few years after the murders and before the paintings in question were created.
So even if Cornwell's subjective opinions that certain figures in Sickert's opinions must be Ripper victims turn out to be true, it certainly doesn't mean he was anything more than interested in the crimes and well read, which we already knew.
"Third, a work of art may give a give a psychological background of the artist/suspect. "
This is so extremely subjective as to be completely worthless most of the time. Even experts in psychology often disagree on these things, and, as Cornwell has no formal experience in these matters and admits that she set out to prove Sickert guilty before she had any objective reason to do so, her opinions are even worse than useless in this regard.
"A work of art may also be a confession. "
Uhhh.... I suppose so. I'd be hard pressed to think of a reasonable example. There certainly is nothing in Sickert's case that would apply from a purely objective view of his work.
"There is no logic in saying Iīm a painter, Iīm not a killer painters donīt kill."
In and of itself, no, that's not inherently logical. But artists who pick dark subjects are no more likely to be killers than anyone else, so the whole question of whether someone was a painter with themes some people find objectionable should be totally removed from the question of whether someone was a killer or not. |
Sandy Hunter
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - 7:41 pm: | |
Absolutely fascinating discussion.
Society (broad generalisation there) was a curious mixed bag of diversity at the time of the murders and thereafter. It's interesting to look at the influences of those rapidly changing times and read the diaries and correspondence of Sickert contemporaries and gauge what occupied and influenced their psyche and lifestyles. The extremes are interesting. For instance, portraits of society ladies being kept from public display as it was considered too risque to show modom with a slightly lower neckline than was considered acceptable for polite society to view. Correspondence and diaries of prolific writers (even what you might call 'professional' writers, men of letters, academics, etc whatever) give the impression that not a great deal of attention or thought was given to the murders. Lashings of political intrigue, affairs, literary crits ad nauseum, gossip gossip gossip, skeletons in the cupboards of the 'known' et etc...but hardly a whisper relating to the murders in day to day correspondence of the time from people whom you would have thought would have had some awareness of them. Sickert's observations of the extremes...the often trivial concerns of the middle to upper classes, his familiarity with and participation in many levels of society...the temptation to to sometimes throw what was under their noses (how the other half live and die) into their faces must have been enormous and he sure seems to have done it on occasion...but interestingly he keeps a kind of safety zone of taste and trend of the time in there. He intrigues, perhaps taunts, perhaps not...and maybe interesting mixed messages, unfathomable perhaps at times.
What I find interesting about Cornwell's direction at times, is that it seems to hover around Sickert with a veil of possibility of a link somewhere in all of this.
Pearls are interesting...pearls always meant something in those days...his use of them seems to indicate many things. Whatever. Can anyone tell me if there was anything significant to any artist of the time connected with butterflies or a butterfly motif?
The painting discussed on another subject thread here was very interesting to me...can't find my way back to it at the moment. There was lengthy discussion about it...'Ennui'. I think there are some interesting things in that painting which seem to point elsewhere. Can anyone tell me about the man on the chair, specifically what is over his right side of the chair? I'm very interested in that. |
Tommy Nilsson
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 5:39 am: | |
So we agree that we donīt agree on art, Walter Sickerts art, the science of art and the science of psychology.
Leave art out of all criminal cases! You have made your point.
But except to critizise us (including Cornwell) who do believe in the importance of the above stated, what are your purpose in this discussion? Just to free Sickert and art from all suspicion?
Kind regards, Tommy
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Glenn L Andersson
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Glenna
Post Number: 1414
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 01, 2004 - 8:21 pm: | |
Tommy,
Who was your post addressed to?
Well, never mind -- I'll answer anyway.
"So we agree that we donīt agree on art, Walter Sickerts art, the science of art and the science of psychology.
Leave art out of all criminal cases! You have made your point."
Thank you. That was all I wanted to hear.
"But except to critizise us (including Cornwell) who do believe in the importance of the above stated, what are your purpose in this discussion? Just to free Sickert and art from all suspicion?"
I can't speak for anyone else here, but frankly I don't care if Sickert would turn out to be guilty -- I am not really that fond of his art anyway. So I have no personal interest in freeing him from suspicion.
But if someone is going to be accused of serial murders in an over 100 year old case, I would like to see this based on more reliable grounds and factual indications than subjective art interpretations, factual manipulations in order to make the facts "fit" the suspect, and pure imaginative fantasies.
This is a police investigation in a historical context and the case should be approached from that direction. Subjective interpretations of art and painted "confessions" that don't even have been established as "confessions" can't be regarded as evidence in a criminal investigation. Cornwell only sees what she wants to see in the paintings and her "facts" and "evidence" are based on sloppy research that wouldn't even stand up in court or would be interesting enough for the police to reopen a closed investigation. It simply won't do. It just won't do!
All the best
Glenn Gustaf Lauritz Andersson
Crime historian, Sweden |
Dan Norder
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, April 01, 2004 - 9:34 pm: | |
Tommy wrote:
"But except to critizise us (including Cornwell) who do believe in the importance of the above stated, what are your purpose in this discussion? Just to free Sickert and art from all suspicion?"
My purpose is to defend logic and honest research, not Sickert or art. What you say about Sickert's art has nothing to do with him being a killer, so I point that out. That doesn't mean I am defending Sickert.
Cornwell writes books about murder and death. If someone claimed that her art made her more likely to have been a serial killer, I would point out that they are wrong too. That doesn't mean I would be trying to free Cornwell and writing from all suspicion.
If anyone comes up with a logical reason to think Sickert (or Cornwell for that matter) killed anyone, then that'll stand on its own regardless of whether I earlier pointed out that being an artist is, by itself, unrelated to being a killer. |
M.Mc.
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 2:40 pm: | |
I for one refuse to have a battle of wits anymore with some of the people who are on Cornwell's side having Sickert as the Ripper. For most of them have the ture agenda to prove it anyway or anyhow they can. Without any true facts or any real logic. All just so some books can be writen and sold. Anyone who dares not believe are asked why we "defend" Sickert. That is not the point nor is it even a good come back. I do not defend Sickert but I do not put a bloody knife in his hand either. We have the right to question Mrs. Cornwell's book, just as we do any book writen. I myself have read many books on the subject of Jack the Ripper and found at least some slight slant in most of them. However in Cornwell's book I found a 100% slant with no real facts to back up much of what she claims. She may have proved Sickert wrote a HOAX JTR letter but everything else is just a guessing game with her. If anyone wishes to prove Sickert was really Jack the Ripper then it's simple. SHOW US THE FACTS, CLUES AND LOGIC BEHIND IT PLEASE! Other wise it's just a guessing game like so many other JTR suspects. The truth is nobody can prove yet if ever who Jack the Ripper was. Rather you believe he was Sickert, Carroll, Druitt, Tumblety, Cream or anyone else on the long list of suspects. I would sure hope that we at least have him on the list but the truth is that list may not have the real Jack the Ripper on it. He may have not even have ever been a suspect and forever be lost in the sands of time. Thus the guessing game goes on.  |
sharon peters
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 11:58 am: | |
These paintings are just eerie and disturbing. he must be a murderer, must be jack the ripper. |
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