I've been reading up on Mr Tillet, The French Angel. He's starting to sound like a character from an epic novel, something historical and smelling of greasepaint like 'Nights at the Circus' or Glen David Gold's 'Sunnyside', which I'm reading at the moment.
'Four enterprising young anthropologists' measured his head in 1940, presumably so they could do research or play a kind of measurements Top Trumps game with their chums. It's odd that they seemed surprised by the 'thank you' letter. What were they expecting him to do? Send them a crayon drawing of a horse-y? Why is it so hard to recognise unusual looking people as anything other than performing animals.
More recent accounts of Tillet usually tend to end with people speculating whether Shrek was based on his unusual visage. And then someone will probably suggest that he probably had a'good soul', which is well-meaning, but also a bit patronising.
Nobody seems to have asked the most important questions about the French Angel, namely: 1) Did the Americans ever try to use him in World War Two? And if so, how? 2) Who would win in a paranormal wrestling bout between Tillet's ghost and Andre the Giant's?
It wasn't part of yesterday's exhibition, but there are other Irving Penn pictures of the Angel online, like the one I've used here. It seems that old timey wrestlers had to wear granny pants whilst in the ring. I bet they were glad when spandex was invented.
No comments:
Post a Comment