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A : Map of Maryon Park (London) 70 X 70 cm 28 X 28 inches
B : First extract from a interview of the writer Patrick Modiano 50 X 100 20 X 40
C : Film still from Antonioni’s film Blow-up 155 X 100 62 X 40
D : Tennyel’s illustration for Alice through the looking glass 100 X 150 40 X 60
E : Book cover of Patrick Modiano’s book Du plus loin de l’Oubli 30 X 30 12 X 12
F : Book cover ofP. Knightley and C. Kennedy’s book on the Profumo affair 30 X 30 12 X 12
G : Second extract from a interview of the writer Patrick Modiano 7 0 X 100 28 X 40
H, I, J Six portraits of Christine Keeler and Vanessa Redgrave photographed
& K, L, M : at different moments of their life 45 X 45 18 X 18
The polyptych Christine Keeler is the meeting point of various elements and clues :
- The likeness between Christine Keeler and Vanessa Redgrave, physically transformed by Antonioni, as if he wanted the actress to look like Christine Keeler. The social position of the man seeming somewhat mysterious and having to remain secret.
- Christine Keeler, the girl who was involved in the Profumo Affair, after she had a relationship with both a British minister and a Sovietic military attaché.
- In his novel, Du plus loin de l’oubll, the writer Patrick Modiano evokes several figures involved in the scandal and he later mentioned this borrowing in an interview.
- In this interview, the two extracts show partially contradictory statements about Modiano’s position towards reality :
Why do you always put a distance, why do you always write about the past ?
P.M. : It is very difficult to manage to write about things as soon as they happen because it seems necessary to have some kind of hindsight. You must feel the time has passed. Finding traces is really what motivates me to write. I can’t write directly about things, I need them to seem rather enigmatic. One must find the traces of things rather than the things themselves. It is much more evocative than when you tackle things fullface. It is like a mutilated statue, you tend to reconstruct it. Suggestion is stronger.
Why do you feel like doing without fiction ?
P.M. : If my novels were X-rayed, whole parts of the Profumo Affair, the Christine Keeler affair or the kidnaping of the Peugeot son would suddenly appear... I would like to tackle things in a more frontal way without having to use the framework of fiction.
- In his book Through the looking glass, Lewis Carroll makes Alice go through the mirror, just as a spy, going from one world to the other.
- Maryon Park was the London park where Antonioni’s film Blow-up was shot. This park has two parts, the second part being a sort of double of the first one : Maryon-Wilson Park.
Various worlds : politics, literature, cinema and sociology meet in the Christine Keeler polyptych. However, behind these different worlds other themes are underlying : the double, V. Redgrave appears as a double of C. Keeler. The relation between reality and fiction as in the Profumo affair or between reality and fantasy as in Alice going through the mirror. It is also a matter of wondering what is a person and a way to question what makes a human being through the changes of time and places.
Another clue is that the Maryon-Wilson family, who’s name is borne by the park, used to own the grounds in north London where was built the house where Sigmund Freud lived during his exile in England.
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