ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Stanley Spencer used his art both to prescribe a general metaphysic for earthly life and to describe—reflect, correct and redeem—his own life in particular. Spencer at one stage wanted them both, Hilda: spiritual, domestic, thoughtful, considerate, sincere, complex, gauche, circumspect, intense; and Patricia: sophisticated, sexy, socially connected, elegant, stylish, vivid, lively, direct, forceful, superficial, teasing and opportunistic. One's individual self, one's real spiritual self, Spencer was fond of claiming, is present everywhere. Alterography and anthropography give onto what might be termed the cosmopolitan anthropology of discerning the relation between our species wholeness and its individual embodiments. A commensurate understanding of 'power' figured in a further fieldwork project that saw working as a hospital porter in a large Scottish teaching hospital. Human beings meet on the surface of themselves; they see one another's faces; they are affected by one another's actions; they engage in common practices, perhaps; they even make love.
