V&A East Storehouse: Everything Everywhere All at Once

V&A Storehouse

V&A East Storehouse is the open-access depository for the Victoria & Albert Museum’s collection of art, design, fashion and performance. With a total floorspace of 16,000 square meters (over 30 basketball courts) and spanning four levels, it is based in Hackney Wick, London, on a site originally used as the media centre for the 2012 Olympic Games. It is free to enter.
 
Walking up the stairs, through an airlock, I found myself in a world of steel, glass and gantries; of spacious aisles, long shelves and open crates – all artificially lit from above to protect the exhibits. 
 
I passed marble heads, ornate furniture and colourful vases; cherubs, chessboards and chimney pots. Here was an example of Palestinian embroidery, a collection of Yemeni funerary stelae. Over there, costumes and cannons; street signs, an abacus, a wireless and some grandfather clocks. Through the glass floor-window, a carved colonnade from Agra.
 
Everything was carefully catalogued and bar coded – but, at the same time, the collection was completely jumbled up. 
 
Arms and armour, rococo mirrors, a gleaming motorbike and a ‘70s mug collection. A Minitel 1 computer terminal. A small child’s West Ham top, sponsored by ‘BAC, the window people.’
 
A middle-aged woman walked past, observing to her husband:
 
‘They seem to have had a lot of boxes in the olden days.’

V&A Storehouse

I was feeling a little disorientated. I yearned for some commentary to make sense of it all - something to aid insight and understanding; to illuminate theme and variation. However, the collection is arranged by the sizes and weights of the objects. And, with the exception of some highlight-displays at the end of each storage rack, there is no attempt at formal categorisation or neat narrative. 
 
A sign asked for Feedback:
‘What new stories could we tell about our objects?’
 
Underneath, someone had complained: 
‘Silence is a terrible narrator.’
 
To be fair, visitors are invited to scan QR codes to learn more about some of the objects. But I’m too old for that now, and it reminds me of Covid. There is also an Order an Object service, by which you can arrange an appointment to see up to 5 pieces from the collection in a private study room.
 
Most people were, like me, just wandering around, taking it all in, peeking at anything that caught their eye.

V&A Storehouse

Past some ceramic tiles, tribal masks and a toy truck. A gilded altarpiece, a corset and a double bass. Blue plaque, bike, Budha, Bowie setlist. 
 
At length, I overheard a Young Person exclaim in delight:
 
‘Every 2 seconds I’m seeing something and thinking: Yo, that’s so cool!’

Adopting this mindset, I determined to let myself go; to give in to the infinite variety; to be curious, available for interesting juxtapositions, for serendipity.
In the accompanying literature, one of the architects described the experience as ‘an immersive cabinet of curiosities.’ I found myself grasping for other analogies. It’s like channel surfing; walking through the internet of things; a garden of culture. It’s like Charles Foster Kane’s vast collection of antiquities. It’s the multiverse. It’s everything everywhere all at once.
 
I came across a couple of set-piece show-stoppers: the Kaufmann Office, a complete honey-coloured interior, designed in the 1930s by Frank Lloyd Wright for a Pittsburgh retail magnate; the Frankfurt Kitchen, a pistachio exercise in minimalist functionality, created in the 1920s by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, and installed in 10,000 flats.

V&A Storehouse

And then there was a melancholy display of remnants from a now demolished Brutalist housing estate in nearby Polplar, Robin Hood Gardens. And some toiles that fashion students have crafted, based on original designs by Balenciaga – an imaginative exercise to better understand his technique.
 
Shoes, chandeliers, a painted tiger and a bus conductor. I could go on…
 
I’d certainly recommend a visit to the V&A East Storehouse. You just need to adopt the right mentality: set aside the Strategist’s craving for order and explanation; relax, be inquisitive, and open yourself up to stimulation and inspiration.
 
Finally, back to the Visitor Feedback:
‘What new stories could we tell about our objects?’
 
In a flamboyant scribble, a Young Person had requested:
‘Haunted, demonic and possessed, puhlease!!!’
 
Exactly.
 
 
'A police car and a screaming siren.
A pneumatic drill and ripped up concrete,
A baby wailing and stray dog howling,
The screech of brakes and lamp light blinking,
That's entertainment.
That's entertainment.
A smash of glass and a rumble of boots,
An electric train and a ripped up phone booth,
Paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat,
Lights going out and a kick in the balls.
I say, that's entertainment.
That's entertainment.
Days of speed and slow time Mondays,
Pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday,
Watching the news and not eating your tea,
A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls.
I say that's entertainment.
That's entertainment.’
The Jam, ’That’s Entertainment’ (P Weller)

No. 577

Glengarry Glen Ross: ‘Always Be Closing’

Rosa Salazar and Dorothea Myer-Bennett in The Old Vic production of Glengarry Glen Ross.

I enjoyed a recent production of David Mamet’s ‘Glengarry Glen Ross.’ (The Old Vic, London, until 18 July)
 
Levene: I need the leads. I need them now. Or I’m gone, and you’re going to miss me, John, I swear to you.
 
Written in the faltering, fragmented metre of everyday diction (Mamet dedicated the work to Harold Pinter), this 1983 play considers the ruthlessness at the heart of contemporary capitalism, the toxic nature of competition.
 
Levene: That’s cold calling. Walk up to the door. I don’t even know their name. I’m selling something they don’t even want. You talk about soft sell… before we had a name for it…before we called it anything, we did it.
 
The drama centres around a Chicago real estate office where four agents, vying against one another in a sales contest, have a few more days to establish their position on the performance board. The top man wins a Cadillac, the second wins a set of steak knives, the bottom two get fired.
 
Richard ‘Ricky’ Roma, the most successful agent, is confident, manipulative, loquacious.
 
Roma: Bad people go to hell? I don’t think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won’t live in it. That’s me.
 
Shelly ‘The Machine’ Levene is past his prime. He has not closed a big deal in a long time and is getting desperate. 
 
Levene: Put a closer on the job…Put a proven man out…and you watch your dollar volumes…You start closing them for fifty ‘stead of twenty-five.
 
Meanwhile, Dave Moss is jealous of his colleagues, and resentful of the unseen agency owners. And George Aaronow lacks self-esteem and is fading fast.
 
The four salespeople are dependent on leads supplied by John Williamson, the despised office manager. 
 
Roma: Williamson: listen to me: when the leads come in… listen to me: when the leads come in, I want my top two off the list. For me. My usual two.

David Mamet. 1999. Photo by © Robin Holland

As the story unfolds, we witness the key characters plot and conspire, insult and disparage each other. They are aggressive, abrasive, argumentative. They’ll do anything, to anyone, to survive and succeed.
 
Levene persuades Williamson to give him some of the prime ‘Glengarry leads’, but only in return for fifty bucks a prospect, in advance, and twenty per cent commission. 
 
Levene: Do I want charity? Do I want pity? I want sits. I want leads don’t come right out of a phonebook. Give me a lead hotter than that, I’ll go in and close it. Give me a chance. That’s all I want.
 
Moss hatches a plan to break into the office, steal all the prime leads and sell them to another real estate agency. And Roma seduces a nervous, reluctant client to sign on the dotted line. 
 
At length, even the struggling Levene cuts a deal, drawing on all his experience, and inspired by the old sales maxim: ‘always be closing.’
 
Levene: This is it, Harriett. I don’t want to f**k around with you. I don’t want to go round this, and pussyfoot around the thing, you have to look back on this. I do, too. I came here to do good for you and me. For both of us. Why take an interim position? The only arrangement I’ll accept is full investment. Period. The whole eight units. I know that you’re saying ‘be safe’, I know what you’re saying. I know if I left you to yourselfs, you’d say ‘come back tomorrow’ and when I walked out that door, you’d make a cup of coffee… you’d sit down…and you’d think ‘let’s be safe…’ and not to disappoint me you’d go one unit or maybe two, because you’d become scared because you’d met possibility. But this won’t do and that’s not the subject. That’s not the subject of our evening together.
 
In the sphere of modern commerce, we all subscribe to the positive power of competition. We believe that salesmanship drives success; that rivalries are healthy; that struggle fortifies; that conflict produces progress. 
 
‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ reminds us that, unbridled and unfettered, competition can get out of hand. It can be cut-throat, cancerous, corrosive, breeding paranoia, lies and betrayal. It can turn colleagues against each other and destroy customer relationships.
 
In order to function optimally, capitalism needs moderation and management, curbs and constraints. Interdependence demands teamwork and collaboration. 
 
Because, without such safeguards, we’ll be left in a world of Ricky Romas.
 
Roma: It’s not a world of men… It’s a world of clock watchers, bureaucrats, office holders… What it is, it’s a f**ked up world… there’s no adventure to it… Dying breed. Yes it is. We are the members of a dying breed.
 

'Someone will call, something will fall,
And smash on the floor.
Without reading the text, know what comes next.
Seen it before and it's painful.
Things must change,
We must rearrange them.
Or we'll have to estrange them.
All that I'm saying,
A game's not worth playing,
Over and over again.’
Depeche Mode, 'The Sun and the Rainfall’ (M Gore)

No. 576

Don’t Worry, Get Angry

Giaele e Sisara (ca.1620) - Artemisia Gentileschi (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest)

Two elderly ladies had stopped to have a chat by the frozen food section at Islington Sainsbury’s.
 
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Barbara. That’s awful. But you know, you shouldn’t worry about it.’
 
Barbara took her friend by the arm, and made her point forcefully.
 
‘I’m not worried about it, Sheila. I’m just pissed off!’
 
There was a pause as the women reflected on the situation, and then Barbara continued.
 
‘They say ‘be the better woman’ and all that malarkey. But Sheila, I’m just really bloody annoyed.’ 
 
I rather liked Barbara’s attitude to life: don’t worry, get angry.
 
In the world of work, we often let conflicts and disagreements eat away at us. We fret and fuss, brood and agonize. We lose sleep and gain ulcers. 
 
But anger is perhaps a more constructive mode. 
 
Though often characterised as a negative emotion, anger, properly harnessed and directed, can fire us up, energise and excite us. It can prompt intense planning and focused action. It can be a creative force.
 
As musician John Lydon has frequently observed, ‘anger is an energy.’
 
‘Don't view anger negatively, don't deny it – use it to be creative… It can take just one positive move to change things for the better… Sometimes the arguing actually helps; it feeds in.’ 
John Lydon, ‘My Life Uncensored’

The two elderly ladies had clearly known each other for many years. Their conversation seemed to have helped, and they separated in good spirits by the frozen peas.
 
‘Anyway, I’ve got to hurry along, Barbara.’
‘Yes, of course, Sheila. Give my love to Dennis.’
 
 
 
'Drove to the forest in a Japanese car.
The smell of rubber on country tar.
Hindsight does me no good.
Standing naked in this back of the woods.
The cassette played pop tones.
I can't forget the impression you made.
You left a hole in the back of my head.
I don't like hiding in this polish and peat.
It's wet and I'm losing my body heat.
The cassette played pop tones.
This bleeding heart looking for bodies.
Nearly injured my pride.
Preys picnicking in the British countryside.
Pop tones.
Pop tones.’
Public Image Ltd, ‘Poptones’ (J Lydon / J Wardle / K Levene)

No. 575

Zurbarán: The Serene Drama

Francisco de Zurbarán - Saint Serapion. 1628. Oil on canvas, 120.7 × 104.1 cm Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

I recently visited a splendid exhibition of the work of Francisco de Zurbarán. (The National Gallery, London until 23 August)

With dramatic lighting, vivid storytelling and an eye for sumptuous fabrics, this 17th century Spanish Master articulated the mysteries of his faith. Today he provides lessons in emotional intensity, in simplicity, clarity and calm.

Born in remote Extremadura in 1598, at 15 Zurbarán travelled to Seville, which was then a prosperous port city, with strong links to Spain’s American colonies. Having learned painting, carving and gilding, he received commissions from the many religious orders in the town; and subsequently from the royal court in Madrid, and from wealthy private patrons.

The Catholic church was encouraging art as a vehicle for devotion: ‘a bridge between heaven and earth.’ And so Zurbarán painted saints, monks and martyrs; the immaculate conception and the crucified Christ; monumental altarpieces of religious scenes, and small, exquisite still lifes that prompted reflection on the fundamental magnificence of nature.

Zurbarán introduces us to a procession of obscure saints who have suffered for their faith.

Francisco de Zurbarán - 'Saint Casilda', about 1635, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Saint Margaret of Antioch, having been swallowed by a dragon, has emerged unscathed. We find her in pristine shepherd’s costume, a saddlebag slung over one arm. (The monster skulks in the background, somewhat crestfallen.) The Muslim princess Saint Casilda of Toledo has been smuggling food to Christian prisoners. When she is confronted, the bread rolls hidden in her richly embroidered frock, have miraculously transformed into roses. Saint Apollonia, her teeth wrenched out by her Roman torturers, has thrown herself into a fire. However, we meet her dressed in a fabulous pink and yellow silk gown, her emerald-green cape fastened at the neck with a jewelled brooch, and holding a pair of pliers - she is the patron saint of dentistry. 

These martyrs have triumphed over death. Elegantly attired, peaceful and poised, they regard us with benign looks of encouragement.

Zurbarán, whose merchant father sometimes dealt in cloth, is a superb painter of textiles. We marvel at the ornate floral bodices and flowing cloaks; the shimmering silk and heavy gold brocade; the opulent pleats and folds.  

Though he has suffered a violent end, Saint Serapion is depicted with a tranquil expression on his face, in a spotless white robe. Even the homespun wool of Saint Francis of Assisi’s habit is rendered with painstaking precision. We encounter him in his tomb, looking up to heaven. As witnessed by Pope Nicholas V, he has remained standing, his body uncorrupted. 

Francisco de Zurbarán - Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth. Circa 1640. Oil on canvas, 165 x 218.2 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio © The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Oh

Zurbarán’s work, contrasting bright light and dark shadow, displays an intense naturalism and deep emotional power. Nowadays we most often think of drama as something fast and furious. We imagine noise and action; quick cuts and excitement. Zurbarán sets narrative turmoil to one side, and makes time stand still. He presents us with characters that have a silent stillness, a self-assured tranquillity. He offers us serene drama.

Clearly Zurbarán’s faith was a major engine of his creativity. Though the infant Christ is untroubled when he pricks his finger while weaving a crown of thorns, his mother, pondering his fate, rests her head on one hand, weeping. An innocent white lamb, its legs tied in preparation for sacrifice, represents the body of Christ. So realistic. So poignant.

Even Zurbarán’s still lifes invite quiet contemplation of the spiritual. A white ceramic cup sits next to a pink rose on a silver tray - the water in the cup suggesting the purity of the Virgin Mary, the thornless roses calling to mind the immaculate conception. 

The artist’s devotion is most evident in his crucifixion scenes. Christ, naked but for a luminous white loin cloth, is open mouthed, a few rivulets of blood trickling from his wounds. He shines out in the darkness with a sculptural beauty. 

The last image we encounter at the exhibition shows St Luke as a painter, with palette in hand, standing at the foot of the cross. It is the nearest thing to a Zurbarán self-portrait.

Francisco de Zurbarán - 'Agnus Dei', 1635–40 Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado

‘There was a woman in the Bible days,
She had been sick, sick so very long.
But she heard that Jesus was passing by,
So she joined the gathering throng.
And while she was pushing her way through,
Someone asked her, 'What are you trying to do?'
She said, 'If I could just touch the hem of His garment,
I know I'll be made whole.’'
Sam Cooke & The Soul Stirrers, 'Touch the Hem of His Garment’ (S Cooke)

No. 574

An Ideal Husband: ‘One’s Past Is What One Is’

I recently enjoyed a production of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play ‘An Ideal Husband.’ (Bristol Old Vic, until 20 June)

Lord Goring: I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be understood.
 
As one would expect with Wilde, the work is rich with the fizz and froth of aristocratic society; with witty conversations about buttonholes, bonnets and marriage proposals; with the bons mots of the beau monde.
 
Lady Chiltern: Oh I love London society!...It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics.
 
But at the heart of the play is a serious narrative about blackmail and corruption, a plot that considers themes of public and private morality; truth and trust within relationships; the intrusion of the past into present day life.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: I wanted my success when I was young. Youth is the time for success. I couldn’t wait.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern, a hard-working, highly respected MP and junior government minister, is visited by Mrs Cheveley, mysterious and glamorous, cunning and quick witted.
 
Mrs Cheveley: Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
 
Mrs Cheveley has invested heavily in a scheme to build a canal in Argentina. However, Sir Robert believes it to be ‘a commonplace Stock Exchange swindle,’ and plans to present a report to that effect to Parliament the following day.
 

Chiké Okonkwo and Jamael Westman in ‘An Ideal Husband’ © Helen Murray

Mrs Cheveley: One should always play fairly…when one has the winning cards.
 
Mrs Cheveley has learned that Sir Robert, in his youth, was involved in insider trading on another canal project. He revealed a cabinet secret to her late mentor and lover, which enabled the rogue to buy shares in the Suez Canal Company three days before the Government announced its purchase. Sir Robert's payoff became the basis for his present fortune, and Mrs Cheveley has a letter as proof of his crime. 
 
Mrs Cheveley: My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am.
 
Mrs Cheveley’s price is more than money. It is Sir Robert’s reputation.

Mrs Cheveley: Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

She demands that Sir Robert withdraw the critical report about the Argentine venture, and state in the House that he believes the enterprise will be of great international value.
 
Mrs Cheveley: A few ordinary platitudes will do. In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude.
 
Sir Robert seeks the counsel of his wife. But, concerned that her love for him is founded on her belief in his rock-solid integrity, he cannot reveal the whole truth. And so he ties himself in knots.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: Public and private life are different things. They have different laws, and move on different lines… Truth is a very complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life, one has to compromise. Everyone does… I am not changed. But circumstances alter things.
 
Lady Chiltern is unimpressed.
 
Lady Chiltern: Circumstances should never alter principles.
 
Sir Robert tries again. 
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: It was a question of rational compromise. It is no more than that.
 
This prompts the response he most feared.
 
Lady Chiltern: Oh! Don’t kill my love for you, don’t kill that!
 
Distraught, Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring. ‘A flawless dandy’ and ‘the idlest man in London,’ Goring does not initially come across as a man for a crisis.
 
Lord Goring: I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
 
Surprisingly, however, Lord Goring reveals himself to be a sympathetic listener and a practical ally.
 
Lord Goring: The English can’t stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong.
 
This time Sir Robert argues that his misdemeanour occurred a very long time ago, and he has in any case given greatly to charity since.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: Do you think what I did nearly eighteen years ago should be brought up against me now? Do you think it fair that a man’s whole career should be ruined for a fault done in his boyhood almost?
 
We may recognise in Sir Robert’s mental gymnastics some of our own attempts to legitimize our actions when we are in the wrong: work operates by different rules; life is about compromise; the end justifies the means; it happened many years ago; times change; it was a victimless crime.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: And, after all, whom did I wrong by what I did? No one.
Lord Goring: Except yourself, Robert.
 
When we are at fault, we resort to casuistry; we lie to ourselves; we create self-justifying narratives. But in time, our faults find us out.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat.
 
The themes in ‘An Ideal Husband’ are particularly pertinent to young people. At the start of our careers, in a hurry to get on, we may be more reckless. We may compromise and cut corners. We may make bad choices.
 
We need to understand that old sins cast long shadows. The past always catches up with us. Indeed, the past makes the present.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: No one should be entirely judged by their past.
Lady Chiltern: One’s past is what one is. It is the only was by which people should be judged.
 
 
'What can I say, dear, after I say I'm sorry?
What can I do to prove it to you, that I'm sorry?
I didn't mean to ever be mean to you.
If I didn't care, I wouldn't feel like I do.
I was all wrong, but right or wrong, I don't blame you.
Why should I take somebody like you and shame you?
I know that I made you cry, but I'm so sorry dear.
What can I say, dear, after I say I'm sorry?’
Dinah Washington, '(What Can I Say) After I Say I'm Sorry?’ (W Donaldson, A Lyman)

No. 573

Strategic Fashion: Could the 20-Year-Rule Apply to Brand and Communication Planning?

Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980), Portrait of Mrs. Rufus Bush

I’m not fashionable, but I’m interested in fashion.

I like to read about skinny jeans, white jeans, barrel leg and baggy jeans; about rich neutrals, microbuns, bixies and man brooches. I like to consider bold pops, polka dots and pointelle fabric; French tuck collars, scelts and tomato red. I like to discover that they’re channelling Marie Antoinette and Diane Keaton, JFK Jnr and Carolyn Bessette; to learn that sandwich dressing is where you contrast a middle layer between two matching elements.

A while ago, I read in The Times (Rhys Blakely, 17 March 2026) that researchers have found evidence to substantiate the long-held fashion principle that trends follow a cycle of approximately two decades.

A study by mathematicians at Northwestern University in the United States examined nearly 160 years’ worth of women’s clothing records, scrutinizing databases of tens of thousands of garments, design drawings and archive images. In particular, it focused on the rise and fall of hemlines.

Employing a spectral analysis technique, the academics discovered repeating wave patterns of style, recurring on a timescale of roughly 20 years. For example, the shorter dresses of 1920s flappers gave way to longer hems in the 1930s, only for hems to rise again in the 1940s, and again in the 1960s with the miniskirt.

According to the research, designers’ and consumers’ desire to stand out – a little, but not too much - from popular conventions, creates a ‘cultural pendulum.’

‘Over time, this constant push to be different from the recent past causes styles to swing back and forth. The system intrinsically wants to oscillate, and we see those cycles in the data.’
Daniel Abrams, professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics, Northwestern University 

We tend to regard the world of brand and communication planning as one of steady progress; of evolutionary learning; of gradual ascent towards superior practices and techniques.

But what if strategy is also subject to fashion? What if the 20-year-rule applies to planning?

I seem to recall that, two decades or so ago, deep in the mists of time, we were concerned with user values and usage occasions; with KPIs, USPs and SWOT analyses; with brand personification, cognitive dissonance and calls-to-action. There was some weird stuff about Greek gods. And we created temples, lighthouses, pyramids and stadia; eggs and onions; task-based briefs, chords, conveyer belts and yin yang charts. (Source: Mintel)

Are some of these approaches relevant now? Could they be revived and rebooted? Could they be the mullet of modern strategy, returning to centre stage in a blaze of glory? Or are they destined to remain forever out in the cold, like pleather chaps and platform trainers; sweatbands, leg warmers and fascinators?

'She's the face on the radio.
She's the body on the morning show.
She's there shaking it out on the scene.
She's the colour of a magazine.
And she's in fashion.
She's in fashion.
She's employed where the sun don't set.
And she's the shape of a cigarette.
And she's the shake of a tambourine.
And she's the colour of a magazine.
And she's in fashion
And she's in fashion.’
Suede, ‘She’s in Fashion’ (B L Anderson, N J Codling)

No. 572

Hurvin Anderson: Identity and Belonging, Memory as Mood, Landscapes Haunted by History

Hurvin Anderson - Grace Jones (2020): an air of fading memories
(Image credit: Hurvin Anderson / The Thomas Dane Gallery / Richard Ivey)

I very much enjoyed an exhibition of the work of Hurvin Anderson. (Tate Britain, London until 23 August)

‘In order to observe, for me at least, I have to sit slightly outside of things. Perhaps this is my natural position.’
Hurvin Anderson

Anderson was born in 1965, to Jamaican parents, in Handsworth, Birmingham. In the early 1990s, he moved to London, studying at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art. 

 ‘I am the youngest of eight siblings. All my elder siblings were born in Jamaica, while I was born in the UK. For me, this has always created a tension and raised lots of questions.’

Hurvin Anderson - Audition
© Hurvin Anderson

Anderson began painting from found photos of family and friends. We see him as a child standing outside a pub with his father. We see his mates looking forlorn as their football is lost in the lake. Here are the trees that he climbed; the Banqueting Palace that he passed on his walk home from school. Here are the municipal swimming baths; the homes with patterned wallpaper and display cabinets for picture frames and china. 

 ‘What I do, it's about questioning my history, my place.’

Anderson returns repeatedly to the same images, each time making subtle adjustments: Mrs Keita in her floral dress and patent leather boots, a hand resting gently on the television set; the reassuring intimacy of the barbershop, its counters cluttered with assorted brushes, clippers and cologne, its walls pinned with pictures of heroes from the Civil Rights struggle.

 ‘Fade. Flat top. High top. Side part. Trim shave. Skiffle.’

Hurvin Anderson - Peter's Sitters II, 2009.
Image courtesy © Hurvin Anderson and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Catharine Wharf

Some of Anderson’s characters are painted in black and white, reflecting their source photographs. The faces tend to be blurred, implying the fuzzy indistinctness of recollection. And the artist mixes remembrance with imagination. Time dissolves, distance disintegrates. His sister Bev sits alongside her younger self. His brother picks apples in an English orchard, but in the background we observe the shadows of a mango tree – he is torn between two cultures. 

Visiting the Caribbean, Anderson grapples with his own identity: his sense of being at once an insider and an outsider.

‘My struggle with Jamaica: I don’t know it and I know it. I have this romantic vision of it and a lot of my painting is fighting that romance.’

Hurvin Anderson - Hawksbill Bay, 2020.
Tate Lent by Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of Mala Gaonkar 2023. © Hurvin Anderson. Courtesy the artist and VeneKlasen.

With precise brushwork, Anderson depicts dense, green-black foliage dropping dramatically towards the ocean. Figures gather on the citrus-yellow sand as a white wave breaks. A girl descends the hotel steps, in a pink dress that is striped blue, green and orange. We are bathed in colour and light.

But behind the languorous landscapes lies a history of colonial oppression. The atmosphere can be dark and ominous. The ravishing scarlet flowers at the roadside are from the shrub Ashanti Blood, recalling a brutally suppressed slave rebellion. And still today beautiful beaches are shut away behind wrought iron fences, luxurious apartments protected by exclusive security grilles. 

‘Painting, like most things, is a contradiction.’

Anderson teaches creative people to reflect on their identity - who am I? who are we?; to think of memory as mood - emotional, imprecise and unreliable, layered and dreamlike; to consider landscapes as haunted by history, veiled in the past.

In a number of Anderson’s Caribbean works, we see half-built and ruined buildings overcome by lush, towering vegetation.  All the while, nature is quietly reclaiming the land; covering up the memories; erasing the pain.

'Your love is a life for I.
Realized that so much,
When I first met you.
That was some time ago, 
From then until this.
Resist, no, no, no, close to you, see.
Oh, yes, right from the start,
Oh, no, no, no, could never part.
Oh, I hear from that thought, 
I wanna live in your house.
I wanna live in your house.’

Steel Pulse, ‘Your House’ (G Ballard, A Morissette)

No. 571

Konrad Magi: Sometimes Sad People See Beauty Differently

Konrad Magi - Norwegian Landscape

I recently enjoyed a trip down to Dulwich to see an exhibition of the work of Estonian artist Konrad Magi. (Dulwich Picture Gallery until 12 July)

Born in 1878 in rural southern Estonia, Magi spent his early adulthood working as a carver in a furniture factory. Argumentative, with left wing and anarchist sympathies, he suffered from poor mental health. Developing an interest in painting in his mid-twenties, he took some classes, but was largely self-taught. He travelled to Saint Petersburg, Finland and Paris, often in poverty and despair, complaining of the cold. 

The Parisian art scene didn’t impress Magi much. In 1907, on visiting a large show of contemporary work, he wrote:

‘I expected a lot, but got very little out of it, because not everything that is so much talked about and praised is good…It was boring to walk through those halls and look at all the hideousness and repulsiveness.’

Konrad Mägi - Portrait of a Lady (Klaara Holst), 1916, Oil on canvas, Art Museum of Estonia.

Magi found his artistic footing on a two-year stay in Norway. Inspired by the drama of the landscapes, he painted forest fringes, lakes and low mountains; watermills, distant towns and quiet hamlets - always using rich, vivid colours.

‘I am a son of the north, and everything that I am is but a fraction of its population and wilderness.’

Still desperately short of cash, Magi survived in Norway on blueberries foraged from the forest. His fortunes improved somewhat when he settled in Tartu in eastern Estonia, and took portrait commissions. 

Magi’s smartly dressed subjects seem gracefully sad, their skin pallid with shades of green and yellow, their large eyes staring mournfully down or into the distance. Perhaps the artist was endeavouring to convey his sitters’ inner feelings through their outward appearance. But these images also suggest his own enduring depression.

‘There is a dark melancholy inside me which I cannot seem to shake…I feel this endless discontent.’

In the summers of 1913 and ‘14, Magi visited the Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Vilsandi, still troubled by anxiety, and seeking out the mud baths to soothe his aching joints.

‘The air and mud have a divine effect on the nerves.’

Konrad Mägi - Landscape with a Red Cloud

It was here that Magi painted the landscapes for which he is best known. Experimenting in many modernist styles, he often applied dabs of paint in a kind of unruly pointillism. 

Remote tracks wind through quilted fields and across undulating hills. Pines swoon on the edge of azure lakes under restless skies. A lighthouse looms on the horizon. In the foreground rocky crags, unpeopled shingle beaches, wind-stunted trees. We see sinuous, organic, otherworldly forms; intense electric blues, deep emerald greens, brooding bright oranges.

‘Art is the only way out. At the moment when the soul is filled with life’s eternal suffering, art provides us with that which life cannot offer.’

Magi’s pictures suggest silent stillness, pastoral peace. One can’t escape the irony that a man cursed with such inner turmoil, found calm and tranquillity in the natural world around him, and conveyed it with such sensitivity. Sometimes sad people see beauty differently.

Konrad Mägi - Norwegian Landscape - Bog Landscape

In the sphere of commercial creativity, we set great store by optimism and positivity. But the truth is that many gifted practitioners are sombre souls, given to bleak perspectives and despondent observations. In my experience, some of the funniest lines were written by gloomy copywriters; some of the most elegant layouts were drawn by unkempt art directors; some of the most uplifting ideas were conceived by downbeat pessimists.

The challenge for anyone overseeing a creative business is to nurture a coherent, vigorous, confident culture, whilst also accommodating individuality, diversity and eccentricity; supporting cynics and sceptics, mavericks and melancholics.

Magi returned to Tartu, making occasional trips to Italy and summering in south Estonia. Gaining public recognition for his landscapes, he taught painting and founded an art school. However, with deteriorating health and growing depression, in 1924 he was treated at a sanatorium in Germany. Back in Tartu the following year, he began destroying his work. Some of his students intervened, taking him to a psychiatric hospital, where his condition declined irreversibly. He died aged 46 in 1925.

'Time has told me
You're a rare, rare find.
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.
And time has told me
Not to ask for more.
Someday our ocean
Will find its shore.’
Nick Drake, ’Time Has Told Me'

No. 570

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: The Mindful Company

Leonard Daniels (1909–1998) - A British Restaurant at Winchester
© Southampton City Art Gallery

The voicemail that morning was brisk and businesslike: 

‘We’re looking forward to seeing you for lunch today. Please call to confirm the reservation. And be aware that we need the table back at 2-30.’

I called to confirm. 

‘That’s great,’ came the reply from the polite young man. ’We need the table back at 2-30.’

I arrived for lunch and was shown my place. 

‘Still or sparkling water, sir?’ 
‘Tap please.’
‘You do know you need to be finished by 2-30?’
‘Yes… Shall I just order a dessert and get out of your way?’

This exchange brought to mind the transience of contemporary life. 

The world is spinning faster. Things are over before they've started. And our accelerated culture inevitably causes stress and anxiety. We’re always worried about missing out, concerned about what’s happening elsewhere. What’s next, who’s next, where next? It’s hard to pause and reflect, to enjoy the moment. It’s even more difficult to plan for the future. 

The challenges of this accelerated culture impact the world of work too.

We live in an era of freelance and independent contractors; of ‘plug-in, plug-out’; of side hustles and the gig economy; of endless restructuring and reorganization; of periodic lay-offs and AI prompted redundancies. The cycle of employment is rotating faster, the turnover of staff is whirling quicker. Contemporary careers are fluid and flexible, polymorphous and plural. What’s in it for me? I’m at capacity right now. I’m jobscrolling, I’m jobhugging, I’m quiet quitting…

There’s also a revolving door of CEOs, a conveyor belt of senior management. Each has a unique vision and an inspiring purpose, a pressing and urgent agenda. They’re looking for a quick turnaround, preparing for a swift sale, planning to flip the business.

‘We’re interested in the long term, but only if you can deliver in the short term.’

No revelation perhaps that, in this climate, colleagues and clients are often looking over your shoulder for a more compelling conversation, a more interesting opportunity. No surprise that their eyes glaze over when you talk about abiding relationships and enduring loyalty.

‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ 
‘Somewhere else, clearly.’

We have been raised to believe that responsible brand stewards look to the long-term, to the future horizon. We have been taught that careers and relationships are built over time. But we also need to recognise that our customers’ and colleagues’ priorities reside in the present.

My limited understanding of mindfulness is that it asks us to set aside nostalgic longings for the past and fanciful hopes for the future; to ignore events and conversations that are occurring with other people in parallel places; to experience life in the here and now. It thereby addresses depression and anxiety. 

So, consider the Mindful Company: one that conducts business in the moment, in the present, with the best resources that are currently available. It would be intense, agile, fleet of foot. It would supply superior strategic and creative solutions for here and for now. And it would structure its remuneration model around premium-priced projects and tasks, rather than around commoditised, long-term account tenure.

Of course, an enduring appointment delivers security of income and enables confident financial planning. But if the reality of client imperatives and colleagues’ careers do not match that ambition, then perhaps we need to adapt?

If we properly align our priorities with those of contemporary culture, with our clients and colleagues; if we focus on the short-term horizon, then perhaps we can build the relationships, trust, careers and long-term brand success that we all yearn for.

As the great choreographer George Balanchine demanded of his exhausted dancers: 

‘What are you waiting for? What are you saving yourselves for? Now is all there is!’

'Take your hands off me,
I don't belong to you, you see.
And take a look in my face, for the last time.
I never knew you, you never knew me.
Say hello goodbye,
Say hello and wave goodbye.’
Soft Cell, ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ (D Ball / M Almond)

No. 569

Photobooth: The Same Technology Can Both Liberate and Constrain

A little while ago, I visited the Photographers’ Gallery to see a display celebrating 100 years of the photobooth. (The exhibition is now over, I’m afraid. But you can review the splendid vintage collection of Raynal Pellicer in his book ‘Photobooth.’)
 
In the decades following the birth of photography in 1839, various designs for self-operating portrait machines were patented. There was an appetite for photographs without photographers - and the attendant appointments, formality and inconvenience. But it was only in 1925 that Anatol Josepho, an immigrant to the US from Russia, introduced the first commercially successful photobooth, on Broadway in New York. And so the selfie was born.
 
Josepho’s machine was extraordinarily complex. It photographed, developed and printed, using a spider assembly mechanism and a carousel of water baths, developer and bleach, clearing agent and toner, heaters and rollers. And yet it also had a revolutionary simplicity.
 
‘Eight photos in eight minutes for twenty-five cents.’
Early Photomaton advert
 
In its first six months, the photobooth was used by 280,000 people. Subsequently the newly formed Photomaton Company placed booths nationwide, and in 1927 Josepho was paid $1 million and guaranteed future royalties. By the 1930s photobooths were a common feature of train stations, shopping centres and arcades, across North America and Europe.
 
‘I don’t want to be ‘took’!
But children lose all awkwardness and shyness in the Photomaton cabinet. They like it!’
Early Photomaton advert

Liberated from the human mediator, photographs became instant, affordable, universal. Photobooth images were more relaxed, informal and spontaneous than studio shots. People smiled, posed, kissed and laughed. They experimented with expressions, hand gestures and tilts of the head; with clothes, hats and disguises. Sitters took their photos alone, with their partner, or crammed in with friends. For soldiers a visit to a photobooth became a ritual of farewell on the way to war. And because photobooths were democratic, they didn’t turn Black people away, and they were a safe space for gay couples. 

Over the years, photobooths acquired their own culture. Sitters learned to navigate the challenges of the blinding flash, the wobbly stool, the merciless timing of the shots. They embraced the risks of a blink or an unintended movement; the occasional errors caused by blurring, discolouration or overexposure.
 
However, governments and institutions soon recognised the usefulness of photobooths for official documents. And they took on an entirely different role in people’s lives. Administrative images needed to be serious, stiff and standardised. And so a tool that had given unprecedented agency, became a mechanism for monitoring, recording and categorising. A platform for play, performance and memory, became a vehicle of control, authority and bureaucracy. 
 
The same innovation can both liberate and constrain. We’re quite familiar with this phenomenon in the era of social media and AI. However bright the technology, it can cast a dark shadow. 
 
 
'I've been looking so long at these pictures of you,
That I almost believe that they're real.
I've been living so long with my pictures of you,
That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel.
If only I'd thought of the right words,
I could have held on to your heart.
If only I'd thought of the right words,
I wouldn't be breaking apart all my pictures of you.

'The Cure, ‘Pictures of You’ (B Williams / L Tolhurst / P Thompson / R Smith / R O'Donnell / S Gallup)

No. 568