‘I Must Create a System or be Enslaved by Another Man’s’: The Visionary World of William Blake

William Blake 'Europe' Plate i: Frontispiece, 'The Ancient of Days' 1827 (?) © The Whitworth, The University of Manchester

‘The enquiry in England is not whether a man has talents and genius, but whether he is passive and polite as a virtuous ass, and obedient to noblemen’s opinions in arts and science.’
William Blake

I recently attended a fine exhibition of the art of William Blake (Tate Britain, London, until 2 February).

Welcome to a world of angels, snakes and devils; of gods, monsters and demons.  Welcome to bearded titans and long-locked maidens; to stooping figures in billowing robes making grand theatrical gestures. Here are muscled torsos and sinuous limbs; heroic figures wreathed in rays of light and clouds of smoke. Here’s Isaac Newton working with his compass, poor old Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon crawling on all fours. Here’s the ghost of a flea, and Urizen, the embodiment of Reason and Science, reaching down to measure the Earth – a futile endeavour.

Welcome to a world of myths, legends and fairies - where Biblical themes are intertwined with the mystical, and historical subjects are treated in mythical terms. Welcome to regret, shame, wrath and ire; to pestilence, plague, war and disaster. Welcome to the unique visionary world of William Blake, poet, painter and printmaker.

William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar 1795–c.1805. Tate

‘The Corner of Broad Street weeps; Poland Street languishes
To Great Queen Street & Lincoln’s Inn, all is distress and woe.’

Blake was born in Soho in 1757, and for most of his life he lived and worked within 20 minutes’ walk of his first family home. The son of a Dissenter and hosier, he attended school until he was 10. His parents, recognising that he had some artistic talent, bought him classical prints and plaster casts to copy, and paid for him to have drawing lessons. At 14 he was apprenticed to an engraver and at 21 he enrolled to study art at the Royal Academy.

Blake’s training as an engraver sustained him throughout his life. He was employed to create illustrations by various publishers and sponsors, and for a short time he ran his own print shop. In 1788 he developed a new form of print-making, ‘relief etching’, a method that enabled him to combine text and images in colour. He used this process to produce most of his own books, paintings, pamphlets and poems. 

‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.’

These were times of radical thought and social upheaval. There were revolutions in France and America, wars raging across Europe. Blake himself was a profoundly independent spirit, a man who refused to conform to established tastes and traditions. He was deeply religious, but he objected to organised religion. He championed the imagination, but he was sceptical of science. He opposed slavery, tyranny and industrialisation. He was an avid proponent of free love. And he channelled all these beliefs and opinions into his poems, prints and personal mythology.

Blake Williams, 'Newton', 1795-c.1805. The Tate

Sadly Blake’s unique talents were largely unrecognised in his lifetime. He rebelled against the fashionable styles taught at the Royal Academy and against its president, Joshua Reynolds. He was out of step with the artistic community, and looked down on the landscapes and portraiture that were financially successful at the time. He resented the commercial engraving work he depended on for income. He fell out with his partners and sponsors, and he didn’t sell many of his books. 

‘I am laid by in a corner as if I did not exist.’

In 1809 Blake organised an exhibition of his work at Broad Street, Soho, on the first floor of the family hosiery business. Very few members of the public turned up, and his one reviewer observed that the artist was ‘an unfortunate lunatic.’

What’s more, Blake always seemed to be getting into trouble. In 1780 he was caught up in the anti-Catholic Gordon riots, and that same year, while out on a sketching trip by the River Medway, he was arrested for spying. In 1803 he was taken into custody following an argument with a sailor.

His wife, Catherine, once complained: 

'I have very little of Mr Blake's company. He is always in Paradise.'

One can’t help concluding that, though supremely gifted, Blake was a difficult individual. 

So what are those of us working in the creative industries to make of William Blake? 

On the one hand, we must stand back and admire his individuality, his free-thinking, his radical vision. We must respect his single-mindedness and persistence in the face of setbacks and disappointments. 

On the other hand, it’s something of an indictment of the artistic community of Blake’s time that it couldn’t recognise the very special talent in its midst. We should always be on the lookout for misfits and malcontents who may in fact have phenomenal contributions to make. I also wonder whether Blake could have been somewhat more successful in his lifetime if only he’d been a little more diplomatic. Maybe he just needed a good Account Manager.

'He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. (Isaiah 53:3)
He gave his back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off
the hair: He hid not His face from shame and spitting.' (Isaiah 50:6)

George Frideric Handel, 'He Was Despised' 

No. 251

Bing Crosby and The Intimacy of Crooning: Creative People Can Make Great Entrepreneurs

Bing Crosby was a revolutionary. 

Born in Takoma, Washington in 1903 and raised in Spokane in the same state, he embarked on a musical career in the 1920s when the convention amongst singers was to deploy a loud ‘belting’ sound. Performers like Al Jolson from the vaudeville tradition were ever mindful of the need to project their big, booming voices to the back seats of the theatre. 

Crosby was one of a new generation who embraced the recent technology of the condenser microphone. He regarded the microphone as his instrument. He leaned into it, caressed his notes and purred his lyrics. With the microphone he could bend melodies and twist phrases. He could be laid back and conversational, pleading and emotional. He could be intimate.

Though Crosby didn’t like the term, the new singing style was called ‘crooning.’ Some were critical of this fashionable approach. Cardinal O’Connell of Boston complained: 

‘Crooning is a degenerate form of singing…. No true American would practice this base art. I cannot turn the dial without getting these whiners and bleaters defiling the air and crying vapid words to impossible tunes.’

Nonetheless, crooning was a hugely popular phenomenon. Ten of the Top 50 records of 1931 featured Crosby’s mellifluous bass-baritone. Crooning was informal, easygoing, casual. It seemed quintessentially modern and American. The key to its appeal resided in its intimacy. The crooner came across as someone who was in the room with you, sharing a joke or confiding a secret; as someone you knew. Fellow singer Dinah Shore observed: 

‘Bing Crosby sings like all people think they sing in the shower.’ 

Perhaps there’s something we in the field of commercial creativity could learn from Crosby. We tend to concentrate on the functional benefits of digital technology: we think of it in terms of enhanced data, distribution and targeting; of superior user interfaces, connectivity and customer journeys. Of course, technology delivers all these things. But we should not forget its considerable emotive power: technology can demolish distance and time; it can create closeness; it can make things more personal and private. Technology enables human intimacy. This is a precious thing.

Crosby went on to become the world’s first multi-media star. His success extended from live performance, to radio and recordings. He had an Oscar-winning film career and he later evolved into TV. 

‘Listen a lot and talk less. You can’t learn anything when you’re talking.’

Throughout his life Crosby was a natural innovator. When the record market was hit by the Depression of the 1930s, he agreed to take a royalty rather than the customary flat fee. In the 1940s he embraced magnetic tape and was the first major performer to pre-record his radio shows. With pre-recording he could control performance conditions and times; he could ad lib and edit out mistakes. And by pre-recording four shows in a week, he could also spend more time on the golf course. 

As his fortune increased, Crosby bought TV stations and recording studios. He financed the development of the video-tape. He invested in fast-freezing technology and became Chairman and lead promoter of Minute Maid orange juice.

We can learn a great deal from Crosby. He demonstrated that creative people should view technology, not as an enemy, but as an ally - something that inspires new approaches and opportunities; something that enables them to take control of their work and how it is received. And critically he demonstrated that creative people should regard entrepreneurism, not as an alien craft, but as a natural extension of their talents. Creatives should be at the heart of a thriving business, not at the margins of it.

Bing Crosby passed away in 1977, having completed a round of golf on a course outside Madrid. His last words were:

‘That was a great game of golf, fellas.’

‘Oh, what eyes you have.
Oh, what lips you have.
Oh, what lovely features.
Talk about adorable creatures.
You have so many thrillables,
That I’m all out of syllables.
From the top of your head,
To the tip of your toes,
You’re marvellous.
Glorious, you are simply divine.
Top to tip, you’re tip top,
But to top it all, you’re mine.’

Bing Crosby, From the Top of Your Head (Mack Gordon, Harry Revel) from the film Two for Tonight (1935)

No. 250

The Bias Cut: Halston and the Perils of Brand Extension

Photography © Dogwoof

‘I believe in our country, and I like America, and I want Americans to look good. And I’m an American designer and I want the opportunity to do it.’
Legendary US designer Halston, on signing a 5 year licensing deal with JC Penney

I recently saw a fascinating documentary about the American fashion legend, Halston (‘Halston' a film by Frédéric Tcheng). It’s the story of a designer who was instinctively in tune with his times, who rewrote the rule book, but who ultimately fell victim of his own success. It’s a story that teaches us a good deal about the perils of brand extension.

Roy Halston Frowick was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1932. Having developed an early interest in sewing, he moved to Chicago, found work as a window dresser and enrolled in a night course at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1953 he opened his own milliners business, which was quickly successful. Soon he was creating hats for the likes of Kim Novak, Gloria Swanson, Deborah Kerr and Hedda Hopper.

In 1957 Halston moved to New York where he was appointed head milliner for high-end department store Bergdorf Goodman. He gained wider celebrity by putting Jackie Kennedy in a pillbox hat for JFK’s 1961 inauguration. In 1968 he opened his first womenswear boutique on Madison Avenue.

‘I’m the all-time optimist and I like it right now.’

Halston in New York in 1980. Credit: SAUER Jean-Claude/Paris Match Archive/Paris Match via Getty Images

Halston’s style was right for the emancipated ‘70s. He was a minimalist and he began by stripping away what he saw as the unnecessary elements of female fashion: 

'All of the extra details that didn't work - bows that didn't tie, buttons that didn't button, zippers that didn't zip, wrap dresses that didn't wrap. I've always hated things that don't work.'

This resulted in clothes that were unstructured and unrestricted, relaxed and carefree - clothes more suited to times of liberation and social change.

Iman walks the runway in a Halston jersey dress in spring 1976, Pulse Magazine

‘He took away the cage, and he made things as though you didn’t really need the structure as much as you needed the woman.’
Pat Cleveland, Model, ‘Halston’

Halston favoured the bias cut: cutting cloth on the diagonal (at 45 degrees) rather than following the straight line of the weave. The technique caused the fabric to fall naturally over the body, creating sensuous curves and soft drapes. His clothes had a fluid functionality, elegance and ease. They were simple yet sophisticated, glamorous yet comfortable.

‘Fabric to Halston was like clay to a sculptor.’
Chris Royer, Model

Halston designed for the international jet-set, for professional women and the discotheque. He eroded the divide between womenswear and menswear, between night and day. He worked with soft silks, sequins and satin, with chiffon and ultra-suede. He produced hot pants and halter-tops; suits and shirtdresses; cutaways, kaftans and capes - all finished off with a flamboyant big belt.

‘You were free inside your clothes.’
Karen Bjornson, Model

Halston was a natural publicist. Subscribing to the view that ‘You’re only as good as who you dress,’ his boutique drew celebrity clients like Anjelica Huston, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli.

‘His clothes danced with you.’ 
Liza Minnelli 

Halston, bottom left, and models in his designs. Photographed by Duane Michals,Vogue, December 1, 1972

Halston brought a sense of theatre to everything he did. He turned up at events accompanied by an array of his favourite models, the Halstonettes. He styled the 1972 Coty Awards as a talent show, climaxing with ex-Warhol actor Pat Ast emerging dramatically from a cake. In 1977 he threw a 30th birthday party for Bianca Jagger at Studio 54. Sitting atop a white horse, she was led around the dance floor by a naked giant covered in gold glitter.

The Urge to Expand

Halston was driven by an ambition to move forward, to grow, to reach more people.

'I don’t quite know where I got my ambition but I have it. I go into things with an optimistic point of view and I look at it straight and try to make it the biggest and best success I can. But the thing that holds my interest always is MORE - what’s next, what’s going to be the next exciting thing?'

In 1973, in order to fund expansion, Halston sold his company to Norton Simon Inc, a conglomerate whose properties included Max Factor and Canada Dry. The deal afforded him huge financial backing and he remained principal designer with complete creative control.

Norton Simon felt they were buying instant access to fashion credibility.

‘We wanted a top perfume and he was the hottest thing around. I just wanted to buy the whole thing. Just to have him on board for his general knowledge of panache.’
David Mahony, President, Norton Simon Inc

The auspices seemed good, and Halston dealt confidently with anyone querying the wisdom of the sale. 

‘It’s rather like growing a tree. Everyone thinks that you’re an overnight success. I’ve worked very hard for 20 years, and you know it’s just a further extension of it. It’s another branch. And they all help each other in a curious way.’

The Honeymoon

In the early years the new corporate partnership went incredibly well.

At the legendary Battle of Versailles Fashion Show of 1973 Halston’s presentation, fronted by Liza Minelli and making extensive use of black models, put America at the forefront of the global fashion industry.

‘All that energy and that joy and that wonder and that curiosity. Well, that is America!’
Liza Minnelli

In 1975 Max Factor released Halston's first branded fragrance for women. With its distinctive teardrop bottle design by Elsa Peretti it was an immediate success.

Halston expanded his line to include menswear and cosmetics, homeware and handbags, shoes and sunglasses, luggage and lingerie. He designed the uniforms for the 1976 US Olympic team, for Braniff Airways and Avis, for the Martha Graham Dance Company and the US Girl Scouts. He created the gold outfits for Sly Stone’s 1974 wedding at Madison Square Garden.

Indeed everything Halston touched turned to gold. In 1978 he moved his headquarters to the 21st floor of Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue. The offices were adorned in white orchids and every wall was covered floor-to-ceiling in mirrored glass. 

"Halstonettes" Pat Cleveland, Chris Royer, Alva Chinn and Karen Bjornson in 1980 - Photo, Dustin Pittman

The Cultural Tension

However, there were inevitably tensions between the corporate owners and the high-end fashion house. Prior to the launch of Halston’s fragrance, Max Factor executives complained about a bottle that couldn’t be filled from the top and branding that was limited to a ribbon round the pack.

In 1982 Halston signed a 5 year licensing deal with JC Penney, the archetypal mainstream department store. Halston was typically bullish about the move.

‘It’s really the third stage of my career. The first being in the millinery business, and then in fancy clothes and dressing all the stars… and now a larger public - dressing America really.’

The media talked about Halston moving ‘from class to mass.’ The President of Bergdorf Goodman deemed this a brand stretch too far and immediately delisted all Halston products from their stores.

Penney merchandisers began to complain that Halston’s working methods didn’t mesh well with their own.

‘He’s got to understand that we’ve got to commit like at least 8 months in advance. We need to get the approvals and the go-aheads and the concepts. But he’s so involved with everything that…the label took him months.’
JC Penney Merchandiser

The Troubled Genius

Halston was committed to retaining complete creative control as his business expanded. He refused to delegate.

‘I must be a part of it. I’ve never ever just leant my name for a commercial business venture.’

On the face of it, this was a good thing as it sustained quality through growth. But it also put incredible pressure on the man himself. He was overworked and stressed, tired and prone to panic attacks. Increasingly he turned to drugs to sustain him. He became a bully in the workplace, an aloof presence behind his signature black sunglasses. Deadlines slipped. 

‘It’s like quicksand. If everyone around you is going down, you’re going to go down too.’
Pat Cleveland, Model

The Decline and Fall

In 1983 Norton Simon was sold to Esmark, an even bigger conglomerate that included Playtex. Senior executives were immediately concerned by the wasteful practices and creative extravagances at Halston.

‘I’m at the top and I don’t care what’s happening in the engine-room. I know the engine-room isn’t running. And it wasn’t. Turn this into a brand. Turn this into something we can handle and stop having it be this airy fairy kind of ‘work when I want to, I’m not inspired, I’m an artist’ kind of thing.’
Walter Bregman, Playtex President

Halston’s MD took to placing ‘to-do’ notes on his desk every day. The relationship deteriorated. Halston came into work later and later. When at length he talked about leaving Esmark and starting out on his own again, he was quickly put back in his box.

‘You don’t own your own name, pal. Read the small print. We own your name.’
Walter Bregman, Playtex President

By this time Halston’s star was on the wane. Soon he was eclipsed by Calvin Klein and a new generation in fashion. In 1984 Halston was locked out of Olympic Tower, and a junior designer was given his role as creative director. Esmark sold off his samples and wiped all the tapes of his shows.

Halston retired to San Francisco and became a recluse. In 1990 he died of AIDS-related lung cancer, one month short of his 58th birthday. It was a sad and untimely end for a hugely talented and influential man. 

We always think a strong brand can comfortably extend into other areas of life. And often it can. And it goes on extending. And on and on. Until the elastic snaps.

'I'm in with the "in” crowd.
I go where the "in" crowd goes.
I'm in with the "in” crowd.
And I know what the "in" crowd knows.

I'm in with the "in” crowd.
I know every latest dance.
When you're in with "in" crowd
It's easy to find romance.’

Bryan Ferry, ’The ‘’In’’ Crowd (B Page)

No. 249

Not Just Reality, But Truth: Giacometti and the Virtues of Style

Giacometti - Figure

'The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.'
Alberto Giacometti

On a recent trip to Vancouver I visited an exhibition of the work of Alberto Giacometti (Vancouver Art Gallery until 29 September). The show originates from the collection of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury held by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Inevitably I was drawn to Giacometti’s tall, slender bronze figures. Big feet, small heads, rough hewn and long limbed. Standing somber, pacing purposefully, stripped bare, isolated and alone. They seem to suggest the very essence of humanity - and after the Second World War they were taken to represent society’s existential crisis.

'When I make my drawings... the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.’

I was also struck by Giacometti’s portraits. They sit square on, staring us straight in the eye. We can see how the artist has restlessly worked and reworked the image: the scratching and scraping; the narrowing focus on posture, frame, face and eyes; the struggle to capture an essence, an identity, a soul.

‘One day when I was trying to draw a girl, something struck me: suddenly I saw that the only thing that stayed alive was her gaze. The rest, the head which was turning into a skull, became more or less the skull of a dead person. The only difference between the dead and living is the gaze.’

Giacometti was notorious for refusing to accept that his portraits were ever finished. On one occasion the Sainsburys needed to get a work signed. But they were warned not to let the artist get his hands on the piece, as he’d never give it back.

Alberto Giacometti - Diego Seated, 1948,
oil on canvas

'That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.'

Perhaps there is something we can all learn here. We live in an era of pragmatism and practicality; of discipline around deadlines. We’re taught that ‘done is better than perfect’ and ‘perfect is the enemy of good’. But in the digital age a task is never complete, a goal never reached. Endings represent a submission, a letting go, a kind of complacency. Nowadays we must constantly improve, endlessly evolve. We shouldn’t be afraid to keep on, to persist in the quest for perfection.

'Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.’

One section of the exhibition considers Giacometti’s sources and influences. In the 1920s he studied classical sculpture in Paris, and he spent days in the city’s museums sketching and making notes. He was clearly inspired by Egyptian, Greek, Roman and West African art.

‘Have you ever noticed that the truer a work is the more stylized it is? That seems strange, because style certainly does not conform to the reality of appearances, and yet the heads that come closest to resembling people I see on the street are those that are the least naturalistic – the sculptures of the Egyptians, the Chinese, the archaic Greeks and the Sumerians.’

Many years ago, on a visit to Athens, I came across the Museum of Cycladic Art. I was bowled over by the elegantly reduced female figures, highly stylised in smooth white marble. Arms folded, flat faced and sharp nosed, they reach out to us across the centuries, cool and aloof, silent and knowing. Originating from a small group of Aegean islands in the second and third millennia BC, Cycladic figures are consistently cited as an inspiration for modern sculptors.

And here they are again at a Giacometti exhibition on the other side of the world. The artist explained why he found them so compelling.

‘If I didn’t know that your skull had a certain depth, I couldn’t guess it. Therefore, if I made a sculpture of you absolutely as I perceive you, I would make a rather flat, scarcely modulated, sculpture that would be much closer to a Cycladic sculpture, which has a stylised look, than to a Rodin or Houdon, which has a realistic look.’

Giacometti regarded art as 'the residue of vision.’ It’s what’s left behind after flawed perception and fading memory have decayed and distorted the lived experience. Beyond reality there is truth.

Perhaps sometimes in the world of brands, communication and entertainment we strive too hard to reproduce reality, to reflect the world as it actually is. Giacometti suggests that we should set aside our crude attempts at naturalism; that rather we should reduce, condense and distil - and then embrace style, abstraction and individual interpretation.

All we have to do is take a leap.

'The more I work, the more I see things differently - that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is.'

'So true, funny how it seems.
Always in time, but never in line for dreams.
Head over heels when toe to toe,
This is the sound of my soul.
This is the sound.
I bought a ticket to the world,
But now I've come back again.
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh, I want the truth to be said.
I know this much is true.
I know this much is true.’

Spandau Ballet, ‘True’ (G Kemp)

No. 248

Play for Today: The Answer To Your Future May Reside in Your Past

There were some advantages to growing up in the era before multi-channel TV. Lack of choice corralled you into regularly watching shows about inventions, astronomy, sheep dog trials and show jumping. Back then it seemed perfectly ordinary for a teenager to be sat at home following a snooker game in black and white, estimating the value of an antique chaise longue, guessing the identity of a musical piece played on a soundless keyboard. It was a kind of forced serendipity. In the absence of videogames and the internet, in the era of unheated bedrooms, there was nothing else to do. Sometimes a narrow diet broadens the mind.

My father and I particularly enjoyed watching a BBC series of one-off dramas, ‘Play for Today’. The pieces considered contemporary British life, and were written by the great dramatists of the time – people like Alan Bleasdale, Mike Leigh, Jack Rosenthal and Dennis Potter. ‘Play for Today’ was a window into other people’s worlds. ‘Bar Mitzvah Boy’ related the concerns of a Jewish lad growing up in North London; ‘The Black Stuff’ recounted the adventures of Liverpudlian tarmac layers during the recession; ‘Nuts in May’ told the tale of a nature-loving couple on a camping holiday.

‘Play for Today’ was not easy viewing. It consistently delivered arguments and upsets, temper tantrums and emotional outbursts. Here were families at war, relationships on the edge, jobs on the line.

One day, after a particularly eventful episode, I turned to my father and challenged him:

‘Look, Dad, I love ‘Play for Today’. But most people’s lives are really not this dramatic.’

As a suburban youth, growing up in a happy lower middle class home, I was under the impression that the majority of the population led rather ordinary, uncomplicated lives. I imagined my own unfolding in a simple and seamless way: go to university, get a job, get married, settle down, raise a family, take up gardening…

As I grew older I realised that life’s not like that. With every passing year you find that another illness or career dilemma, another financial challenge or brush with the law, another triumph or disaster, has affected your friends and family - and indeed yourself. Someone close has succumbed to teenage angst, twenty-something stress, a mid-life crisis, the softening of old age. Someone dear has been cursed by a tempestuous relationship, a torrid break-up; is haunted by missed opportunities, disappointed ambitions.

In truth most people’s lives could provide the material for their very own ‘Play for Today’. And indeed, as I reflect on my own childhood, it probably wasn’t so ordinary after all. It explains a good deal about who I am now.

 ‘Childhood is the bank balance of the writer.’
Graham Greene

It’s important to bear this in mind when considering your colleagues. You may regard them as robust, settled and steady. You may feel you’ve got a pretty good appreciation of what makes them tick. But, in my experience, individuals often conceal domestic concerns from the office. They often suppress anxieties, tensions and traumas that date back well before they arrived.

My old boss Nigel Bogle was a firm believer in brand archaeology pointing the way to future business success:

 ‘If you want to make a brand great again look at what made it great in the first place.’

I suspect this sentiment may be as true of people as it is of brands. If we know our colleagues’ personal narratives, their early struggles and experiences, we can better comprehend what motivates them and stands in their way; their enduring values and character. If we spend time properly listening to the dramas that propelled them through childhood, we’ll better understand the behaviour of their adult selves - and be better equipped to get the best out of them at work. The answer to our future often resides in our past.

So go on. Find a quiet moment, lean over to the person next to you, and gently enquire: 

‘Tell me about your childhood.’

'It's not a case of telling the truth.
Some lines just fit the situation.
Call me a liar,
You would anyway.

It's not a case of aiming to please.
You know you're always crying.
It's just your part
In the Play for Today.’

The Cure, 'Play for Today’ (L Tolhurst / M Hartley / R Smith / S Gallup)

No. 247

In Quiet Contemplation: ‘It Is in Silence that One Gets to Face Oneself’

Helene Schjerfbeck,Self-Portrait, Black Background, 1915

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck (Royal Academy, London, until 27 October).

Schjerfbeck was born in Helsinki in 1862. Her father was an office manager in the state railways. When at the age of 4 she fell down the stairs and broke her hip, she was given drawing materials to cheer her up. It soon became clear that she had a special talent, and at 11 she was sent to study art in Helsinki. In 1880 she moved to Paris, and she subsequently spent time in artists’ colonies at Pont Aven, Brittany and St Ives, Cornwall. 

Schjerfbeck began as a realist, and over the years her work embraced impressionism and abstraction. She painted still lifes and landscapes, rural views and domestic scenes. Yet one is most struck by her portraits.

Schjerfbeck’s subjects regard us over their shoulders. Then they turn away and look down. Sometimes they simply close their eyes. Her friend Maria attends to her book with her back to us. Her black-clad mother reads, sews and sits silently with her hands clasped in front of her. The seamstress and the schoolgirl are lost in private reflection. 

Occasionally the melancholy mood is lifted by an element of fashion. Schjerfbeck subscribed to Marie Claire magazine and had an eye for a beret, a cloche hat, a bold shade of lipstick. 

From her early twenties until the end of her life, aged 83, Schjerfbeck painted raw, candid self-portraits. Hair neat, lips pursed, eyebrows arched. Angular features. A spot of rouge on her cheeks. The portraits become progressively more pared back, more abstract and anguished. Youth fades, skin pales, colours recede, shadows fall. Finally she faces death, gaunt and alone.

One leaves the Schjerfbeck exhibition haunted by a sense of sadness. She was an artist of introspection; of quiet rooms and muted colours; of silence and stillness.

When I was at college I recall a visit from my friend Catrin’s parents. I was babbling away, filling the awkward silence with inconsequential nonsense - as is my wont. At length Cat’s father addressed me in somewhat severe Welsh tones:

‘It is in silence that one gets to face oneself.’

These words stuck with me.

Helene Schjerfbeck,Maria (detail), 1909

I have generally subscribed to the view that an active mind needs constant stimulus; that it must process that stimulus into opinions and beliefs; that we must always be looking, listening and learning, deliberating, debating and discussing. But there’s a limit. As I’ve aged I’ve realised that it’s also important to stop and catch one’s breath; to liberate the brain from the trivial and unimportant; to pause and take stock. I have found it helpful when on the verge of sleep, on the edge of consciousness, to review the day and reflect on tomorrow. I guess I’ve gradually learned to appreciate absence and stillness.

‘Dreaming does not suit me. To work, to live through work, that is my path.’

Fate dealt Schjerfbeck a cruel hand. Her childhood accident left her with a lifelong limp and she suffered poor health. She was unlucky in love. Financially challenged, she spent many years nursing her mother in a small town north of Helsinki. She died in a sanatorium in Sweden in 1946. Nonetheless, one can’t help thinking that, though she had a tough life, she probably left it with profound knowledge and understanding, and with a strong sense of self. Perhaps that is enough.

Helene Schjerfbeck - The School Girl II (1908)

'Quiet nights of quiet stars, quiet chords from my guitar,
Floating on the silence that surrounds us.
Quiet thoughts and quiet dreams, quiet walks by quiet streams,
And the window that looks out on Corcovado. Oh how lovely.’

Astrud Gilberto, ‘Quiet Nights (Corcovado)’ (A C Jobim / G Lees)

No. 246

‘You Got to Have Vision to See’: Tennessee Williams and The Fugitive Kind

‘This country used to be wild, the men and women were wild and there was a wild sort of sweetness in their hearts, for each other. But now it’s sick with neon, it’s broken out sick with neon, like most other places.’
Carol Cutrere, ‘Orpheus Descending’

I recently saw a fine production of Tennessee Williams’ ‘Orpheus Descending’ (The Menier Chocolate Factory, London). This 1957 play meant a good deal to Williams. It was a re-write of his 1940 piece, ‘Battle of Angels,’ which was his first work to be given a professional production. He also adapted it into the 1959 movie ‘The Fugitive Kind’, starring Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. (Brando’s performance earned him the first million-dollar contract for a single film.)

‘Orpheus Descending’ is a hot Southern stew of ‘memories and the loneliness of them’; of isolated strangers yearning for intimacy in a world of prejudice and bigotry. 

’Nobody ever gets to know no body! We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!’

Lady Torrance runs a small-town dry goods store and she busies herself attending to her narrow-minded, gossiping customers. Her tyrannical husband lies upstairs, unloved and dying. The local free-spirit, Carol Cutrere, who ‘has an odd, fugitive beauty,’ arrives to ruffle some feathers.

‘I’m an exhibitionist! I want to be noticed, seen, heard, felt! I want them to know I’m alive!’

Carol takes a shine to Val Xavier, a drifter who has recently arrived in town with little more than a snakeskin jacket and a guitar to his name.

‘I’d love to hold something the way you hold your guitar, that’s how I’d love to hold something, with such - tender protection!’

But Val has other things on his mind. Vowing to put the troubadour life behind him, he pitches for a job as Lady’s store clerk. Lady is initially sceptical.

Val: ‘I got nowhere to go.’
Lady: ‘Well, everyone’s got a problem and that’s yours.’

Gradually, however, Val charms Lady into giving him a chance. He’s a talkative, sensitive, self-assured young man, with a philosophical nature.

‘You know they’s a kind of bird that don’t have legs so it can’t light on nothing, but has to stay all its life on its wings in the sky?... They sleep on the wind and never light on this earth but one time when they die… I’d like to be one of those birds; they’s lots of people would like to be one of those birds and never be – corrupted!’

‘Orpheus Descending’ is a celebration of birds that can’t settle, that stay on the wing, cherishing their freedom; a celebration of misfits and malcontents, oddballs and outsiders; of artists and activists, musicians and immigrants; of ‘the ‘fugitive kind’.

In one scene, eccentric local artist, Vee Talbott, a woman of a nervous disposition, endeavors to explain to Val her impressionistic style of painting.

‘I paint a thing how I feel it instead of always the way it actually is. Appearances are misleading, nothing is what it looks like to the eyes. You got to have – vision – to see!’

This thought resonated with me. 

Professionally I was raised to follow the discipline of Vision, Strategy and Tactics: we should always set out with a clear, compelling Vision; Vision drives Strategy; Strategy drives Tactics; and everything else is just a distraction.

However, there’s something about the contemporary discourse that works against this approach. Whether one considers the field of politics or commerce, one cannot help noticing the absence of guiding Visions. Of course, a Vision Statement may exist on a website somewhere, in a Manifesto or Company Report perhaps, or in an arcane deck of charts. But rarely nowadays do you see clear evidence of Vision driving everyday behaviour and beliefs. 

We spend most of our time reacting to events and responding to circumstance. We duck and dive, nip and tuck. We get caught up in the petty and prosaic, the incidental and insignificant. The competitive storm, the relentless media scrutiny, the headlong tilt towards change; the urgency of now, the pressing need for immediate opinion and instant action – they all combine to drag the debate ineluctably down into Tactics. 

We may feel as though we’re actively engaged and urgently busy, as we expertly navigate our daily trials and tribulations. But as Vee Talbott knew, if we have no Vision, we just can’t see.

In the course of ‘Orpheus Descending’ the forces of small-town conservatism close in on Val. Inevitable really. And at the end of the play a mournful Carol is left in possession of his snakeskin jacket.

‘Wild things leave skins behind them, they leave clean skins and teeth and white bones behind them, and these are the tokens passed from one to another, so that the fugitive kind can always follow their kind.’

'But what I'd like to know
Is could a place like this exist so beautiful,
Or do we have to find our wings and fly away
To the vision in our mind?’

Stevie Wonder, ‘Visions’ (M Graves / L J Fiagbe)

No. 245

Are You Sitting Uncomfortably? The Healthy Scepticism of Felix Vallotton

Felix Vallotton - la loge de theatre (detail)

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Swiss artist Felix Vallotton. (The Royal Academy, London, until 29 September, and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 29 October to 26 January.)

Vallotton was born into a puritanical protestant family in Lausanne in 1865. Aged 16 he settled in Paris, at first to study and then to practice art. In the 1890s he associated with the circle of artists known as the Nabis (Prophets), whose number included Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. They sought to convey emotion rather than just to record reality. They admired Japanese woodblock prints, and their work was characterised by flattened figures, strong outlines and bold colours; by empty spaces and decorative patterns.

Vallotton became a master of the art of woodcut and he was commissioned to produce illustrations for journals and newspapers, including the influential La Revue Blanche. 

Belle Epoque Paris was prosperous and dynamic, brimming with fashion, fun and creativity. It was the centre of the art world and a hub for scientific innovation. But it was also a hotbed of political unrest and social upheaval. Vallotton seems to have been both captivated by the capital’s boundless energy and conscious of the tensions that lay just beneath the surface. In his work he regarded French society with an amused but critical eye, satirising the customs and values of the bourgeoisie.

There’s a pervasive disquiet about Vallotton’s art. He seems uneasy about the relationships that are played out in the dim lamplight, in the shadows, behind closed doors; uneasy about the turbulence of city life, about the passions of the new consumer society, about the durability of the family unit. What hypocrisy remains unvoiced behind a conventional conservative façade? What secrets and lies lurk around the corner, along the corridor, or beneath the brim of an elegant hat? 

Félix Vallotton,The Ball (Le Ballon), 1899

They’re caressing fabrics at Le Bon Marche. They’re partying in the Latin Quarter. They’re rioting on the streets. The crowd runs for cover from the pouring rain. A smart-suited gentleman waits expectantly by the window. A desolate man weeps into his handkerchief as a woman looks impassively on. A couple embrace by the doorway to a claustrophobic interior. A darkness creeps across the pond in the garden. There’s a child chasing an orange ball, unaware of the looming shadows. There’s something missing in the linen closet. There’s a knife erect in the fruit loaf.

Félix Vallotton,Self-portrait at the Age of Twenty , 1885

Everything seems slightly on edge, an intriguing, incomplete narrative, a pressure cooker about to explode. Vallotton ratchets up the tension with his terse, enigmatic titles: ‘The Lie,’ ‘The Money,’ ‘The Provincial,’ ‘The Extreme Measure.’ His work foreshadows Hopper and Hitchcock in its dark humour and unsettling air of menace. 

Ours is an industry of emotions and enthusiasms; of fashions and fads. So it serves us well to retain a healthy objectivity, a suspicion of success, a caution around modish ideas. Scepticism insures us against egotism. Paranoia inoculates us against complacency. 

As Nigel Bogle was wont to warn, even in the good years, ‘We’re three phone calls away from disaster.’

So don’t get sucked in. Better to keep a cool head than to drink the Kool-Aid. Let’s maintain our distance, keep a wary eye. And like Vallotton, let’s give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

'She had a place in his life.
He never made her think twice.
As he rises to her apology,
Anybody else would surely know
He's watching her go.
But what a fool believes, he sees.’

The Doobie Brothers, ‘What a Fool Believes’ (M McDonald, K Loggins)

No. 244

Cleo’s Conundrum: ‘I Always Think Everyone's Looking at Me, But I Only Look at Myself’

'The tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world.'
Director Agnes Varda

In the 1962 film ‘Cleo de 5 a 7’ Corinne Marchand plays the eponymous heroine, a successful Parisian pop singer who fears that she has cancer. The movie follows her movements on the first day of summer, from 5-00 to 6-30, as she waits to hear the results of her tests.

'Ugliness is a kind of death. As long as I'm beautiful, I'm even more alive than the others.’

When we first encounter Cleo she comes across as somewhat superstitious, self-absorbed and trivial. She visits a tarot reader, bursts into tears in a café, and consoles herself with a visit to the hat shop. She revels in attention and recognition, and is constantly seeking her own reflection in mirrors.

‘Everything suits me. Trying things on gives me a thrill.’

However, we soon realise that Cleo’s identity is in part a product of the company she keeps. Her indulgent maid-companion avoids taxis with unlucky numbers and warns against wearing new clothes on Tuesdays. Her businessman lover only has time to pop in and shower her with hollow compliments. Her musician friends faun on her and compose frivolous songs for her with titles like ‘The Tease’ and ‘The Liar’. But they don’t think she quite has the voice for serious material.

They all treat Cleo like a child, privately regarding her as a hypochondriac drama queen. She is unable to have a proper conversation about her health concerns with any of them.

'Everybody spoils me. Nobody loves me.’

Finally Cleo can take no more. She discards her wig, changes into a simple black dress, and dons the inappropriate hat she purchased earlier. She walks out onto the Paris streets alone.

Cleo visits an old friend, Dorothee, an artist’s model who is hard up but happy. Taking a trip around town together, she is at last able to talk seriously about her fears. Cleo drops Dorothee home in a taxi. As her friend disappears up the steps, Cleo asks the cabby to slow down so that she can savour the moment. She seems to be undergoing some kind of awakening. She is more curious about the world around her, more alert to the people she passes on the street. She stops looking in mirrors.

Director Agnes Varda, who died in March of this year, explained the theme of ‘Cleo de 5 a 7’:

‘When the film starts, she’s just there to be looked at. When she takes off her wig and puts on her black dress and goes out, she’s the one who starts to look. Looking at others is the first step of feminism—not being selfish, not being mirror-oriented. Looking at other people. Discovering what they do to make a living. Or how they behave. Cleo, in the shock of being afraid of death, starts to see things differently.’
(Interviewed in Cleo, 6.1)

I was particularly taken with Cleo’s articulation of her dilemma. At a critical moment in the film, standing in front of a mirror, she declares:

‘I always think everyone's looking at me, but I only look at myself.’

This seems a thoroughly modern concern. This is us: our vanity, our solipsism, this narcissistic age. We are more interested in being known than knowing; in being understood than understanding. We think everyone’s looking at us, but we only look at ourselves.

Like Cleo, we should realise that the first step to a happy life, and indeed a successful career, is to remove our ego-tinted spectacles, to see the world as others see it. We need to cultivate abstraction.

Easier said than done perhaps.

At the Parc Montsouris Cleo meets Antoine, a soldier on leave from the Algerian war. He senses that she is troubled.

'You seem to be waiting for something, rather than someone.'

Antoine is thoughtful, talkative, funny and wise. Gradually he charms Cleo and they enjoy an open, honest conversation about love, the war and her worries. He escorts her to the hospital, taking her by the hand.

Antoine: 'I'm sorry I'm leaving. I'd like to be with you.'
Cleo: 'You are. I think my fear is gone. I think I'm happy.’

 
‘With all the doors flung open,
The wind rushing through.
I’m like an empty house
Without you.

Like a deserted isle,
Covered by the sea.
My sands slip away
Without you.

Beauty wasted,
Naked in the cold of winter.
Just a yearning body
Without you.’

‘Sans Toi’, Corinne Marchand (M Legrand, A Varda)

In memory of Agnes Varda and Michel Legrand, both of whom passed away in 2019.

No. 243

Forget What You Know: Natalia Goncharova and the Spirit of ‘Everythingism’

Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962), Peasants Picking Apples 1911 (ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019)

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Russian artist Natalia Goncharova. (Tate Modern, London until 8 September)

Peasants pick apples and dance in circles. They cut hay at harvest time and gather firewood in the snow. A head-scarfed bread seller caresses a crusty loaf. Two sporty rowers lean into their strokes. A couple of beefy wrestlers are locked in each other’s arms. Trains, planes and bicycles whizz past at incredible speed. Machines manically weave, as factory chimneys loom ominously over us. Angels grapple aeroplanes to the ground. 

Goncharova’s work at once captures the timeless routines of rural Russia and the breathless velocity of the twentieth century. It fizzes with vital energy, radiates with vibrant colour.

‘I believe that colour possesses a strange magic: sad colours, joyous or calm colours, a delicate or stronger colour harmony – these are not simply words that characterise an emotion similar to the sensations of taste. Colours have an effect on one’s psychological make-up.’

Natalia Goncharova’s ‘exhilarating’ Cyclist, 1913. Photograph: © ADAGP/DACS

Goncharova was born into a family of Russian aristocrats in 1881. She grew up on country estates 200 miles from Moscow, and moved to the city when she was 11. At 20 she enrolled to study art at the Moscow Institute and by 22 she was exhibiting in the major salons. 

Although Goncharova was classically trained, she was inspired by modern French painters and by traditional Russian arts and crafts. In 1909 she left the Institute and with fellow radical students formed Moscow's first independent exhibiting group. Critical to her development as an artist was her rejection of everything she had studied at college.

‘I have passed through all that the West has to offer… and all that my country has assimilated from the West… I now shake the dust from my feet and distance myself from the West.’

Goncharova spurned conventional approaches to scale, perspective and naturalism. Her art spanned a range of contemporary styles: Primitivism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism. She painted still lifes, landscapes and nudes; traditional peasant scenes and snapshots of urban upheaval; pure abstractions and interpretations of religious icons.

Nor did Goncherova limit herself to painting. She turned her hand to prints, book illustrations and performance art; to theatre, fashion and interior design. She published zaum, a type of experimental sound poetry. And she invented the shirt-dress.

Goncharova was happy to court controversy. Critics were outraged by a 1910 exhibition of her work that included female nudes and pagan mythology, and she was charged for public display of ‘corrupting’ images.  

She was also a natural publicist. In 1913 a Moscow gallery staged a major retrospective of her work, which included over 800 of her pieces and was the first solo exhibition of any member of the Russian avant-garde. A few weeks before the opening, she and her fellow artists paraded through the streets with hieroglyphic patterns painted on their faces. Journalists had been alerted in advance, and the streets were lined with curious crowds. Some 12,000 people visited the show.

Goncharova left Russia in 1915 to design radical costumes and sets for the Ballets Russes. Unable to return home after the 1917 revolution, she settled in Paris where she continued to create in all manner of media right up until her death aged 81 in 1962.

I left the exhibition in awe of Goncharova’s audacity and exuberance, and of the rich diversity of her output. It’s difficult to define her style because she seemed to embrace so many of them. Indeed fellow artists described her work as ‘everythingism.’ 

'We acknowledge all styles as suitable for the expression of our art, styles existing both yesterday and today.'
Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov

Goncharova suggests that we should not be constrained by our education; that we should not feel obliged to follow established codes and best practice. Hers is a story of liberation, of following one’s passions wherever they lead.

What if we threw off the shackles of convention and taste? What if we rejected modish opinions and the limitations of style? What if we forgot what we know? 

Perhaps like Goncharova we would be free to pursue a broader range of methods, modes and media. Perhaps we too could find our own version of  ‘everythingism.’

'Somebody told me:
"Boy, everything she wants is everything she sees."
I guess I must have loved you,
Because I said you were the perfect girl for me.’

Wham! ‘Everything She Wants’ (G Michael)

No. 242