Picasso Drinking Gasoline: In Praise of Restless Souls and Inventive Minds

'Study for the Horse Head (I)', a sketch for ‘Guernica’ (1937)

'I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.'
Pablo Picasso

Picasso sits before his easel in a pair of shorts and no shirt. He is 75. He has been set the challenge of creating an image in 5 minutes with a new felt-tip pen. He sketches with speed and confidence - long fluid lines, bold squiggles, dabs of colour. He stares intently at his canvas. A bunch of flowers becomes a tubby fish, which turns into a jaunty cockerel, and finally a red-eyed faun.

‘I could go on all night if you want.’

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s fascinating 1956 film ‘Le mystère Picasso’ seeks to shed light on Picasso’s creative process. The artist paints on transparent blank newsprint so that the crew can film on the other side. He takes us on a dazzling, restless, inspiring journey.

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.’

The documentary features in the fine ‘Picasso and Paper’ exhibition, currently running at the Royal Academy, London (until 13 April).

Pablo Picasso, Women at Their Toilette, Paris, winter 1937–38
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean

‘By chance I managed to get hold of a stock of splendid Japanese paper. It cost me an arm and a leg! But without it I’d never have done those drawings. The paper seduced me.’

For Picasso paper was a vehicle for expression that was always close at hand. It was a tool for preparatory studies. It was a fertile medium in its own right. He created on writing paper, wrapping paper, wallpaper and newspaper. He sketched on notebooks and napkins, magazines and menus, packaging and postcards. He drew in pencil, oil, ink, crayon and charcoal. He folded and glued, cut and pasted, painted and printed.

'I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.’

The exhibition presents a torrent of ideas, thoughts and feelings, a gushing stream of consciousness. It takes us from two charming silhouettes of a dog and a dove, cut from paper when Picasso was nine years old; through his Blue and Rose Periods; through Cubism, Surrealism and Neoclassicism; all the way to a skull-like self-portrait, in black and white crayon, that he made at the age of 91. 

Dog, Málaga, c. 1890 Cut-out paper
© Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Photo, Gasull Fotografia © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020

'To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.’

On the way we see countless fauns, goats and doves; matadors and minotaurs; harlequins and horses; nudes and portraits; lovers, jesters, cavaliers and circus performers. Picasso burnt two eyes and a mouth into a paper napkin with a cigarette to make a head. He created a plaster cast of a crumpled sheet of paper. He drew a cheeky leg on a Vogue fashion spread.

'Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.’

Picasso clearly had a phenomenal work ethic. He just kept producing fresh, original ideas across all manner of media. He couldn’t help himself.

'Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.’

And he wasn’t afraid of the absurd, the ugly or the obscene. His work is unfiltered, unfettered, uncensored. Freud would have had a field day.

'The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.’

When fellow artist Georges Braques first saw 'Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon' he observed:

'It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire.’

Picasso next to the cut and folded cardboard sculpture of a seated man for Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / image RMN-GP © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020

I left the exhibition in awe of Picasso’s extraordinary appetite for change, his craving to create. He seems to have had a relentless desire to express ideas, to articulate feelings, to explore, to pioneer. He was indeed drinking gasoline.

'If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!’

Picasso was, of course, a unique talent and a problematic personality. But he still suggests some simple lessons for people working in the creative professions.

We should cultivate a restless mind - diligent, dynamic, determined; alive to new possibilities and fresh perspectives. We should not seek to check, edit or censor ideas before we’ve given them room to breathe. We should avoid nostalgia; never rest on our laurels; never look back.

'Action is the foundational key to all success.'

Above all, we should reach for a pad. Scribble, sketch, jot and note. Carry a journal, make a list. Devise a scheme, form a theory, hatch a plan, draft an idea, plot an escape.

Go on. Make it up, write it down. Now.

'I do not seek. I find.’

At the end of the Clouzot film Picasso expresses dissatisfaction with one of his images. He sets about over-painting it. ‘But what about the audience?’ Clouzot asks.

‘I’ve never worried about the audience and I’m not about to start now.’

'O, the wayward wind is a restless wind,
Is a restless wind that yearns to wander.
And I was born the next of kin,
The next of kin to the wayward wind.’
Sam Cooke, ‘The Wayward Wind’ (S Lebowsky, H Newman)

No. 269

‘Ace in the Hole’: Beware the Seductive Allure of Cynicism in the Workplace

'Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.’
Chuck Tatum, ‘Ace in the Hole’

In Billy Wilder’s splendid 1951 movie ‘Ace in the Hole’Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a hard-bitten, unscrupulous journalist who has been fired from the big East Coast papers for lying, drinking and womanising. Arriving in a small New Mexico town, looking for a break to take him back to the big time, he takes a job at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. 

'I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog.’

After an uneventful year at the paper, Tatum stumbles across an incident where a man has been trapped alive down an old Native American mine. He weaves a sensational story about an ancient curse, a hero in peril and a distressed wife waiting back at home. The piece makes the front page and precipitates a stream of onlookers and reporters to the site of the accident.

'This is the way it reads best, this is the way it's gonna be. In tomorrow's paper and the next day's. It's the way people like it. It's the way I'm gonna play it.' 

Tatum understands that human interest sells newspapers, and he’s happy to spice up the truth a little to enhance that human interest.

'Human interest. You pick up the paper, you read about 84 men or 284, or a million men, like in a Chinese famine. You read it, but it doesn't stay with you. One man's different. You want to know all about him. That's human interest.’

Next Tatum does a deal with the local sheriff to keep competitive press reporters away from the scene, promising that the celebrity he garners for the official overseeing the rescue will increase his chances of re-election. When the disgruntled wife of the trapped man threatens to leave, Tatum coaxes her to stay on and reap the commercial benefits of the sensation at her hitherto desolate trading store. 

'I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.’ 

Then the chief engineer reports that he can get the trapped man out in 12 hours by shoring-up the mine walls. This is too soon for Tatum. He persuades the contractor to drill from above, which will take a number of days. The more dramatic the project, the greater the engineer’s reputation, the more lucrative the jobs he’ll secure in the future.

'I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.’

For Tatum himself the incentive for spinning out the story is simple: more exclusives, more recognition, a bigger job, more money. Soon he’ll be back at the top where he belongs.

'Look, I've waited a long time for my turn at bat. Now that they've pitched me a fat one, I'm gonna smack it right out of the ballpark.’

Intense, vigorous and on a short fuse, growling and grinning, teasing and cajoling, Tatum orchestrates a full-scale media circus. Day-trippers arrive from the city. Cars and tour-buses queue to get in. A special train is laid on. A carnival sets up in the shadows of the mine. 

The disgruntled pressmen endeavour fruitlessly to get Tatum onside.

'We're all in the same boat.’
'I'm in the boat. You're in the water. Now let's see how you can swim.’

‘Ace in the Hole’ is a modern fable. It illustrates what happens when truth is pushed to one side, when compromises are made, when people are manipulated to pursue their own self-interest. It’s a story of when cynicism takes hold.

Of course cynicism can be seductive. Cynics are often charming and funny, crafty and canny. You’ll find them at every level of status and experience; in every company, community and country. They can bend the truth to make it more attractive. They can make straight dealing seem archaic and naïve. 

But cynicism is corrosive. With every corner cut and lily gilded, with every minor deception and petty deceit, with every scornful remark and sarcastic observation, there is an erosion of trust, a decay in confidence, an unpicking of the ties that bind people together. And, in time, sooner or later, things fall apart.

Of course, for all his charisma, intelligence and foresight, there’s one element of the whole media circus that Tatum can’t control: the health and durability of the hapless victim trapped for six days down a mine. And this is where his perfectly laid plans gradually come unstuck.

'When you have a big human interest story, you've got to give it a big human interest ending. When you get people steamed up like this, don't ever make suckers out of them. I don't want to hand them a dead man.'

In memory of Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) who passed away earlier this month.

'Well, if friends with their fancy persuasion
Don't admit that it's part of a scheme,
Then I can't help but have my suspicions
'Cause I ain't quite as dumb as I seem.
And you said you was never intending
To break up our scene in this way.
But there ain't any use in pretending
It could happen to us any day.
How long has this been going on?
How long has this been going on?’

Ace, ‘How Long?’ (P Carrack)

No. 268



The Clash Teach The Three Rs: ‘Rehearse, 'Rite and Record’

The Clash - Credit: Pennie Smith

'The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in.
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin’ thin.
Engines stop running, but I have no fear,
'Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river.'
The Clash, ‘London Calling’

I recently visited a display at The Museum of London commemorating the 40th anniversary of The Clash’s third album, ‘London Calling’ (until 19 April 2020).

This 1979 release marked a critical moment in British popular music. It led a breakout from the narrow confines of punk and mapped new, more expansive creative territories. It was swaggering and confident, rebellious and romantic. Where previously The Clash had been the standard bearers for punk minimalism, ‘London Calling’ experimented with ska and reggae; with rockabilly and rock’n’roll; with piano, sax and brass. Where previously the band had been deeply sceptical about America’s cultural worth, they now embraced its status as the wellspring of rock’n’roll. 

'We wanted 'London Calling' to reclaim the raw, natural culture. We looked back to earlier rock music with great pleasure, but many of the issues people were facing were new and frightening. Our message was more urgent — that things were going to pieces.’
Joe Strummer

True to The Clash’s own roots, ‘London Calling’ considered contemporary themes: police oppression, racism and unemployment; lost idealism, consumer ennui and nuclear fallout. (It was written in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident.) But it also looked further afield, reflecting on the Spanish Civil War, Montgomery Clift and the enduring appeal of a brand new Cadillac. It was a thrillingly eclectic cocktail of top tunes and radical ideas.

'I'm all lost in the supermarket.
I can no longer shop happily.
I came in here for that special offer,
A guaranteed personality.’
'Lost in the Supermarket' 

The Clash - Credit: Pennie Smith

The display at the Museum of London, along with the accompanying scrapbook, afford us the opportunity to consider the very particular circumstances that led to this vital, exhilarating album. 

Here are some of its lessons.

1. ‘If You’re in a Rut, You Gotta Get Out of It’

‘If you hold them to their past, you’re strapping on a straightjacket.’
Kris Needs, ZigZag Magazine

By the time The Clash came to planning their third album, they’d reached a fork in the road. The Sex Pistols had split up and Sid Vicious was dead. The punk genre they had collectively pioneered, for all its blistering brilliance, was running on empty. It had become all three chord Spartanism, snarling nihilism, safety pins, spitting and mohicans.

As a journalist observed at the time:

‘The first album detailed their concerns (repression, class war, boredom, etc.) while the second showed up the dilemmas of their position rather than actually going some way to resolving them.’

The Clash recognised that they had to evolve and move on.

2. Build a Tight Team

The band had recently parted company with their manager Bernie Rhodes and found themselves without a studio. They relocated to Vanilla Studios in Pimlico and set about rehearsing. In contrast to previous albums, they kept these sessions private.

‘We felt quite alone in some ways. We found the place in Pimlico and became even tighter, to the point where you didn’t need to talk when you were playing because there was a natural communication there.’
Paul Simonon

The main songwriters, Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, had not penned a new song in over a year. And so the group began the process by performing covers from a broad variety of genres.

3. Establish a Routine

 ‘There was a real intensity of effort and our recreation was playing 5-a-side football as a way of starting our rehearsal days. We’d play until we dropped and then we’d start playing music. It was a good limbering up exercise.’
Joe Strummer

The band developed a disciplined daily routine: a midday game of football in the playground opposite the studio, egg and chips in the nearby café, followed by extensive rehearsals. As ever, habit is the creative’s friend.

'I just think we really found ourselves at that time and it was a lot to do with the football.’
Mick Jones

4. Do Things in the Right Order

Once they had built confidence and coherence through rehearsing cover versions, the band took to writing new songs, and then rehearsing these. They then transferred to Wessex Studios in Highbury to begin recording. They referred to their disciplined regime as the Three Rs: ‘Rehearse, ‘Rite and Record.’

This may seem an obvious point. So often in any creative endeavour we charge ahead and try to do everything at once. The Clash demonstrated that it’s critical to give each developmental phase time and space, and to approach them in the right sequence.

‘That’s probably why it’s our best, because it was written, rehearsed and then recorded, rather than just going into the studio and see what turned up.’
Topper Headon

5. Add a Dose of Adrenaline

The Clash had appointed veteran producer Guy Stevens to oversee the album. Stevens was a fast-working maverick who had recorded with Mott the Hoople back in the day. He created a sense of urgency in the studio by smashing chairs, whirling ladders and shouting in the musicians’ faces.

He also liked to play a recording of the 1979 FA Cup Final - when Arsenal beat Manchester United 3-2 - at full volume over the studio speakers, while holding a scarf bearing the words 'There's only one Liam Brady'.

6.  When You’ve Found a Groove, Stay in It

One of the remarkable things about ‘London Calling’ at the time was that it was a 19-track double album. This seemed at odds with the punk movement for whom such things had the whiff of prog rock excess and self-indulgence. In order to address possible accusations of commercial exploitation, The Clash insisted that ‘London Calling’ be sold as a two-for-one offer.

The truth was that the band had hit such a rich vein of form that they had too much material for a single album. The final song, 'Train in Vain,' arrived so late that it was originally excluded from the back cover's track listing. 

The lesson is: when you’ve found a groove, stay in it.

‘London Calling’ was released on 14 December 1979. Pennie Smith’s iconic cover photo featured Paul Simonon smashing his bass on stage at New York’s Palladium theatre earlier that year. (She had originally been reluctant to use this image as it was out of focus.) Ray Lowry’s art direction echoed that of Elvis Presley’s first album.

From the moment we heard the first urgent chords of ‘London Calling’; from the moment we acquainted ourselves with the assertive strut of ‘Working for the Clampdown’; from the moment the bass on ‘The Guns of Brixton’ came rumbling in … we knew this was it, the real deal – it can’t fail.

'I know that my life make you nervous.
But I tell you I can't live in service.
Like the doctor who was born for a purpose.
Rudie can't fail,’
‘Rudie Can’t Fail’

Rudi Can’t Fail - Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, The Clash 1979

No. 267

‘An Intenser Expression’: David Bomberg on Building Life and Art Anew

David Bomberg 1890–1957 Vision of Ezekiel 1912

'We must build our new art life of today upon the ruins of the dead art life of yesterday.’
David Bomberg

I recently visited a small exhibition of the early work of British artist David Bomberg. (The National Gallery until 1 March.) 

Bomberg was born in Birmingham in 1890, the seventh of eleven children. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants who subsequently settled in Whitechapel in London’s East End. He grew up in poverty, but single-mindedly pursued an artistic career. After a chance encounter at the V&A with the established painter John Singer Sargent, he gained a place at the Slade School. 

‘I hate the Fat Man of the Renaissance.’ 

Whereas the British art establishment of the day steadfastly resisted the innovations that were taking place on continental Europe, Bomberg was one of a number of young painters who were emboldened by the likes of Picasso and Matisse. He gradually developed a radical style that combined the abstraction of cubism with the dynamism of futurism.

When he was 22 Bomberg’s mother died of pneumonia. She was just 48. He channelled his grief into 'Vision of Ezekiel,' a work that considered the biblical story in which a prophet is taken to the Valley of Dried Bones and witnesses their resurrection.

'And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.'
Ezekiel, Chapter 37

The geometric figures in ‘Vision of Ezekiel’ dance with pure joy, hug one another, and raise their hands ecstatically to the heavens. They are in awe at what has happened to them, animated with a renewed lust for life. It is a heartfelt work.

Detail from David Bomberg In the Hold, about 1913-14 © Tate

Bomberg’s paintings around this time responded to his family’s experiences and to the world around him. He was inspired by the muscular activity at the Judeans gymnasium where his brother trained as a boxer; by the dramas played out at Saint Katharine’s Wharf where ships brought in human cargoes of immigrants; by the raw physicality that he witnessed at Schevzik’s Vapour Baths in Brick Lane where locals went in search of ‘purification.’

Bomberg created sharp, angular abstractions, teeming with energy, vibrant with colour. There were jagged elbows, taught necks, arms aloft and legs akimbo. Stretching and straining, squatting and stooping. Wrestling, embracing, gripping and grasping. Holding on for dear life. His paintings had an urgency about them, an electric charge, a vital sense of struggle. 

Bomberg’s progressive thoughts and rebellious attitude got him expelled from the Slade. But he forged ahead, and within a year, in 1914, he was given a show at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea. In the catalogue he wrote:

'In some of the work… I completely abandon Naturalism and Tradition. I am searching for an Intenser expression. In other work… where I use Naturalistic Form, I have stripped it of all irrelevant matter.’

Perhaps there is a lesson for us all here. So often in work and life we compromise, concede and dilute. We waste time and energy. We allow ourselves to be caught up in the trivial and superficial, the bland and banal. 

If we truly want to ‘build our new life of today’ the answer may reside in ‘stripping away irrelevant matter’; in finding more concise, more concentrated articulation of our feelings; in seeking out heightened experiences. We need to find ‘an intenser expression.’

David Bomberg, The Mud Bath, 1914. © Tate

With the onset of the First World War Bomberg enlisted and served in the trenches on the Western Front. Like many of his comrades he turned to poetry as an outlet. Distraught at the death of his brother and many of his friends, in 1917 he shot himself in the foot. He was fortunate to escape a firing squad.

After the conflict Bomberg’s experiences prompted a change in artistic direction. He increasingly painted portraits and landscapes, embracing a more figurative style. The radicalism of cubism and the optimism of the machine age just didn’t feel relevant any more.

‘Hemmed in. The bolted ceiling of the night rests
on our heads, like vaulted roofs of iron huts the troops
use out in France, - unlit. Grope – stretch out your
hand and feel its corrugated sides, rusted,

Dimly seen, six wiring-stakes driven in the ground,
askew, some yards apart; - demons dragging, strangling -
wire. Earth and sky, each in each enfolded -
hypnotised; - sucked in the murky snare, stricken dumb.’

David Bomberg, ‘Winter Night’

No. 266

A Taste of Honey: You Find Unusual People in Unusual Places

‘Dear Miss Littlewood,
Along with this letter comes a play, the first I have written. I wondered if you would read it through and send it back to me because no matter what sort of theatrical atrocity it might be, it isn’t valueless as far as I’m concerned.'

So began a letter sent in April 1958 by 19-year old Shelagh Delaney to radical theatre director Joan Littlewood. Delaney, the daughter of a bus inspector, was living on a Salford council estate. She had left school at 17 and worked in a number of low-paid jobs: a clerk at a milk depot, a shop assistant, an usherette and a photographer's assistant. The play that came with her letter was ‘A Taste of Honey’. 

'A fortnight ago I didn’t know the theatre existed, but a young man, anxious to improve my mind, took me along to the Opera House in Manchester and I came away after the performance having suddenly realised that at last, after nineteen years of life, I had discovered something that means more to me than myself.' 

Legend has it that Delaney was spurred to write ‘A Taste of Honey’ after seeing a production of Terence Rattigan’s ‘Variation on a Theme.’ This polite middle-class drawing-room drama was typical of British theatre at the time. To Delaney it seemed completely irrelevant and she believed she could do better. In a subsequent interview she observed:

'I had strong ideas about what I wanted to see in the theatre. We used to object to plays where the factory workers came cap in hand and call the boss 'sir'. Usually North Country people are shown as gormless, whereas in actual fact, they are very alive and cynical.’

‘A Taste of Honey’ is set in crumbling, neglected post-war Salford. It’s a world of industrial pollution and grinding poverty; of uninspiring schools and unfulfilling jobs; of a cold shabby flat with a shared bathroom and a gas cooker on the blink; of make do and mend, worrying about the rent, and keeping your cups in the sink. It’s a world of awkward truths and pernicious lies.

‘We’re all at the steering wheel of our own destiny. Careering along like drunken drivers.’

The play relates the story of working-class teenager Jo, who has grown up following her bibulous mother from one tatty bedsit and unreliable boyfriend to the next. 

‘When you start earning you can start moaning.’

Jo falls in love with a black sailor, but he returns to sea and leaves her alone and pregnant. She strikes up a friendship with gay art student Geof, who moves into her flat and looks after her.

'You need someone to love you while you are looking for someone to love.’

A mixed race relationship, single motherhood, homosexuality - these were themes that had not hitherto had a place on the British stage. Above all ‘A Taste of Honey’ was ground breaking in its frank and affectionate depiction of working-class Northern life.

‘In this country the more you know the less you earn.’

Despite all the daily injustices and inequities, Delaney’s Lancastrian characters are resilient, cheerful, sarcastic and funny. They move freely from bitter rancour to light-hearted teasing. They take life’s challenges in their stride.  

'I’m not afraid of the darkness outside. It’s the darkness inside houses I don’t like.’

At the heart of the play is an extraordinary portrayal of the relationship between a mother and her daughter. We see resentment and affection, rivalry and companionship. And we get a strong sense that they have more in common than they’d like to admit.

‘Why don’t you learn from my mistakes? It takes half your life to learn from your own.’

In May 1958, just a few weeks after Littlewood received the teenager’s letter, ‘A Taste of Honey’ opened at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. It was a runaway success, winning awards and a West End transfer. Delaney worked with film director Tony Richardson to translate it into the splendid 1961 movie of the same name, starring Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan and Murray Melvin.

'The only consolation I can find in your immediate presence is your ultimate absence.’

I found the story of Shelagh Delaney’s first play both thrilling and troubling. On the one hand, it’s marvellous to encounter such talent in someone so young: so bold and original; so determined and confident.

‘I just applied my imagination to my observation.’

On the other hand, one can’t help wondering: How lucky was Delaney to find the supportive Littlewood? Would similar talent be recognised and rewarded today? How many words go unspoken? How many voices go unheard? How many perspectives go unexpressed? How many ideas go unrealised?

‘My usual self is a very unusual self.’

Nowadays we spend a good deal of time in the world of communications obsessing about transformation and reinvention. We tend to imagine that all the answers are to be found in new models, new platforms and new processes.

But the greatest opportunity facing this, and so many other industries, may reside in untapped talent – in young people from classes, regions and ethnicities that are currently overlooked. You find unusual people in unusual places.

‘People of my age – a bit younger than me – want to go somewhere and they know what they want to do, and they’re all like tethered… jerking about waiting for someone to cut the tether. Let me off. Let me go!’

Delaney’s letter to Littlewood concluded with a simple plea for help:

‘I want to write for the theatre, but I know so very little about it. I know nothing, have nothing – except a willingness to learn – and intelligence.’

Isn’t that all you can ask for?

You can see a fine production of ‘A Taste of Honey’ at the Trafalgar Studios in London until 29 February.

'I dreamt about you last night
And I fell out of bed twice.
You can pin and mount me like a butterfly.
But 'take me to the haven of your bed'
Was something that you never said.’

The Smiths, ‘Reel Around the Fountain’ (S Morrissey / J Marr)

No. 265

Trojan Business: Can an Ancient Myth Teach Contemporary Lessons?

Filippo Albacini (1777–1858), The Wounded Achilles. Marble, 1825. © The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth

'Like the generation of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.'
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, VI

I recently attended an exhibition at the British Museum considering the enduring myth of ancient Troy. (‘Troy, Myth and Reality’ runs until 8 March, 2020.)

The displays recount the legend of the Trojan War as described by Homer, Virgil, the great tragedians and poets. They consider the central role the story had in ancient cultures, the archaeological endeavours to discover the true site of Troy, and the range of artistic responses to the myth through the centuries.

According to legend, the Trojan War was precipitated by the abduction of Helen, the wife of Spartan King Menelaus, by the Trojan Prince Paris. An alliance of Greek kings, led by Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon of Mycenae, rallies in support. They sail in their ‘sea-cleaving ships’ across the Aegean for ‘many-towered’ Troy. A huge army of ‘well-greaved‘ Greeks then embarks on a ten-year siege that culminates in the fall of the city. 

'At last the armies clashed at one strategic point,
they slammed their shields together, pike scraped pike,
with the grappling strength of fighters armed in bronze
and their round shields pounded, boss on welded boss,
and the sound of struggle roared and rocked the earth.
Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath,
fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood.’
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, IV

It’s a story of fearless bravery and human frailty, of camaraderie and brutality. Heroes strive through their acts of courage to create reputations that will endure through the ages. Theirs is a quest for immortality. But ultimately their fates are determined by the gods, who are fickle, capricious and partisan.

'And someday one will say, one of the men to come
steering his oar-swept ship across the wine-dark sea
'there's the mound of a man who died in the old days,
one of the brave whom glorious Hector killed.'
So they will say, someday, and my fame will never die.’
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, VII

The ancients studied Homer and Virgil as sacred texts that revealed truths about life, death, individual responsibility and destiny. Let us consider whether these same myths and legends have any contemporary relevance.

1. Life and business are about hard choices

Inevitably the true origins of the Trojan War derive from a disagreement among the gods. Paris is asked to arbitrate in a dispute over a golden apple inscribed ‘to the most beautiful.’ The apple is claimed by three competing divinities: Hera, the goddess of marriage and power, who promises Paris an empire; Athena the goddess of war and wisdom, who guarantees glory in battle; and Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who vows to give him the most beautiful woman in the world.

Paris chooses the path of passion and sentiment, and so sets in train the events that lead to war.

We may censure Paris for his short-sightedness. But what was he to do? Which goddess should he have chosen? Whomever he selected, wouldn’t he inevitably have encountered problems? 

The exhibition features a 1569 painting of Queen Elizabeth I by Hans Eworth that shows that Paris could have been more creative. Elizabeth, confronted with the same dilemma, chooses to reject the offers of the three goddesses and retain the apple herself - thereby demonstrating her extraordinary wisdom, and instinct for diplomacy and peace.

And this is the first lesson: life and business are about hard choices.

Hans Eworth - Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses 1569. © The Royal Collection Trust

2. Petty rivalry divides a team

‘Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.'
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, I

A central character in the siege of Troy is ‘swift-footed’ Achilles, fearsome warrior and Greek hero. The war rages for nine years without any decisive victory, but in the tenth year an argument prompts Achilles to withdraw from the fray. He has been given Briseis, the queen of a neighbouring city, as his prize. However, ‘wide-ruling lord’ Agamemnon pulls rank and demands her for himself. Furious Achilles threatens to remove his troops and return home. He prays that the Trojans will succeed and retires to sulk in his tent. 

This seemingly insignificant incident tips the scales in favour of the Trojans, who drive the Greeks back behind their defences. The Trojans now have the upper hand.

Beware. Petty rivalries, trivial feuds and false pride can divide a team and determine events.

‘Love at first sight’: amphora, c530BC (detail), showing Achilles killing Penthesilea. Photograph: British Museum

3. Everyone has an Achilles’ heel

'I know you and what you are, and was sure that I should not move you, for your heart is hard as iron; look to it that I bring not heaven's anger upon you on the day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo, valiant though you be, shall slay you at the Scaen gates.'
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, XXII

When Achilles was a baby, his mother Thetis made him invincible by dipping him into the River Styx. But since she held him by the heel, one foot was untouched by the magical water and was therefore left unprotected.

When Achilles is eventually persuaded to reengage with the combat, he kills ‘horse-taming’ Hector, the first-born son of King Priam, and drives the Trojans back behind the gates of the city. But triumphant Achilles is then shot by Paris. The arrow is guided by the god Apollo ‘with the unshorn hair’ to strike Achilles at his one weak point: his heel. It seems a tragically modest way for such a man to die.

Even the most fearsome warrior has an Achilles’ heel. And even the most celebrated businessperson has a vulnerability, flaw or weakness.

4. You’re most at risk at the height of your success

And then one day, as ‘rosy-fingered Dawn’ rises over the city, the Trojans awake to discover that the Greeks have sailed away across the ‘wine-dark sea’. They assume that the invaders have been fatigued by the years of fighting, or that the gods have demanded their departure. They then discover that the Greeks have left a huge wooden horse on the beach and interpret this as an offering to appease the heavens. The Trojans drag the horse into the city, breaching their own defensive wall in the process.

‘Four times it stalled before the gateway, at the very threshold;
Four times the arms clashed loud inside its belly.
Nevertheless, heedless, blinded by frenzy,
We press right on and set the inauspicious
Monster inside the sacred fortress.'
Virgil, ‘The Aeneid’, II

In fact the wooden horse conceals the Greeks’ best warriors. When night falls, the Greek fleet sails quietly back to Troy and the warriors emerge from the horse. Troy is sacked, suffering many atrocities.

When we think we’re on top, we’re most exposed to complacency. Pride comes before a fall.

Exekias
Achilles and Ajax Playing a Board Game 540-530 BCE. Terracotta amphora. Height 2 feet (Musei Vaticani, Rome)

5. It’s not enough to be right

'I fear the Greeks, even those bearing gifts.’Virgil, ‘The Aeneid’, II

Red-figure jar, c480-470BC: Odysseus, strapped to the mast, sails past the Sirens. Photograph: British Museum

The tragedy of Troy’s fall is enhanced by the fact that, first the priest Laocoon, and then the priestess Cassandra, warn that the Greek horse cannot be trusted.

Serpents emerge suddenly from the sea and devour Laocoon and his sons, seemingly confirming that the horse is bona fide. Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam, is gifted with prophetic skills, but cursed never to be believed. With the fall of Troy she is taken back to Mycenae as a concubine by Agamemnon, and subsequently murdered by his embittered wife.

Sadly, it’s not enough to be right in life or business. Your success and happiness revolve around your ability to persuade others that you are right.

6. Sometimes it pays to delay

'So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web—
by night, by the light of torches set beside her,
she would unravel all she’d done. Three whole years
she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme.’
Homer, ‘The Odyssey’, II

Meanwhile the Greek heroes have left their loved ones to cope without them for ten years. In Ithaca Penelope, the wife of ‘great hearted’ Odysseus, must fend off an army of suitors who assume that the king is dead. She is obliged by the laws of hospitality to entertain these admirers at great expense, but, ever loyal, she devises a scheme to keep them at bay. She promises she will choose a new husband when she has woven a shroud. So she sits all day weaving this garment and then spends all night secretly unpicking her work.

We tend nowadays to celebrate speed of thought and immediacy of action. But sometimes, as Penelope knew, it pays to delay.

7. Leave a legacy

There are passages in ‘The Iliad’ that are little more than relentlessly grim lists of wretched, painful deaths. The phrases and epithets are repetitive and formulaic. The plot seems stuck in a rut.

There is, of course, poetic truth in these ‘retarded’ verses: war is a brutal, endlessly monotonous exercise in munitions, names, numbers and statistics. It has no neat narrative shape.

Scholars have also concluded that ‘The Iliad’ was not originally a written work, but rather was transmitted orally. Primarily performed around a campfire, the poem was the product of improvisation, adapted to the location and audience. Homer may have felt obliged to name-check the local hero of the townsfolk he was addressing. And so with time the work accrued more and more valiant deaths.

'My doom has come upon me; let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.’
Homer, ‘The Iliad’, XXII

With ‘The Iliad,’ Homer secured the immortality of legions of heroes for generations to come. Perhaps we too should sometimes focus on the reputation we leave behind us. 

 8. Follow your destiny

Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ picks up the tale of Troy with its demise, and pursues a positive theme. It relates the fate of Aeneas, a Trojan prince who survives the defeat, endures adventures, and goes on to found Rome. ‘The Aeneid’ suggests that some people are ordained by the gods to achieve great things. They will undergo hardship and tragedy on the way, but they will succeed.

'Duty bound, 
Aeneas, though he struggled with desire
to calm and comfort her in all her pain, 
to speak to her and turn her mind from grief, 
and though he sighed his heart out, shaken still 
with love of her, yet took the course heaven gave him
and turned back to the fleet.'Virgil, ‘The Aeneid’, IV

We may conclude our review of the Trojan story with a somewhat outdated sentiment. Perhaps we, like Achilles, Hector and Aeneas before us, would do well to pursue our lives and careers with a belief in our own destiny; with a sense of purpose; with an ambition to leave a legacy in the hearts and minds of our colleagues and friends. 

Even in this anxious modern age - even in the context of contemporary commerce - it’s still possible to be a hero.

'When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.’
Henry Purcell, ‘Dido’s Lament’ (Nahum Tate)

 No. 264

Flawed Beauty and Awkward Truths: What I Learned from My Brief Career as a Ballet Dancer

"Ballerina In Sink II, London" (2004) Credit: Courtesy Mary McCartney

'I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.'
Choreographer, George Balanchine

Did I ever tell you I once performed in a ballet?

When I was a student at Oxford, a visiting ballet troupe from London put on a production of ‘Cinderella’ at the Playhouse. The custom in those days was for touring companies to recruit extras from the local student population. Our friend Jez had some connection with a theatrical agent, and we were always interested in earning a few extra quid.

So, one afternoon, along with a handful of my mates (Tall Jez, Little Jez, Matty and Alex), I tramped along to the Playhouse for a briefing. We were of varying height, aptitude and agility, but it didn’t seem to matter too much. An hour’s instruction and we were stage-ready, match-fit.

When it came round to the performances, I think we acquitted ourselves rather well. We employed the principles of method acting to inhabit our roles as military cat people. We stood to attention and looked distinguished. We held spears and marched about a bit. The highlight came when four of us carried a feline ballerina across the stage in a sedan chair - a cat litter, I suppose.

I was left with a couple of enduring impressions.

First of all I developed a real respect for ballet. I had had no previous exposure to classical dance and I guess I thought of it as a rather rarefied, elegant affair. I had no idea of the physical exertion involved. But as we stood in the wings awaiting our next entrance, the principals would join us from the stage, having completed a seemingly effortless, graceful, gravity-defying pas de deux. The moment they were out of the audience’s sight, they would be bent double with exhaustion, gasping for breath. 

Ballet dancers are not just artists. They are athletes.

George Balanchine and Arthur Mitchell

Secondly I had a rather chastening encounter with my ballet costume. We got changed in the archaic theatrical dressing room backstage at the Playhouse. Space was limited and we were surrounded on all sides by mirrors with bright bulbs around their edges. We’d been given a number of feline military garments to accompany our roles. Coarse black breeches, red velvet waistcoats and white furry cat heads. But before we could don these, we first had to strip right down and put on a pair of pink ballet tights that extended up to our chests and were suspended by thick elastic shoulder straps.

As I regarded myself in the unforgiving dressing room mirrors, clothed only in my long pink ballet tights, I was confronted with the truth of my moderate looks and unconvincing masculinity. There was nowhere to hide. I was indeed no Rudolf Nureyev. It was a humbling experience. 

'The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.’
George Balanchine

I was reminded of this recently when judging the APG Creative Planning Awards. 

Across a diverse range of categories and tasks, brands were taking a long hard look in the mirror. KFC sought to acknowledge its historically flawed fries and the logistical disaster when its stores ran out of chicken. Mothercare focused on real women’s bodies post childbirth and endeavoured to translate ‘body shame’ into ‘body pride.’ And with its ‘Bloodnormal’ campaign Bodyform/Libresse shed a positive light on the truth of periods. 

In the age of transparency, brands need to be prepared to recognise their flaws and failings – indeed sometimes to celebrate them. Brands also need to be positive and proactive around issues that were hitherto regarded as unappealing and unattractive. We must speak honestly, talk candidly, take on taboos vigorously. We must learn to embrace flawed beauty and awkward truths. 

Though scarred by my experience with the pink tights, I retained an affection and respect for ballet, which in my later years has translated into something of an enthusiasm. Ballet is where art meets athleticism. It’s both an escape from, and an engagement with, the real world. It’s an exercise in essential truth.

As the great choreographer George Balanchine once observed:

'Music must be seen, and dance must be heard.’ 

'Mirror in the bathroom,
Please talk free.
The door is locked,
Just you and me.’

The Beat, ‘Mirror in the Bathroom'

No. 263

What Medium Do You Work In?: Bridget Riley and the Art of Perception

Detail from Pause, 1964. Photograph: Bridget Riley 2019

'Focusing isn't just an optical activity, it is also a mental one.’
Bridget Riley

I recently attended a fine retrospective of the art of Bridget Riley. (The Hayward Gallery, London until 26 January.)

Triangles, curves, rhomboids, stripes and dots. Shapes that shimmer, hover and flicker. Discs that hum, throb and float. Circles that disappear into a fold in time. Dizzying, blurring, rippling contours. Everything moves. Reality warps. The images seem to be shouting: ‘Forget what you know. Don’t trust your senses. Hold on tight.’

'The word 'paradox' has always had a kind of magic for me, and I think my pictures have a paradoxical quality, a paradox of chaos and order in one.’

Born in Norwood, London in 1931, Riley studied art at Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art. After her education she spent some time as an illustrator at JWT. Her early work was figurative and impressionist.

Then in 1959 Riley copied Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting ‘The Bridge at Courbevoie’ ‘in order to follow his thought.’ The experience set her on the path to her signature Op Art style, and the resulting work has hung in her studio ever since.

Riley began to paint black and white geometric patterns, exploring the dynamism of sight and the illusions of seeing. She liked to ‘take a form through its paces in order to find out what it can do.’

Riley’s art was disruptive, unsettling, mesmerising. It chimed with the spirit of the ‘60s - an age of doubt and disorientation, of anxiety and apprehension. 

Bridget Riley review. Cataract 3, 1967. © Bridget Riley 2019

'There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation.’

Our eyes travel across a Riley painting, restless, uneasy, looking for a centre. But there’s no place for our attention to settle.

'In general, my paintings are multifocal. You can't call it unfocused space, but not being fixed to a single focus is very much of our time.’

In 1967 Riley introduced colour to her abstract work. She became interested in its instability and interactions, in different couplings and combinations.

'If you can allow colour to breathe, to occupy its own space, to play its own game in its unstable way, it’s wanton behaviour, so to speak… it is promiscuous like nothing.’

Riley’s method involved what she called ‘conscious intuition.’ She explored the intersection between the hard, precise, clinical drive of the rational brain and the unfocused impact of intuition and emotion.

'I work on two levels. I occupy my conscious mind with things to do, lines to draw, movements to organize, rhythms to invent. In fact, I keep myself occupied. But that allows other things to happen which I'm not controlling... The more I exercise my conscious mind, the more open the other things may find that they can come through.’

At the exhibition you can see Riley’s preparatory drawings and studies, precise instructions for her painting assistants. Some look like grand contour maps of new frontiers, of unknown terrain. They reveal the painstaking calculations that the artist invests in her work, the countless decisions about form, colour, structure and scale. 

High Sky, 1991. Photograph: Bridget Riley 2019

'It seems the deeper, truer personality of the artist only emerges in the making of decisions... in refusing and accepting, changing and revising.’

I was particularly struck by a remark Riley made about Seurat’s art.

‘His work gave me a sense of the viewer’s importance as an active participant. Perception became the medium.’

This abstract, conceptual definition of Seurat’s medium seems to suggest fresh possibilities for art, to open up new horizons.

As we embark on a new year, it may be helpful to pause for a moment and reflect on our own core competences. What is it that we do? What are we good at? What medium do we work in? 

Should we define ourselves by our output? By adverts and art direction, design and data, copy and content? There is an admirable, plain-speaking directness to such descriptions. Maybe we see ourselves as artisans or makers?

Or do we deal in something more abstract? Perhaps we are persuaders, curators, cultural commentators, consumer champions, brand spokespeople? Perhaps we create and manage ideas; or nurture talent; or navigate change; or provoke disruption; or stimulate growth?

Or do we, like Riley, work in the medium of perception?

‘Looking is, I feel, a vital aspect of existence. Perception constitutes our awareness of what it is to be human, indeed what it is to be alive.’

'Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying.
Now I want to understand.
I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding.
You must help me if you can.
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong.
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?’

Jackson Browne, ‘Doctor My Eyes'

 No 262

‘All the King’s Men’: Observations on a Tarnished Politician and a Jaded Fixer

‘Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.’ 
Willie Stark, ‘All the King’s Men’

I recently read the American political novel ‘All the King’s Men’ by Robert Penn Warren. Published in 1946, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1949 it was adapted into a film of the same name that won the Oscar for Best Picture.

‘All the King’s Men’ follows the political career of Willie Stark, a liberal populist in the South during the 1930s. His story is narrated by Jack Burden, a reporter who is employed as a personal aide when Stark becomes Governor. 

It’s a tale of infidelity, betrayal and corruption under the throbbing Southern sky; of debt, restitution and nameless despair; of broken promises, broken relationships and broken people.

Sugar-Boy puts the throttle to the floor. The Cadillac speeds along the white slab in the dazzling heat, past the corner drugstore and the tin-roofed, white-framed houses. There’s a smell of sweat, stale cigars and gasoline fumes. There are hushed conversations with men in well-pressed suits and two-color shoes. There’s coarse liquor drunk in shady bars. And an iron bed under the electric fan. 

It’s a compelling read. 

I was struck by a number of themes suggested by the two central characters.

The Tarnished Politician

Willie Stark, 'the Boss,’ starts out as an idealistic lawyer, a humble, well-meaning man looking to represent the ordinary country folk he cares about. 

‘My study is the heart of the people…Your will is my strength.’

Through bitter experience he transforms into a charismatic populist, who can rouse a crowd with his plain speaking, tub thumping oratory.

‘This is the truth; you are a hick and nobody ever helped a hick than the hick himself. Up there in town they won’t help you. It is up to you and God, and God helps those who help themselves.’

Stark climbs the political ladder by exposing the corruption and complacency of the incumbent administration.

‘The machine had been operating so long now without serious opposition that ease had corrupted them. They just didn’t bother to be careful.’

But Stark’s own Governorship is tainted by power. Convinced that the end justifies the means, he becomes mired in patronage, bribery and intimidation.

‘Did you ever see the flies stay away from the churn at churning time?’

Let’s consider the fundamentals of Stark’s approach to politics. We may find there are contemporary resonances.

1. Stir ‘em up

The key to Stark’s popularity is his ability to whip up a crowd, to connect with them at a raw and basic level. He realises that it doesn’t matter so much what you say, so long as you can inspire a passionate response.

‘Hell, make ‘em cry, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em think you’re their weak erring pal, or make ‘em think you’re God Almighty. Or make ‘em mad. Even mad at you. Just stir ‘em up, it doesn’t matter how or why, and they’ll love you and come back for more.’

2. Be prepared to sacrifice your dignity

Stark is not afraid of looking foolish or silly. He’s not shy of mockery or ridicule. None of these things constrains him from the pursuit of power.

‘Yeah, I’m Governor, Jack, and the trouble with Governors is they think they got to keep their dignity. But listen here, there ain’t anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity.’

3. Write off the costs against the gain

Stark is prepared to make concessions to achieve his goals. He doesn’t realise that compromise can be corrosive.

‘All change costs something. You have to write off the costs against the gain.’

4. Don’t shy away from dirt

Stark had a religious upbringing and he retains a Calvinist conviction that all men are tainted by original sin.

‘Dirt’s a funny thing… Come to think of it, there ain’t a thing but dirt on this green God’s globe except what’s under water, and that’s dirt too. It’s dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain’t a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?’

5. Just fix it

Ultimately Stark becomes a ruthless operator, blind to the ethical responsibilities of office. He believes that every man and woman has a price, and he’s prepared to pay it.

‘My God, you talk like Byram was human! He’s a thing! You don’t prosecute an adding machine if a spring goes bust and makes a mistake. You fix it.’

The Jaded Fixer

'There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain. I was in the car. And I was glad of it.’

Jack Burden is a student of history, a former journalist who acts as a fixer for The Boss. He’s smart and can be charming when he wants to be. But he’s also a detached, world weary, hard drinking cynic ‘hiding from the present... [and taking]refuge in the past.’

‘Maybe the things you want are like cards. You don’t want them for themselves, really, though you think you do. You don’t want a card because you want the card, but because in a perfectly arbitrary system of rules and values and in a special combination of which you already hold a part the card has meaning. But suppose you aren’t sitting in a game. Then, even if you do know the rules, a card doesn’t mean a thing. They all look alike.’

We come to realise that Burden’s misanthropy and nihilism derive from a broken heart. He is a man who has been in love too long.

'If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.'

Stark sets Burden a task: to dig up some dirt on a respected former Judge who has crossed him politically. It’s fascinating to watch Burden in action, combining his historical research and journalistic skills in pursuit of his prey.

Author Robert Penn Warren - 1950. (AP Photo)

1. There is always something

Burden goes into his investigation with the conviction that there is inevitably a clue to be found, a secret to be unearthed, a truth to be revealed. There is always something.

‘For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost. There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed, the condom on the park path, the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the blood stream.’

2. Try the obvious first

Burden is conscious not to walk past the simple solutions, the straightforward resolutions to a problem.

‘Finding someone in a city if you can’t call the cops is quite an undertaking. I had tried it often enough back when I was a reporter, and it takes luck and time. But one rule is always to try the obvious first.’

3. Ask it quick and fast

Burden’s interviewing style is forceful and direct. He likes to cut to the chase and surprise a response.

‘I asked it quick and sharp, for if you ask something quick and sharp out of a clear sky you may get an answer you never would get otherwise.’

4. Listen for the hollow sound

Once past the direct questions and obvious explanations, Burden switches to a more speculative approach. He plugs away at a problem looking out for something that doesn’t quite tally.

‘When you are looking for the lost will in the old mansion, you tap, inch by inch, along the beautiful mahogany wainscoting, or along the massive stonework of the cellarage, and listen for the hollow sound.’

5. Sleep on it

Finally Burden leaves room for intuition and gut response. After he’s investigated every highway and byway, after he’s examined every clue, he sleeps on the problem.

‘I had reached that stage of the problem where there is nothing to do but pray. That stage always comes. You can do all you can, and pray till you can’t pray, and then you go to sleep and hope to see it all in the dream, by grace.’

Inevitably Burden’s investigation reaches a melancholy conclusion. ‘All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.’ But there is a sense that Burden ends the story less detached, recognising that we cannot live as isolated individuals: there are connections between us all – between our choices and responsibilities, and between our past, our present and our future. 

'Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events… Direction is all.'

Time for a festive break.
Next post will be on Thursday 9 January 2020.
Have a restful Christmas.
See you on the other side, I hope!

'You know that it's the time of year,
When certain things that you see and hear
Remind you of the holidays.
When I hear the bells ring
I think of you, and I start to sing.
You hold me tight all through the night.
Peace and calm is in your arms.
Silent nite
Feels so right, 
All is calm, all is bright.
Silent nite.’

En Vogue, 'Silent Nite'

No. 261

Happy Accidents: Will You Open the Door When Opportunity Knocks?

William Henry Perkin

'Awake! arise! the hour is late!
Angels are knocking at thy door!
They are in haste and cannot wait,
And once departed come no more.’
HW Longfellow, ‘A Fragment' 

I recently attended an exhibition exploring the intimate relationship between art and science. ‘The Art of Innovation’ at the Science Museum, London, considers how creative thought has been integral to many scientific breakthroughs and how technological change has inspired a good deal of great art. (The exhibition runs until 26 January, but you can also listen to a BBC podcast on the same theme.)

'I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’
Albert Einstein

Observe how the train revolutionised timekeeping, how the study of botany precipitated the first photography book, how Polaroids inspired David Hockney. Learn about experiments with laughing gas, about orreries, artificial limbs and delta wing jets. Examine John Constable’s records of the clouds over Hampstead Heath, Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic studies of ‘The Horse in Motion’, and Ada Lovelace’s illustration of the first algorithm - the unassuming Note G. It’s fascinating stuff.

I was particularly taken with the story of mauve.

In 1856 the 18-year-old student chemist William Perkin was experimenting in his shed in Shadwell, East London. He wanted to see if he could synthesize the anti-malarial drug quinine from aniline, a derivative of coal tar. The experiment failed and he was left with a black sludge. Still curious, he determined to dry this sludge into a powder, which he then dissolved in methylated spirit. This process produced a rich purple solution. The inquisitive Perkin then tried dipping a piece of white silk into the solution and was struck by how well the fabric took the purple colour.

Most fabric dyes at that time were extracted from plants and lychens, and were expensive and limited in variety. The industrial revolution had created a booming textile industry and an increasing demand for new, more affordable colours.

Assured by dye experts that this new compound could function well as a commercial dye, Perkin and his family built a factory near Harrow and marketed the dye under the sophisticated French name ‘mauve’. The British public, the great and the good, and even Queen Victoria, were delighted with the new, vibrant purple fabrics. Mauve became the most fashionable colour of the 1850s and 1860s. It was the first of a new generation of cheap, high quality synthetic dyes.

‘The mauve complaint is very catching: indeed, cases might be cited, where the lady of the house having taken the infection, all the family have caught it before the week was out.’ 
Punch, 1859

Of course the history books are filled with great scientific discoveries and inventions that began with a chance event, a happy accident.

Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming after he returned to his lab from a two-week holiday to find that a mould had grown on some of his culture and killed the staphylococci he’d been investigating.

The Kellogg brothers invented corn flakes after boiling wheat for too long in a sanatorium kitchen.

Velcro was conceived by Swiss engineer George de Mestral after he got burrs stuck in his clothes when he went hiking.

The microwave was created by engineer Percy Spencer after his chocolate bar melted while he was testing a new vacuum tube.

Silk dress dyed with William Henry Perkin’s mauve aniline dye. Photo by SSPL/Getty Images.

‘One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.'
Alexander Flemming

We can all probably think of instances in our own careers when an unexpected occurrence has produced a fortuitous outcome – a random experience, a misguided experiment, a serendipitous conversation. The unforeseen consequences of unplanned events often deliver breakthroughs and revelations. Chance can play a key role in innovation.

But we have to be agile and alert to respond to a happy accident. We have to be curious, open to distraction, prepared to take a different path. The window of opportunity rarely remains open for very long.

Perkin was probably not the first scientist to conduct that particular experiment on aniline. But whereas others had thrown away the black sludge, he persisted, sensing there was something worthwhile further down the line.

I suspect that sometimes we’re too focused on achieving our objectives to be distracted by the unplanned and unexpected. We may be too time-constrained to pursue our curiosity; too disciplined to redirect our resources. We’ll never know how many chances have passed us by because we were cautious, blinkered or blind.

Of course we all want to be beneficiaries of random good fortune. But we have to ask ourselves: Are we sufficiently open-minded to spot a happy accident? Are we willing to pursue a possibility even when it’s not what we originally envisaged? Will we open the door when opportunity knocks?

'Getting stuck on you, baby,
Was the last thing I had in mind.
But now you got me wanting you, baby,
Want your love all the time.
I slipped, tripped and fell in love,
Fell in love with you, baby.’
Ann Peebles, ‘Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love’ (G Jackson)

No. 260