Eileen Agar: ‘Surround Yourself with Sensitive Chaos’

Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse, 1936 (b/w photo) by Eileen Agar (private collection) / Estate of Eileen Agar

‘To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic, and to give a lie to the inconvenient world of fact.’
Eileen Agar

I recently visited an excellent retrospective of the work of Eileen Agar. (The Whitechapel Gallery, London until 29 August)

Agar rebelled against her aristocratic upbringing to pursue her own artistic path. She developed a unique style of painting that synthesised Cubism and Surrealism. Inspired by nature, she created exuberant colourful collages that revealed psychological truths. She restlessly explored new media and fresh forms of expression. She was gregarious, fun loving and playful, and she channelled her rich enthusiasms into her work. 

Let us consider what we can learn from this creative pioneer.

1. Live Your Life ‘in Revolt Against Convention’

Eileen Agar was born in Buenos Aires in 1899. Her American mother was the heir to a biscuit company, her Scottish father an industrialist. She grew up in Argentina in a privileged world ‘full of balloons, hoops and St. Bernard dogs.’ She had a pony named Strawberry Cream. And when, every two years or so, the family sailed to Britain, her mother insisted on embarking with a cow for milk and an orchestra for entertainment.

Agar attended boarding school in England and finishing school in Paris. Having walked out on her first art college because it was too academic, she studied at Brook Green and then the Slade in London. Gradually a rift developed between Agar and her parents. She didn’t want to become a debutante. She refused to take the Rolls Royce that was sent to pick her up from college each day.

'I have spent my life in revolt against convention, trying to bring colour and light and a sense of the mysterious to daily existence.’ 

2. Embrace ‘Point and Counterpoint’

In 1929 Agar moved to Paris. There she studied under the Czech Cubist, František Foltýn, and fell in with the Surrealists, André Breton and Paul Éluard.

Agar’s painting had hitherto been figurative and representational. But from now on she combined the cold logic of Cubism with the sensuous irrationality of Surrealism. 

‘The two movements interested me most. I see nothing incompatible in that, indeed we walk on two legs, and for me, one is abstract, the other Surreal – it is point and counterpoint.’

Agar painted muses and madonnas with sinuous lines, swirling shapes and vibrant hues. She depicted families and friends as bold abstractions. She distilled the turbulent forces of Winter into a mass of curves and colours. She created a woodcut of a bird that could also be seen as two lovers locked in an embrace. She represented her partner, an avid collector of precious stones, with a collage of jewels against a silhouette of his head and shoulders. Her work was relentlessly inventive.

Agar joined the English Surrealist Group and was the only British woman to take part in the famous 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London. This led to her being described thereafter as a Surrealist, a neat categorisation she would always reject.

‘The sudden attention took me by surprise. One day I was an artist exploring highly personal combinations of form and content, the next I was calmly informed I was a Surrealist.’

Eileen Agar - Surrealist Collage, 1938

3. Find Inspiration in Nature

Agar was always keen to escape city life. She took summer-holidays in Dorset and Cornwall, and wintered in Portofino and Tenerife. Once away she could immerse herself in the wonders of the natural world.

‘The earliest forms of Nature to a painter are studies in pure abstract design.’ 

Agar painted butterflies and birds; fish, insects and snakes. She made collages of squid and starfish; of elegant coral and fragile leaves. She created silhouettes of hands and faces and female forms, overlain with flowers and foliage, interwoven with classical imagery. 

‘You see the shape of a tree, the way a pebble falls or is framed, and you are astounded to discover that dumb nature makes an effort to speak to you, to give you a sign, to warn you, to symbolise your innermost thoughts.’

There is a sense that for Agar the beach represented a threshold between the conscious and the unconscious worlds; that the forest was embedded with timeless truths; that the ocean spoke of interior lives.

Eileen Agar's collage on paper, Precious Stones (1936). Courtesy of Leeds Museums and Galleries. © The estate of Eileen Agar.

4.’Surround Yourself with Sensitive Chaos’

Agar collected shells, stones, bones and fossils from the seashore. She foraged for interesting flora and fauna in the woods. She took photographs of unusual rock formations. She would often integrate her latest discoveries into her collages, a form she liked because it enabled overlay and juxtaposition: ‘a displacement of the banal by the fertile intervention of coincidence.’

But Agar’s ‘found objects’ didn’t always make their way immediately and directly into her art. She also used her collection as ongoing stimulus; as creative problem solvers.

‘I surround myself with fantastic bric-a-brac in order to trigger my imagination. For it is a certain kind of sensitive chaos that is creative, and not sterile order.’

5. ‘Yield to the Magic of Play’

Agar was an avid socialite. She studied with Cecil Beaton and Henry Moore; holidayed with Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst; drank with Dylan Thomas and Ezra Pound; partied with Roland Penrose, Lee Miller and Paul Nash. She visited Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar's home in Mougins, Alpes-Maritimes and danced on the rooftops in a transparent dress.

Agar was serious about play. She regarded it as an aid to her creativity, a liberating spiritual force.

‘Life’s meaning is lost without the spirit of play. In play all that is lovely and soaring in the human spirit strives to find expression. In play the mind is prepared to enter a world where different rules apply, to be free.’

You see Agar’s merrymaking percolating through her work. She created her Angel of Anarchy from a plaster head covered in fabric, shells, beads, diamante stones and green osprey feathers. She made her Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse from an upturned cork basket stuck with bones, coral and crustaceans. 

Eileen Agar, Untitled collage, 1936. Mixed media and collage on paper, 75.5 x 53.3 cm. Courtesy of Mayor Gallery. © Estate of Eileen Agar/Bridgeman Images

6. Recognise the Restorative Power of the Outdoors

Inevitably, with the onset of World War II Agar’s hedonism and optimism were diminished. She was a pacifist, and pitched in as a canteen assistant and a fire-watcher at night. She helped friends fleeing persecution and those made homeless by the Blitz. But she found it hard to create. And what art she did make was anxious and downbeat.

‘How does one communicate with any subtlety when the world is being deafened by explosions?’

After the war Agar gradually emerged from her melancholy through a diet of work, travel and spending time outdoors. 

‘I had been too long cut off from the world of nature, too cooped up, too cribbed and confined, and the relief of finding one’s roots responding to the quickening pulse of vegetation, the vast mountainscapes, the sea horizons, all this made me fall in love with the mountainous dew-drop in the ocean and I revived and could work again.’

Eileen Agar, Angel of Anarchy 1936-40 © The Estate of Eileen Agar

Agar continued to paint, draw and make collages. In the 1950s she experimented with spontaneous art, pouring paint with free swirling actions to create loose, fluid imagery. In the 1960s she embraced the versatility of acrylic paints. Between 1946 and 1985 she had 16 solo exhibitions. And in 1986, aged 87, she modelled dresses for Issey Miyake. 

Eileen Agar died in 1991, a month shy of her 92nd birthday. She had been creating for seventy years. 

Agar had a restless mind; an insatiable appetite for new ideas and fresh perspectives. She resisted categorisation. She found beauty, inspiration and relief in the natural world. And she responded to it with work that spoke of freedom and boundless possibility.

'One must have a hunger for new colour, new shapes and new possibilities of discovery.' 

'Come with me, my love
To the sea,
The sea of love.
I want to tell you
How much I love you.’

Cat Power, ’Sea of Love’ (P Baptiste / G Khoury)

No. 329

Disruptive Dreams: A Tour of France with My Brother, Two Mates and Van Morrison

‘If my heart could do my thinking
And my head began to feel,
Would I look upon the world anew,
And know what's truly real?’
Van Morrison, ‘I Forgot that Love Existed’

Some time in the late 1980s I went on a road trip round France with my brother Martin and friends Mike and Thommo. 

Crammed into a small, silver Citroen AX, with our sports bags strapped to the roof and with nothing booked, we disembarked at Calais and plotted a path towards the Loire Valley. 

Since Martin and I were feeling flush, each night we shared a room in a modest hotel, while Mike and Thommo settled for the local campsite. When the four of us reported at the first establishment and requested ‘une chambre a deux lits,’ the proprietor was somewhat challenged. Martin, realising the misunderstanding, gestured towards Mike and Thommo and explained:

‘Non, ils font le camping!’

We started each day with strong coffee, golden croissants, President butter and apricot jam, and each evening we feasted on quite extraordinary food and wine - whether at a smart local restaurant or a truck drivers’ cafe. 

‘Fruits de mer et confit de canard, s’il vous plait.’

Thommo couldn’t cope with the unrelenting richness of the meals, and so we took one night off, settling for local ‘Loveburgers’ washed down by 1664. 

We moved on to the Vendée and the Dordogne, through the Auvergne and up to Burgundy, Alsace and Lorraine. And at each new location I dusted off the remnants of my O-Level French.

‘Pardon, maisonette, je n’ai pas de la monnaie.’

‘Ah, c’est l’année des guêpes!'

We explored lush green landscapes, rugged mountain roads and bleak grey hamlets. We encountered old men playing boules on village squares and young men playing baby-foot in late night bars. We avoided one town because on approach it seemed to be very smelly. Only later did we realise that we’d been following a sewage lorry round a ring road.

We were accompanied on the trip by Van Morrison’s elegiac ‘Poetic Champions Compose’ album, on repeat play. It seemed entirely appropriate.

'You're the queen of the slipstream with eyes that shine.
You have crossed many waters to be here.
You have drunk of the fountain of innocence.
And experienced the long cold wintry years.’
‘The Queen of the Slipstream’

On the long journeys Scouse Mike would amuse himself by hanging his head out of the car window. And when the two campers returned to their site each night, he insisted that Thommo stay up into the early hours drinking cheap warm red wine from plastic bottles.

Inevitably on a holiday of this nature, although we were pretty much aligned in terms of evening adventures, there were some disagreements about how to spend the daytime. Martin and I were interested in churches and chateaux. Thommo leaned towards nature and wildlife. Mike just wanted to have fun. 

To accommodate Mike we took in a terrifying luge trip down a mountainside. And when we visited the tomb of Eleanor of Aquitaine at the magnificent abbey at Fontevrault, he persuaded Thommo to stay outside and play footie. On another occasion he took over the map, and, without conferring, navigated us to a beach crowded with locals in skimpy trunks and bikinis. This was not my natural habitat. In protest I sat on a towel fully clothed with my top button done up. 

'Let go into the mystery.
Let yourself go.
You've got to open up your heart,
That's all I know.
Trust what I say and do what you're told,
Baby, and all your dirt will turn
Into gold.'
‘The Mystery’

We all look back on the holidays of our youth with great fondness. These were simple, carefree, happy times. And perhaps our exploits were all the more special because they were characterised by surprise, serendipity and strangeness. Everything seemed mysterious.

I read recently (The Guardian 14 May ‘Weird Dreams’) about a new theory of dreams.

Dreams have long fascinated scientists and psychoanalysts. Freud believed they were ‘disguised fulfilments of repressed desires.’ And through the years experts have variously hypothesized that they help us process our emotions; consolidate our recollections; make creative connections between memories; and practice our survival skills.

Erik Hoel, a research assistant professor of neuroscience at Tufts University in Massachusetts, has proposed that, by introducing the strange and bizarre to our habituated existence, dreams equip us to cope with the unexpected.

His theory was inspired by the field of machine learning. Artificial intelligence often becomes too familiar with the data with which it’s been coached, assuming that this ‘training set’ is a perfect representation of anything it may subsequently encounter. To remedy this, scientists introduce some chaos into the data in the form of noisy or corrupted inputs.

Hoel suggests that our brains do something similar when we dream.  

‘It is the very strangeness of dreams in their divergence from waking experience that gives them their biological function.’

This suggests to me that we should think seriously about the role of the unusual and unfamiliar in our lives. 

Perhaps we should more actively embrace strange and bizarre events in our personal and professional worlds; not just in our dreams or on holiday, but in our day-to-day experience. Maybe we should use the weird and wonderful to ward off the narrowing perspectives brought on by habit, custom and age. Maybe we would do well to regard disruption, not just as a revolutionary market force; but as a necessary part of our daily regime.

Despite our excellent gastronomic adventures, by the last night of our tour of France I was pining for some familiar food. Spotting ‘fromage blanc’ on the menu, I assumed it was cheddar and ordered it with eager anticipation. When it arrived it was worryingly soft and smelly. 

I ate it nonetheless.

'I've been searching a long time
For someone exactly like you.
I've been travelling all around the world
Waiting for you to come through.
Someone like you,
Makes it all worth while.
Someone like you
Keeps me satisfied.
Someone exactly like you.’
Van Morrison, ‘Someone Like You’

No 328

Blue Note: Making Uncertainty Your Ally

‘The one thing that all the greats did was never let go of who they are, never turn away from who they are and their experiences – because your experiences, and what you’ve been through in your life, make you sound the way you sound.’
Robert Glasper

I recently watched Sophie Huber’s fine documentary ‘Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes.’ It tells the tale of the seminal jazz label from its founding myths through to the present day.

Blue Note is crazy chords, taught rhythms and truthful testimony. It is bop and hard bop, soul jazz and fusion; unapologetic, fresh and vital. It is sharp suits, narrow neckties and button-down shirts; clouds of cigarette smoke in darkened rooms. It is the founding spirit of Alfred and Frank, the recording genius of Rudy Van Gelder, the graphic art of Reid Miles. It is Lee Morgan’s ‘Sidewinder’ and Hank Mobley’s ‘Soul Station;’ Wayne Shorter’s ‘Speak No Evil’ and Horace Silver’s ‘Song for My Father.’ It is Herbie Hancock on his ‘Maiden Voyage,’ Art Blakey ‘Moanin’’ and Sonny Clark ‘Cool Struttin’’. Blue Note is Thelonius Monk, Sonny Rollins and Grant Green. It is struggle, hope and, above all, it is freedom.

The documentary weaves together Blue Note’s history with insights from the titans of its golden age and observations from its current crop of talented artists. Jazz musicians seem such an intelligent, articulate bunch. There’s a great deal that anyone working in a creative profession can learn by reflecting on their words.

Learning from the Founders 

1. Follow Your Uncomprehending Affection

Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff first heard jazz when they were boyhood friends growing up in 1920s Berlin. 

‘My mother bought a record home. I was very impressed by what I heard. Not knowing that it was jazz or what it was all about, but I got very interested in the record.’
Alfred Lion

Fleeing Nazi oppression, Lion and Wolff both settled in New York in the late ‘30s. They followed their passion and set up Blue Note Records in 1939, initially recording in rented studios. 

 2. Pursue Quality, Not Success

Lion and Wolff had a slow start and for years made little money. Their releases focused on traditional and hot jazz, boogie woogie and swing - artists like pianist Meade Lux Lewis and saxophonist Sidney Bechet. They were happy to record musicians that other labels did not consider commercial. Thelonius Monk’s sound was thought incredibly challenging at the time. But Blue Note nurtured his talent. They were pursuing quality rather than sales success.

‘Any record we ever made we weren’t really figuring on a hit. If later on it became successful, it just happened to become successful.’
Alfred Lion

3. Trust the Creators to Create and the Managers to Manage

Lion and Wolff were fans, not musicians. They were sufficiently self-aware to engage saxophonist Ike Quebec to spot upcoming talent. Soon the label roster also boasted drummer Art Blakey, pianist Bud Powell and trumpeter Clifford Brown. 

When it came to recording, the founders trusted the creators to create. 

‘I never got a sense of pressure from them to create in any particular way, other than whatever might come out of me.’
Herbie Hancock

Blue Note’s faith in its recording artists set it apart in a cut-throat industry. 

‘All the record companies were white – cheap, cheap white too. They was a bunch of scoundrels. I should name them, but I won’t. But not Alfred. Alfred was not like that. He just let us do what we wanted to do.... And he didn’t bother musicians.’
Lou Donaldson 

Trust worked both ways. Once recording was complete, the artists were happy to let the producers take over.

‘At the end of the session everyone said that’s the good music, including the musicians. That was the end of the musicians’ involvement. They trusted Alfred, who trusted me. And that’s how it went.’
Rudy Van Gelder

4. Creation Needs Craft

Rudy Van Gelder was recording engineer on most Blue Note releases between 1953 and the late sixties. Up until 1959 his studio was the living room of his parents’ home in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Van Gelder knew that creation needs craft. He employed cutting edge equipment and recording methods. And great consideration was given to establishing the right environment. Musicians were paid for rehearsal time - unusual in those days - and recording sessions were scheduled for the early hours of the morning, after late-night club venues had closed. 

‘Prestige was alright. Savoy, they liked jazz. But they didn’t press it and put it out like Alfred. The sound was better. The musicians were better.’
Lou Donaldson

In 1959 Blue Note moved to a new state-of-the-art facility in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, the studio had very high ceilings and was often mistaken for a church.

 5. Though Product Is Paramount, Presentation Has a Critical Role to Play

Joining the label in 1956, Reid Miles designed almost 500 Blue Note record sleeves in 15 years. 

Miles gave the label a coherent look that matched its sound. Blue Note sleeves had tightly cropped photography (employing candid shots taken by Wolff), with abstract colour blocks and bold typefaces set at rakish angles. They were audacious, modern and cool. 

Though product was paramount at Blue Note, presentation played a critical role in the label’s success.

Learning from the Musicians

1. ‘Never Let Go of Who You Are’

Blue Note sought first and foremost to articulate authenticity of individual experience.

‘What they were searching for was to get the heart of the individuals creating the music, to have a platform for expression. And the heart is effected by the times, because we were living in it.’
Herbie Hancock

The golden age of Blue Note coincided with the height of the Civil Rights struggle. The records were not politically explicit, but they were politically charged. The music consistently communicated strength and determination, hope and freedom.

 ‘A lot of this music has to do with how we feel about America. And how we came from seeming to progress, to going back to an era that we fought to get away from.’
Marcus Stickland

2. ‘Make Uncertainty Your Ally’

Improvisation is a central part of jazz culture and working practice. Blue Note artists recognised the creative value of doubt and vulnerability; of risk and uncertainty. Improvisation enables innovation.

‘It takes some kind of courage and fearlessness. And the challenge to be vulnerable is a challenge itself.’
Wayne Shorter

‘The more you challenge yourself to muster up the courage, the more the uncertainty becomes your ally.’
Herbie Hancock

A key to successful improvisation is abstracting yourself from extraneous concerns and ‘submitting to the now.’

‘The feeling that I get when I’m really improvising with other people who are really improvising is … something that always feels like it’s a step, or a half step, away from me… I know that you get closer to it by not living in the past or the future – just sort of submitting to the now.’
Ambrose Akinmusire

3. ‘Be a Leader Who Trains Leaders’

 ‘You can’t hide behind your instrument.’
Art Blakey

Art Blakey was a natural born leader. When in 1954 a Blue Note All-Star line-up was booked to play New York’s Birdland, he slipped the announcer Pee Wee Marquette a couple of notes, and Blakey was introduced as the head of the band.

And yet Blakey also encouraged others to lead. Throughout his career he urged band members, like Wayne Shorter and Horace Silver, to graduate to marshalling their own outfits. He was happy to manage fluid ensembles and to accommodate the occasional loss of knowledge and skills.

‘Art Blakey was a university to himself. And a lot of musicians that came through his band actually became leaders. He was a leader who trained leaders.’
Kendrick Scott

Jazz ensembles are often informally led. They accommodate, and even embrace, tension and discord, because these qualities contribute to the entity’s unique energy.

4. Creativity Is Incomplete without an Audience

Of course, music is nothing without an audience to hear it.

‘What’s contained on the record itself is incomplete. Because it doesn’t include the process of the person listening to it and how it effects them.’ 
Herbie Hancock

But audiences and industries can be fickle. In 1963 Blue Note recorded a significant hit with the title track of Lee Morgan’s ‘The Sidewinder’ album, and Horace Silver did the same the following year with ‘Song for My Father.’

Perversely, distributors then put pressure on the label to come up with similar successes. Lion and Wolff became exhausted with it all and in 1965 they sold Blue Note to Liberty Records. Lion, who disliked the corporate environment, retired in 1967. Wolff stayed on, but passed away in 1972.

5. ‘Work on Your Humanity as Well as Your Creativity’

Blue Note continued. And in the ‘80s and ‘90s it had something of a renaissance when hip hop artists recognised it as a kindred spirit and made extensive use of Blue Note samples. 

‘I found out looking at my royalties.’
Lou Donaldson

The documentary features interviews and performances from today’s Blue Note All-Stars. As this new generation collaborates with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, they observe the special dynamic that is at play.

‘I saw how each individual relinquished the leadership and, being in a band situation with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, I immediately want to relinquish it to them. But they’re waiting for me to do something. They want to see what you have to offer. And to frame that picture for you.’
Kendrick Scott

On the one hand, since jazz is all about finding authentic individual expression, it is a supremely egotistical art form. On the other hand, it involves the integration of the individual within the collective. It demands selflessness.

‘It’s something that’s very important in a jazz group is that everybody has a voice.’
Kendrick Scott

Aware of such paradoxes, the contemporary Blue Note artists come across as reflective and spiritual.

‘It all comes down to managing the ego in a way that allows the music to really come out. People like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, they allow the music to flow through…They work on their humanity as well as their music.’
Marcus Strickland

I left the documentary concluding that modern business could learn a great deal from jazz: about the integration of individuality within a coherent community; about improvisation as a force for innovation; about more fluid leadership styles; and developing a proper engagement with risk and uncertainty. 

We often think of jazz as rather intellectual and po-faced. These artists are certainly serious about their craft. They are obsessed with consistently delivering to the highest standard and constantly pioneering new frontiers. But they also display natural informality and disarming humour.

In a moment of downtime Herbie Hancock enters the studio with an awkward shuffle. He calls across to Wayne Shorter.

Herbie: Hey, Wayne, who’s this?

Herbie shuffles some more.

Wayne: That’s Frank.

Herbie: If you played and Frank was dancing that was the take. If he wasn’t dancing that was not the take. A little shuffle – it had nothing to do with the beat.

'Blow me a kiss from across the room,
Say I look nice when I'm not.
Touch my hair as you pass my chair,
Little things mean a lot.
Give me your arm as we cross the street,
Call me at six on the dot.
A line a day when you're far away,
Little things mean a lot.’

Dodo Greene, ‘Little Things Mean a Lot’ (E Lindeman / C Stutz)

No. 327

Dubuffet: Waging a War Against Cultural Conditioning

Jean Dubuffet - 'Landscape with Argus' 1955

‘Millions of possibilities of expression exist outside the accepted cultural avenues.’
Jean Dubuffet

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of the work of French painter Jean Dubuffet. (‘Brutal Beauty’ is at the Barbican, London until 22 August.)

Dubuffet was a singularly independent thinker. He rebelled against established artistic norms. He celebrated art created by people not considered artists. He worked with materials, processes and concepts that expanded our understanding of what art could be. He created new worlds of beauty and meaning. He was an outsider.

'Without bread we die of hunger, but without art we die of boredom.’

Let us consider what Dubuffet teaches us about the creative mindset.

1. Reject ‘Cultural Conditioning’

Dubuffet was born in Le Havre in 1901 to a family of wine merchants. In 1918 he moved to Paris to study painting at the Académie Julian. After just six months he packed it all in, finding the formal training too restrictive and conservative. 

Henceforth Dubuffet spent a lifetime kicking against what he regarded as ‘cultural conditioning.’

'Our culture is like a garment that does not fit us, or in any case no longer fits us. This culture is like a dead language that no longer has anything in common with the language of the street. It is increasingly alien to our lives.’

Dubuffet travelled to Italy and Brazil, pursued his own studies in music, poetry, and languages. And when he returned to France in 1925, he established himself as a vintner in Paris. Over the next twenty years, he rarely picked up a paintbrush. 

2. Seek Creativity ‘in its Pure and Elementary State’

Since the 1920s Dubuffet had been interested in art created by psychiatric patients, prisoners and children. He admired the honesty, directness and vitality that he saw in such work, and applauded the fact that it didn’t adhere to any tradition or movement. He coined the term Art Brut (‘raw art’) for work produced by non-professionals outside aesthetic norms. And in 1948 he co-founded the Compagnie de l’Art Brut, which collected more than 1,200 pieces by over 100 artists for its ‘museum without walls.’

Art Brut embraced a diverse set of styles and themes. At the Barbican exhibition you can see Madge Gill’s elegant pen and ink designs of fashionable women; Auguste Forestier’s characterful carved wooden beast; and Laura Pigeon’s mournful blue abstracts. There are dense graphic patterns, architectural constructions, psychedelic creatures and a collage map of France.

‘It is my belief that only in this Art Brut can we find the natural and normal processes of artistic creation in their pure and elementary state.’

3. ‘Plug into the Present’

Inspired by the sights of war-ravaged Paris, Dubuffet took up painting again in 1942. He made lithographic prints that looked like defaced walls. Over formal text from French and German newspapers, he scrawled graffiti suggestive of secret Resistance messages.

‘The key is under the shutter.’
‘I’ve been thinking of you.’ 

Dubuffet was determined that his art should respond to the real world, not to any artistic fashion or convention.

‘I aim for an art that is directly plugged into our current life.’

Jean Dubuffet - Wall with Inscriptions, April 1945

4. Embrace the Editorial Power of Memory

In the late ‘40s Dubuffet developed his own primitive style of portraiture. Having spent hours staring at a sitter, he withdrew to his studio and painted entirely from recollection, creating what he called ‘a likeness burst in memory’. His work was cartoonish, childlike and raw, focusing on a few distinguishing features, rather than seeking to capture a detailed resemblance. 

'In portraits you need a lot of general, very little of specific.’

5. Employ Unorthodox Materials

Dubuffet liked to work with unconventional materials. He mixed thick oil paint with sand and cement, pebbles and plaster, string and straw, glass and gravel. He applied razor blades and sandpaper to the paste, scratching and slashing it to give it texture. 

'Mud, rubbish and dirt are man's companions all his life. Shouldn't they be precious to him, and isn't one doing man's service to remind him of their beauty?'

Dubuffet also experimented with ‘assemblage’, creating collages with found materials; with butterfly wings or remnants of previous paintings. He made figures from steel wool, charcoal, vines and lava stone; from the debris of a burnt-out car.

'Art should be born from the materials.’

6. Explore the Landscape of the Mind

Between 1947 and 1949 Dubuffet travelled to Algeria for inspiration. He learned Arabic and lived with Bedouin communities in the desert. On his return to Paris, with the aid of his sketchbooks, he sought to capture the spirit of the places he had visited.

'Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes.’

Dubuffet’s landscapes were brimful of mysterious patterns, shapes and contours, the horizon relegated to a thin distant strip at the top of the canvas. He believed that these paintings could articulate interior as well as exterior truths.

‘I have been concerned to represent, not the objective world, but what it becomes in our thoughts.’

Jean Dubuffet - ‘Landscape in Metamorphosis’

7. Think Micro Macro

In 1957, prompted by his time in Vence, Dubuffet embarked on his ‘Texturology’ paintings. He adopted a technique used by Tyrolean stonemasons, which involved shaking a branch loaded with paint over fresh plaster in order to soften its colour. The tiny spattered dots in subtle shades of cream, brown and grey suggested both the delicate beauty of a microscopic world and the infinite allure of the cosmos.

‘Teeming matter, alive and sparkling, could represent a piece of ground … but also evoke all kinds of indeterminate texture, and even galaxies and nebulae.’

Jean Dubuffet - 'The Exemplary Life of the Soil (Texturology LXIII)’, 1958

8. 'Start All Over Again from the Beginning’

In 1961 Dubuffet returned to Paris and realised that he needed a fresh start.

‘I live locked up in my studio doing - guess what? - paintings in the spirit and manner of those I was making in 1943. I have decided to start all over again from the beginning.’ 

Dubuffet set about capturing the vibrant spirit of what he called the ‘Paris Circus’: the posters, traffic, restaurants and bars – an urban realm of chaotic, colourful energy.

‘I want my street to be crazy, my broad avenues, shops and buildings to join in a crazy dance.’

9. Find Inspiration in the Unconscious

In 1963 Dubuffet was inspired to take another new direction by some doodles he made during a telephone call. In his ‘L’Hourloupe’ series he created his own highly stylized graphic world of fluid shapes, coloured in with blue and red stripes; of twisting and turning jigsaw figures, full of vim and vigour.

'It is the unreal that enchants me now.’

Next Dubuffet breathed life into this doodle-universe by inventing a one-hour spectacle, ‘Coucou Bazar.’ He choreographed ‘theatrical props’ -  some static, some powered by motors - with live dancers, dramatic lighting and a musical accompaniment  - which he stipulated should be ‘brutally loud with abrupt interruptions of silence.’

Jean Dubuffet - ’Skedaddle'

10. Let the Imagination Bleed into the Everyday

’The things we dearly love, which form the basis of our being, we generally never look at.'

In the late ‘70s Dubuffet returned to assemblage. For his ‘Theatres of Memory’ series he created enormous collages with layered fragments of old paintings. Crude cartoon characters jostle with bold abstract shapes and colours. Trees and masks are enmeshed with fierce monochrome patterns. 

When they were exhibited in New York in 1979, these works inspired a new generation of artists, including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

Dubuffet said he was concerned with how our imagination bleeds into our impressions of the everyday world. 

'What interests me about thought is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas, but its earlier stages.’

Dubuffet died from emphysema in 1985. He was 83. He had endeavoured to return art to untutored primitivism. Constantly reinventing his process and style, he sought relentlessly to explore interior and exterior truths; to blur the boundaries between the psychological and the real, the micro and the macro.  And in so doing he created magical worlds of beauty and vitality. 

'For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.’

Above all, Dubuffet raged against tradition and taste, custom and convention: what others decree as ‘normal’. Creativity should not follow any prescribed path or respect any established practice. It should be an unshackled expression of self. 

’There is only one way of being normal, and a hundred million ways of not being normal.’

'Express yourself.
Express yourself.
You don't ever need help from nobody else.
All you got to do now,
Express yourself.
Whatever you do,
Do it good.
Whatever you do, do, do, 
Do it good, all right.
It's not what you look like
When you're doin', what you're doin’.
It's what you're doin', when you're doin'
What you look like you're doin’.
Express yourself.
Express yourself.’

Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, 'Express Yourself’ (C Wright)

No. 326

The South Indies: When Over Thinkers Under Perform

Moore’s tackle on Jairzinho

‘Football is the most important of the less important things in the world.‘
Carlo Ancelotti

I think the South Indies football team mattered more to me than it really should have.

Through the week I washed the kit, recruited players and popped out to Soccer Scene to buy random bits of equipment. I woke up in the middle of the night pondering league tables. I plotted innovative formations on the back of envelopes, but ended up concluding that, erm, 4-4-2 probably best suited our resources. 

We were in many ways a typical amateur side. Our fixtures tended to be on Saturday mornings when many of our personnel were nursing hangovers. Our home ground was the astroturf at Market Road - where Australians sold their VW Camper Vans and local kids hung round to nick our balls. 

Like most such squads, we were a mismatched assortment of characters and talents. John did warm-up exercises that the rest of us scorned for being too ‘continental.’ Dylan was a philosopher off the pitch and an enforcer on it. Tim played with the enthusiasm of a 20 year old, though his body had moved on a decade or so. Andy was quiet, but lethal. Matty kept goal, but not his temper. Striker Kweku had the disarming habit of chatting amicably to opposition Defenders. Vinny played like a troubadour social worker and Tony like a novelist with a fine appreciation of history. Thommo was stylish. Caz was obdurate. Dave was rustic. Doug was contrary. Steve was tidy. And Shamik was late.

‘If I have to make a tackle then I have already made a mistake.’
Paolo Maldini

My own skills as a Centre Back were rudimentary. Slow, lumbering, physical. More comfortable with the ball in the air than on the ground. Whenever a Striker approached me in possession, I could hear over my shoulder Thommo shouting: 

‘Stand up. Stand up, Jim!’

I hesitated and held my ground. I stared the Striker in the face as he contemplated his next move. 

‘Don’t dive in!’ Thommo cried.

For a brief moment the Striker and I were frozen to the spot, each ready to spring into action. Time stood still. 

I felt the same way about this bloke as I did about all Forwards. I resented his speed and agility, his refined skills and youthful good looks. He needed to be taught a lesson. Perhaps, re-enacting Bobby Moore’s tackle on Jairzinho in the 1970 World Cup, I could slide in to dispossess him, with balletic grace, with pinpoint precision.

And then, suddenly, he feinted as if to go one way and went the other. I sensed him accelerate past me as I struggled to build up momentum.

It was now or never. 

And so, with a rush of blood to the head, I made my move. 

Thud, clatter, crash. 

I’d taken him down. 

Penalty.

I looked up from the astroturf to see Thommo frowning at me with accustomed disappointment. 

'Football is a game you play with your mind.’
Johan Cruyff

A little while ago I read an article about the science of spot kicks (‘Want That Penalty?’ The Times, 7 May).

It transpires that, if you’re taking a penalty to win a match, you can expect a 90% success rate, compared with only 60% if you’re trying to avoid defeat. In a shoot-out, striking the first penalty elevates your chances of winning to 60:40. Keepers should waste between 1.7 and 4.5 seconds before the kick is taken.

There’s clearly a good deal of psychology involved.

A recent study published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Computer Science’ monitored the brains of footballers when they took spot kicks. 

22 players were fitted with a cap with sensors that measured oxygen levels in different parts of the brain. Those who missed their penalty tended to have activated cerebral areas associated with long-term planning. By contrast, those who scored had employed unconscious neural pathways. They had performed the task automatically, with well-rehearsed movements.

The research concluded that players miss penalties when they over-analyse the outcomes. Over thinkers under perform. They would do better to employ ‘neural efficiency theory,’ responding to pressure by switching some parts of the brain on and others off.

’The best decisions aren’t made with your mind, but with your instinct. The more familiar with a situation you become, the quicker, the better your decision will be.’
Lionel Messi

It’s easy to imagine such findings having application in business.

Inevitably we spend a good deal of the working week plotting and planning, calculating and co-ordinating. We repeatedly rehearse our arguments, review the pros and cons of various strategic routes, in order to equip ourselves to make the critical calls. But as we approach the key meeting, we should not be too preoccupied with the consequences of our actions. We should be confident, focused on winning, set to seize the initiative. At the decisive juncture in the negotiation; at the point of making the crucial creative recommendation; at the climax of the presentation, we should switch from a mindset of preparation and projection to one of instinct and intuition. We should concentrate on the situation and not the stakes.

After the game we’d adjourn to the Hemingford Arms. Caz, in his genial way would talk to the opposition at the bar and smooth over grievances and misperceptions. The rest of us would sit in a huddle in the corner, re-enacting the highlights, exaggerating our heroics, appointing the scapegoat - usually me.

'My heart was broken.
Sorrow, sorrow.
My heart was broken.
You saw it, you claimed it,
You touched it, you saved it.
My tears are drying.
Thank you, thank you.
My tears are drying.
Your beauty and kindness
Made tears clear my blindness.
While I'm worth
My room on this Earth,
I will be with you,
While the Chief
Puts sunshine on Leith.’

The Proclaimers, 'Sunshine on Leith’ (C & C Reid)

No. 325

The 39 Steps: Does Your Brand Have a MacGuffin?

'Have you ever heard of the 39 Steps?
'No. What's that, a pub?’

‘The 39 Steps’ is a classic 1935 British thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on a novel by John Buchan.

Robert Donat stars as Richard Hannay, a Canadian visitor to London who becomes a murder suspect, goes on the run and endeavours to prevent a spy ring from stealing British military secrets. It’s gripping stuff.

A gun goes off in a music hall and an alluring secret agent seeks sanctuary in Hannay’s flat on Portland Place.

‘There’s a dangerous conspiracy against this island and we’re the only ones who can stop it.’

But the mysterious woman dies with a knife in her back, clutching a map of the Highlands. Hannay escapes disguised as a milkman, hides away on the Flying Scotsman and kisses a fellow passenger to evade arrest. He jumps off at the Forth Bridge, stays the night with a crofter and is chased across the moors by a police gyrocopter. 

'I've been guilty of leading you down the garden path. Or should it be up? I never can remember.'
'It seems to be the wrong garden, all right.’

Next Hannay is shot by an aristocratic villain with a finger missing – but the bullet is stopped by a hymnbook. He is interviewed by an unreliable sheriff and seized by police who may not be police. And he spends the night at a country inn handcuffed to a beautiful blonde who doesn’t quite trust him. 

'There are 20 million women in this island and I've got to be chained to you.'

‘The 39 Steps’ takes us on a breathless chase across the Highlands, along roads blocked by flocks of sheep, through a patrician country house party and a crowded political meeting. We are desperate for our hero to escape his pursuers and foil the villains’ scheme. But, in truth, we are not that concerned about exactly what that scheme is.

This is a classic early use by Hitchcock of a plot technique he called a MacGuffin: a device that drives the narrative and motivates the characters, but is itself unimportant.

'The MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience don't care.’
Alfred Hitchcock

We learn that the 39 Steps refer to a foreign spy organisation that has been scheming to smuggle the design for a silent aircraft engine out of the country. Although we the audience appreciate that silent aircraft engines are hugely important to the key protagonists in the movie - that they are prompting them to risk their lives – silent aircraft engines don’t really matter too much to us, or to our enjoyment of the drama.

Hitchcock was fond of MacGuffins. ‘Foreign Correspondent’, for example, was propelled by a clause in a secret peace treaty; ‘Notorious’ by radioactive uranium; ‘North by Northwest’ by confidential microfilm. 

Indeed you’ll find MacGuffins in many movies, particularly thrillers. There’s the small statuette in 'The Maltese Falcon,’ the stolen transit letters in ‘Casablanca,' the briefcase in ‘Pulp Fiction,' the rug in 'The Big Lebowski.'

I found myself wondering about Brand MacGuffins: particular characteristics that drive a brand narrative, that sustain its core benefits – but that are not of themselves that important to consumers.

Back in the day Cadbury Dairy Milk contained ‘a glass and a half of full-cream milk’; Dove soap was ‘one quarter cleansing cream’; and Boost was ‘slightly rippled with a flat under-side.’ KFC had an ‘Original Recipe of 11 herbs and spices’; Coors was ‘brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water’; and Flora margarine had ‘polywassernames’…

Wanting to draw attention to the breadth of his brand’s range, in 1896 Henry J Heinz introduced the slogan ‘57 pickle Varieties.’ In fact he was selling more than 57 varieties, but he just thought the numbers 5 and 7 were lucky.

The 39 Steps (1935) Alfred Hitchcock (second right) directing the handcuffed Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat on the first day of filming

Brand MacGuffins – Reasons to Believe or Substantiators as we called them back then - were vitally important to the businesses that claimed them. They established difference, explained superiority and justified premium. They were often shrouded in secrecy and guarded with alacrity. As consumers we were glad they existed, but didn’t really care too much about their specifics.

Of course, nowadays Brand MacGuffins are rather thin on the ground. Product differentiators are easy to copy and difficult to extend across sectors. And if you research them, people just shrug their shoulders. Modern brands prefer emotional differentiators and Big Ideas – they’re more pliable, comprehensible, universal. 

It’s a shame. Brand MacGuffins conferred texture, character and credibility. They enabled more engaging, distinctive brand dialogue. They were fun.

Perhaps now, after all this time, it may be pertinent to ask: could your brand benefit from a MacGuffin?

At the end of ‘The 39 Steps’ Hannay realises that the plotters have not actually stolen any secret papers. Rather they intend to smuggle the details of the silent aircraft engine out of the country using the extraordinary recollective powers of a theatre performer. 

We make our way to the London Palladium. Mr Memory, who has been an unwitting accomplice in the scheme, is shot on stage as he reveals the plans. He seems relieved finally to be liberated from his secrets.

‘The first feature of the new engine is its greatly increased ratio of compression represented by R minus over to the power of gamma where R represents the ratio of compression and gamma... Seen in end elevation, the axis of the two lines of cylinders...Angle of degrees… Dimensions of cylinders as follows...This device renders the engine completely silent.’ 
‘Am I right, sir?’
‘Quite right, old chap.’
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you. I'm glad it's off my mind. Glad.’

'I got an X-ray camera hidden in your house
To see what I could see.
That man you was kissing last night
Definitely wasn't me.
And I spy for the FBI.’

Jamo Thomas ‘I Spy (for the FBI)’ (R Wylie / H Kelley)

No. 324

Alice Neel: ‘Always in the Process of Becoming’

Alice Neel, A Spanish Boy 1955

‘I paint to try to reveal the struggle, tragedy and joy of life.’
Alice Neel

I recently watched a fascinating documentary about the American painter Alice Neel, written and directed by her grandson Andrew Neel (‘Alice Neel,’ 2007).

Neel believed passionately that people are worthy of our attention; that every individual merits scrutiny. She created raw, intimate images of diverse characters, revealing their suffering and frailty, their strength and dignity. In pursuing her craft, she made huge personal sacrifices. She persisted with portrait painting when the art establishment determined it was an obsolete artform. She persevered when the world went wild for Abstract Expressionism. And finally she received the credit she had always deserved.

In the documentary there’s a brief clip of Neel at work with a sitter in her apartment. She reflects on how a portrait is shaping up.

‘It’s going somewhere, but it hasn’t arrived there. It’s always in the process of becoming.’

Let us consider what we can learn from this compelling artist.

1. ‘Search for a Road. Search for Freedom’

Alice Neel was born in 1900 and grew up in rural Pennsylvania, in a middle-class family that was often short of money. After graduating from high school, she took a clerical job to help support her parents. She studied art at evening classes, and in 1921 she enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

‘My conscience bothered me, that I should be just fooling about with art when really everybody needed money.’

In 1925 Neel married Carlos Enríquez, an aristocratic Cuban painter, and they moved to Havana to live with his family. There she embraced the thriving avant-garde creative scene and developed a lifelong political consciousness. 

Neel had already travelled a long way from her conventional Pennsylvania upbringing.

'Art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom.’

Alice Neel with her paintings at her Spanish Harlem apartment in 1944. Courtesy of Sam Brody, via SeeThink Films

2. ‘All Experience Is Great, Providing You Live Through It’

In 1927 the couple moved to New York where Neel's first-born daughter died of diphtheria. A few years later Enríquez left her, taking their second daughter with him. Neel suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized and attempted suicide. 

‘In a way it was my own fault. I pushed my brain back. And then after it got back there, I was much worse off. I forgot all the Spanish I knew. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t do anything.’

When Neel was released from the sanatorium, she took to painting themes of motherhood, loss and doubt. 

She continued to be unlucky in love. She had an affair with a heroin-addicted sailor, who, in a jealous rage, set fire to 350 of her paintings and drawings. She had a son by a nightclub singer and another by a documentary film-maker. The latter supported her work, but was abusive to her older boy.

‘I look happy. But that’s just a fake. I’m serving a sentence. Instead of jumping out the window, I’m putting in the time.’

Neel sold very few paintings and she participated in only one exhibition in this period. Between 1933 and 1943 she received funding from the Public Works of America Project, one of the Roosevelt's New Deal initiatives. But once that income dried up, she relied on welfare to make ends meet.

‘I had acquired the idea that for art’s sake you had to give up everything. If I had some money, I wouldn’t buy a dress or anything. I’d buy canvas and paint materials.’

Somehow Neel managed to survive.

'All experience is great providing you live through it. If it kills you, you've gone too far.’

Alice Neel, Pat Whalen, 1935

3. ‘People Come First’

In Greenwich Village Neel painted critics, artists, activists and intellectuals. In Spanish Harlem she painted her neighbours, women and children, family, friends and strangers. In West Harlem she painted pregnant nudes and nursing mothers. She painted people from diverse racial, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. She painted what she called ‘the human comedy’: real people, real bodies, real lives.

'For me, people come first. I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.’

Neel had developed a direct style of portraiture. Employing bold loose outlines and fresh vibrant colours, stripping away unnecessary detail, focusing with unflinching intensity on posture, personality and nuance; on idiosyncrasies that indicated the sitter’s true character -  a subtle gesture of the hand and a gentle tilt of the head; a clenched fist, folded arms and a furrowed brow; a bored stare, tired eyes and a nervous sideways glance. 

4. Be a ‘Collector of Souls’

'Like Chekhov, I am a collector of souls… If I hadn’t been an artist, I could have been a psychiatrist.'

Neel was aiming to go beyond surface detail to establish psychological truth. This required her to be empathetic; to develop a strong sense of the feelings of the sitter; to be sensitive to the life within.

‘I go so out of myself and into them that after they leave I sometimes feel horrible. I feel like an untenanted house.’

 5. Resist Prevailing Fashion and Dogma

Throughout her life Neel had to steel herself against prevailing cultural fashion and dogma.

There was a view that advances in photography had effectively removed the need for portrait painting. Neel demonstrated that, whereas a photo freezes a sitter in a particular moment and attitude, a painting can animate its subject through time; can penetrate beyond masks and facades; can express an authentic individual identity.

‘I would have to apologise for being psychological because that was considered a weakness.’

In the 1950s and 1960s Abstract Expressionism drowned out all other artforms. As the painter Chuck Close observed, it was as if Neel was ‘broadcasting and no one’s picking up the signal.’ But she remained stubbornly committed to representational work. 

‘I am against abstract and non-objective art because such art shows a hatred of human beings. It is an attempt to eliminate people from art, and as such it is bound to fail.’

Alice Neel, Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis), 1972

6. ‘Express the Zeitgeist’

Neel was conscious that every individual is imprinted with the values and struggles of their era. And so her portraiture evolved with time. 

‘I like it not only to look like the person, but to have their inner character as well. And then I like it to express the zeitgeist. You see, I don’t want something in the’60s to look like something in the ‘70s.’

As Neel painted sitters of every ethnicity, sexuality, age, gender and economic group, so she recorded the progress of American history: from the Depression, through the Civil Rights era and on to a modern world of material wealth and spiritual poverty.

‘I like to paint people who are in the rat race, suffering all the tension and damage that’s involved in that – under pressure really of city life and of the awful struggle that goes on in the city.’

7. Be Tenacious. Be Interested

Toward the end of the 1960s, the Women's Rights movement celebrated Neel as an unfairly ignored talent, and she became something of a feminist icon. And yet she refused to be categorised simply as ‘a woman painter.’

'When I was in my studio I didn’t give a damn what sex I was… I thought art is art.'

Neel toured the States delivering lectures and participating in panel discussions at museums, art schools and universities. In the documentary an academic relates how, at one such event, Neel grabbed the microphone, set up a slide carousel of her work, and took over the discussion. She was hungry for attention.

At last, in 1974, Neel was given a major retrospective at the Whitney in New York. 

‘I always felt in a sense that I didn’t have the right to paint, because I had two sons and I had so many things I should be doing. And here I was painting. But that show convinced me that I had a perfect right to paint. I shouldn’t ever have felt that, but I did feel it. And after that show I never felt it any more.’

It had been a long, hard struggle for recognition. But Neel was equal to the challenge.

‘If you’re sufficiently tenacious and interested, you can accomplish what you want to accomplish in this world.’

In 1984 Neel died from cancer in her New York apartment.

Detail of Alice Neel, Richard in the Era of the Corporation (1978-79). Photo by Ben Davis.

Alice Neel was a woman of conviction. She adhered to her artistic and political beliefs, despite desperate poverty, untrustworthy lovers, a fickle art establishment and systemic sexism. She left us with a portrait of America in the 20th century, a tapestry of individual lives; of struggle, passion and endurance. 

There’s a telling scene in the film where this seemingly sweet little old lady upbraids an interviewer.

‘You must take what I give you. Don’t be so demanding. Just sit there.’
 She smiles gently.
‘Now. What was I talking about?...’

(You can see a retrospective of Neel's work at the Met Fifth Avenue, New York until 1 August 2021: ‘Alice Neel: People Come First.’)

‘Me.
Can you focus on me?
Baby, can you focus on me?
Babe.
Hands in the soap,
Have the faucets running,
And I keep looking at you.
Stuck on your phone,
And you're stuck in your zone,
You don't have a clue.
But I don't want to give up.
Baby, I just want you to get up.
Lately I've been a little fed up.
Wish you would just focus on
Me.’
HER, ‘Focus’ (D Camper / G Wilson / J Love)

No. 323

The Conversational Gambit: If You Were Restricted to Five Fruits, What Would They Be?

Basket of Pears, 1882 by Édouard Manet. Photograph: © Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen

‘'What ho!' I said.
'What ho!' said Motty.
'What ho! What ho!'
'What ho! What ho! What ho!'
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.’
PG Wodehouse, 'My Man Jeeves’

I have often thought that what little success I have had in business derives from one particular conversation.

I had been working at Bartle Bogle Hegarty for only a short while when I was invited to a dinner. Co-Founder Nigel Bogle wanted to meet a few of the recent recruits, to get a sense of the emergent talent pool and perhaps to impress on them some of the company’s values.

I’m not the most socially confident person, and I am generally awkward at such work events - worried that I will say the wrong thing or, worse still, say nothing at all. And so I approached the occasion with some trepidation.

'I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.'
Sally Rooney, 'Conversations with Friends'

My nerves jangled all the more when I found that I was seated next to the evening’s host. Nigel was an imposing figure. Fiercely intelligent, serious-minded and somewhat laconic. How could an anxious fool like me keep him interested and entertained for three courses?

My Classics teacher at school, Mr Deasy, had advised that such situations called for the deployment of a Conversational Gambit: a short remark, story or question that would start a discussion. And so I had subsequently developed a stock of gambits to see me through uncomfortable interactions:

‘What would be your final meal?’
‘What’s your favourite bus route?’
‘Which body part would you change if you could?’
‘When were you happiest?’

On this occasion, I thought I’d try my Five Fruits gambit:

‘If you were restricted to five fruits, what would they be?’

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of limiting choice, particularly in the area of food. Too many permutations. Too much fuss. Altogether a distraction. A little editing would do us all a favour.

And so the table debated my question.

‘Well, you’ll want an apple as a work-horse fruit.’

‘And a banana as an indulgent fruit – with all its associated energy benefits.’

‘You’ll need one citrus, probably orange. I’m tempted to go for satsuma for easy peeling.’

‘And then perhaps a berry. Raspberry is slightly more tasty, and certainly less obvious, than a strawberry.

‘Or grapes, as you wouldn’t want to do without wine.’

Inevitably there was some disagreement. Snobbishness about satsumas. Preference for exotic varietals like mangoes and mandarins. Debates about the botanic status of plantains and avocados.

‘Is a tomato a fruit?’

The gambit served its purpose. It had the whole table buzzing. And I noticed Nigel was particularly engaged. He probed away at the question as if sitting an exam, exploring the many ways of interpreting it, developing different strategies for answering it. He was addressing the task with a little more seriousness than I had intended.

In any case, I was informed the next day that I’d made an impression on the Agency Co-Founder. And from that moment on I felt I had earned his tacit support. Something about my Five Fruits gambit had suggested to him that I could be of value to the Agency. What value exactly was not entirely clear to me.

Perhaps there is a lesson here.

We treat conversation as something effortless and instinctive; a consequence of social chemistry and circumstance; a gift that comes naturally or not at all. But in fact conversation is an art worthy of our study. It merits time and attention, practice and preparation, strategies and tactics. Our ability to converse shapes how people think of us.

'My idea of good company, Mr Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.'
Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’

I have continued to employ Conversational Gambits in both my professional and domestic lives. In the course of an average day, as I’m working my way through The Guardian or The Times, I’ll make a few notes of interesting news items or cultural topics at the foot of the front page. And then later, as my wife is preparing dinner, I like to pepper our discussion with anecdotes, facts, quotes and opinion.

It amuses me at least.

'Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?’
Stella Gibbons, 'Cold Comfort Farm'

Of course, the pandemic has presented a particular challenge to our social confidence. We all feel a diminution of experience, a narrowing of bandwidth. When we emerge blinking into the wider world, will we have forgotten how to converse? Will we have anything to say?

I have taken to compiling a list of candidate conversational topics, loosely categorised, on a piece of paper: recently watched movies and documentaries, political events, aphorisms, fashion trends, music tips. I carry my list with me at all times, so I’m properly equipped if ever I get to encounter another human being.

A recent Conversational Gambit list suggests:

French generals; ‘Not trickle-down, but bottom-up and middle-out’; the dignity of labour; protest against ‘guys’; Blair Hair; Abrdn; shullet, shrobing, linners; languishing; Citizen Kane v Paddington 2; ‘I Am Duran’; HER.

One of the rare pleasures of lockdown (when we’re allowed) has been meeting My-Mate-Andy-from-Back-Home on a park bench at the Stratford Olympic Park (Excellent amenities!). Wrapped up against the elements in hoodies and anoraks, drinking a bottle of wine from plastic beakers, I’m sure we look like a couple of old tramps. But we’re happy enough.

With the advantage of familiarity built over many years, we can chat effortlessly about people and politics, sport and music, old times and new places. And then, after a good while, there is a break in the conversation. And a pause. And when the silence drags, Andy looks across at me.

‘Go on then. What have you got on your list?’


'Talk to me,
Talk to me.
I love the things you say.
Talk to me,
Talk to me,
In your own sweet gentle way.
Let me hear,
Tell me dear.
Tell me you love me so.
Talk to me,
Talk to me.
Tell me what I want to know.’

Little Willie John 'Talk to Me, Talk to Me’ (J Seneca)

No 332

'Who Pushed Taylor Off the Pier?': Why The Big Sleep Is a Little Confusing

'Your story didn't sound quite right.’
'Oh, that's too bad. You got a better one?’
'Maybe I can find one.’

‘The Big Sleep’ is a classic 1946 detective thriller directed by Howard Hawks, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Private investigator Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is commissioned by wealthy invalid General Sternwood to extract his troublesome younger daughter, Carmen, from extortion over gambling debts. But nothing is straightforward: Sternwood is also keen to locate his trusted bodyguard who has recently disappeared; his older daughter Vivian (Bacall) seems unduly curious about Marlowe’s brief; and Carmen is being inappropriate.

'She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.’

When Marlowe embarks on his enquiries, he discovers a drugged Carmen beside the dead body of the blackmailer, and a hidden camera with the film missing. This sets him off on a trail of vice, violence, corruption and infidelity; of sophisticated clubs, hired guns and poisoned drinks. There’s a disappearing corpse, a mugging in the car park and a shooting at the apartment door. 

'You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.’

Marlowe navigates these challenges with a cool head and worldly cynicism. And he meets his match in Vivian - reserved, sharp tongued, quietly amused - and not entirely to be trusted. 

'Why did you have to go on?'
'Too many people told me to stop.’

Marlowe and Vivian are clearly attracted to each other and they spar flirtatiously whenever they meet.

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're frontrunners or come from behind… I'd say you like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free…
Marlowe: You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

They make a compelling couple. The suited Bogart, hard-boiled and obstinate, nervously touching his ear lobes when he thinks, striding through the mean streets in battered trench coat and fedora. Bacall, her head tilted down, her eyebrows arched, her feline beauty gliding across the screen in trousers, loafers and velvet shirt; in hounds-tooth jacket and black beret; in gold lame evening gown.

‘The Big Sleep’ has a labyrinthine plot, with key characters we never see, seven murders and numerous double crosses and false leads. It’s difficult to keep up.

Of course, the complexity was written into Chandler’s original narrative. But it was exacerbated by the troubled production process. Bogart and Bacall had embarked on an affair, and, with his marriage on the rocks, Bogart was drinking heavily. Bacall’s agent, concerned by her recent box office flop, and the fact that Martha Vickers as Carmen was dazzling in every scene, demanded rewrites that diminished the younger sister’s role and gave Bacall a chance to shine. The resulting edit did not entirely make sense.

On one occasion, Bogart, perplexed by the death of one of the minor characters, marched onto the set and asked Hawks:

'Who pushed Taylor off the pier?' 

Equally confused, Hawks could get no explanation from scriptwriters William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett. So he sent Chandler a telegram, asking him to clear things up. But the author couldn’t answer Bogart’s question either. 

At length Hawks concluded that strong character development and powerful individual scenes should take precedence over narrative coherence. 

'I never figured out what was going on, but I thought that the basic thing had great scenes in it, and it was good entertainment. After that got by, I said, 'I'm never going to worry about being logical again.''

This may give us pause for thought.

Given the necessary brevity of advertising communication, we go to great lengths in script reviews, pre-production conversations and research to ensure that everything contributes to a simple powerful story with the brand at its heart; that every script, casting, wardrobe and set decision has a logic; that it is all pointing in one direction. 

But as we iron out irregularity and polish off inconsistency, so we also diminish character, credibility and memorability. Even in our reduced format, texture, tone, quirks and foibles matter.

Thankfully Marlowe and Bacall emerge from ‘The Big Sleep’ in tact and together. With the chief villain lying dead in the hallway, they sit in a gloomy parlour awaiting the police. Marlowe sketches out the story he will tell Sternwood and the cops; and the treatment best suited for Carmen. Everything seems resolved. 

Vivian: You've forgotten one thing… Me.
Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.

'She is watching the detectives.
"Oh, it's so cute."
She's watching the detectives,
When they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
They beat him up until the teardrops start,
But he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.’
Elvis Costello, 'Watching the Detectives'

No. 331

Poly Styrene’s Provocation: ‘When You Look in the Mirror Do You See Yourself?’

‘I just consider myself a person first. And anything else that anybody else might call you - well, they’re just names really, aren’t they? ’
Poly Styrene

I recently enjoyed a documentary about the luminous singer and inventive songwriter Poly Styrene.

Co-directed by Paul Sng and Poly’s daughter Celeste Bell, ‘Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché’ reminds us that, as leader of her band X-Ray Spex, Poly gave us some of the most inspiring music of the punk era. She engaged with issues - sexism, racism, consumerism and identity - in a way that was heartfelt, insightful and way ahead of her time. She was a creative force, a defiant political voice and a unique style icon.

Let us consider what Poly teaches us today.

‘Who am I? I’m just an ordinary tough kid from an ordinary tough street.’

Mari Elliot was born in 1957 in Bromley and raised in Brixton. Her mother was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary, her father a Somali dockworker. Bullied at school, she encountered racism from all sides.

‘They see us as a threat to their genetic existence.’

As a teenager Mari travelled around the country going to gigs. She dabbled in a recording career, and made her own customised clothes and jewellery to sell on a stall on the King’s Road. On her nineteenth birthday she saw the Sex Pistols perform on Hastings Pier. She decided there and then to form a punk band, and promptly put an ad in the Melody Maker for ‘young punx who want to stick it together.’

And so X-Ray Spex was born. Mari chose her stage name, Poly Styrene, from the Yellow Pages. It suggested ‘something around today - something plastic and synthetic.’

In 1977 X-Ray Spex released their first single. The song begins with a gently spoken intro:

'Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard. But I think ...

Poly’s voice suddenly becomes irate:

‘Oh bondage up yours! 1-2-3-4!’

‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’ was inspired by Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries outfits, by the Suffragettes and David Bowie, by rage against ubiquitous sexism, racism and consumerism. It was banned by the BBC and was not a hit. But it became a seminal punk single. 

‘I discovered a new-found sense of freedom….I had an innate desire to be free – to be free from unwanted desires seemed desirable.’

The X-Ray Spex sound was built on a base of buzzsaw guitar. A robust saxophone added melody and mystique. And over the top of it all Poly shrieked, chanted and sang with raw power and intensity.

'A lovely girl with a voice that could punch a hole in a steel plate.’
Johnny Rotten

Poly Styrene in 1991. Photograph: Ian Dickson/Redferns

Lyrically Poly was particularly concerned with the omnipresence of plastics and synthetics; with a culture that was becoming increasingly disposable and fake. 

'I know your antiseptic,
Your deodorant smells nice.
I'd like to get to know you.
You're deep frozen like the ice.
She's a germ free adolescent,
Cleanliness is her obsession.
Cleans her teeth ten times a day,
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away,
The SR way.’
‘Germfree Adolescents'

Poly recognised that, on the one hand, this modern consumer society dumbed down and desensitized; but, on the other hand, it had seductive charms. And she found this paradox fascinating.

‘The weird thing about all the plastic is that people don’t actually like it. But, in order to cope with it, they develop a perverse kind of fondness for it.’

There were few women in pop and rock at that time, and they were often forced by the industry into highly sexualised presentations of themselves. Poly was determined to be different. 

Here’s Poly in her signature dental braces; in DIY day-glo and brilliant bri-nylon. Poly in an army hat and scarlet military jacket; in home-made creations, jumble sale discoveries, ornamented with enamel badges. Here’s Poly in leggings, pink socks and court shoes; in huge white woolly cardigan. Poly in granny prints; in emerald tank dress with orange tights. Poly in a pale blue trouser suit with lemon-and-lime head dress. Poly with red and blue pom-poms in her hair. She was a magnificently inventive dresser.

‘Clothes are never really you. That’s why people wear them. Cos you can just create an image with clothes. They’re just part of a façade, which is good fun to play sometimes.’

On stage Poly performed with righteous anger and joyous pride. She skipped, strutted, danced and did a playful hand jive. You can’t take your eyes off her. 

Given her experiences growing up, Poly was keen not to be defined by demographics, gender, ethnicity or style tribe.

‘Identity. That’s one of the current problems at the moment is identity. Everyone’s looking desperately to identify themselves with one thing, instead of themselves.’

She elegantly articulated these sentiments in song.

'Identity
Is the crisis,
Can't you see?
When you look in the mirror,
Do you see yourself?
Do you see yourself
On the TV screen?
Do you see yourself
In the magazine?
When you see yourself,
Does it make you scream?’
‘Identity'

I have always found this a compelling provocation. When we look in the mirror, do we see categories and classifications? Do we see other people’s standards and stereotypes - their expectations of who we are? Or do we see a unique individual, liberated from definitions and divisions?

X-Ray Spex did not hang around for too long. They only released five singles and one album, 1978’s ‘Germfree Adolescents.’ They performed in all the classic punk venues: The Roxy, the Man in the Moon, the Hope and Anchor, New York's CBGB's. And they featured in the famous 1978 Rock Against Racism gig at Victoria Park. 

But then in 1979, exhausted by touring, Poly left the band. She was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and sectioned. Only many years later was her condition recognised as bipolar disorder. 

‘It isn’t normal for people to be surrounded by people telling them that they’re great.’

Poly pursued a solo career, developing a more jazz-based sound, and in 1983 she joined the Hare Krishna movement. She died of breast cancer in 2011. She was only 53.

Poly Styrene teaches us that creativity is, at heart, an articulation of your own personal tastes, your individual feelings, your particular perspectives – unconstrained by custom, consensus and convention. Creativity is an expression of self.

The B-side of X-Ray Spex’ first single was ‘I Am a Cliché’ and featured the song title being repeated over and over again. Of course, Poly Styrene was anything but.

'I drove my polypropylene car on wheels of sponge,
Then pulled into a Wimpy bar to have a rubber bun,
And watched the world turn day-glo. 
You know, you know,
The world turned day-glo.’
X-Ray Spex, ‘The World Turned Day-Glo’

No. 330