The Graduate: ‘It's Like I Was Playing Some Kind of Game, But the Rules Don't Make Any Sense to Me’

Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate 1967

Mrs. Robinson: Do you find me undesirable?
Benjamin: Oh no, Mrs. Robinson. I think, I think you're the most attractive of all my parents' friends. I mean that.

‘The Graduate’ is a 1967 movie that stars Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, a college graduate who is uncertain about his future. He feels distant from the values and aspirations of his parents’ generation, and yet he’s not sure what he’s doing or where he’s going. It’s a film about alienation and ennui. And it still resonates today, as young people endeavour to preserve a sense of identity and independence in the face of convention and tradition; materialism and the need to make a living.

'Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin our descent into Los Angeles. The sound you just heard is the landing gear locking into place. Los Angeles' weather is clear, temperature is 72.'

‘The Graduate’ opens with 21 year-old Benjamin on a plane home to Los Angeles, returning from college in the east. The credits roll and we hear the haunting harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence.’ 

‘And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening.
People writing songs that voices never shared, no one dared disturb the sound of silence.’
Simon & Garfunkel, ‘The Sound of Silence.’ (P Simon)

With neat hair and wearing a suit and tie, Benjamin looks nervous, reflective, a little confused, as he stands on the travelator at LAX, passing white-tiled walls, accompanied by a repeated safety announcement.

‘Please hold the handrail and stand to the right. If you wish to pass, please do so on the left.’

He retrieves his single suitcase from the luggage carousel and exits the airport. Next we see him in his upstairs bedroom at his parents’ smart Pasadena home. Lying with his head next to the aquarium tank, he stares blankly ahead. Downstairs his parents and their friends have gathered to celebrate his graduation. His father comes up to chivvy him along.

Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. Photo Courtesy of Embassy Pictures

Mr. Braddock: Hey. What's the matter? The guests are all downstairs, Ben, waiting to see you.
Benjamin: Look, Dad, could you explain to them that I have to be alone for a while?
Mr. Braddock: These are all our good friends, Ben. Most of them have known you since, well, practically since you were born. What is it, Ben?
Benjamin: I'm just...
Mr. Braddock: Worried?
Benjamin: Well...
Mr. Braddock: About what?
Benjamin: I guess about my future.
Mr. Braddock: What about it?
Benjamin: I don't know... I want it to be...
Mr. Braddock: To be what?
Benjamin: ... Different.

Eventually Benjamin sallies forth and is greeted with a series of congratulations, pats on the back and affectionate kisses. A middle-aged man puts his arm over his shoulder and takes him to one side.

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?

All at sea, Benjamin embarks on an affair with one of his parents’ friends. Mrs Robinson (played by Anne Bancroft) is glamorous, confident and droll. She is also bored, depressed and drinking too much. 

Benjamin: For God's sake, Mrs. Robinson. Here we are. You got me into your house. You give me a drink. You put on music. Now you start opening up your personal life to me and tell me your husband won't be home for hours.
Mrs. Robinson: So?
Benjamin: Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me!

We learn that when she was Benjamin’s age, Mrs Robinson had studied art at college. But having become pregnant by her student boyfriend, she found herself married and sentenced to a life of affluent tedium. And her cultural interests seemed suddenly entirely irrelevant.

Benjamin spends the summer drifting: secretly meeting Mrs Robinson in a bedroom at the Taft Hotel; driving around town in his red convertible Alfa Romeo Spider; floating on a lilo in his parents’ pool, an Olympia beer at his side. 

His father tries to rouse him to action.

Mr. Braddock: Ben, what are you doing?
Benjamin: Well, I would say that I'm just drifting. Here in the pool.
Mr. Braddock: Why?
Benjamin: Well, it's very comfortable just to drift here.
Mr. Braddock: Have you thought about graduate school?
Benjamin: No.
Mr. Braddock: Would you mind telling me then what those four years of college were for? What was the point of all that hard work?
Benjamin: You got me.

‘The Graduate’ is a fine movie: beautifully shot and crisply cut; wittily scripted and evocatively soundtracked. It established Hoffman as a star and director Mike Nichols as a new creative voice. It also gave us Anne Bancroft’s splendid portrayal of Mrs Robinson, a lost soul. 

We may recognise in Benjamin’s delusion and apathy something from our own youth: the concern that society’s values do not chime with ours; the discovery that the commercial and corporate worlds have little in common with the high-minded realms of academia; the fear that there are no fulfilling roles and opportunities available to us.

‘It's like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up.’

Benjamin’s dilemma presents a challenge to present day leaders in the world of work: How do we motivate and inspire new generations? How do we give them a voice, recognise their difference and individuality? How do we convince them that it’s a game worth playing?

In the event Benjamin finds motivation and meaning when he falls in love with Mrs Robinson’s daughter, Elaine – a development that naturally precipitates complications.

At the film’s climax Benjamin dramatically persuades Elaine to leave her new, conventional, parent-approved husband standing at the altar. As she runs down the aisle past the aghast congregation, still in her wedding dress, she is confronted by her mother.

Mrs. Robinson: Elaine, it's too late!
Elaine: Not for me!

'And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson,
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
Hey, hey, hey.
Hey, hey, hey.’

Simon & Garfunkel, 'Mrs. Robinson’ (P Simon)

No. 454

John Craxton: The Heroic Hedonist

Still Life Sailors (1980-85) Estate of John Craxton

I recently took the train to Chichester to see an excellent exhibition of the art of John Craxton. (Pallant House Gallery, until 21 April 2024)

Though born and raised in England, Craxton produced much of his work in Greece. There he portrayed an Arcadia of ordinary folk living under a hot sun, amongst olive trees and asphodels, wild cats and frolicking goats. He painted young men smoking in the morning, sleeping in the afternoon and dancing into the night. His art is full of colour, light and movement. It is a joyous celebration of life, and prompts us to consider our own attitudes to work and play.

‘As a child I enjoyed a happy, near-Bohemian home life in a large family.’

Craxton was born in London in 1922. When his father, a pianist and composer, scored his only hit - ‘Mavis,’ sung by the legendary Irish tenor John McCormack - he took his wife and six children down to Selsey on the south coast and bought a shack above the beach.

Craxton had an idyllic childhood.

‘In what now seems like a succession of endless, if not cloudless, summer days, I ran barefoot, rode ponies, shrimped at low tide, collected fossils from the Bracklesham Beds, went to the movies, carried milk from the farm (which still had a working windmill) and had family picnics on the beach.’

Craxton decided as a young boy that all he wanted was to be an artist. He attended various schools, but emerged with no qualifications. A naturally independent spirit, he didn’t fancy the discipline of formal creative training either. And so he was largely self-taught, occasionally dropping into art schools to pick up equipment and a little drawing tuition.

Boy on a Blue Chair, 1946 John Craxton

Having failed an army medical, Craxton was excused war service. Always rather charming, witty and spontaneous, he fell in with various sponsors, lovers and artists, and one patron funded a studio in St John’s Wood that he shared with Lucian Freud.

His early work featured quiet country lanes, twisted trees and dead animals; solitary souls in melancholy, menacing landscapes. During the war years he was given his first solo exhibitions in London, and was commissioned to produce book designs – a line of work that served him well for much of his life.

But Craxton was keen to get away from Britain. As a teenager he had been enchanted by the ancient Greek figurines and pottery he encountered at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Dorset. He aspired to a Mediterranean idyll.

‘The willow trees are nice and amazing here, but I would prefer an olive tree growing out of a Greek ruin.’

John Craxton by Felix H. Man
bromide print, 1940s© estate of Felix H. Man / National Portrait Gallery, London

Immediately after the hostilities ended, there were still strict restrictions on travel. So Craxton and Freud embarked on a painting expedition to the Scilly Isles, and then stowed away on a Breton fishing boat bound for France. They only got as far as Penzance. 

The following year Craxton made it to Zurich, where he met the wife of a British ambassador at dinner. She offered him a lift to Athens in a bomber she had borrowed for a curtain-buying trip. 

And so, aged 23, Craxton arrived in Greece and immediately fell under its spell. He settled first in Poros, and then Crete, and he would stay there, on and off, for the rest of his life.

‘It’s possible to be a real person – real people, real elements, real windows – real sun above all. In a life of reality my imagination really works. I feel like an émigré in London and squashed flat.’

In Greece Craxton created romantic landscapes populated by shepherds, peasants and a pipe-playing Pan. He painted the azure sea and cyan sky; bare footed young men in white cotton trousers and striped tee shirts - working, relaxing, dancing arm-in-arm. His art has vibrant colours and a gentle cubism. And by contrast with his previous work, there’s an exultant spirit, a dreamy languor, a warm conviviality. We meet a rugged herdsman, a smoking butcher, a grey-bearded octopus fisherman. Here are moustached mariners tucking into a meal of seafood and salad at the local taverna. A sign on the wall behind them warns against breaking plates.

‘The most wonderful sound in the world is of people talking over a good meal.’

Craxton was fond of saying that 'Life is more important than art.’ He relished the freedom he had on the Greek islands - to ride his Triumph Trophy motorcycle along dirt roads and mountain tracks; to talk and laugh at the dockside bars, as he drank ouzo and feasted on cuttlefish and calamari; to lead an openly gay life. 

At the time Greece was a more tolerant place than Britain - although Craxton's interest in young men in uniform did prompt the authorities to suspect he was spying. When homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK in 1967, he sent the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, a picture.

As well as painting, Craxton designed book jackets for the travel writer Paddy Leigh Fermor; and created stage sets for Frederick Ashton at the Royal Ballet. But he was not particularly industrious. His friends joked that he suffered from ‘procraxtonation.’

Pastoral for PW John Craxton

Craxton suggests that a creative life need not be fuelled by anxiety and pain. It doesn’t have to be all about struggle and denial. Rather we can choose to follow our dreams; pursue our passions; seek out the sun. 

Craxton, who was made a British honorary consul in Crete, was never concerned by artistic fashion or the opinions of the establishment. He carried on painting in his own individual style into his later years, and he rode his motorbike until nearly 80. When he died aged 87, his ashes were scattered in Chania harbour. 

His biographer Ian Collins described him as ‘a heroic hedonist.’

 
'My life, my life, my life, my life in the sunshine.
Everybody loves the sunshine.
Sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine.
Sunshine, folks get down in the sunshine.
Sunshine, folks get 'round in the sunshine.
Just bees and things and flowers.
My life, my life, my life, my life in the sunshine.
Everybody loves the sunshine.
Feel, what I feel, when I feel, what I feel,
When I'm feeling, in the sunshine.
Do what I do, when I do, what I do,
When I'm doing, in the sunshine.
Sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine.'

Roy Ayers, 'Everybody Loves The Sunshine' 

No. 453

I Never Want to Go Out, I’m Always Glad I Did: Overcoming Inertia at Home and in Work

John Held Jr - Jazz Age

I have fallen in with an engaging crowd that regularly sees bands around London - usually small Americana outfits at characterful venues like Bush Hall and Dingwalls.

Towards the end of last year I attended a Goose gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. They presented admirably tuneful indie songs, laced with sprawling virtuoso guitar solos - the ghosts of the Grateful Dead.

The audience was for the most part young, knowledgeable, enthusiastic. The five of us stood towards the back, near the bar – nodding heads and making occasionally insightful observations.

Mid-way through the concert a tee-shirted American man in his thirties turned round and addressed us, with open smile and outstretched arms:

‘I just think this is fantastic. You guys, at your time of life, still getting out to see bands. Can I buy you a beer?’

We were insulted and delighted at the same time.

‘That’s very kind of you. I’ll have a pint of IPA please.’

As a senior citizen with more time on my hands nowadays, I go out in the evenings a good deal.

I have noticed that, as my theatre appointment, gig rendezvous or gallery reservation approaches, a fog of lethargy falls over me. I’ve been enjoying the comforts of home, the reassurance of a newspaper and a mug of sweet tea. Do I really want to brave the cold night air; to jump on a crowded tube; to conjure up conversation?

A kind of paralysis sets in.

'The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.'
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Then, eventually, propelled by guilt, self-censure and the fear of missing out, I don my artisanal jacket and make my way for the door. And I have consistently found that my languor and listlessness were unjustified. More often than not, my night on the town delivers.

Whilst I never want to go out, I’m always glad I did.

'Nothing happens until something moves.'
Albert Einstein

This phenomenon may be familiar to us in the world of work. Sometimes we get caught up in the inertia of established practices. We cling to the familiar and accustomed, postponing and prevaricating whenever a difficult decision is required. We find excuses not to try new things

And yet I have learned, in the course of my career, that whilst I never wanted to change, I was always glad I did.

'The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.'
Elbert Hubbard

The tee-shirted American was true to his word and bought us each a beer. He also took a photo of us at the bar. On inspection, it’s fair to say we did look like an outing from the old people’s home.

To see ourselves as others see us…

 
'So my time will come
When I have the right mind.
Rid my mind of this hesitation,
Can't think why.
All I need is coming though.
It's not here quite yet.
Here I have seen the same thing,
Pretend not to mind it.
I'd like to be closer to me,
Or who I think I want to be.
Things change but you don't realize
You have all you need.’

Goose, ‘All I Need’ (R L Mitarotonda)

No. 452

The Beauty Industry: Manufacturing Identity, Desire and Disappointment

A bust of Queen Nefertiti of Ancient Egypt XVIII-th dynasty (14th century BC)

I recently visited a fascinating exhibition exploring the complex story of our relationship with beauty. (‘The Cult of Beauty’ is at the Wellcome Collection, London until 28 April 2024. And it’s free.)

'Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.’
Confucius

In ancient times beauty was equated with moral goodness, and throughout history physical looks were thought to reveal mental character. Philosophers endeavoured to define beauty, artists sought to express it and scientists tried to enhance it. 

At the entrance to the exhibition you can marvel at a bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti, with her perfectly symmetrical face, long neck and high cheekbones; her kohl eyeliner and elegantly arched eyebrows. Her name translates as ‘A Beautiful Woman Has Come.’

'It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.'
Leo Tolstoy

Our relationship with beauty has always been complicated. Whilst celebrating physical attractiveness, society has at the same time censured its pursuit - the sin of vanity. In Greek mythology handsome Narcissus, rejecting all advances, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. In the 17th century Saint Rose of Lima, concerned that her good looks distracted her from devotion to Christ, rubbed peppercorns into her face, causing it to blister.

Ideals of pulchritude were socially constructed and therefore mirrored the biases of prevailing politics and religion. Beauty was ascribed to the young, the wealthy, the conventional, the pale skinned. A 17th century print shows husbands taking their elderly wives to a windmill for grinding. 19th century photographs articulate colonial prejudices in catalogues of ethnic physical features.

‘Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist.’
Naomi Wolf

Egyptian stone slab with wells for cosmetic ointments, 1991–1786BC. © Wellcome Collection/ Science Museum Group

We may associate beauty with health. But many cosmetic products were created to address sickness and disease. Rhinoplasty was developed in the 15th century to help disfigured soldiers and syphilis victims. Beauty patches, or mouches, were fashionable in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries to conceal syphilis scars. Powdered wigs became popular in Louis XIV’s time, as they covered lice and hair loss from syphilis. 

'The problem with beauty is that it's like being born rich and getting poorer.’
Joan Collins

Similarly, we can examine curious cosmetic contraptions that were originally designed for non-beauty related purposes. Electrotherapy masks for wrinkles and sagging necks were first used to treat tuberculosis. Oxygen therapy began as a treatment for asthma. LED facemasks, nowadays employed for lines, wrinkles and blemishes, were engineered by Nasa to heal wounds in space.

'Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.'
Dorothy Parker

Since beauty has always been a cultural currency, it has also been a source of wealth. Science and industry have consistently conspired to create products that purport to enhance appearance. The displays include ancient Egyptian powder compacts and Renaissance cosmetics; 17th and 18th century travel sets and toiletries; antique tweezers, pliers, fat rollers and face irons. There are cheek plumpers, breast pads, corsets (for men and women) and fake eyebrows. There’s a moustache bandage and a teacup with a beard protector. The objects can be both ludicrous and shocking.

A selection of 1920s fancy dress velvet beauty patches. © Fashion Museum Bath

In many countries women were prohibited from entering medical school, and so established themselves as apothecaries - experts in ointments, potions and pills. In the 20th century make-up entrepreneur Helena Rubenstein made sure she was always photographed in a lab coat.

'Beauty is not caused. It is.'
Emily Dickinson

Sometimes products were underpinned by approximate science, and came with their own health risks. Diane de Poitiers, a 16th-century French courtier, consumed drinkable gold (aurum potabile) to preserve her youth and allure. Subsequent scientific examination of her hair suggested that this practice killed her. 

'Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.'
Albert Camus

Society’s passion for beauty came hand-in-hand with a fascination with self-image. In ancient times people regarded their dim reflection in burnished bronze. It was only when, in the 14th century, mercury was put behind glass to create mirrors that one could see oneself clearly. Mirrors amplified our obsession with how we appear and magnified social pressures. It’s possible to trace a line from the looking glass to our modern addiction to selfies, surgery and tweakments - and attendant disorders, such as selfitis or Snapchat dismorphia.

‘I always think everyone's looking at me, but I only look at myself.’
Cleo, ‘Cleo de 5 a 7’ (1963, Agnes Varda)

Wellcome Foundation Archives. The Cult of Beauty, advertisement for Hazeline Snow, 1929

The journey through the exhibition can sometimes be a little depressing. Media and advertising have often reinforced narrow definitions and unattainable fictions. There’s a disconcerting Barbie doll scaled up to life-size. There’s a 1972 Miss World board game for children. We learn that in 2021 the global skin lightening industry was worth $9.96b. 

'I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem.'
Song of Solomon

It is nonetheless heartening to read that in the 1930s the celebrated performer Josephine Baker successfully marketed Bakerskin, a skin darkening product; to see Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty range with its 59 shades of matt foundation; and to discover numerous positive stories of self-expression, identity and community building.

'Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.’
Coco Chanel

Miss Black & Beautiful Sybil McLean with Fellow Contestants - Raphael Albert, Hammersmith Palais, London 1972
RA Albert, courtesy of Autograph London

As we leave we are confronted with a quote from Toni Morrison, reminding us that - if we strip away all the unnatural obsessions, the unjust hierarchies, the commercial exploitation - beauty is fundamentally a rare and precious thing.

'I think of beauty as an absolute necessity. I don’t think it’s a privilege or an indulgence, it’s not even a quest. I think it’s almost like knowledge, which is to say, it’s what we were born for.'


’Pretty hurts.
We shine the light on whatever's worst.
Perfection is a disease of a nation.
Pretty hurts, pretty hurts.
Pretty hurts.
We shine the light on whatever's worst.
You're trying to fix something,
But you can't fix what you can't see.
It's the soul that needs a surgery.’

Beyonce, ‘Pretty Hurts’ (B Knowles / S Furler / J Coleman)

No. 451

I Know Where I’m Going!…The Best Leaders Listen to Their Hearts

Joan: Please, please, God. You know how important it is for me to get to Kiloran. Please let the gale drop… Or let me get to the island somehow. Please. Please.

‘I Know Where I'm Going!’ is a 1945 romantic drama created by the masterful Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. 

It’s the story of an ambitious, independent woman who has a fixed view of her future and is determined not to be distracted from her objectives by fate, feelings or circumstance.

Narrator: When Joan was only one, she already knew where she was going… She's 25 now and in one thing she's never changed - she still knows where she's going.

We meet Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) in a smart Manchester nightclub. Stylishly dressed and confident, she casually takes a puff on her cigarette and orders a gin and Dubonnet. Over dinner with her bank manager father she briskly announces that she is setting off that evening for the Isle of Kiloran in the Hebrides. There she will marry Sir Robert Bellinger, her boss at Consolidated Chemical Industries, a wealthy industrialist.

Father: Bellinger must be nearly as old as I am.
Joan: And what's wrong with you, darling?

In her first class compartment on the night train to Scotland, Joan dreams of her future life of luxury as Lady Bellinger. But her fantasy takes a rather curious turn as she imagines taking her wedding vows.

'Do you, Joan Webster, take Consolidated Chemical Industries to be your lawful wedded husband?’
'I do.'

When dense fog postpones the final leg of her journey, the boat trip to Kiloran, Joan is obliged to sit it out on the Isle of Mull. There she meets Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a naval officer returning home to Kiloran for his eight days’ shore leave.

The pair kill time together in a land of big skies, tall mountains and turbulent seas; of long-horned cattle, friendly hounds and singing seals. Joan encounters Gaelic-speaking locals, impecunious gentry and an eccentric falconer. She dances to pipers at a joyous ceilidh and is introduced to traditional superstitions and an ancient curse.

Joan: People around here are very poor I suppose.
Torquil:  Not poor, they just haven't got money.

As the fog turns to a gale, Joan becomes ever more impatient.

Joan: How long will the gale last?
Boatman: Oh, just as long as the wind blows, milady. It can last for a day. It can blow for a week.
Joan: It looks so near. In half an hour we could be there.
Boatman: In less than a second you could get from this world into the next.

And so the delay drags on.

Joan learns that the locals are not particularly enamoured of her husband-to-be. Betraying his city origins, he is having a swimming pool built in his grand house and buys his salmon in from the mainland. She also discovers that Torquil - by contrast an enthusiast for country living - is the Laird of Kiloran, beloved of the community.

Gradually Joan finds herself falling for her new acquaintance. And so is all the more determined to stick to her original objective and get away.

Joan: It's very important. I must get across. I'll pay you anything you ask.
Boatman: I will take you to Kiloran as soon as it is humanly possible, milady, and I will not be wanting extra payment for that.

Joan is increasingly torn between realising her long-held goal and losing herself to Torquil. Desperate to salvage her plans, she bribes young Kenny, the Boatman’s son, to attempt the hazardous crossing.

Joan: You think that I'm risking Kenny's life when I could stay safely here. But I'm not safe here. I'm on the brink of losing everything I ever wanted.

We may recognise something of Joan’s obstinacy - her dogged determination to see things through - in our own lives. Too often we ignore evolving context, unwelcome information and our own emotional messaging. We know where we’re going, and we’ll not be deterred or distracted. But our destination has become the wrong one.

In the world of work we celebrate objective setting and long term planning. We admire people who exhibit resolve and conviction; who keep their eyes on the prize. But the best leaders also embrace agility and flexibility. They adapt to changing data, events and circumstances. They listen to their hearts.

The movie culminates in high drama as Torquil joins Joan and Kenny on the perilous boat trip. They must overcome a violent storm, mechanical failure and the legendary Corryvreckan whirlpool. It’s gripping stuff.

I hope you know where you’re going in 2024. And that it’s in the right direction. Happy New Year!

'I know where I'm going,
And I know who's going with me.
I know who I love,
But The Devil knows who I'll marry.

I have stockings of silk,
Shoes of fine green leather,
Combs to buckle my hair,
And a ring for every finger.

Some say he's black.
I say he's bonny.
The fairest of them all,
My handsome winsome Johnny.

I know where I'm going,
And I know who's going with me.
I know who I love,
But the Devil knows who I'll marry.’

The Glasgow Orpheus Choir, 'I Know Where I'm Going’ (Traditional County Antrim song)

No. 450

The Mystery of the Missing Doormat: Don’t Underestimate the Dispiriting Effect of Petty Bureaucracy

Louis de Schryver, Summer Flowers

‘I came out of my flat the other day, Jim, and somebody had pinched the doormat off my front step. What a cheek!’

I’d just bought my morning coffee from Doriano and was chatting to Carly the Florist who has a stall nearby. She revealed the crime with a look of disappointment and dismay.

‘And then I thought: I know who did this. And so I popped upstairs to the next level of the flats.’

Carly took on the aspect of an expert detective. Her bright eyes became focused and intense.

‘But she didn’t have my doormat either. And you know what, when I looked down the corridor, none of the flats had doormats.’ 

‘That’s a proper mystery, Carly. So what did you do?’

‘Well, I thought about it for a little while and then I phoned the Council…. You wouldn’t believe it, Jim... It was them that took all the doormats.’

‘But, Carly, why would Islington Council remove everyone’s doormats?’

‘Heath and safety... I was livid!’

I never did get to the bottom of what precisely lay behind the Council’s curious decision. Were they worried about fire risk or trip hazards? Were they trying to facilitate cleaning?

In any case I was struck by how organisations often underestimate the dispiriting effect that petty bureaucracy can have on people’s lives.

This goes for the world of work too.

Many a time in various leadership roles I was visited by a disgruntled employee who took particular exception to the new policy on timesheets or expenses; to the change in the breakfast offering at the coffee bar; to the gaudy redesign of the office bathrooms.

One chap resigned because we’d moved his desk and he was no longer sitting next to his mate.

‘Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.’
Honore de Balzac

It’s easy to dismiss these concerns as trivial and insignificant. But small changes can make big differences to people’s outlooks. We often reason with our emotions. And behind a minor, frustrating event we perceive a bigger, more sinister plot or strategic shift.

That timesheet policy may imply oppressive corporate control. That reduction in the breakfast menu may indicate a broader financial malaise. The bathroom makeover may suggest a loss of creative identity.   

'Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.’
Brooks Atkinson

When you sit in management meetings and sign off on policies, you shouldn’t just apply rational, top-down logic. It’s always essential to retain a human perspective. How will this be construed on the shop floor? What could this imply about your overall strategy? How will people feel about it?

'There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.’
Gore Vidal

I must confess that the person most upset with the bathroom renovation was me. Overnight the fixtures and fittings became all neon and slick - like something from a Thames Valley gastropub. It prompted me to worry a good deal about the company’s cultural and aesthetic direction.

Time for a festive break.
Have a restful Christmas. 
My next post will be on Thursday 4 January 2024.
See you on the other side, I hope.

'The snow's coming down,
I'm watching it fall.
Lots of people around,
Baby, please come home.
The church bells in town,
All ringing in song,
Full of happy sounds.
Baby, please come home.

If there was a way,
I'd hold back this tear.
But it's Christmas day.
Please, please,
Please, please,
Baby, please come home.’

Darlene Love, 'Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ (E Greenwich / J Barry / P Spector) 

No. 449

‘I Walked Across the Freeway to the Ramada Inn’: The Trials and Triumphs of Tina Turner

Tina Turner performing on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' in 1970 CBS PHOTO ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

'Physical strength in a woman - that’s what I am.’
Tina Turner

The death at the age of 83 of the legendary singer Tina Turner earlier this year prompted me to look back on her life and work. And so I watched ‘Tina’ the documentary (2021, directed by Daniel Lindsay and TJ Martin) and ‘Tina’ the musical (2018, directed by Phylidda Lloyd, at the Aldwych Theatre, London). Both were compelling commemorations of her luminous talent and indomitable spirit.

'My legacy is that I stayed on course… from the beginning to the end, because I believed in something inside of me.’

Turner shakes and shimmies, struts and stomps. She twists, jives and kicks her long legs to one side. She clenches her fists and claps her hands; implores us, pleads with us. She is both spiritual and sensual; tenacious and triumphant. Resplendent in red split skirts and sparkling silver mini-dresses; rejoicing in denim jumpsuits and leather leotards; glorying in knee-high boots, big belts and big hair - with a beaming smile and a full-throated roar, she celebrates what it is to be alive.

'I’m self-made. I always wanted to make myself a better person, because I was not educated. But that was my dream—to have class.’

Turner’s success was hard won. She had to prevail over poverty, racism, sexism and ageism. Above all she had to overcome a wretched, abusive relationship. She teaches us a good deal about survival and strength of character.

‘My ex-husband was a physically violent man. I went through basic torture… I was living a life of death. I didn’t exist. But I survived it. And when I walked out, I walked and I didn’t look back.’

Anna Mae Bullock was born in 1939 into a sharecropping family in rural Tennessee. As a child she started singing in the choir at her local Baptist church. She discovered she had a remarkable voice.

‘When you’re in the South there’s nothing happening except the church, the piano, the preacher.’

When she was 11 Anna Mae’s mother left without warning for St. Louis in order to escape her violent husband. Two years later he moved to Detroit with another woman. Anna Mae, feeling unloved and isolated, was cared for by her strict grandmother.

‘I didn’t think that I would actually achieve [success as a performer] because first I wasn’t pretty, and I didn’t have the clothes, and I didn’t have the means.’

Tina Turner. Michael Ochs Archives

At 16 Anna Mae rejoined her mother in St. Louis, where in 1956 she met Ike Turner, a talented musician whose 1951 recording ‘Rocket 88’ is considered by many to have been the first rock’n’roll song. That track was carelessly credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, and so began Ike’s lifelong sense of injustice.

'Oh, there's something on my mind.
Won't somebody please, please tell me what's wrong?
You're just a fool, you know you're in love.
You've got to face it to live in this world.
You take the good along with the bad.
Sometimes you're happy, and sometimes you're sad.
You know you love him, you can't understand.
Why he treats you like he do, when he's such a good man.’

'A Fool in Love’ (I Turner)

During the intermission in one of Ike’s concerts, Anna Mae grabbed the microphone and sang. He immediately recognised her talent and enlisted her to his band.

‘I was playing these two roles… Rings all over my fingers and bareback shoes with seams in my stockings. And then on Monday morning I was headed for school.’

Anna Mae had undoubted star quality, and Ike subsequently recast his outfit as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue – without consulting her. Perhaps this was the first indication that he had a sinister, controlling side. But she was young, in awe and in love. She accepted the name change and they got married.

‘I promised him that I wouldn’t leave him. In those days a promise was a promise.’

Before too long Tina realised she was in a toxic relationship. Ike was unfaithful, controlling, violent and abusive. He was also addicted and paranoid, and he gave her no financial independence.

And yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave him.

‘I felt obligated to stay there and I was afraid. And I stayed. This was just how it was. I felt very loyal to Ike and I didn’t want to hurt him. And sometimes after he beat me up, I ended up feeling sorry for him.’

Through the early 1960s Ike and Tina Turner had a string of R&B hits and toured extensively. Featuring Tina’s mesmerising singing, a tight band and the well-drilled, high-tempo dancing of backing vocalists the Ikettes, they presented an electrifying stage act.

In 1965 the band caught the eye of renowned music producer Phil Spector. Sidelining Ike from the recording sessions, he recorded Tina performing ‘River Deep – Mountain High’, a stunning expression of his ‘Wall of Sound’ technique.

‘That was a freedom that I didn’t have. Like a bird that gets out of a cage. I was excited about singing a different type of song. I was excited about getting out of the studio on my own. It was a freedom to do something different.’

The single was a smash overseas, but failed to make an impression on the US pop charts. The quest for mainstream success continued.

‘When I was a little girl, I had a rag doll.
It was the only doll that I've ever owned.
Now I love you just the way I loved that rag doll,
But only now my love has grown.
And it gets stronger in every way.
And it gets deeper, let me say
Then it gets higher, day by day.
And do I love you, my oh my.
River deep, mountain high.
If I ever lost you would I cry.
Oh, how I love you baby.'

'River Deep, Mountain High’ (E Greenwich / J Barry / P Spector)

Tina Turner perform at the Soul Bowl concert at Tulane Stadium in 1970.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL P. SMITH/PROVIDED BY HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION

At long last, in the early 1970s, after relentless touring and countless TV appearances, Ike and Tina Turner achieved crossover pop hits in the US - with 'Proud Mary'  and 'Nutbush City Limits'. But Tina was increasingly unhappy.

‘I was insanely afraid of that man.’

When she wasn’t performing she found herself confined to the family home in LA where she was raising four children. Ike became more controlling, bad tempered and violent. On one occasion Tina took a whole bottle of sleeping pills in an attempt to end it all.

‘Maybe I was brainwashed. I was afraid of him and I cared what happened to him and I knew that if I left there was no one to sing. So I was caught up in guilt and fear.’

Finally, introduced to Buddhism, she developed the mental strength to make a break.

‘Buddhism was a way out and it changed your attitude towards the situation that you’re in... So I started seeing my life. I started seeing that I had to make a change.’

Tina’s relationship with Ike had endured for 16 years. But in 1976, after the couple had a violent argument on their way to their hotel in Dallas, she fled with only 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket.

‘I walked across the freeway to the Ramada Inn. I was very proud. I mean I felt like…I felt strong.’

Tina’s short walk across that busy, dangerous freeway late at night represented a massive act of fortitude and defiance. She filed for divorce the same month and it was finalized in 1978. She was left with no money, no house, no car and no claim on royalties. She just wanted to be free. All she demanded was that she retain the Tina Turner name.

‘Actually there is something that he has that I want… That is when I realised that I could use Tina to become a business.’

Hard times followed. Tina was burdened with the bills for cancelled shows and found herself performing in Vegas and at sales conventions; in hotel ballrooms and on any TV show that would have her.

‘I was becoming stagnant. I knew that there was something else. And I realised I wasn’t going anywhere. I’d be in Las Vegas all my life.’

Tina’s luck changed in 1979 when she met Roger Davies, manager of Olivia Newton-John. He saw that, behind what had become a disco and nostalgia act, there was still a phenomenal talent. She pitched her vision for a new chapter in her career.

‘I had a dream. My dream is to be the first Black rock’n’roll singer to pack places like the Stones.’

Reasoning that the US’s schism between R’n’B and rock radio stations presented too great a barrier to realising Tina’s ambition, Davies took her to the UK. There, in two weeks, she recorded a collection of pop and rock songs with four different production teams, including Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 and Rupert Hine. Tina was at first reluctant to take on one proposed track that had previously been recorded by Bucks Fizz. Finally she relented and ‘What's Love Got to Do with It’ became the album’s standout single.

The resultant ‘Private Dancer’ album, released in 1984, was a runaway success.  Certified five times platinum in the United States, it sold 10 million copies worldwide, and the following year Tina won three Grammys.

‘I didn’t consider it a comeback album. Tina had never arrived. It was Tina’s debut for the first time. That was my first album.’

'You must understand, though the touch of your hand makes my pulse react,
That it's only the thrill of boy meeting girl, opposites attract.
It's physical.
Only logical.
You must try to ignore that it means more than that.
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love, but a second-hand emotion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

'What's Love Got to Do with It’ (T Britten / G Lyle)

Tina continued recording, touring and scoring hits for her adoring fan-base. In 1988 she performed in front of 180,000 in Rio de Janeiro, setting a record for the largest paying concert attendance for a solo artist. She had achieved her dream of becoming the Queen of Rock’n’Roll.

‘I will receive it when I’ve earned it.’

In the years after her divorce from Ike, Tina was constantly asked about the split. In a 1981 interview with People Magazine she reluctantly revealed the facts of the domestic abuse in order to put the whole story behind her. But the questions kept coming.

When in 1993 a movie of her life story, ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ (starring Angela Bassett), was released, Tina couldn’t watch it. At the Venice Film Festival she explained:

‘I’m not so thrilled about thinking about the past and how I lived my life…The story was actually written so that I would no longer have to discuss the issue. I don’t love that it’s always talked about. You see, I made a point of just putting the news out to stop the thing, so that I could go on with my life. And this constant reminder is not so good and I’m not so happy about it. So, do I want to sit with a screen and watch all the violence and brutality? No… That’s why I haven’t seen it.’

By shining a light on her experience of domestic abuse, Tina helped a vast number of women all over the world. And she illustrated the complex emotions playing out in victims and survivors. In time Tina was happily remarried and found peace.

‘At a certain stage forgiveness takes over. Forgiveness means not to hold on. You let it go.’

As Tina’s mother, with whom she had a difficult relationship, observed, she was fundamentally a courageous, independent spirit.

‘Some people [are] afraid to climb a ladder unless someone’s holding it. But she’s not. Once she’s made that first step on that ladder, she’s climbing… up, up, up.’

At the heart of Tina’s extraordinary triumphant story was huge personal resilience. We should all aspire to her strength of character.

'I didn’t have anybody really, no foundation in life, so I had to make my own way. Always, from the start. I had to go out in the world and become strong, to discover my mission in life.'

'Left a good job down in the city,
Working for the man every night and day.
And I never lost one minute of sleeping,
I was worrying about the way that things might've been.
Big wheel keep on turning,
Proud Mary keep on burning,
And we're rolling, rolling,
Rolling on the river.’

‘Proud Mary’ (J Fogerty)

No. 448

Sarah Lucas: ‘Everything Is Language’

Sarah Lucas. From left: Sugar, 2020; Bunny, 1997; and Cool Chick Baby, 2020

I recently visited a retrospective of the work of artist Sarah Lucas. (‘Happy Gas’ is at Tate Britain, London until 14 January.)

'My maxim would be: Do what you like… It’s not always easy to know what that is though.'

Lucas emerged as one of the key players in the Young British Art scene of the 1990s. This movement had a lot in common with advertising – the good and the bad. It was bold, immediate, funny and accessible. But it could also be vulgar, simplistic and shallow.

Lucas’ current show provides an opportunity to step back and take a broader look at her work over the Britart period and the decades that followed.

'I don’t tend to preach in my work. It’s more about having a look around at what’s going on…Very surprising when you open your eyes.’

She has spent her career considering consistent themes: sex, swearing and smoking; food and toilets; the expressiveness of ordinary things.

Sarah Lucas: Self Portrait With Fried Eggs, 1996

In the exhibition there are blown up photos of crude tabloid stories; of Lucas eating a banana and holding a huge salmon. There are naked body-casts and erect penises; a masturbating mechanism and a pair of chicken knickers. There’s also a big concrete sandwich. And each piece is given a wry, playful title.

Lucas clearly has had a fascination with smoking and mortality. A crash helmet made of fags sits on a charred armchair. Cigarettes poke out of navels and backsides. They decorate a burnt-out car, broken in two.

‘When I first started using cigarettes in art, it was because I was wondering why people are self-destructive. But it’s often destructive things that make us feel most alive.’

© Sarah Lucas, Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: © Nick Turpin

Over the years Lucas has returned again and again to her chair sculptures - which she calls her ‘Bunnies.’ Stuffing tights with shredded newspaper, kapok, cotton or wool, she created faceless female figures with writhing limbs; with multiple, saggy and lightbulb breasts. She gave them daft names - like Fat Doris, Honey Pie and Zen Bomb - and arranged them in platform shoes and kinky boots, perching on armchairs, side chairs and office chairs. They are insolent, saucy, suggestive. And seen together, they have their own distinct characters.

‘The purpose of chairs (in the world) is to accommodate the human body sitting. They can be turned to other purposes. Generally as a support for an action or object. Changing light bulbs. Propping open a door. Posing. Sex.’

Lucas encourages us to interrogate objects for their meaning. Things derive associations and resonances from their various functionalities; from their use and abuse; from their physical similarities to other forms; from their constituent materials, their ownership, history and location. Everything means something.

‘Everything is language, including objects. There’s an infinity of ‘stuff.’ How to invest any of it with meaning?’

Sarah Lucas: Is Suicide Genetic?
helmet, cigarettes, burnt-chair, cigarette packets. 1996

Of course, Lucas is coarse. You need a robust constitution to navigate her work. Nonetheless I left the exhibition reflecting on the artist’s big themes.

For all our complexity and sophistication, we are united in our basic instincts: our carnal drives and emotional impulses. These appetites can be disturbing and contradictory, uplifting and amusing; and they can often surprise.

‘It’s a paradox that happiness reminds us of sadness, and that a sad story can be uplifting, or that something magical can come about through something mundane. I suppose that, when I’m making things, I’m looking for some kind of transcendence from everyday stuff into something surprising.’

'I'd work very hard, but I'm lazy.
I can't take the pressure and it's starting to show.
In my heart you know that it pains me,
A life of leisure is no life you know.
Waking up and getting up has never been easy,
Oh, I think you should know.
Waking up and getting up has never been easy,
Oh, I think you should know.
Oh, I think you should go.
Make a cup of tea, and put a record on.’

Elastica, ‘Waking Up’ (B Duffy / D Greenfield / H Cornwell / J J Burnel / J Frischmann)

No. 447

The Empathetic Leader: Helping People Make Better Decisions

Joan of Arc (1879) by Jules Bastien-Lepage. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.

'Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.’
Jack Welch

The hugely talented copywriter had been responsible for a succession of compelling commercials. He thoroughly deserved his promotion to Creative Director. And yet initially he struggled in the role.

Young teams marched into their creative reviews at the appointed times, eagerly anticipating the legend’s feedback. But he failed to see any merit in their efforts. He glanced through their first scripts, impatient and inattentive. And then cast the others to one side.

‘I’m not sure you’re approaching this brief in the right way at all. I think I know how to do it. Write this down…’

And then the Creative Director proceeded to dictate the outline of an idea.

The young creative teams shuffled out of the review despondent. They had been sentenced to draft their boss’s hastily conceived proposal. They probably didn’t much believe in it and they probably wouldn’t execute it very well. It’s always difficult raising other people’s babies.

'Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.’
Tom Peters

A little while ago I was chatting to a neighbour who had a high-flying job in financial services. She was charming, intelligent and had a rather gentle manner. I was interested in how she had succeeded in such a hard-nosed profession.

‘How would you describe your leadership style?’

‘Well, it’s simple really. I just try to help people make better decisions.’

This definition stuck with me.

In the creative industries we often promote our best practitioners into leadership roles. And yet leadership requires a completely new set of skills.

In my experience the first instinct of practitioners elevated to senior responsibility is to replicate their particular approach in others. They instruct, prescribe and dictate. They seek to solve it all themselves.

However, such a style is doomed to failure. These novice leaders are attempting to make their colleagues into counterfeits. Their directions are often too vague and impractical. Or too rigid and inflexible. And their teams are generally left confused and demotivated. They’ll never achieve anything at scale.

We may think of Empathetic Leaders simply as people who are interested in the wellbeing of their staff. But they should be more than this. Empathetic Leaders invest time in understanding their teams’ thoughts and ideas; explaining the challenges and choices these proposals will encounter; illuminating the path to success. Their focus is encouragement and enhancement. They help people make better decisions.

'Leadership is unlocking people's potential to become better.’
Bill Bradley

Thankfully, with time and experience, our Creative Director became a master of the art. He was smart enough to pick up the requisite skills himself. Back then we didn’t train Creative Directors. I hope you do now.

'Coming to you at night
I see my questions, I feel my doubts.
Wishing that maybe in a year or two
We could laugh and let it all out.
Now that you made yourself love me,
Do you think I can change it in a day?
How can I place you above me?
Am I lying to you when I say
That I believe in you?
I believe in you.’

Neil Young, ‘I Believe in You'

No. 446

Philip Guston’s Art of Anxiety: Not Inventing, But Revealing

Dawn (1970), Philip Guston, oil on canvas. Glenstone Museum, Maryland

‘Well, it could be all of us. We’re all hoods.’
Philip Guston

I recently visited a fine exhibition of the work of Philip Guston. (Tate Modern, London, until 25 February)

Guston was a fiercely political artist, raging at injustices he saw all around him. He articulated his anger and anxiety through narrative murals and allegorical paintings, through abstract works and depictions of dark cartoonish nightmares. He was a restless soul who believed the role of the artist was not to invent fictions, but to reveal truths. He pleads with us to care, and prompts us to reflect on the enemy within – within our society and within ourselves.

‘I feel that I have not invented so much as revealed in a coded way, something that already existed.’

He was born Phillip Goldstein in Montreal in 1913, the youngest of seven children. His Jewish parents had fled persecution in present-day Ukraine. In 1922 the family moved to Los Angeles, where, struggling to make ends meet, his father, a scrap collector, hanged himself in the shed - and 10 year old Phillip found the body. 

Philip Guston in New York, in 1952 Martha Holmes/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images

As a child Goldstein was interested in cartoons and Renaissance art. At 14 he began painting, and enrolled in the Los Angeles Manual Arts High School where he met Jackson Pollock, who became a life-long friend.

‘I grew up politically in the thirties and I was actively involved in militant movements and so on, as a lot of artists were… I think there was a sense of being part of a change, or possible change.’

Goldstein became politically active as the United States saw the rise of racism and antisemitism; and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. He joined a group of artists creating large-scale narrative murals supporting workers’ rights and resistance to fascism and oppression. 

'Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.’

In 1935, at 22, Goldstein moved to New York where, concerned about the climate of antisemitism, he changed his name to Philip Guston. He was deeply affected by the war in Europe and the Holocaust. And so he turned to his easel and painted the bombing of Guernica; children playing and fighting in ruined townscapes; haunted camp inmates.

‘That’s the only reason to be an artist… to bear witness.’

Martial Memory Philip Guston, 1941, Oil on Canvas

In the late 1940s, suffering a crisis of confidence, Guston destroyed everything he’d been working on. Perhaps he felt figurative painting could not do justice to the horrors that had so recently taken place.  

‘I began to feel that I could really learn, investigate, by losing a lot of what I knew.’

He decided to change course, and immersed himself in New York’s emerging Abstract Expressionist scene, hanging out with Rothko, de Kooning and Kline. 

‘The trouble with recognisable art is that it excludes too much. I want my work to include more. And ‘more’ also comprises one’s doubts about the object, plus the problem, the dilemma, of recognising it.’

Standing close to the canvas, Guston painted forms coming into existence – perhaps you can detect a body or a head - using gentle, complementary colours. Critics dubbed him an ‘abstract impressionist.’ His favourite shade was cadmium red, and it would continue to feature strongly in his work for the rest of his career. 

‘I like pastrami. I just like it. I couldn’t tell you why.’

Beggar's joys, Philip Guston, 1954–1955 oil on canvas

In the late ‘60s Guston was deeply moved by the Vietnam War and the political upheaval in the United States. 

‘The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything – and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?’

Feeling that his art had to make more overt political statements, Guston made a dramatic return to figurative work.

‘The hell with it. I just wanted to draw solid stuff.’

He had always liked comics, and his new images drew on George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. He painted cartoonish, blood-spattered Klan figures driving around town in a childish car, pointing at the sights, the legs of a man projecting from the boot. He depicted similar hoods relaxing at home with a cigarette by the window; in the courtroom, at the office and drawn on blackboards - suggesting they were part of the curriculum.

'Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.’

Where previously Guston had shown Klansmen conspiring, in the act of racial assault, here they were engaged in the mundane activities of everyday life. It was as if he was saying: evil is all around us; it is institutional, systemic - in our courts and schools and on our streets; it is hiding in plain sight.

‘My attempt was really not… to do pictures of the KKK, as I had done earlier. The idea of evil fascinated me… I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil? To plan and plot?’

Most striking among these works was a picture of a hooded artist at work in the studio, painting himself. 

‘I perceive myself behind the hood.’

The Studio, Philip Guston, 1969 Oil on canvas

Guston implies that we are all complicit in the injustices we see around us. We carry with us our own prejudices and partialities; our unconscious biases; our inertia and failure to act. We should turn our critical faculties on ourselves.

'There is another man within me that’s angry with me.’
Thomas Browne

Guston presented his startling new work at the Marlborough Gallery in New York in 1970. But the show was not a success and he only sold one painting. Critics were hugely disappointed that he had deserted the abstract cause, and he lost friends as a result. 

‘There is nothing to do now, but paint my life; my dreams, surroundings, predicament, desperation, [my wife] Musa – love, need.’

Depressed at the response, Guston turned to painting strange dreamscapes populated by objects that meant something to him – mental junk that he called ‘crapola.’ Repeatedly he depicted cigarettes, irons, clocks and steaming kettles; clocks, blinds and bare bulbs; sinister dangling light-pulls. And everywhere there were old shoes and severed legs - echoes of the Holocaust.

'The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.’

In 1973 Guston painted himself: pastrami-pink, indolent, smoking in bed with a plate of ketchupped chips on his chest and a stack of shoes at his side. There’s a bare light bulb and a light-pull. His paintbrushes sit unused. It’s a desolate image. 

Interviewer: Do you think of yourself as kind of pessimistic?

Guston: I don’t think it’s pessimistic. I think it’s doomed.

In 1980 Guston died of a heart attack, in Woodstock, New York. He was 66.

Smoking, Eating . Philip Guston (1973). Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam/The Estate of Philip Guston

Guston was clearly a melancholy figure. But he demonstrated that, even at our lowest ebb, we can find some solace in art. He teaches us to be restless; to embrace radical change when we’re running out of steam; to see the enemy within; and to turn our critical judgement on ourselves. 

‘Probably the only thing one can really learn, the only technique to learn, is the capacity to be able to change.’

'People just ain't no good,
I think that's well understood.
You can see it everywhere you look,
People just ain't no good.

It ain't that in their hearts they're bad.
They can comfort you, some even try.
They nurse you when you're ill of health,
They bury you when you go and die.
It ain't that in their hearts they're bad.
They'll stick by you if they could.
Ah, but that's just bullshit, baby.
People just ain't no good.

People they ain't no good.
People they ain't no good.
People they ain't no good at all.’

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,'People Ain't No Good’ (N Cave)

No. 445