Winston Churchill and the Consolation of Art: ‘If It Weren’t for Painting, I Couldn’t Live. I Couldn’t Bear the Strain of Things.’

Winston Churchill - Cap d'Ail, Alpes-Maritimes, from La Capponcina

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of the paintings of Winston Churchill. (The Wallace Collection, London until 29 November)

In May 1915, less than a year into World War 1, blamed for the failure of the Dardanelles campaign, Churchill lost his position as First Lord of the Admiralty. Depressed and with time on his hands, the forty-year-old took up painting. It became a lifelong passion.

‘When he left the Admiralty, he thought he was finished… I thought he would never get over the Dardanelles; I thought he would die of grief.’
Clementine Churchill, Churchill’s wife

Churchill had the advantage of being trained by the best: John Lavery, William Nicholson, and later Walter Sickert. He developed a post-impressionist style that nodded towards Van Gogh and Cezanne. Employing bright, vibrant colours - cerulean blue, acid greens and warm reds - his art was spontaneous, fresh, alive. 

With no government position, Churchill determined to contribute to the war effort by joining the Royal Scots Fusiliers. His early artistic work included a 1916 image of his shell-damaged battalion headquarters in Belgium; and a haunting self-portrait.

‘I think that [painting] will be a g[rea]t pleasure & resource to me – if I come through all right.’
Winston Churchill, in a letter to Clementine

Winston Spencer Churchill (1874–1965) - Self Portrait. National Trust, Chartwell

Out of political office in the 1920s and ‘30s, Churchill built a studio at his beloved country house at Chartwell, Kent. When the weather was fine, he painted outdoors – the walled kitchen garden, the orchard and fishpond – and when it rained, he painted still lifes. Here’s a magnolia in a silver vessel; some summer flowers in a cut glass vase; a ‘bottlescape’ of his favourite tipples, including Pol Roger and Johnny Walker.

Churchill also painted the great country houses of England: his birthplace Blenheim Palace, the Palladian Bridge at Wilton House, the Italian Garden at Sutton Place, Branksome Dene, the scene of a near fatal accident in his youth. 

‘We do not have much sunshine in our island, but the English people in every walk of life delight in flowers and gardens, and greet our grey skies with more flowers than any other people grow.’
Winston Churchill

Churchill loved to escape to the French Riviera. Drawn to atmosphere and reflections, he depicted the small, sleepy harbour at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the dappled light from a canopy of olive trees in Cap Martin, a shimmering villa pool. At the chateau at Saint-Georges-Motel, gardeners and a friend were enlisted to row across the moat to create ripples.

‘The fleeting light imposes a rigid time-limit. The same light never returns. One cannot go back day after day without the picture getting stale.’

Churchill began his paintings on location and completed them later in the studio, often using photos as an aide memoire. Sometimes he employed a projector to transfer an image onto a squared-up canvas or board.

Winston Churchill - Jug With Bottles - 1930’s

Churchill largely gave up painting during World War 2. In the wake of victory, when he lost the 1945 general election, he returned to art for solace and relaxation. A favourite location was Marrakech, ‘the red city,’ which he liked to visit between Christmas and New Year. Enchanted by the bright sunlight and rich colours, he captured the market stalls at the city gate; the verdant trees peering above the rooftops; the snow-capped peaks of the Atlas Mountains; the palms in the garden at the Mamounia Hotel.
 
Sometimes Churchill gave away his paintings to staff, family and friends. Sometimes he submitted them, under a pseudonym (such as Charles Morin) to competitions. 

Of course, Churchill was an amateur. Nonetheless, I found his pictures of historic houses, well-tended gardens and tranquil harbours; of mosques, mountains and olive groves, rather touching. His devotion to his hobby was clearly sincere. 

Often in the world of work, we find ourselves embattled by competition, besieged by stress. Churchill teaches us to reflect on the consolation of art; to consider it an escape from the turmoil, an opportunity to refresh our energies and restore our appetites. 

John Rothenstein, the Director of the Tate Gallery (1928-64), recalled a remark made by Churchill when he visited him in his studio in 1955:

‘If it weren’t for painting, I couldn’t live. I couldn’t bear the strain of things.’

Winston Spencer Churchill - The Mosque at Marrakech. National Trust, Chartwell

Churchill continued to paint until shortly before his death, aged ninety, in 1965. Over a period of fifty years, he produced well over 500 paintings. At the exhibition you can see his oils, brushes and palette cup; his travel easel with its wooden case. And there’s a quarter bottle of Pol Roger, his last, enjoyed a week before he died

'Sweep away the broken glass,
Some things were never meant to last.
Don't cut your skin on things that linger in the past,
Be sure to clear away the shards.
Lest a piece should pierce your heart,
Taking splinters with your fingers is an art.
And it's so late to finally learn,
That perhaps you missed a turn.
And all the signs that showed you where you could have gone,
You let them go,
And so they flew,
And never once looked back to you.
Thought opportunity was endless,
You were wrong.’
Matt Elliott, 'Song of Consolation'

No. 591

Golden Boy: ‘Where a Man is Glad to Be Himself’

Photo: Marc Brenner | Josh O'Connor (Joe) and Zubin Varla (Eddie)

Clifford Odets’ 1937 play ‘Golden Boy’ tells the story of Joe Bonaparte, a gifted violinist who chooses to pursue a career in boxing. (There’s a fine production at the Almeida Theatre, Islington until 31 October. Let’s hope it receives a West End transfer.)
 
Joe: Poppa, I have to fight, no matter what you say or think! This is my profession! I’m out for fame and fortune, not to be different or artistic! I don’t intend to be ashamed of my life!
 
When we first encounter young Italian American Joe, in the small Broadway office of fight manager Tom Moody, he is self-contained, a callow, ‘cock-eyed’ youth, desperate to be given a chance to prove himself in the ring.
 
Joe: There are forty-three thousand minutes in a month - can’t you give me five?
 
Joe has determined that his pugilistic talents offer a more propitious route to material wealth than music.
 
Joe: Do you know there are men who have wonderful things from life? Do you think they’re better than me? Do you think I like this feeling of no possessions? Of learning about the world from Carp’s encyclopaedia?
 
And so, Joe has no use for the concert violin that his father has bought him for his 21st birthday.
 
Mr. Bonaparte: Music is the great cheer-up in the language of all countries.
Joe: I take a vacation – the notes won’t run away!
 
Joe is successful in his first bouts under Moody’s management, but Moody is concerned that he’s not a slugger. He seems to be holding back. Trainer Tokio argues that Joe should be allowed to fight his own way.

Tokio: Don’t ask him to change his style. A style is best when it’s individual, when it comes out of the inner personality and the lay of the muscles and the set of the bones.

Portrait Of Clifford Odets by Lusha Nelson

It transpires that Joe has been pulling his punches to protect his hands, and with them his future violin playing. Promoter Roxy Gottlieb is dismissive of Joe’s musical pretensions.
 
Roxy: You shoulda seen that bunch of musicians on 48th Street before. Fiddlers, drummers, cornetists – not a dime in a car-load. Bums in the park!
 
Moody’s girlfriend Lorna is assigned to change Joe’s mind.
 
Lorna: If you made your fame and fortune – and you can – you’d be anything you want.
 
At length, Joe is persuaded to go all-in, and he runs confidently towards his prizefighting destiny.
 
Joe: When a bullet sings through the air, it has no past – only a future.
 
With his consequent success, Joe succumbs to the delights of custom-made suits and a Deusenberg automobile. 
 
Eddie: A year ago Bonaparte was a rookie with a two-pants suit. Now he wears the best, eats the best, sleeps the best. He walks down the street respected – the golden boy!
 
But Joe also breaks a hand, thereby ruining any prospect of returning to the violin.
Becoming disillusioned with the fight game, he turns insolent and arrogant. And he is increasingly vicious in the ring.
 
Tokio: Your heart ain’t in fighting…Your hate is. But a man with hate and nothing else…he’s half a man…and half a man…is no man.
 
Built around an admittedly rather artificial plot, ‘Golden Boy’ is a simple morality tale. It suggests that riches and renown are not enough. They cannot satisfy our fundamental human needs. They leave us hollow, discontented, dissatisfied.
 
Siggie: Joe went in the boxing game ‘cause he’s ashamed to be poor.
 
The play prompts us to question what society values and what we value as individuals. Are our motivations at work sincere and well-intentioned? Will they ultimately lead us to fulfilment or frustration? Are we properly assessing our career choices?
 
Joe: With music I’m never alone when I’m alone.
 
At the end of the play, Lorna, now regretting her part in Joe’s demise, expresses her yearning for a less cruel, less mercenary world. 
 
Lorna: We’ll find some city where poverty’s no shame – where music is no crime! – where there’s no war in the streets – where a man is glad to be himself.
 
 
'In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade.
And he carries the reminders,
Of every glove that laid him down.
Or cut him till he cried out,
In his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter still remains.’
Simon & Garfunkel, 'The Boxer’ (P Simon)

No. 590

The Gatwick Water Crisis: Proportion and Perspective

Caspar David Friedrich -Das Eismeer (The Sea of Ice). 1823–1824. Oil on canvas

It’s been a Long Hot Summer of aquamarine and deckchair stripes, ringer t-shirts and Zara death pants; of frozen yogurt, festival dust and hydration breaks. We’ve considered magnetic pétanque espadrilles and solar powered aircon; vertical drinking bans and finger-clicking cricketers. It’s been the Bandana Summer, the Summer of Spritz… All very entertaining. 
 
And yet I confess I endured the heat more than I enjoyed it.
 
On one July evening this year, Gatwick Airport suffered a major water outage. This left both terminals without running water for several hours. 
 
On the radio news they interviewed a woman who expressed her dismay in a suburban London accent.
 
‘It’s awful. I’ve been to the loo, and I can’t wash my hands. And there’s no ice for the white wine.’
 
There seemed to be an issue of perspective here. On the one hand, the lady was concerned about a fundamental breakdown in hygiene. On the other, she was worried by her inability to enjoy her beverages in her preferred fashion.
 
'Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.’
Carl Gustav Jung
 
This calls to mind a problem I often encountered in the world of work. 
 
At any one time, we are confronted by assorted challenges on different fronts. We know we need to tackle each of them, and we often have a decent idea of how to do so. But we are not so skilled at prioritising those problems.
 
As a result, we try to do everything everywhere all at once. We embark on too many initiatives, dividing our time, fragmenting our efforts. Our colleagues become confused by our complex communications. We may at length be paralysed by inaction.
 
‘It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.’
George Eliot, ‘Middlemarch’
 
A critical leadership skill is putting tasks that compete for our time and attention into perspective. We need to understand their proportionate importance, their relation to each other, and allocate resources accordingly. We need to sequence our response.
 
‘Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.’ 
Irving Berlin
 
 
'At 17 we fell in love, high school sweethearts.
Love was so brand new.
We took the vows of man and wife,
Forever for life.
I remember how we made our way.
A little patience, the time we prayed.
Can't imagine that this love is through,
Feeling the pain, boy, when you lose.
Because, it's too hot,
Too hot, baby.
We gotta run for shelter,
Gotta run for shade.
It's too hot.
It's too hot, baby.
We gotta cool this anger, what a mess we made.’
Kool & the Gang, 'Too Hot’ (George Brown, Kool & the Gang)

No. 589

Schiaparelli: ‘I Like to Amuse Myself Through Some of my Creations. If I Didn’t, I Should Die’

Elsa Schiaparelli in 1940. Photograph: Fredrich Baker/Conde Nast/Getty Images

Elsa Schiaparelli redefined fashion in the 1930s. She created sensuous clothes that caught the eye, that embraced new techniques and materials, that shocked and amused. Above all, she articulated the artistic spirit of her day. (‘Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art’ is at the V&A, London until 8 November.)
 
‘For me, dress designing is not a profession, but an art.’
Elsa Schiaparelli

Born in Rome in 1890, into an aristocratic family, Schiaparelli was educated at a strict Swiss convent school. Breaking free from her conservative upbringing, she spent time in Paris, London and New York, marrying a charismatic conman with whom she had a daughter. Following the breakdown of this relationship, she fell in with the Surrealist set, including the writer Gabrielle Buffet‑Picabia and the artist Man Ray.

'Belief is as necessary to the soul as pleasures are necessary to the body.'
 
In 1922 Schiaparelli moved with her child to Paris, where she took a role as designer at a small fashion house. Although she had had no formal training, in 1927 she presented her first solo collection of hand‑knitted sweaters with geometric patterns. The piece that made her name was a black-and-white jumper with a trompe l'oeil bow‑knot. 
 
‘I wore it at a smart lunch and created a furore… Soon the restaurant of the Paris Ritz was filled with women from all over the world in black-and-white sweaters.’

Schiaparelli opened her first shop in 1928 on rue de la Paix. Branded ‘Schiaparelli Pour le Sport,’ it sold knitted pullovers, simple tops and skirts, as well as beachwear and ski attire. She subsequently added stylish, practical daywear, ‘Pour la Ville,’ and glamorous eveningwear, ‘Pour le Soir.’
 
‘Simple suits, mandated apparel.’
 
Schiaparelli’s day-suits featured unusual fabrics with unexpected fastenings and prominent pockets. There were lively novelty prints, depicting Parisian landmarks, disembodied hands, floating red hearts and newspaper cuttings about herself. Trousers were to the fore, at a time when most women wore them just for sport or informally at home. 
 
‘In the building of a basic wardrobe, we cannot go wrong if we strive for simplicity and perfect fitting.’

Elsa Schiaparelli - Black-and-white jumper with a trompe l'oeil bow‑knot

Schiaparelli’s evening gowns were dramatic, sinuous and shimmering. With distinctive epaulettes, folded sleeves and daringly‑deep back décolletage, they boasted form‑hugging silhouettes and took inspiration from disparate sources: classical architecture, Harlequin costumes and the circus; military uniforms and Russian parachutists. She experimented with bustles, velvet capes, head scarves and hoods; with prominent zips and asymmetric drapery; with apron‑style over‑tunics and camouflage. And she worked with textile manufacturers to explore innovative materials - crinkly textures, cellophane, metallic threads and woven glass. Her designs consistently came in strong colours - sleeping blue and pirate red; ocean green and her signature shocking pink - with unexpected juxtapositions, like beetroot and salmon.
 
‘Before me, everything was black or navy blue or grey or brown or beige, things like that, for daytime. I began using shocking pink and ice blue and all kinds of bright colours.’

Evening coat, designed by Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Cocteau, 1937, London, England

Schiaparelli’s smartly tailored jackets completed her evening suits. Made from sumptuous textiles, with oversized pockets, they were graced with characterful buttons - ships and mirrors, playing cards, candlesticks and crowns – and embellished with exquisite embroidery by Maison Lesage – designs featuring flowers, starbursts and musical instruments.
 
‘Fortunately, or unfortunately for me, I am always at my best when I am unhampered: when I can let myself go and have a little fun.’
 
Within five years, Maison Schiaparelli was employing 400 staff and manufacturing over 7000 garments per annum. In 1935, Schiaparelli moved her couture business to 21 Place Vendôme, one of the most elegant addresses in Paris. Its window displays starred two articulated wooden figures, Pascal and Pascaline, performing in witty theatrical scenes. Inside there were screens painted by her artist friends, and light fixtures designed by Alberto Giacometti. 
 
‘There are times to be casual and times to be correct. It's alright to wear a sweater and slacks on a picnic, but they don't belong in the theatre or the drawing room.’

Elsa Schiaparelli - Circus Evening Jacket. February 1938 (made)

The larger space at Place Vendôme enabled Schiaparelli to sell accessories, perfumes and cosmetics. Her first fragrance, S, was unisex. She went on to create Snuff, a scent for men in packaging shaped like a pipe (a reference to René Magritte’s ‘This is not a pipe’ painting). Night-time perfume Sleeping came in a vessel formed like a lit candle, and best-seller Shocking had a bottle based on Mae West’s hourglass figure. One journalist wrote of her Salut scent:
 
‘This is what Salut does for a girl… A drop behind each ear and you feel you’ve had good news. A spray around your neck and Marlene Dietrich had better look out.’
 
Schiaparelli developed a following of confident, wealthy women who wanted to make a mark. Her clients included Wallis Simpson and Nancy Cunard; Mae West and Josephine Baker; Dietrich, Garbo and Hepburn. Bettina Ballard, the Paris correspondent for American Vogue, observed of the typical Schiaparelli customer:
 
‘Wherever she went [she was] protected by an armour of amusing conversation‑making smartness.’
 
A striking playfulness ran through Schiaparelli’s work. She designed shoes in stripes, gloves with faux fingernails. And at a time when hats were required daytime wear for women, her creations – in plant fibre, felt or fur - included a birdcage, a lambchop and an upside-down shoe. 
 
‘The spirit of infectious good humour can be created even through women’s hats. I like to amuse myself through some of my creations. If I didn’t, I should die.’

Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali - The shoe-hat
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Winter 1937-38 collection.
Inspired by a photograph that Gala, (Dali's wife) had taken of her husband wearing a woman's shoe.

Schiaparelli’s wit, her love of the absurd, erotic and subversive, derived from her enduring association with the Surrealists. She commissioned contemporary artists to co-create designs for garments and accessories; for her advertising and boutiques. Indeed, such was her affection for the avant garde that her rival ‘Coco’ Chanel dismissed her as ‘that Italian artist who’s making clothes.’
 
‘Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women.’
 
Schiaparelli worked particularly closely with Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. One coat at the exhibition is embroidered on the back with a Cocteau drawing of mirrored, kissing faces which, in profile, trace an urn of roses. Inspired by Dali, Schiaparelli created a gown with a dramatic lobster print, and a frock that gives the impression of torn fabric. Her Skeleton Dress, co-designed with Dali, has quilting resembling a rib cage, vertebrae, hip and leg bones.
 
‘A successful designer must be a gambler.’
 
Schiaparelli teaches people working in commercial creativity to approach their craft with vigour and courage; to integrate humour, however serious the endeavour; to embrace the ideas and influence of contemporary art. 
 
‘More than life I cherish freedom.’

The Skeleton Dress - Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali
Evening Dress, 1938 (made)

Schiaparelli spent most of the Second World War in New York. Having returned to Paris in July 1945, she continued to design collections. But post-war austerity and Christian Dior's ‘New Look’ combined to create challenging trading conditions. She terminated her couture business in 1951, and in 1954 she closed the doors of her salon. She lived out a comfortable retirement between her Paris apartment and her house in Tunisia, and died in 1973, at the age of 83.
 
‘Nobody has been able to pronounce [my name] properly… but everybody knows what it means.’
 

'I am a lonely painter,
I live in a box of paints.
I'm frightened by the devil,
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid.
I remember that time you told me, you said
"Love is touching souls."
Surely you touched mine.
'Cause part of you pours out of me,
In these lines from time to time.’
Joni Mitchell, ‘A Case of You'

No. 588

A Century of American Urban Photography: ‘We Believed in Hope’

Arthur Leipzig, Divers, East River

The exhibition ‘Portrait of a City’ considers one hundred years of American urban life as seen through the photographer’s lens. (The Dulwich Picture Gallery until 4 October)

‘I get totally out of myself. It’s the closest I get to not existing.’
Garry Winogrand

We visit New York and Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as they expand at an unprecedented pace. We see immigration, industrialisation; staggering wealth and pitiful poverty, cheek by jowl. 

‘I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for truth my obsession.’
Alfred Stieglitz

From an upper deck on a transatlantic crossing, Alfred Stieglitz photographs the steerage passengers below, huddled under their woollen shawls. High up on the Empire State Building, Lewis Hine shoots a construction worker confidently clinging to the hoisting ball of a crane.

We observe the effects of the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression - unemployment, homelessness, relentless hardship. We stop by a boarded-up Harlem tenement (‘Danger. Keep out’), and the Best Hotel in The Bowery (‘Beds 20c’). There’s a live burlesque show at the Chicago Theater. And a man in a tatty suit sleeps on the pavement, arms folded, his fedora still perched on his head. 

‘Sometimes I come away… sick at heart, with the faces of people in pain etched as sharply in my mind as on my negatives. But I go back because I think it is my place to take such pictures.’
Margaret Bourke-White

In San Francisco Dorothea Lange shows us a defeated man on a breadline, his back turned away. In harsh, high contrast black-and-white, Weegee presents New York’s underbelly, the brutal violence, the voyeuristic crowds.

‘Many photographers live in a dream world of beautiful backgrounds. It wouldn’t hurt them to get a taste of reality to wake them up. Anyone who looks for life can find it.’
Weegee

Lewis Hine, Riding the Ball High Up on Empire State

And all the while people work and play, fall in and out of love, raise families. Boys dive from a wall into the East River. A girl sits in the back of a limousine with the window down. A lady in a cloche hat and furs pauses on 42nd Street. And Roy DeCarava finds two men in an almost empty ballroom, dancing in the dark.

We witness post-war prosperity, corporate expansion. Whatever the drama enacted on the streets, there’s always an attempt to make a sale.

‘Here is the place to get live bait.’
’Walkers Gin. Made with imported botanicals.’ 
’Rheingold Extra Dry.’ 
‘Brown’s Mule. Juicy and Sweet. 5c cuts.’
‘Purol-Pep Gasolene. Wakes up your motor.’

Saul Leiter shoots in impressionistic colour - through windows and doorways, capturing reflections on wet panes of glass. With an unflinching gaze, Diane Arbus seeks out the marginalised and maverick.

‘Individuals all different, all wanting different things, all knowing different things, all loving different things, all looking different… That is what I love: the differentness.’
Diane Arbus

Then there’s Cold War paranoia, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam; protest and generational division; the counterculture. Garry Winogrand shoots at pace, capturing the city’s kinetic energy. On Hollywood Boulevard three female office workers walk past a man in a wheelchair. On Park Avenue a couple with a monkey sit in an open topped car.

'Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty… I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn’t matter, we have not loved life.'
Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand - Park Avenue, New York 1959

Soon highways cut through neighbourhoods and suburbs expand outwards. We watch the creeping anonymity, the loneliness and alienation. Ed Ruscha reveals the banal aspects of West Coast life: the horizontal city; gas stations, apartment buildings, parking lots and palm trees.

‘After people live a while in a place to which they’ve laid waste, it gets to be easy to hate a great many things, including themselves.’
Robert Adams

Finally, Bruce Davidson takes us down onto the New York subway. Cautiously we peer at the graffiti, the trash, the neglect. Passengers regard us with curiosity, defiance, indifference.

‘And to find its humanity when it’s inhuman, that’s a challenge.’
Bruce Davidson

The exhibition reminds us that we don’t have to go far for inspiration. It’s on our doorsteps.

‘I would rather photograph in Grand Central Station than in the Grand Canyon… that’s my choice.’ 
Bruce Davidson

I left thinking that, despite the grim realities - the people that fell through the cracks - the American city in the twentieth century was a thrilling, tumultuous, romantic place; a vortex of possibilities; an ever-changing stage for communities to come together, for businesses to thrive, for individuals to pursue their dreams. Because they believed in hope.

‘Of course, the ‘good old days’ were not all sweetness and light. There was poverty, racism, corruption and violence in those days too, but somehow we believed in the possible. We believed in hope.’
Arthur Leipzig

Walker Evans, 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, 1929

'Rockets, moon shots,
Spend it on the have nots.
Money, we make it,
'Fore we see it, you take it.
Oh, make me want to holler
The way they do my life.
Make me want to holler,
The way they do my life.
This ain't livin', this ain't livin’.
No, no baby, this ain't livin’

Hang-ups, let downs,
Bad breaks, set backs.
Natural fact is,
Oh honey that I can't pay my taxes.
Oh, make me want to holler,
And throw up both my hands.
Yea, it make me want to holler,
And throw up both my hands.
Oh crime is increasing,
Trigger happy policing.
Panic is spreading,
God knows where we're heading.
Oh, make me want to holler,
They don't understand.'
Marvin Gaye, 'Inner City Blues’ (J Nyx / M Gaye)

No. 587

A Month in the Country: Lost in Lacemaking

Ivan Turgenev’s ‘A Month in the Country’ is set on a Russian country estate in the 1840s. The play explores the painful complexities of unrequited love - petty jealousies played out in a world of stifling ennui. (An excellent production of the Brian Friel version, directed by Lyndsey Turner, is running at the Donmar Warehouse, London until 3 October.)

Michel: It occurred to me a while ago that we regret most of the things we say and we regret even more all the things we don’t say; so that our lives just dribble away in remorse.

Natalya Petrovna, an intelligent, sophisticated woman in her late 20s, is bored by her marriage to Arkady, a rich landowner, seven years her senior, whose principal interests are weirs and winnowing machines.

Arkady: Yes, I always seem to be simultaneously very busy and very confused, don’t I?

Natalya sustains herself by spending time with debonair, attentive Michel, Arkady’s childhood friend.

Natalya: Don’t you know that nothing bores a woman more quickly than an excessive desire to please?

Though Natalya appreciates Michel’s devotion, she has never let their friendship develop into an affair.

Natalya: You know I love you. And the moment I say that, the moment I make that acknowledgement, I think… that man has never made me suffer; that man has never made me cry; and if I have never cried because of him, I can’t really love him, can I?

The equilibrium is disturbed by the arrival of Aleksey, the handsome 21-year-old tutor to Natalya’s son.

Natalya: He’s so unlike us: he’s so… unjaded.

Natalya falls in love with Aleksey. But so does Vera, her 17-year-old ward, precipitating rivalry, conspiracy and betrayal.

Natalya: I feel… unhinged…And dangerously irresponsible – giddy, heady, almost hysterical with irresponsibility.

Patrick Gibson as Aleksy, Sophie Okonedo as Natalya, with Alistair Petrie as Michel looking on - Photo Helen Murray

Poor Aleksey finds it all very confusing. 

Aleksey: I’m here a month and what happens? Arkady fights with Michel. Michel fights with Natalya. Natalya fights with you. Anna fights with Michel. And in some way I seem to be the cause of it all.

Amidst the romantic chaos, there is a strong sense that these listless, chattering aristocrats are not listening to each other.

Natalya: You are a kind man and a subtle man and a man of great delicacy. But there are times when I think you know nothing about me.

They are too caught up in their own immediate problems and their own private worlds.

Natalya: You’re not talking to me at all; you’re playing a private little game of your own. You’re like those lacemakers in those gloomy, airless rooms – each one totally isolated, totally concentrated on those minute, complex, subtle little stitches. As if nothing in the world mattered but those ridiculous little stitches.

Ivan Turgenev

I found myself thinking that Natalya’s lacemaking analogy applies as much to the contemporary world of work as it does to rural life in pre-revolutionary Russia. Heads down, we labour to address our most pressing problems. We become absorbed in the detail, lost in the politics of the present. We begin to ignore our relationships; to abandon all sense of perspective and proportion. 

We would do well to look up occasionally; to consider the broader picture and the longer term. We need to retain our vision.

Natalya: You gaze at me all the time, don’t you? You know every thought in my head – don’t you? You analyse everything I think, everything I do – don’t you?...Don’t tell me there’s a little portion of my mind that you haven’t invaded?

Written around 1850 and first published in 1855, ‘A Month in the Country’ was not staged until 1872, and then it was criticised for being ‘undramatic.’ It shares its character-driven narrative and melancholy tone with much of Anton Chekhov’s work, which it preceded by some forty years. It was only in the wake of Chekhov’s success - when in 1909 Konstantin Stanislavsky staged a production in Moscow - that Turgenev’s play was properly appreciated. 

Vera: Esteem – affection – love; maybe you’re right; maybe they are synonymous; maybe they should be.

Inevitably the misaligned affections at the core of this splendid piece lead to disappointment, misery and heartache.

Michel: All love is a catastrophe. Look at me. An endless process of shame and desolation and despair when you are stripped – you strip yourself! – of every semblance of dignity and self-respect; when you grovel in the hope of a casual word or a sly smile or a secret squeeze of the hand.

Vera’s attempt at reassuring words falls on deaf ears.

Vera: Everything’ll soon be back to normal.
Natalya: For God’s sake, can’t you see that it’s the normal that’s deranging me, child?

As Natalya observes, life cannot be quietly managed, elegantly navigated. Survival and success require stronger, more robust decisions; bigger, bolder actions.

Natalya: You are so eloquent about ‘nature’, Michel; so sensitive, so responsive to it. ‘Nature’ must be flattered….But of course you’re wrong about ‘nature’. Nature is blunt and crude and relentless. Nature cares about nothing except itself – surviving and perpetuating itself. Your exquisite nature is a savage.

'When you looked into my eyes,
My heart never skipped a beat.
And when you touched my hand,
Didn't feel it down to my feet.
And when you kissed me so,
I didn't feel my body shaking.
And when you had to go,
Didn't feel my whole heart breaking.
It didn't mean much to me.
It didn't mean much to me.

And when you closed the door,
Didn't have to dry my eyes.
And when you didn't call no more,
I barely even realized.
I never listen for your voice,
Every time I pick up the phone.
'Cause you never even crossed my mind,
Until I had to sing this song.
It didn't mean much to me
It didn't mean much.’

The Womack Sisters, 'Didn’t Mean Much to Me’ (B Mann)

No. 586

Richard Dadd: Fairies, Sprites, Nymphs and Goblins

Richard Dadd - The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke 1855–64

I recently enjoyed a small exhibition of the art of Richard Dadd. (‘Beyond Bedlam’ is at the Royal Academy, London until 25 October.)
 
‘Perhaps the artist is himself the greatest victim of delusion – self delusion.’
Richard Dadd
 
Born in Chatham, Kent in 1817, the son of a chemist, Dadd studied at the Royal Academy Schools, where he was a member of a progressive group known as the Clique. Developing an interest in folklore and the uncanny, he was particularly inspired by Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ 
 
Queen Titania sleeps in a grotto, attended by dancing sylphs. Mischievous sprite Puck, a demonic mega-baby, sits cross-legged on a mushroom in a forest glade. A crouching fairy adorns her hair with flowers and regards us with a slight smile.

Dadd’s work is enigmatic and sensitive, exquisitely detailed and vibrantly coloured.

Richard Dadd - Puck 1841

In 1842 Dadd travelled to Turkey, Syria and Egypt. He filled his sketchbooks with intricate studies of camels, ruined monuments, mosques and markets. However, he began to experience delusions, became violent, and believed himself to be under the influence of the god Osiris. His condition was initially thought to be sunstroke. But in truth, his family had a history of mental illness, and he was probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. It has also been suggested that he’d consumed too much opium.
 
Back in England, Dadd withdrew to recuperate in the village of Cobham. On 28 August 1843, he took his father for an after-dinner walk and murdered him with a knife, believing him to be a devil. Fleeing to France, he tried to kill a stranger, and was subsequently apprehended and taken back to England.
 
Dadd was committed to Bethlem Hospital in Southwark (commonly known as Bedlam), an institution with a relatively enlightened regime. Encouraged by staff to continue painting, he created detailed works based on the sketches from his travels; portraits, literary scenes and landscapes. He also produced a series of watercolours to illustrate the intense, dark passions that drive human behaviour - including Grief, Ambition and Self-Contempt; Deceit, Jealousy and Agony-Raving Madness.

Henry Hering - Portrait of Richard Dadd, c. 1857
Photographic print. 20 x 15.5 cm. Courtesy of Bethlem Museum of the Mind. Alex Fox (Roy Fox Fine Art Photography)

Naturally Dadd returned to the enchanted worlds that had established his reputation. His most celebrated picture is ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke.’ Painted over a nine-year period, it was inspired by Mercutio’s description in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ of Mab, the fairy queen who plants dreams in human heads at night.
 
‘Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut 
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, 
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. 
And in this state she gallops night by night 
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love.’
William Shakespeare, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Act I, scene 4
 
We peer through an undergrowth of wildflowers and weeds, to discover an axeman - intent on constructing Mab’s new fairy carriage - on the point of cleaving a chestnut in two. A bearded patriarchal figure wearing a gold papal crown stands nearby, and a crowd of peasants, soldiers and sprites look on. There, in the background, are Oberon and Titania, and a trumpet-playing crane fly. The image is intricate, ethereal, unsettling. Is the apothecary at the top right perhaps a reference to the artist’s murdered father? Is the adjacent child with an outstretched arm Dadd himself? Is that blood pouring from his fingers?

Richard Dadd - Contradiction. Oberon and Titania, 1854-58
Oil on canvas. 61 x 75.5 cm. Private Collection. Photo: David Parmiter

After 20 years in Bethlem, Dadd was moved to Broadmoor Hospital, near Reading, a newly built high-security facility. A few months after his arrival, his Case Notes observed:
 
‘Employs himself generally in painting and is at present engaged on a water colour fairy scene which he is executing with great care.’
 
Dadd remained in Broadmoor for the rest of his life, painting constantly. On one occasion, he seemed to reflect to a visitor on his artistic reputation.
 
‘Yes, some painters - the few, perhaps - achieve renown and substantial rewards; others lag behind.’
 
Dadd died of tuberculosis in 1886. He was largely forgotten until the 1960s, when his fantastical world of nymphs and goblins chimed with the culture of hippy psychedelia. On seeing Dadd’s work in the Tate Gallery, Freddie Mercury was inspired to write the 1974 Queen song ‘The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke.’ 
 
Some have argued that Dadd’s fascination with sylphs and sprites derived from his mental illness. But the artist’s enthusiasm pre-dates his breakdown. I confess I’ve never been much taken with the mystical and occult. But his paintings prompted me to reflect on arcane traditions; the realm of dreams and fantasy; the surreal, subconscious and supernatural. Sometimes it’s healthy to set aside rationality, and let oneself go.
 
In a rhymed account of the ‘Fairy Feller’s’ origins and characters, Dadd explained that his picture was inspired by poetry, chance, and a kind of magic. 
 
‘The fairies grow without / The reach of human ken or will.’
 
 
'He's a fairy feller.
The fairy folk have gathered 'round the new moon shine,
To see the feller crack a nut at night's noon time.
To swing his axe he swears, as he climbs he dares,
To deliver
The master stroke.’
Queen, 'The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke’ (F Mercury)

No. 585

The Singing Cabbie: The Benefit of Keeping People Waiting

Walter Sickert - Lion Comique 1887. Oil on canvas, 51 x 31 cm

The four of us crammed into the cab that had been booked to take us to the opera at Glyndebourne. 

Settled in the front passenger seat, dressed in black tie, I engaged the driver in conversation - a grey-haired bloke with a warm, friendly manner.

‘Have you been cabbing in these parts a long time?’

‘Oh, no. We only moved down here to be close to the mother-in-law. I’m actually from South London, and most of my life I was a singer.’

I looked across at him, and noticed his big, bright toothy smile. I could imagine this chap on stage.

‘How fantastic. In a band?’

‘No, no. I was a club singer. Performing Motown and soul. Spent quite a while in Sarasota, Florida.’

We chatted away about the wonders of Stevie, Aretha, Otis and Curtis; the distinction between Stax and Motown; ‘The Summer of Soul.’

At length, I decided to make the obvious request.

‘Go on then, give us a song.’

The driver sighed and turned to me with a grin.

‘I’m afraid not, mate. I’m retired.’

And so we continued to our destination in silence. I was a little disappointed, but he was clearly not going to change his mind. 

After the opera, the same cabbie took us back on the return journey, and again we picked up the musical theme.

‘Do you see any soul acts nowadays?’

‘Yes, I travel up to town to check out the likes of Raye and Olivia Dean. Both really good. And I’ve been impressed by a new guy, MT Jones.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen him. Totally excellent.’

Soon, we were back at our hotel. As we disembarked and gathered our belongings, the driver paused, patted me on the shoulder, and, in mature, honeyed tones, broke into mellifluous song.

'I want to stop, and thank you, baby.
I just want to stop, and thank you, baby.'

Delighted by the deferred gratification, spellbound under the moonlit sky, I couldn’t help joining in.

'How sweet it is to be loved by you.
Oh, baby.
How sweet it is to be loved by you.’

In the world of work, when we’ve got a great strategic route or creative idea to present, there’s always a temptation to reveal it sooner rather than later, and so secure the attention and approval of our client audience. But the Singing Cabbie reminds us that sometimes it pays to bide our time and hold our fire; to escalate the tension and amplify the drama. Sometimes, it’s worth keeping people waiting.

'I needed the shelter of someone's arms,
And there you were.
I needed someone to understand my ups and downs,
And there you were.
With sweet love and devotion,
Deeply touching my emotion.
I want to stop, and thank you, baby.
I just want to stop, and thank you, baby.
How sweet it is to be loved by you.’
Marvin Gaye, 'How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)’ (Holland–Dozier–Holland)

No. 584

The Cherry Orchard: Imaginative Memory, Toxic Nostalgia

‘The Cherry Orchard’ was Anton Chekhov’s last play. Written in 1903, it relates the story of a group of charming, listless, impractical aristocrats and their dependents, as they struggle to come to terms with the social and economic upheaval in Russia at the turn of the 20th century.

Lopakhin: If we can’t think of anything and don’t make up our minds on anything, then on August 22, both the cherry orchard and the whole estate will be up for auction. Make up your mind! I swear there’s no other way out.

At the heart of the drama is Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya, an indebted landowner returning to her family estate after five years in Paris. The property, which includes a beloved cherry orchard, is due to be auctioned to pay the mortgage. She is prompted to recall happier times.  

Lyubov: Oh, my childhood, my innocent childhood! This is the nursery where I slept and I used to look out at the orchard from here! Look, Mother's walking in the orchard. In a white dress.

Lyubov and her brother Gayev are visited by Lopakhin, a wealthy local merchant from humble stock, who proposes a remedy to their predicament.

Lopakhin: You needn’t be alarmed, dear madam, you may sleep in peace; there’s a way out. Here’s my plan. Please attend carefully! Your estate is only thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into building lots, and are then leased off for villas, you’ll get at least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

Lyubov and Gayev are unconvinced.

Gayev: How utterly absurd!
Lyubov: I don’t understand you at all, Ermolai Alexeyevitch.

But Lopakhin persists.

Lopakhin: If you advertise now, I’m willing to bet that you won’t have a vacant plot left by the autumn; they’ll all go. In a word, you’re saved. I congratulate you. Only, of course, you’ll have to put things straight, and clean up.... For instance, you’ll have to pull down all the old buildings, this house, which isn’t any use to anybody now, and cut down the old cherry orchard….

Lyubov is particularly sensitive about any plan that threatens her treasured cherry orchard.

Lyubov: Cut it down? My dear man, you must excuse me, but you don’t understand anything at all. If there’s anything interesting or remarkable in the whole province, it’s this cherry orchard of ours.

Lopakhin tries to reason with Lyubov and Gayev, pointing out that the orchard only bears fruit every other year, and that then it produces more cherries than they can sell.

Resolute, Lyubov and Gayev instead consider the unlikely prospect of inheriting some money, borrowing from a wealthy but hostile aunt, marrying off Lyubov’s daughter to a rich aristocrat, taking out another loan… Anything but lose the cherry orchard.

Gayev: This orchard is mentioned in the ‘Encyclopaedic Dictionary.’ 

The central debate in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ reminds me of dilemmas played out in the world of contemporary commerce. We become attached to certain approaches and ways of working that have served us well in the past. We are sentimental about historic glories. And this nostalgia deters us from taking timely, realistic action. Sometimes we resist necessary change even when the solution to our problems is staring us in the face.

Lopakhin:  You must excuse my saying so, but I’ve never met such frivolous people as you before, or anybody so unbusinesslike and peculiar. Here I am telling you in plain language that your estate will be sold, and you don’t seem to understand.
Lyubov: What are we to do? Tell us, what?
Lopakhin:  I tell you every day. I say the same thing every day.

Chekhov in 1889

I saw a very good production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ recently in Stratford-upon-Avon, and came across a compelling essay in the programme, written by Dr Charan Ranganath, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of California at Davis.

Lopakhin:   Just one word! [Imploringly] Give me an answer!
Gayev: [Yawns] To what?

Ranganath observes that Lyubov’s memories of the estate are rose tinted and selective. She happily recalls her innocent childhood, the nursery and her mother walking in the cherry orchard, but she chooses to ignore the fact that the house was also the location of her husband’s death and the drowning of her young son, and it is the source of her current financial hardship.

‘Memories are not mere recordings of past experiences. We do not replay the past so much as we pull up a few fragments of detail and context and use them to imagine how the past might have been.’
Dr Charan Ranganath

Ranganath goes on to explain that ‘the brain networks supporting imagination and episodic memory are enmeshed to such a degree that we often struggle to distinguish events we actually experienced from those we have merely imagined.’

We edit and curate our personal histories to meet our own agendas and sense of self, and this can lead to a kind of ‘paralysing stasis…a toxic nostalgia’: an unhealthy romanticisation of the past that prevents us from embracing the future. We would do well to direct our emotional energies towards more practical, productive outputs.

Trofimov: If the energy which you, in the course of your life, have spent in looking for money to pay interest had been used for something else, then, I believe, after all, you’d be able to turn everything upside down.

Chekhov described ‘The Cherry Orchard’ as a comedy. But when it opened at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904, the director Konstantin Stanislavski treated it as a tragedy. It’s easy to see why. 

Firs (the elderly manservant): In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them… And then we’d send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, and nicely scented.... They knew the way....
Lyubov: What was the way?
Firs: They’ve forgotten. Nobody remembers.

(The Stratford-upon-Avon production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ closes on 29 August. There’s another version of this classic play planned for the Harold Pinter Theatre, London from 3 October to 9 January.)

'Remember those who win the game,
Lose the love they sought to gain,
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity.
Their small town eyes will gape at you,
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received,
At seventeen.
To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came,
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball.
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today,
When dreams were all they gave for free,
To ugly duckling girls like me.’
Janis Ian, 'At Seventeen'

No. 583

Ferdinand Waldmüller: Truth Hurts

Ferdinand Waldmüller - Large Prater Landscape

I recently enjoyed a small, one-room exhibition of landscape paintings by Ferdinand Waldmüller. (The National Gallery, London until 20 September. Free to enter.)
 
‘It is the nature that surrounds us, our time, and our customs that we need to express in our artistic creations.’
Ferdinand Waldmüller

Born in Vienna in 1793 and educated at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts, Waldmüller worked in the Biedermeier period following the Napoleonic Wars, when a flourishing middle class was setting the cultural agenda.
 
Waldmüller specialised in portraits of the Austrian elite, the creative community and the bourgeoisie; in genre pictures of everyday domestic activity; and in still lifes of flowers and fruit. He taught himself landscape painting by copying Dutch 17th-century artists, but soon abandoned this approach to studying directly from nature.
 
‘The only true way, the eternal inexhaustible wellspring of all art had been revealed to me: observing, perceiving and understanding nature.’
 
Working mostly on modestly-sized panels prepared with a white ground, Waldmüller applied thin paint in small, fluid, precise brushstrokes, picking out every leaf, twig and flower with bright, intense colours. 
 
A waterfall cascades down the rocks towards the valley floor. In the deep shadows cast by the elm trees of Prater Park, a woman collects wood. A group of countryfolk rest on the hills overlooking limpid Lake Hallstatt. Under a majestic sky, the soft green of an Alpine valley gives way to the blue-grey of the distant, snow-capped mountains. Some children gather violets on a path through the Vienna Woods. A rugged track leads up to the ruins of Liechtenstein Castle.
 
These are delicate, sensitive pictures of peace and tranquillity.

'Ferdinand Waldmüller - View of the Dachstein from the Sophien-Doppelblick near Ischl’

Waldmüller travelled widely, and took a number of trips to Sicily. We inspect the golden ruins of the ancient Greek theatre at Taormina. In the heat and dust, we visit a quiet hill town. We walk amongst the silvery blue olive trees on the slopes beneath the Temple of Juno.
 
Waldmüller’s work is meticulously executed and minutely detailed. He had a particular talent for trees - tangled roots, twisted trunks, dappled foliage - and he was happy to include dead and dying branches. Concerned more with accuracy and integrity, he broke with the convention of idealising nature.

 'Ferdinand Waldmüller - Ruins of Liechtenstein Castle, near Modling

In 1829 Waldmüller was appointed curator of the Academy’s collection. An outspoken teacher, he argued for Realism over Romanticism, tried to put nature at the centre of art education, and endeavoured to reform the Academy, even calling for its closure.

‘It is my firm belief that the complete abolition of all academies is the first and most necessary step to improve the state of art in the fatherland.’
 
As a result, Waldmüller was forced to retire on half-salary. A commitment to unflinching honesty; to facts and veracity; to telling it like it is, can be costly in the workplace. Truth hurts.
 
 
 
'So true, funny how it seems,
Always in time, but never in line for dreams.
Head over heels when toe to toem
This is the sound of my soul.
This is the sound.
I bought a ticket to the world,
But now I've come back again,
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh, I want the truth to be said.’
Spandau Ballet,’True’ (G Kemp)

No. 582