Edvard Munch: The Anatomist of the Soul

Ill.23 The Anatomist Kristian Schreiner I 1928-29

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of portraits by Edvard Munch. (The National Portrait Gallery, London until 15 June.)

Munch is renowned for his images of anguish and alienation. But over his long career he also painted many intimate portraits of family, friends, lovers and patrons, along with a good number of self-portraits. 

Born in 1863 in the Norwegian village of Ådalsbruk, Munch came from a distinguished family of clerics and had an austere religious upbringing. When he was 5 his mother died of tuberculosis, and his older sister subsequently fell victim to the same disease - prompting a lifelong preoccupation with mortality.

'From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.’ 

In a naturalistic style, Munch paints his grey-bearded father puffing on a pipe, avoiding his son’s gaze. His soberly dressed aunt, black hair neatly tied, also looks down. His brother, studying to become a doctor, works with a skull on his desk. Here’s sister Laura on summer holiday by a lake. In blue striped dress and straw sun hat, she stares into the distance as the evening light fades. You can just make out the ghostly figure of another sister standing nearby. Munch has painted over her, emphasising Laura’s isolation.

 'Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... It also includes the inner pictures of the soul.’

Edvard Munch - Evening (1888)

We see the Bohemian writers and artists with whom Munch socialised in Kristiania (modern day Oslo), Paris and Berlin. In gloomy cafes they discuss free love, atheism and women’s emancipation over cigarettes and alcohol. Artist Karl Jensen-Hjell leans nonchalantly on a walking stick, a cigar in his gloved hand. In jade green jacket and fedora, anarchist Hans Jaeger looks tired and sceptical, seated on his own with a drink to-hand. Playwright August Strindberg, with high forehead, buttoned up and serious, regards us with a severe stare. 

Munch was fond of double portraits, and here’s one of married couple Aase and Harald Norregaard - he in profile, she fixing us with her bright blue eyes. Aase was one of the few women in Munch’s life that didn’t threaten or disturb him. 

Munch called his work ‘soul art,’ since he was seeking to reveal inner feelings and motivations; to convey psychological intensity. In a lithograph self-portrait his disembodied head emerges from the black background with a blank expression, a skeleton arm running along the bottom of the frame. He was often prone to melancholy.

‘The greatest colour is black…It is the tabula rasa for pure expression. Nothing prostitutes it.

Edvard Munch - Hans Jaeger

Gradually Munch made a name for himself, and was commissioned to paint portraits by wealthy, liberal collectors. His naturalistic technique gave way to a more expressive style of bright colours and energetic brushstrokes. 

Munch was certainly not seeking to flatter his sitters.

'When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.'

With folded arms, banker Ernest Thiel looks proud and defensive. Painted against a bright red background, physicist Felix Auerbach is caught as if in conversation. 

Here’s a dandy in a white suit, the artist Ludvig Karsten, with whom Munch had a fractious relationship.

‘Strange guy that Karsten – the big wide-brimmed hat tilted to one side – that slightly roguish expression. The mouth always ready for some sarcasm.’

Edvard Munch - Ludvig Karsten

In his later years Munch asked his friend, the anatomist Kristian Schreiner, to take him to the morgue, so that he could observe an autopsy. In a subsequent lithograph, Munch portrayed Schreiner standing over the artist’s own dead body. Schreiner later recollected that Munch said:   

‘Here are two anatomists sitting together; one of the body, one of the soul. I am perfectly aware that you would like to dissect me, but be careful. I too have my knives.’

I like this thought.

In the world of commercial communication, we are often on transmit: presenting, projecting, persuading. Sometimes we would be wise to step back; withdraw, observe and listen; scrutinise and survey. 

Like Munch we too should seek to be ‘anatomists of the soul.’

'Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears, without crying.
Now I want to understand.
I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding.
You must help me if you can.
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong.
Was I unwise
To leave them open for so long?
Because I have wandered through this world
And as each moment has unfurled
I've been waiting to awaken from these dreams.
People go just where they will,
I never noticed them until I got this feeling
That it's later than it seems.
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see.
I hear their cries
Just say if it's too late for me.'
Jackson Browne, 'Doctor My Eyes'

No. 516

Sidney Poitier: The Lonely Leader

Sidney Poitier. Photograph: Bob Adelman/AP

Interviewer: You were here in search of fame and fortune.
Poitier: I was here in search.

The 2022 documentary ‘Sidney’, directed by Reginald Hudlin, tells the story of Sidney Poitier, actor, film director and activist.

‘I never thought about what I looked like. I would only see what I was.’

Curious to learn, determined to succeed, resolute in the face of bigotry, Poitier played a succession of compelling film roles in the 1950s and ‘60s, that forged a path for Black actors in the decades that followed. As a Hollywood pioneer, he had to navigate without maps, to plot his own route through the political and social dilemmas of the time. He prompts us to reflect on the loneliness of leadership and the enduring role of values in decision making.

‘I am artist, man, American, contemporary. I am an awful lot of things. So I wish you would pay me the respect due.’

Born in 1927, in Miami, Florida, the youngest of seven children, Poitier was raised on Cat Island in the Bahamas, where his father was a tomato farmer.

‘The world I knew was quite simple. I didn’t know there was such a thing as electricity. I didn’t know that there was such a thing as having water come into the house in a pipe. I learned by observation what the world was like. I saw creatures, I saw birds and I had to figure out for myself what they were.’

When Poitier was 10 years-old, his family moved to Nassau, where he saw his first car, mirror and movie. He fell in with some rough kids, and so was sent to Miami to live with his brother's family. It was here, aged 15, that he had his first experience of racism.

‘From the time I got off the boat, Florida began to say to me: you’re not who you think you are.’

 After run-ins with the Ku Klux Klan and the local police, Poitier realised he had to get out of town.

‘Within a matter of a few months, I had to kind of switch my whole view of life. I began to learn who had the power, and I would witness the application of that power.’

Still from The Defiant Ones - Sidney Potier and Tony Curtis

Arriving in New York, Poitier slept in a toilet cubical at the bus station and found a job washing dishes. Having seen an ad in the paper, he applied for a role as an actor at the American Negro Theatre, where he was auditioned by the founder Frederick O’Neal.

‘He said: ‘Why don’t you stop wasting people’s time and go get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something?’ That’s the moment I became an actor.’

Poitier’s mind was made up. Every night an elderly Jewish waiter at the bar-and-grill where he was working helped him to improve his reading with the aid of a newspaper. And he studied the radio broadcaster Norman Brokenshire in order to remodel his Bahamian accent. 

‘I was born with a curiosity that got me into an awful lot of trouble when I was a kid, but it certainly stood me in good stead when I became an adult. I hope that curiosity stays with me all my life.’ 

At length, Poitier was admitted to the American Negro Theater, where he was spotted by a producer and given a leading role in a Broadway play. This in turn led to him being scouted by 20th Century Fox, who offered him a screen test in Hollywood.

‘Acting offered me an area where I could be an exhibitionist, where I could give vent to some of my frustrations, where I could pour out some of my confusion and other ills into a fictitious character. I thought: this is something that gives me a badge of distinction. I can be many things here. And the areas of life – socially and otherwise – that were restricted to me, I had ways of retaliating in this kind of illusion.’

The Poster for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

In Poitier’s first major role, ‘No Way Out’ (1950), he played a young doctor in an LA hospital tending to a white bigot. The part broke with the film convention of characterising Black people as funny, lazy or stupid.

‘There were people in the industry who didn’t have the courage to make a film like that about Black people. There was a habit pattern of utilising Blacks in the most disrespectful way.’

Despite his breakthrough, Poitier soon found himself back in New York washing dishes. 

‘I still had faith in myself and faith in the future.’

Poitier was not prepared to take any role. He turned down a part in ‘The Phenix City Story’ (1955), because it required him to play a janitor whose murdered daughter was thrown on the lawn. There was no opportunity for his character to respond.

Poitier asked himself what his father would have done in the same position.

‘Reginald Poitier would never have allowed a child of his to be thrown on the lawn and not have something to say about it.’

This recourse to his parents’ values was to guide Poitier as he encountered challenges and choices throughout his career.

 ‘I cannot play that if I’m the son of the man I believe I am. I could not play that if my mother is the mother that I think she was.’

Poitier also had to reckon with the Cold War paranoia about communism that had swept the nation in the 1950s. As a friend and admirer of the singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson, he was monitored by the authorities. When he played a tough juvenile in the school drama ‘Blackboard Jungle’ (1955), he was asked to sign a loyalty oath. He refused.

‘There are some things that you have to say ‘no’ to. My integrity was more important than to play politics.’

Poitier pressed on. In the 1958 movie ‘The Defiant Ones,’ he and Tony Curtis were cast as two escaped convicts shackled to each other and forced to cooperate in order to survive.  

Joker: You know what I mean, boy? 
Noah: Yeah. And I got a needle sticking in me right now. Joker, don't call me ‘boy’.

In the closing scene, Poitier’s character spurns an opportunity to escape on his own, so as to save his white friend. Some in the Black community felt this was a sell-out. He was to face such scrutiny throughout his career. 

Still from In The Heat of the Night - Sidney Potier and Rod Steiger

Poitier continued to take roles that dealt with race and equality. The film version of  the Lorraine Hansberry play ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ (1961) shone a light on the lives of a Black Chicago family coming to terms with issues around housing, financial opportunity and assimilation. And ‘Paris Blues’ (1961) (in which he featured alongside Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Louis Armstrong and Diahann Carroll) contrasted American racism with Paris's open acceptance of Black people.

‘Through the eyes of the average American, unfortunately, it was impossible for them to see me.’

Ultimately it was a rather sweet role that earned Poitier an Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1963’s ‘Lilies of the Field’ he starred as an itinerant worker who helps some nuns build a chapel. He was the first Black male to win the Oscar.

‘It was a turning point, truly a turning point, in a Hollywood that had chosen to articulate us, Black people, as entirely different than we were.’

As the Civil Rights struggle intensified, Poitier joined other actors on marches and in TV interviews. (They included Sammy Davis Jr, Marlon Brando, Diahann Caroll, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, Lena Horne, Paul Newman. and his great friend Harry Belafonte.) While on one voter registration initiative in Mississippi, Ku Klux Klan members tried to drive Belafonte and Poitier off the road.

‘I became interested in the Civil Rights struggle out of the necessity to survive.’

1967 was a landmark year for Poitier, as he starred in three commercially and critically successful movies. Dressed in a dark suit, crisp white shirt and narrow tie, he looked elegant, graceful, precise and composed. He sported a stern, reflective expression, which could at any moment break into a luminous smile.

In ‘To Sir, with Love’, defying the convention of the wise white mentor, Poitier played a teacher at a tough school in the East End of London. In ‘In the Heat of the Night’, he was Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia detective investigating a Mississippi murder, alongside a prejudiced police officer (Rod Steiger).

Gillespie: Virgil? That's a funny name for a n****r boy that comes from Philadelphia. What do they call you up there?
Virgil Tibbs: They call me Mister Tibbs!

‘In the Heat of the Night’ featured a scene in a hothouse where a plantation owner slaps Tibbs in the face. In the original script Tibbs was to respond by walking stoically out. Poitier demanded that his character should strike the plantation owner back. It was a slap that was heard around the world.

In the third of the three classic 1967 movies, the social drama ‘Guess Who's Coming to Dinner’, Poitier played a man in a relationship with a white woman (Katharine Houghton), who brings him home to meet her parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy). It was extremely rare for any movie at the time to depict an interracial romance. Marriage between the races had historically been illegal in most states in the US, and was still illegal in 17 states until June 1967 (six months before the film was released). 

 John: Dad, you're my father. I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.

Looking back at Poitier’s career, it’s striking how he was constantly confronted with dilemmas over roles, scripts and characterisation. Words and gestures, relationships and motivations, actions and reactions were all weighted with meaning. He was always having to judge where to draw the line.

’I think it’s all too easy for anyone not a participant in the cultural clashes of that era to unfairly dismiss films like ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,’ forgetting just how revolutionary they were in the context of their times.’

Those times were changing. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968, there were riots in cities across America. Belafonte and Poitier fell out over Belafonte’s proposal for a rally in Atlanta. Poitier thought it would be a distraction. The two didn’t talk for years.

‘It’s difficult when you’re carrying other people’s dreams. So you have to hold onto the dream that’s inside yourself, and know that if you are true to that, that’s really all that matters.’

Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte

The era of Civil Rights evolved into the era of Black Power. In the early ‘70s Black audiences chose to watch Blaxploitation movies like ‘Shaft’ and ‘Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.’ These featured tough Black protagonists in gritty urban settings; storylines with violence, sex and drugs. Poitier’s noble, besuited, idealized characters suddenly seemed less relevant.

‘Given the quickly changing social currents, there was more than a little dissatisfaction rising up against me in certain quarters of the Black community, a cultural wave that would crest when the New York Times published an article titled ‘Why Do White Folks Love Sidney Poitier So?’ According to a certain taste, I was an Uncle Tom, even a ‘house negro’, for playing roles that were non-threatening for white audiences, for playing the noble negro who fulfils white liberal fantasies.’

Poitier wanted to play more varied parts. But, as the only major actor of African descent being cast in leading roles at the time, he also felt obliged to set an example. 

‘If the fabric of the society were different, I would scream to high heaven to play villains and to deal with different images of Negro life that would be more dimensional . . . But I'll be damned if I do that at this stage of the game. Not when there is only one Negro actor working in films with any degree of consistency.’

Poitier felt trapped and isolated.

Interviewer: Did you feel that pressure?
Poitier: You can’t help but feel it. You know it’s there all the time. You know that there is a community of people watching to see if you carry a banner that they feel is close to their hearts and to determine whether you are representative of their imagery of you, whether you should be welcomed or not.
Interviewer: Was it lonely?
Poitier: Of course it was lonely. It was lonely.

Poitier played Tibbs in a couple of sequels to ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ but from this point on, he took fewer acting roles. 
 
‘I’ve climbed all the mountains I intended as an actor.’

Sidney Poitier, center, supporting the Poor People's Campaign at Resurrection City, a shantytown set up by protesters in Washington, D.C., in May 1968.
Chester Sheard / Getty Images

In 1969, along with Barbra Streisand and Paul Newman, Poitier formed First Artists Production Company, with a view to developing movie projects for themselves. He made a point of employing Black people behind the camera as well as in front of it. 

‘What we all really wanted was to be able to make movies of our choice, make them ourselves, choose the material.’

In 1972 Poitier made his directorial debut with a Western that focused on the relationship between Black Americans and Native Americans in the nineteenth century: ‘Buck and the Preacher.’ He went on to direct a series of successful comedies: ‘Uptown Saturday Night’ (1974), ‘Let's Do It Again’ (1975) , ‘A Piece of the Action (1977), ’Stir Crazy (1980).

‘The comedies that I made, we tried to design them so that the people who are going to sit there are going to see themselves in an embracing way.’

In 2002, Poitier received the Honorary Academy Award for his contribution to American cinema. Later in the ceremony, Denzel Washington won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in ‘Training Day’, becoming the second Black actor to win. In his victory speech, Washington acknowledged Poitier:

‘I'll always be chasing you, Sidney. I'll always be following in your footsteps. There's nothing I would rather do, sir.’

Poitier died in 2022, at the age of 94.

‘I truly, truly try to be a better person tomorrow than I was today. Not a better actor, but just a better human being. And when I die, I will not be afraid of having lived.’

Sidney Poitier was a man of great talent and integrity. He broke down barriers and beat a path for others to follow. As a pioneer, he was endlessly confronted with dilemmas, and forced to calibrate his decisions on his own. He was the Lonely Leader, demonstrating that a set of deeply held values can help steer a course through troubled waters. 

‘Everything I knew in terms of values, in terms of right and wrong, in terms of who I was values-wise, had to come from my parents. I was always watching them, their treatment of each other, how they cared for each other, how they behaved with their friends, how they behaved with other people in the village. And I would behave as close to that as I could. Because I would see the results of their behaviour.’

'The time has come
For closing books and long last looks must end.
And as I leave
I know that I am leaving my best friend.
A friend who taught me right from wrong,
And weak from strong.
That's a lot to learn,
What can I give you in return?
If you wanted the moon,
I would try to make a start.
But I would rather you let me give my heart.
‘To sir, with love.’’
Lulu, 'To Sir with Love'  (D Black / M London)

No. 515

Sienese Painting: ‘One Must Worship Him and Not This Wood’

Lando di Pietro, Head of Christ (Fragment of a Crucifix) (1338). Detail from Photo by Ben Davis.

I recently visited an excellent exhibition that gathers the work of four artists working in Siena in the first half of the 14th century. (‘Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350’ is at the National Gallery, London until 22 June.)

With tender expressions, intimate gestures and garments of glistening gold, Sienese painters humanised the bible stories and introduced visual storytelling to Western art. Duccio, Simone Martini and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti opened the doors to the Renaissance.

By the late 1200s Siena was thriving. Situated on the pilgrimage route between Canterbury and Rome, it was on the Silk Road and one of Europe’s first banking centres. Ruled by ‘the Nine,’ a council of officials elected every two months, it also benefitted from stable government.

In 1260, at the battle of Montaperti, a smaller Sienese army defeated that of its neighbour and rival Florence. Since the Virgin Mary was thought to have intervened on Siena’s behalf, a number of public buildings were duly built in her honour, including the striped marble cathedral, the hospital and the town hall. Siena became known as ‘The Virgin City.’

Duccio ‘The Annunciation’ 1307/8-11. Egg tempera on wood. Nationa Gallery

At the exhibition Sienese devotion to the Virgin is evident in grand altarpieces, narrative cycles and intimate objects for private contemplation. Mary shudders when she learns of her destiny from the Angel Gabriel. She holds her newborn baby to her cheek as it reaches for her veil. She is distraught on discovering her youthful, defiant son teaching in the temple. She faints at the foot of the cross as blood trickles from Christ’s wounds. She helps to lower his dead body and clasps his corpse in its tomb. She regards us with benign grace.

Dressed in shimmering silk and cloth of gold, bishops, angels, soldiers, saints and sinners act out their own dramas amid rocky landscapes and pink-walled towns. They have sculptural solidity and psychological intensity. They move and gesticulate. They show emotion. 

Everywhere we see examples of exquisite craftmanship. Sometimes the artists painted marble to suggest Christ’s tomb or the rock of the Church. Sometimes they employed sgraffito, a technique by which a top layer of paint is scratched away to reveal gold underneath. Textiles from far and wide are delicately reproduced.

Simone Martini ‘Madonna and Child’ ca. 1326

I was quite taken with a fragmented polychrome head from a crucifix made by Lando di Pietro. Once located on the church altar, the crucifix was split into pieces by Allied bombing in 1944. Inside the broken sculpture’s head, restorers found a parchment containing a prayer, the author's name and the date. The script concludes:

‘In the year of Our Lord 1337 was completed this figure in the likeness of the crucified Jesus Christ, living and true Son of God. And one must worship him and not this wood.’ 

Lando’s insistence that, though he was proud of his work, his artistry derived from a higher authority, prompted me to think of the world of commercial communication. 

Sadly, in our industry it is not uncommon to confuse the proper order of things. Sometimes, in our enthusiasm for producing the best work, we place creatives on a pedestal above our Clients and brands. It’s important occasionally to remind ourselves that, no matter the personnel or the project, the talent serves the idea, and the idea serves the brand.

Duccio ‘The Crucifixion’; the Redeemer with Angels; Saint Nicholas; Saint Gregory 1311–18

Siena’s golden age did not endure. In the late 1340s half of its population was killed by the bubonic plague. The city was subsequently conquered and absorbed into the Florentine state. Sic transit gloria mundi.

'It's not the way you smile that touched my heart.
It's not the way you kiss that tears me apart.
Many, many nights roll by.
I sit alone at home and cry over you.
What can I do?
I can't help myself.
When, baby, it's you.
Baby, it's you.’
The Shirelles, ‘Baby It’s You’ (B Williams / B Bacharach / M David)

No. 514

The Face: Not Just Words, But Pictures. Not Just Music, But Style

Sade Portrait by Jamie Morgan

I recently enjoyed an exhibition considering the story of The Face magazine. (‘Culture Shift’ is at the National Portrait Gallery, London until 18 May.)

‘Nobody worked for The Face for the money. You did it because you believed in the magazine and for the creative freedom that came with that belief.’
Chalkie Davies, Photographer

In the 1980s and ‘90s The Face provided an electrifying glimpse into the world of music, clubs and street-fashion. It presented ideas and images from the vanguard of cultural change. And it rewrote the paradigm of youth-targeted periodicals: not just words, but pictures; not just music, but style.

‘Live photos…so many of them were cliches. I didn’t want to see Roger Daltrey’s tonsils. His jacket was more interesting to me.’
Nick Logan, Founder

Nigel Shafran, Moonflowers concert on board the Thekla, Bristol, 1991

The Face was founded by Nick Logan, who had previously edited the weekly music paper the New Musical Express, and had launched the teen pop title Smash Hits.

Logan spotted an opportunity for a youth-targeted monthly style magazine with a broader range of content than the dedicated music publications. It would be more visual than the music weeklies - the so called ‘inkies’ - and more serious than the teen magazines. 

‘The premise which made The Face unique was that youth and pop culture should be treated with the sort of reverence and critical intelligence that prior to May 1980 was almost exclusively associated with the highbrow.’
Richard Benson, Editor

The first issue of The Face appeared on newsstands in May 1980, a year into Margaret Thatcher’s first premiership. Its name was inspired by ‘60s mod culture – a ‘face’ was someone who wore the right clothes, had the right haircut and taste in music. The first cover featured Jerry Dammers of The Specials.

‘I went into a bank in London in need of some cash, but didn’t have any ID and they wouldn’t cash my cheque. So I went to a newsagent, bought a copy of the first Face magazine and took it to the bank and showed it them to prove I was Jerry Dammers. They couldn’t really argue with that, and they cashed the cheque.’
Jerry Dammers, Musician 

Girls on Bikes by Elaine Constantine

Though Logan was working with modest budgets, since it was an independent publication he could offer collaborators creative freedom. And so he attracted a group of gifted, hungry young writers, designers and photographers. 

 ‘The Face in the beginning was like the Wild West. Nick had very little money. He relied on young, energetic creatives, and responded to people with enthusiasm and vision.’
Sheila Rock, Photographer

‘Everything was very collaborative. Fuelled by naivety and poverty. We were all broke and on the dole.’
Robin Derrick, Art Director

Neville Brody, the art director in the early years, had experience designing record sleeves, and quickly established a distinctive brand look: integrating hand-drawn typefaces into experimental layouts and introducing radical cover crops.

‘Interviews were never pre-structured and imagery was never pre-imagined. Ideas came from everyone. It was beautiful in that sense: there were no boundaries as to what you could contribute.’
Neville Brody, Art Director

Kate Moss by Corinne Day

As a large format magazine, using quality paper, The Face could showcase photography in a way hitherto unimagined in a music publication. 

‘Previously, the journalist was king: they had all the time and the ‘snappers’ had ten minutes at the end. The Face inverted that. The image became king… Suddenly music press photographers had space, style, respect and a glossy outlet for our best work – the kind of respect and page count that fashion photographers had enjoyed for years.’
Jill Furmanovsky, Photographer

 At the exhibition one gets a real sense of the vibrant creative culture in the early days of this entrepreneurial start-up. Photographers painted backdrops, sourced props, borrowed clothes and styled their subjects themselves. There was a buzz about the place.

‘The whole magazine was art directed, designed and sent to production in a week. It was mad. We’d do at least two or three all-nighters. Bike messengers would be waiting to rush a layout over to the printer while we were still trying to design it.’
Neville Brody, Art Director

The Face found an endless supply of creative inspiration in the booming club culture of the time, a hotbed of youthful ideas and attitudes.

‘From month to month, and then from year to year, The Face not only documented what was happening underground, but also asked if sometimes those clubs might not have bigger meanings that went beyond just drinking and dancing. The writers and editors shared two unspoken beliefs. First, that clubs are places in which the young and creative try on new ways of enjoying and expressing themselves that feel right for the times. And secondly, clubs can be the best places in which to hunt out the new music and ideas that may eventually infiltrate everyone’s everyday lives.’
Richard Benson, Editor

With success, The Face employed photographers with fashion training, who executed more ambitious stories and collaborated with dedicated stylists.

‘If a band was going to feature in The Face, then they had to do something different. They weren’t just going to be lined up for five minutes against a wall for the photograph, but had to commit to a day in the studio.’
Sheryl Garratt, Editor

‘Killer’ cover with 13-year-old Felix Howard (March 1985)

This new generation of photographers included: Corinne Day, Glen Luchford, Nigel Shafran, David Sims, Juergen Teller. Using unconventional models and real-life settings, they excelled at capturing the thrill of youth and the intoxication of style. Day’s image of 16-year-old Kate Moss, which featured on the ‘3rd Summer of Love' cover in July 1990, set her on course to stardom.

‘I’d been consciously looking for a model, someone to be the face of The Face. Someone who reflected the demographic of our readership and projected the spirit of the magazine. Seeing the girl in Corinne’s image, I knew at once I had found her. It was Kate.’
Phil Bicker, Art Director

With the arrival of new technologies, The Face’s photographers experimented in radical image manipulation. And they established a reputation for innovative celebrity portraiture. Memorably they captured Shayne, Sade and Sinead; Bjork, Kylie and Kurt; Naomi, Liam and Jarvis.

The magazine had its highest readership in the mid-‘90s, in the midst of Britpop, the Spice Girls, the Young British Artists and New Labour. And its accomplishments prompted the launch of other style titles like Blitz and iD. 

Ultimately it fell victim of its own success, as an ever more crowded marketplace became more aggressive. 

The Face story teaches a whole host of marketing lessons. It encourages us to identify opportunities in a changing market; to rewrite sector paradigms; to find fresh young talent; to locate the source of new ideas and attitudes; to build brands around culture.

‘It was the benchmark for a magazine culture of things that came up from the kids, not driven by the establishment or commercial concerns.’
Elaine Constantine Photographer 

At its best The Face was thrilling, mystifying, seductive, even to someone like me, on the outside looking in. Perhaps its final lesson is that inspiration and aspiration don’t have to be arcane and exclusive.

‘Sons of tycoons or sons of the farms,
All of the children ran from your arms.
Through fields of gold, through fields of ruin,
All of the children vanished too soon.
In towering waves, in walls of flesh,
Among dying birds trembling with death.
Sons of tycoons or sons of the farms,
All of the children ran from your arms.
So long ago: long, long, ago.’
Scott Walker, ‘Sons Of’ (E Blau / G Jouannest / J R Brel / M Shuman)

No. 513

Paule Vézelay: No One Is a Prophet in Their Own Land

Vézelay’s oil-on-canvas Growing Forms (1946)

‘Art develops. The more you think about it, the more it changes.’
Paule Vézelay

I recently visited a splendid exhibition of the work of Paule Vézelay (The RWA, Bristol until 27 April), and supplemented it by watching a compelling 1984 interview with the artist by Germaine Greer (BBC, Women of Our Century).

 ‘What is important is the work. Is it original? Is it well done? Is it good?’

Vezelay was one of the first British painters of abstract art. She created joyous works inspired by natural forms. She experimented with shadows, silhouettes, colours, curves and movement. And, above all, she conjured up ‘living lines.’

‘After much study, practice and thought, I began to hope that, whether painted or drawn, my lines were ‘living lines’… and in my most optimistic moments I was content, feeling that these lines did indeed come from my hand and my Spirit…that they were inevitable.’

Born Marjorie Watson-Williams in Bristol in 1892, the daughter of a surgeon, Vézelay studied at the Bristol School of Art and, briefly, at the Slade School of Fine Art.

‘I’d already studied in art school for two years, and I didn’t want to be treated as a beginner at the Slade. They were very old fashioned, I thought… And I was bored to death.’

Paule Vézelay, Silhouettes, 1938. Photo England & Co ©Estate of Paule Vézelay

Vézelay’s early output was figurative. She had an eye for observing people and a fascination with the theatre. All was to change when she visited Paris in 1921. She was stunned by the quality of the art she found in the galleries and suddenly England seemed terribly provincial.

‘There wasn’t anything outstanding to my mind at that time in England.’

In 1926 Vézelay moved to France on her own, to forge a new life and embark on a radical transformation of her work. Marking this new chapter, she adopted the name Paule Vézelay, ‘for purely aesthetic reasons.’

‘I’ve never pretended to be a man. Never… It certainly would have been easier for me as an artist if I had been a man.’

Vézelay dived headlong into the French capital’s artistic life. She became part of a circle that included Picasso, Matisse, Calder, Kandinsky and Miro. Abandoning figurative painting, she adopted abstraction and joined the Abstraction-Création movement. And she fell in love, with fellow artist André Masson, living and working with him for four years. Their engagement however was called off.

‘Unfortunately – or fortunately – I had reason to change my mind. And I changed it, which was very painful.’

She remained unmarried for the rest of her life.

Paule Vézelay pictured circa 1919. Photograph: Estate of Paule Vézelay/RWA

Vézelay’s art is full of floating biomorphic shapes, bright optimistic colours, airy spaces and sensuous, serpentine lines. 

‘[Curves] exist in nature and they exist in life. Why limit yourself to straight lines and angles?’

She sought to make work which lifts the spirit.

‘I dislike sad art. There’s enough real sadness in real life. I think an artist might create something joyful or happy or pleasing.’

Vézelay was always curious to try new things. She experimented with three dimensional pictures that featured threads or wires strung across the picture frame and hung in shallow boxes.

‘You’ve got to do a lot of thinking before you invent something which is rather new.’

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Vézelay moved, reluctantly, back to Bristol, where she served in the Home Guard and cared for her elderly mother. She also set about drawing bomb damaged buildings and barrage balloons (what she called ‘tough monsters’). And all the while she continued to produce abstract paintings. 

 ‘A line’s very extraordinary. It can be dark or light or curved or straight. And it can be a lively line, a dull line. But you’ve got to be able to control it with your hand, and that takes years of practice.’

After the war Vézelay had difficulty gaining recognition from England’s conservative art establishment. Nevertheless, she persisted. 

‘I start work at my easel and I know it’s bad, know it’s quite bad. But I think it’ll lead onto something better. So I go on. And I can always tear up the bad work I’ve done. It often does lead to something more complete and better. Bad work can lead to good work.’

Relief sculptures … Lines in Space No 51 (1965). Photograph: © The Estate of Paule Vézelay

In the 1950s, to supplement her modest income, Vézelay designed textiles for Metz & Co of Amsterdam and Heal's of London. 

‘I have a certain amount of faith in myself, confidence in myself.’

Vézelay exhibited occasionally and sold some of her pieces. But for the most part, not given to self-promotion, she remained outside the public eye. As Greer observed in the 1984 interview:

‘Her work is her life, and she keeps it about her as a living oyster keeps its pearl.’

In the interview we see an elderly Vézelay at home. She wears a smart silver necklace, has neat grey hair and a benign smile, listening patiently, replying precisely.

‘I like my work, strange as it may seem. I like my paintings. I like to keep them. I’m never in a hurry to sell them.’

 She emerges as a self-possessed, intelligent woman, with a steely determination to make up her own mind and forge her own path.

‘To draw a line is very difficult. It takes years before you can draw the exact line you want in the exact way, in the exact place that you want it to be.’

The story of Paule Vézelay reminds us of the Biblical aphorism: 

‘A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.’
Mark 6:4 

Sometimes we are not properly appreciated by our friends, family and colleagues. Sometimes we must leave our home, our town, our country, our workplace, in order to break free from limiting assumptions and constraining conventions; in order to establish our own way in the world.

The Tate finally gave Vézelay a retrospective exhibition in 1983. She died the following year, aged 91.  

Greer: Would you say that yours has been a happy life?

Vezelay: I don’t know what you mean by happy. I did what I wanted to do. I wasn’t obliged to go and work as a typist in an office, or as a saleswoman, or as a children’s nurse. I’ve been very fortunate.

'When you're running out
And you hear them coming like an army loud.
No time for packing,
When you're running out.
You fall to the ground
But you're holding on.
Is this called home?
Land turns to dust,
This can't be home,
Time's running out for us.’
Lucy Rose, ‘Is This Called Home?’ (L R Parton)

No. 512

Tarot: The Story Machine

Installation view, Tarot: Photo: Stephen White & Co. Courtesy The Warburg Institute

I recently saw a small but thought-provoking exhibition about the history of tarot. (‘Tarot - Origins and Afterlives’ is at the Warburg Institute, London until 30 April.)

Tarot cards originated as a recreational game in northern Italy. They have been used as a mystical means of interpreting the past and predicting the future; and as a creative tool to generate stories and interrogate social norms.

Tarot, or ‘tarocchi’, first appeared in Ferrara and Milan in the 15th century, when the Fool and 21 trumps (‘trionfi’) were added to the standard pack of four suits. Subsequently it spread to most of Europe.

In 1781 a French clergyman, scholar and Freemason, Antoine Court de Gebelin, asserted that tarot was not just a courtly card game, but a repository of arcane wisdom derived from the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth. There was no historical evidence for this. But that didn’t stop Parisian print-seller, Jean Baptiste Alliette (known as Etteilla, a reversal of his surname) from founding a society dedicated to its study. They produced their own tarot deck, the first to be explicitly designed for fortune-telling.

In the 1880s tarot was adopted in Britain by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret organisation committed to the occult. In the early twentieth century the Golden Dawn (whose number included WB Yeats and Aleister Crowley) fractured into new groups that linked spirituality to science, combining Christian mysticism with occult symbolism.

Tarot - Origin & Afterlives

The tarot characters are certainly evocative, including as they do: the Pope and Popess; the Moon, the Star and the Sun; the Juggler, Judgement and Justice; the Hermit, the Hanged Man and the House of God; the Lovers and the Fool, Death and the Devil. When one regards the cards, one can’t help imagining mysterious adventures and unexpected encounters; dates with destiny and the cruel hand of fate.

Italian writer Italo Calvino recognised that tarot cards can have value beyond predicting fortunes. As a versatile system of suggestive symbols, they are ideally suited to telling stories – about the past, the future, the self and society. His 1973 book ‘The Castle of Crossed Destinies’ featured a group of enchanted travellers who, mysteriously deprived of speech, communicate through tarot cards.

In more recent times, tarot has been adopted by countercultural and futurist movements as a prompt to envision alternative futures. At the exhibition you can see how it has been used to indicate fresh opportunities in the fields of town planning, surveillance and social justice; climate change and AI.

I confess I’m not naturally drawn to mysticism and the occult. But I did find the curious course that tarot has taken through the years fascinating. And the cards themselves are often aesthetically compelling. 

In particular, I was struck by the way that tarot has been employed as an imaginative story generator. It brought to mind the creative techniques used by the Surrealists in 1920s Paris.

We live in a world of filter bubbles, confirmation bias and conspiracy theories. Social media and the algorithm drive convergence, coherence and convention, endlessly serving up information and opinion that support a narrow, myopic view of how the world works. 

We should consider any creative tools that open us up to inspiration from the hidden, familiar and forgotten; that prompt us to consider fresh paths and perspectives - new stories for understanding contemporary complexity.

We should learn to respect the fool on the hill.

‘Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still.
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer.
But the fool on the hill sees the Sun going down,
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.’
The Beatles, ‘The Fool on the Hill’ (P McCartney, J Lennon)

No. 511

Noah Davis: Breaking the Spell

1975 by Noah Davis.Oil on canvas.
Image: Kerry McFate/Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

I recently enjoyed an excellent retrospective of the art of Noah Davis. (The Barbican Art Gallery, London until 11 May.)

‘Do I have to make it new and about hip hop and all this shit to get people interested? Or maybe there is something else?’
Noah Davis

Davis was an energetic, truly creative thinker, committed to making art accessible to all. In his work he sought to represent the normality of African American community life. His paintings of anonymous figures at rest and play, touched by the mysterious and uncanny, have a timeless, dreamlike, haunted quality. He seems to be asking us to imagine a better world. 

‘I wanted Black people to be normal. That was my whole thing. We are normal, right?’

Noah Davis, The artist is incomplete … Untitled, 2015.
Photograph: Kerry McFate/(c) The Estate of Noah Davis Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

Davis was born in Seattle in 1983, the youngest son of a lawyer and an educator. 
Having taken to painting as a teenager, his parents rented him his own studio to stop him ruining the carpets at home. He curated his first exhibition in a shopping mall.

‘I’d rather fail at painting than be successful in anything else.’

Davis studied film and conceptual art at Cooper Union, New York, leaving without graduating, so as to pursue his own education in LA. He clearly had a restless, curious mind. Employed at a specialist bookshop, he immersed himself in diverse works from art history. He bought vintage photos of Black life from flea-markets, and set up blogs in the early days of the internet. 

‘I’m fascinated with the instances where Black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide.’

Carefree children cavort in the azure open-air swimming pool, watched by a lifeguard in a red singlet. A group of young men relax by the lake. And two girls lie asleep on the cream sofa. There’s a businessman in a green jacket with a trilby hat, walking with a briefcase along the sidewalk. A teenager levitates on the front lawn, and a young lad rides a white unicorn. Karon stands in the yard in a gold leotard, with large yellow fan-wings at her sides - a contemporary Isis. 

‘I want it to be magical. I don’t want it to be stuck in reality.’

Davis was inspired by Egyptian mythology, daytime TV, historical art, modernist architecture, and photos that his mother took of Chicago in the 1970s. He was quick to paint and slow to contemplate. He rapidly applied rabbit skin glue beneath washes of diluted oil paint to give his images a vibrant sheen. And then he sat in front of his work for hours. 

‘Priorities: walker, painter, Black person, flaneur, all around wild and crazy guy, nice guy.’

The Pueblo del Rio housing project in LA, designed in part by African American architect Paul Revere Williams, was constructed in 1941 as a ‘garden city’ for Black defence workers. It subsequently became impoverished and run down. Davis reimagined how the neighbourhood could look. Ballet dancers practice their arabesques in a courtyard, musicians play by the roadside, and a man sits in sunshine with outstretched legs, engrossed in his newspaper. Images emerge from, and dissolve into, abstract streetscenes and landscapes. These are intimate everyday events, tinged with melancholy and mysticism.

‘I wanted to make anonymous moments permanent.’

Noah Davis - Isis, 2009,
Image: Courtesy ©The Estate of Noah Davis, David Zwirner, Mellon Foundation Art Collective

In 2012 Davis and his wife, fellow-artist Karon Davis, co-founded the Underground Museum on a site behind four storefronts in the historically Black neighbourhood of Arlington Heights. Their vision was to create an artspace that was free and open to all.

‘Mission Statement: To exhibit world-class art to a community that does not have access to such resources.’

Davis asked established museums to lend pieces to the new gallery, but none was forthcoming. And so he created his own versions of works by the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Don Flavin and Jeff Koons, titling the show ‘Imitation of Wealth.’ Within a few years the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA had agreed to loan art from its permanent collection. 

Noah Davis - Pueblo del Rio, Arabesque, 2014
Copyright: The Estate of Noah Davis, Courtesy THe Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

Davis teaches us to pursue our own path with gusto; to persevere and find lateral solutions. He suggests that we should integrate the real and imaginary, the ordinary and fantastical; that we should ‘break the spell’ of convention and past practice.

‘These elements of fantasy may arise from my need to ‘break the spell,’ or the constraints of art theory, and move more into the realms of mysticism.’

In 2013 Davis was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer. He carried on working from hospital beds and kitchen tables, right up until the end. He died at his home in Ojai, California in 2015. He was 32.

'When life seems full of clouds and rain
And I am full of nothin' and pain,
Who soothes my thumping, bumping brain?
Nobody.
When winter comes with snow and sleet
And me with hunger and cold feet,
Who says, "Here's twenty-five cents, go ahead and get somethin’ to eat?”
Nobody.’

Bert Williams, ‘Nobody’ (B Williams, A Rogers)

No. 510

‘Are You Together?’: Is Your Business Like a Team or a Family?

It was a busy Friday evening at the Fish Central takeaway counter. I’d made my usual order - cod, chips and mushy peas - and was waiting to one side for the fish to fry.

Next up in the queue was a track-suited man in his mid 40s.

‘Scampi and chips please, with a couple of onion rings.’ 

Behind him was a woman of a similar age, with a child alongside.

‘Just two small cod and chips for us.’

The Cypriot chap taking the orders at the till looked up at the man and woman.

‘Are you together?’

They regarded each other wearily. ‘Yes, we’re together,’ replied the track-suited man.

Then he retreated to where I was waiting by the window and muttered under his breath: ‘Just about.’

The woman could tell he’d made a sarcastic remark.

‘What’s that you said?’

‘Oh, nothing, dearest….’ 

This exchange prompted me to speculate on the nature of the family’s relationships. I imagined the couple had been an item for some time. They’d got past romantic gestures and displays of affection. They were now familiar with each other’s faults and foibles, and were enjoying subtle digs and droll remarks. The kid seemed entirely comfortable with their sharp words.

'The family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.'
Dodie Smith, Novelist and Playwright

In corporate life we often see ourselves as creating high-performance sports teams. The leadership challenge is characterised as managing a diverse set of talents and personalities; organising them to function optimally, day-in, day-out; encouraging them to work towards a single unifying goal. We promote players who excel; drop them to the bench if they’re out of form; transfer them if they don’t improve. 

This is certainly a useful way of framing the task. But I sometimes find sport analogies a little clinical, somewhat two dimensional.

Real life and real commerce are, in my experience, a good deal more messy than this.

'Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.’
Virginia Satir, Clinical Social Worker and Psychotherapist

The best businesses also have something of the family about them. The core members have enjoyed the good times and endured the bad times together. They have rolled with life’s punches, learned to accommodate each other’s shortcomings and eccentricities; to acknowledge rivalries and accept differences. The relationships are complex and varied. The conversations are frank and open. The hierarchies are arcane and mysterious. They have been bound together by emotional ties of shared experience and values that date back years. They are fiercely loyal to each other.

Of course, analogies only go so far. 

Once home, I liberated the cod and chips from its paper wrapping, poured the mushy peas to one side of the heated plate and sprinkled the dish with salt, dousing it in vinegar. Alone tonight, I dined from a tray and watched football on TV. And I washed the feast down with a glass of cold Chablis. 

‘Haven't you noticed
A breakdown in the family tie?
Just not as strong as it once was,
Every time I see it weaken, it makes me want to cry.
Oh, what a shame,
Because another home's falling apart.
Oh, what a shame,
Another group of broken hearts.
It's not a secret,
We all know that it's slipping away.
Don't let it go, no, don't you let it go.
It is the only true foundation on which we can survive.
Don't be afraid,
Because you got to take it for a stand.
Don't be afraid,
You've got to try to understand.
Bring the family back, bring it back together.
Bring the family back,
Bring the family back, bring it back together,
Together.’
Billy Paul, ‘Bring the Family Back’ (F Smith / T Phillip)

No. 509

Molly Drake: ‘I Remember Firelight and You Remember Smoke’

Molly Drake

Molly Drake was born into English middle-class privilege, endured the vicissitudes of war, raised two gifted children, and suffered terrible family trauma. She was also a remarkable poet and musician who did not publish any of her work during her lifetime. 

For her, creativity was a private pursuit; a natural articulation of her thoughts and feelings; an expression of talent that didn’t need recognition or affirmation.

‘I sometimes think when it is time to die 
I may perhaps have learnt the way to live.
I may have learnt to sift from out the grain 
The chaff of littleness that blurs my eyes,
Small worries, little thoughts and little ways,
That creeping canker of insignificance
That eat away the very heart of life
And leaves behind the dull and flaccid shell.
I live hard, and oh, I hardly live
If living is become life’s only business.
And so I go stumbling and all perplexed,
Puffed on the dreary wind of little fears,
An eddied leaf jostled upon the tide
And seeing not the tide’s magnificence.’

Molly Drake, ‘Martha’ (Poem)

Molly was born in 1915 to military parents stationed in Rangoon. Educated in England, she returned to Burma, where she met and married Rodney Drake. With the outbreak of World War 2, Rodney enlisted and Molly made the gruelling trek on foot to Delhi with her sister Nancy. In comparative safety there, she formed a musical duet with Nancy, and worked as a co-host on All India Radio. Towards the end of the war, she was reunited with her husband, and gave birth to their two children, Gabrielle and Nick.

In 1952 the Drakes moved to England, to Tanworth-in-Arden, where Molly spent the rest of her life. As well as raising her children, she composed poems and songs, and played the piano for family and friends. 

‘I never thought I was glamorous,
Nor dreamed I could inspire
Feelings that were amorous,
Red-hot flames of desire.
But now the door has opened on 
A land of milk and honey.
It’s wonderful, it’s marvellous
But Lord! It’s terribly funny.’

Molly Drake, ‘Laugh of the Year’ (Song)

Molly was quiet, shy and somewhat reclusive, and her life was in many ways typical of a woman of her era and class. It was marked by conventional milestones; sustained by the usual hopes and disappointments; encumbered by the ordinary domestic duties. And yet it also saw terrible tragedy.

Gabrielle grew up to become an actor and Nick a musician. But Nick had poor mental health, and in 1974, aged 26, he was found dead due to an overdose of antidepressants. 

Molly dealt with her grief in the old-fashioned way. She didn’t complain. She kept busy. She wrote, composed and played. She carried on.

‘But time is ever a vagabond,
Time was always a thief.
Time can steal away happiness,
But time can take away grief.
So I won’t try to remember, 
For that way leads to regret.
No, I won’t try to remember
What I can never forget.’

Molly Drake, ‘Do You Ever Remember?’ (Song)

Molly Drake and Nick shopping

With Rodney’s help, in the 1950s Molly recorded some of her songs at home on a reel-to-reel tape machine. The recordings were later re-engineered by John Wood (who had worked closely with Nick) and finally issued in 2013.

Accompanying herself on the piano, Molly sings tunefully, mournfully, in a Home Counties accent. With precise phrasing and occasionally a wry smile, she tells of mercurial love and fleeting happiness; of consoling nights and sustaining dreams. She relates stories of birds and butterflies; wild winds and summer rains; of the pain of nostalgia and forced separation; of regretful recollections and the constraints of motherhood.

I was particularly struck by one composition, ‘I Remember,’ in which Molly recounts how a couple have completely different memories of the same events.

'We tramped the open moorland in the rainy April weather,
And came upon the little inn that we had found together.
The landlord gave us toast and tea and stopped to share a joke,
And I remember firelight,
I remember firelight,
I remember firelight,
And you remember smoke.

We ran about the meadow grass with all the harebells bending,
And shaking in the summer wind the Summer never ending.
We wandered to the little stream among the river flats,
And I remember willow trees,
I remember willow trees,
I remember willow trees,
And you remember gnats.’

Molly Drake, ‘I Remember' (Song)

At the conclusion of this recording, you can just make out Rodney’s quiet approval:

‘I should think that's really good.’ 

Memory is an elusive space, sometimes crisp and clear, sometimes vague and nebulous. Rarely consistent, often disputed, it binds us together and drives us apart. Some of us view the past through rose tinted spectacles; others see it through clouds of gloom. ‘Recollections may vary.’ 

And because of all this, memory is a prime source and subject for creativity. 

'To me a poem is not a forever thing, nor the statement of long held views, but the product of a moment so suddenly and hurtingly felt that it has to burst out into words.'

Molly died in 1993 and was buried in Tanworth-in-Arden, alongside her husband and son. Early on the morning of Christmas Day 1992, her last Christmas, she had written the following stanza:

‘Amid the unceasing starts and flurries
My heart is busy at its usual game,
The manufacturing of woes and worries
Lest the serene of life should seem too tame.’



‘We strolled the Spanish marketplace at ninety in the shade,
With all the fruit and vegetables so temptingly arrayed,
And we can share a memory as every lover must,
And I remember oranges,
I remember oranges,
I remember oranges,
And you remember dust.

The autumn leaves are tumbling down and winter's almost here,
But through the Spring and Summer time we laughed away the year,
And now we can be grateful for the gift of memory,
When I remember having fun,
Two happy hearts that beat as one,
When I had thought that we were we,
But we were you and me.’

Molly Drake, ‘I Remember' (Song)

No. 508

The Sisterhood of Mickalene Thomas: Create the Right Context, Then Focus and Celebrate

Mama Bush (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of work by the African American artist Mickalene Thomas. (‘All About Love’ is at the Hayward Gallery, London until 5 May.)

‘With painting you can manipulate time, shaping how it’s perceived. It’s about exploring fantasy, illusion and the creation of desire.’
Mickalene Thomas

Thomas creates paintings, photographs, collages and installations that celebrate her family, friends and lovers. Her portraits are big, bold, colourful and confident. Conveying a very human presence with intimacy and intensity, they stop us in our tracks, hold us in their gaze.

‘To see yourself, and for others to see you, is a form of validation. I’m interested in that very mysterious and mystical way we relate to each other in the world.’

Born in 1971, in Camden, New Jersey, Thomas was raised by her mother, a former fashion model, who enrolled her in after-school art lessons at the Newark Museum. 

‘It all began as a young child, when I recognised beauty and desire by the way the world responded to my mother’s beauty. My understanding of the complexity of desire began with how I perceived myself in relation to my mother. I became mindful of a desire to be the woman that she hoped I would be.’

As a teenager, Thomas moved to Portland, Oregon, and she subsequently studied at the Pratt Institute and Yale School of Art. She developed a particular interest in creating large-scale depictions of Black women. 

‘I grew up with a lot of brothers, and I don’t have any sisters, so for me it’s really important to develop my sisterhood. It’s something I’ve always coveted.’

Painting in oil, acrylic and enamel, sometimes employing collaged black and white photos to add a touch of realism, Thomas inlays her work with multi-coloured rhinestones. Her subjects, dressed in vibrant, glamorous clothes and located in bright domestic contexts, are in repose, relaxed, at leisure. They regard us directly, with assured stares, seeming both self-possessed and vulnerable.

‘The love we make in community stays with us wherever we go.’

Often the poses and compositions echo the works of historical European painters - Ingres, Courbet, Manet, Monet – as Thomas seeks to reclaim art from its traditional white male perspective.

‘My work is rooted in self-discovery, celebration, joy, sensuality, and a need to see positive images of Black women in the world.’

Mickalene Thomas, Afro Goddess Looking Forward, 2015,
Rhinestones, acrylic, and oil on wood panel, 60 x 96 in (152.4 x 243.8 cm)

I was impressed by Thomas’ process. 

She first photographs her subjects in bespoke sets built in her Brooklyn studio. These interiors, draped with vividly patterned textiles, suggest warmth, security, the comfort of home. 

‘I created domestic settings primarily for fellow Black women – my muses – to spend time and have new experiences in familiar surroundings, perhaps resembling their mother’s or grandmother’s living rooms.’

At the exhibition you can see a couple of Thomas’ living room installations, recalled from her own childhood: mirror walls, thick carpet, Tiffany lamp and pot plants; Donna Summer and Diana Ross LPs leaning against the music centre. She seems to be suggesting that our identity is shaped by the spaces we inhabit, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to.

Having put her sitters at their ease, Thomas then finds deeply personal connections with them. She focuses on who they truly are, celebrates them, elevates them. 

‘Beauty has always been an element of discussion for Black women, whether or not we’re the ones having the conversation.’

In the world of commercial communication, we may recognise this approach: settle on the right environment; create an appropriate context; locate the brand in its own world. Then focus on, and amplify, its truth.

‘I define my work as a feminist act and a political act because I’m Black and a woman. You don’t necessarily have to claim that, but the act of making art itself is a political and feminist act when you’re a woman.’

There’s much to see at the exhibition beyond Thomas’ portraiture. I was particularly taken with a video piece inspired by Eartha Kitt’s 1953 song, ‘Angelitos Negros.’ The artist reimagines original footage of Kitt singing, combining it with images of herself. The lyrics ask why religious painters of the past filled the heavens exclusively with white figures. 

It’s an absence Thomas seeks to address. She paints her own Black angels. 

'Painters painting saints in church,
How do you know that God is white?
Painter, if you paint with love,
Paint me some Black angels now.
For good Blacks in Heaven,
Painter, show us that you care.
Paint me some Black angels now.
Paint me some Black angels now.’

Eartha Kitt, 'Angelitos Negros’ (Translation) (M Maciste, A Blanco)

No. 507