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

The Summer Trousers: A Lesson in Salesmanship from a Traditional Tradesman

I have always struggled with Summer Trousers. 
 
Whenever I buy a pair, they tend to be too loose, too light or too tight; too crinkly or too creasy. They end up lurking at the back of my wardrobe - rejected, forgotten, unloved.
 
Nonetheless, with the return of warm weather, I resolved to have another go, this time visiting the place where I buy my suits, the traditional outfitters Cordings of Piccadilly. 
 
On descending the carpeted stairs to the Men’s Department, I found a rack of trousers in a range of fabrics. There was corduroy, cotton and linen; moleskin, twill and chino –  and in a host of colours. It was quite bewildering. 
 
I decided to try on a ‘summer gabardine’, as it was signalling its seasonal appropriateness. Navy, just to be safe.
 
As I stood examining myself in the full-length mirror, still unsure about my selection, I was approached by a Mature Assistant, smartly dressed in a suit and tie, his hair slicked back with pomade. 
 
‘Can I pin you up, Sir?’ 
 
‘Yes, absolutely. And while you’re at it, can you just tell me a little about this particular pair of trousers.’
 
As the dapper man set about the hems, he addressed me, polite and self-possessed, in a soft Cockney accent. 
 
‘What you have here, Sir, is a summer gabardine. A lighter, functional, more technical fabric. Just right for the warmer months. It contains 2% elastane, which makes it crease less than cotton or linen. It’s more durable really. Retains its shape. An excellent choice if I may say so, Sir. I have a couple of pairs myself.’
 
I found this description entirely reassuring. I’d clearly chosen well.
 
‘Excellent. Yes, I think I’ll have these please. And actually I’ll also take a pair in khaki.’ 
 
You can learn a good deal about salesmanship by paying attention to traditional tradespeople. The Mature Assistant had gently bolstered my confidence and supplied me with a rationale. He made me feel like I was making an informed, intelligent choice.
 
Finally, as he was making out the docket to have my Summer Trousers adjusted, the Mature Assistant looked up at me.
 
‘If I may ask, Sir, what shoes will you be wearing with these trousers?’
 
‘Well, I guess just a pair of brogues.’ I replied hesitantly.
 
He wasn’t convinced.
 
‘That’s right, Sir. Loafers.’
 
 
'When he said,
When he said,
That he liked my cut of hair,
I became a barber.
When he said,
When he said,
That my scent was eau de fleur,
I became a perfumer.
When he said,
When he said,
That he liked the clothes I wore,
I became a tailor.’
Anaïs Mitchell, ‘Tailor'

No 581

Art Deco Tube Posters: The Legacy of a Visionary Client

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of art deco posters commissioned by London Transport in the 1920s and ‘30s. (London Transport Museum, London, until May 2027)

Art deco, the movement characterised by clean lines, clear geometry and bold colours, flourished between the First and Second World Wars throughout Europe and the US. (It was given the art deco label retrospectively, in 1966.) The style influenced the design of architecture, automobiles and shipping; fashion, furniture and lighting. And the simplified aesthetic also lent itself particularly to print advertising.

Over this period London Transport put up many and varied art deco posters - on vehicles, on bus stops and in tube stations. At a time when leisure was becoming more important, with new public holidays and paid annual leave, the campaigns promoted the glamour of modern life, accessible to all on bus, tram and underground services.

‘Hear, see, smell, touch and taste the riches of London.’

Visit the Zoo, Hampton Court or Kew Gardens. Take in the Winter Sales. A day trip to Southend perhaps? Or Wimbledon, Ascot, Lords? Why not watch the Boat Race, see the Motor Show or attend the Aldershot Tattoo? Join the glamorous theatregoers descending the escalators in their elegant coats and hats. Journey to the outskirts of the city to breathe fresh air.

‘Kenwood, cleaned and swept by the winds.’ 
‘Dark bluebells drench’d with dews of summer eves.’
‘It’s Crocus Time.’ ‘Daffodils are blooming.’

Posters also reminded Londoners of the tube’s speed and comfort, encouraged them to buy special fares and to fill empty seats outside rush hour. 

‘Avoid the wet.’
‘Season tickets save trouble.’ 
‘Shop between 10 and 4, the quiet hours.’

The art direction was often exquisite. Strong, angular, minimal images, sleek and stylised, with vivid colours and sweeping curves. 

What lay behind such a consistently impressive body of work? Well, first and foremost, a visionary client.

From 1908 to 1940 Frank Pick oversaw London Transport publicity, and he was appointed its first Chief Executive in 1933. Though he had been trained as a lawyer and had no particular creative education, he was committed to good design, believing it could enrich the quality of urban life.

'The test of the goodness of a thing is its fitness for use. If it fails on this first test, no amount of ornamentation or finish will make it any better; it will only make it more expensive, more foolish.’
Frank Pick

Pick commissioned the calligrapher Edward Johnston to design London Underground’s official sans serif typeface, known today simply as Johnston. He oversaw the development of the underground logo into the now world-famous roundel. And as the tube network expanded, he hired architect Charles Holden to design new station buildings in a modern, elegantly functional, style. Highlights included Piccadilly Circus, with its wide, circular, subterranean ticket hall; the Underground's new headquarters in St James's, with its sculptures of Day and Night by Jacob Epstein; the new Piccadilly line stations, with their geometric forms, flat rooves and high windows; Gants Hill underground, inspired by the Moscow Metro.

Pick had an eye for detail, and his passion for good design extended to new bus stops and shelters; to station furniture, lampshades and seating upholstery (known as moquette). Though at first sceptical, he signed off Harry Beck’s innovative diagrammatic tube map.

Pick introduced a consistent approach to advertising at stations, standardising poster sizes, limiting their number and controlling their positioning. And when he commissioned new ads, he identified artists working in modernist styles.

'There is room in posters for all styles… They are the most eclectic form of art.’

Pick was by no means perfect. He was a shy, moralistic, sometimes arrogant, loner, who was difficult to work with and reluctant to delegate.

'I have always kept in mind my own frailties – a short temper. Impatience with fools, quickness rather than thoroughness. I am a bad hand at the gracious word or casual congratulation.’

Nonetheless, I’m sure any creative practitioner today would accept such character shortcomings as a small price to pay for such an ambitious, progressive, far-sighted client.

Pick, who refused offers of a knighthood and peerage, died at home in Hampstead shortly after his retirement in 1941. Looking back on his achievements, in 1968 the historian Nikolaus Pevsner wrote:

‘He was the greatest patron of the arts whom this century has so far produced in England, and indeed the ideal patron of our age.’

'The distant echo -
Of faraway voices boarding faraway trains,
To take them home to
The ones that they love and who love them forever.
The glazed, dirty steps - repeat my own and reflect my thoughts.
Cold and uninviting, partially naked,
Except for toffee wrappers and this morning's paper,
Mr. Jones got run down
Headlines of death and sorrow - they tell of tomorrow
Madmen on the rampage.
And I'm down in the tube station at midnight.'
The Jam, 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight’ (P Weller)

No. 580

Barbara Hepworth: Searching for ‘Forms and Rhythms and Curvatures for My Own Satisfaction’

Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Eidos, 1947, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Photo: Predrag Cancar / NGV. Image courtesy National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

I enjoyed a small exhibition of the work of sculptor Barbara Hepworth at the Courtauld Gallery, London. (‘Hepworth in Colour’ runs until 6 September.)

'My works are an imitation of my own past and present.'
Barbara Hepworth

Born in Wakefield in 1903, Hepworth studied at the Royal College of Art, and afterwards in Florence and Rome, learning the Italian tradition of direct stone carving. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, she and her husband, the artist Ben Nicholson, left London with their young children, for St Ives in Cornwall. It was here that she properly explored what she called ‘the particular tensions and relationships of form and colour.’

‘I actually think I have discovered how to use both [colour and form] together to achieve a new power and experience, and I have discovered certain laws. I don’t think anybody has done it before.’

Barbara Hepworth, Sculpture With Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red, 1943.

Working in plaster, wood and stone, Hepworth experimented with geometric shapes - spheres, cylinders and cones; arcs and axes; lozenges, ovals and parabolas. She polished her pieces to a sheen, pierced and hollowed them, revealing inner surfaces that - inspired by the sea and sky, the light and atmosphere of the Cornish coast - she painted deep and pale blue, intense sunny yellow and vibrant grassy green. Occasionally she added taut strings in different colours as accents.

‘The colour in the concavities plunged me into the depths of water, caves, or shallows deeper than the carved concavities themselves.’

Pure forms, with refined surfaces and enfolding curves, Hepworth’s sculptures perhaps suggest cells, seeds and acorns; wombs; planetary and crystalline shapes. They create what she described as ‘the sense of being curled up in the shelter of sunlit cliffs.’ They have a serene beauty.

Barbara Hepworth

At the show, you can see 18 of Hepworth’s sculptures, and also 26 drawings and paintings - what she termed ‘sculptures in disguise’ - where she worked through her ideas.

‘I spend whole periods of time entirely in drawing (or painting as I use colour) when I search for forms and rhythms and curvatures for my own satisfaction.’

Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Drawing for Sculpture with Colour (Forms with Red and Blue), 1941, pencil and gouache on paper-covered board.

This language prompted me to reflect on the world of marketing. Whilst we are often offered martial and mechanical metaphors to articulate brand building, I have found it helpful to think of our core task as something more organic and emotive: creating meaningful patterns; setting a seductive beat; designing a compelling cadence that swings and tilts and cascades. Indeed, one could say ‘searching for forms and rhythms and curvatures.’ Brand building is not a science, rigid and fixed. It is a natural, fluid, creative endeavour, requiring fundamentally human qualities of instinct, taste and judgement.

Hepworth was not given to self-promotion and she was often misinterpreted. Critics sometimes felt her work was too cool, and credited her innovations to Henry Moore. While recognising her mastery of form, they seldom celebrated her use of colour. 

‘My colour has been accepted, but never understood.’

This exhibition goes some way to rectifying that error.

'Walking in rhythm,
Moving in sound.
Humming to the music,
Trying to move on.
I'm walking in rhythm,
Singing my song,
Thinking about my baby,
Trying to get home.’
The Blackbyrds, 'Walking in Rhythm’ (B Perry) 

No. 579

Surviving the Three-Day Week: We Must Accept Our Own Responsibility for the Future

Women in the office of a duvet manufacturing firm use quilts to keep themselves warm while they workPhotograph: Evening Standard/Getty

As a child growing up in the early 1970s, I enjoyed the bold fashions and vibrant music; the flamboyant footie and fabulous TV. 

But I was also aware that the United Kingdom had been laid low.

The news was filled with pay disputes and poor inflation figures; with reports about unemployment, updates on the Troubles. And, in the midst of a global oil crisis, the miners went on strike for higher wages. 

In December 1973, Prime Minister Ted Heath announced that, from 1 January, commercial consumption of electricity would be limited to three days per week. Only essential services like hospitals, supermarkets and printing presses were exempt. 
 
During the Three-Day Week, TV channels stopped broadcasting at 10-30 every night;
streetlights were periodically turned off; homes, shops and classrooms were plunged into darkness; people wrapped themselves in blankets and worked by paraffin lamp.
 
At 125 Heath Park Road, my mother determined to turn lemons into lemonade. She gathered her kids round the flickering coal fire to eat cheese-on-toast and sip milky coffee. She had us playing Cluedo and canasta by candlelight. And then we settled down to listen to Dr Finlay’s Casebook on the transistor radio.
 
‘Another cup of tea, Janet?’
 
It was all rather romantic.

'Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.'
Sigmund Freud
 
I read recently in The Times about a study into the impact of a belief in free will on one’s wellbeing. (Rhys Blakely, June 15 2026)
 
In the research, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, a thousand adults were divided into two groups. One group read material that defended the idea that we are masters of our own fate; the other read texts that challenged that notion.
 
Everybody was then asked, considering their own lives, to say how happy they were on a scale from one (I’m very miserable) to seven (I couldn’t be happier). Those who had been encouraged towards a belief in free will, averaged 5.2; whilst those who had not, averaged 3.3. 
 
The authors, led by Dr Kathi Diel of Saarland University, suggested that ‘seeing oneself as a free and responsible agent’ is an important, and perhaps underappreciated, factor in everyday happiness.
 
We often think of ourselves as victims of circumstance, tossed on the waves of misfortune. In the world of work, buffeted by bad luck, it’s easy to slip into passivity and inertia, a slough of despond. But there’s nothing to be gained by wallowing in self-pity and allocating blame. The only way out is through. And we would be wise to embrace agency and autonomy; to concentrate on what we can control - our future.

'Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.'
John F Kennedy

The upheaval of early 1974 precipitated a general election. The Heath government lost power, the incoming administration reached a settlement with the miners, and by March the Three-Day Week had come to an end. 
 
Curiously, I don’t recall my father being part of the sentimental fireside scene. I think he managed to find a pub that was still serving pints in the darkness. He too had resolved to be master of his own destiny.
 
 
'Goodbye to you, my trusted friend.
We've known each other since we were nine or ten.
Together we've climbed hills and trees,
Learned of love and ABCs,
Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees.
Goodbye my friend, it's hard to die,
When all the birds are singing in the sky.
Now that the spring is in the air,
Pretty girls are everywhere,
Think of me and I'll be there.
We had joy, we had fun,
We had seasons in the sun.
But the hills that we climbed,
Were just seasons out of time.’
Terry Jacks, 'Seasons in the Sun’ (J Brel)

No. 578