An Ideal Husband: ‘One’s Past Is What One Is’

I recently enjoyed a production of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play ‘An Ideal Husband.’ (Bristol Old Vic, until 20 June)

Lord Goring: I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be understood.
 
As one would expect with Wilde, the work is rich with the fizz and froth of aristocratic society; with witty conversations about buttonholes, bonnets and marriage proposals; with the bons mots of the beau monde.
 
Lady Chiltern: Oh I love London society!...It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics.
 
But at the heart of the play is a serious narrative about blackmail and corruption, a plot that considers themes of public and private morality; truth and trust within relationships; the intrusion of the past into present day life.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: I wanted my success when I was young. Youth is the time for success. I couldn’t wait.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern, a hard-working, highly respected MP and junior government minister, is visited by Mrs Cheveley, mysterious and glamorous, cunning and quick witted.
 
Mrs Cheveley: Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
 
Mrs Cheveley has invested heavily in a scheme to build a canal in Argentina. However, Sir Robert believes it to be ‘a commonplace Stock Exchange swindle,’ and plans to present a report to that effect to Parliament the following day.
 

Chiké Okonkwo and Jamael Westman in ‘An Ideal Husband’ © Helen Murray

Mrs Cheveley: One should always play fairly…when one has the winning cards.
 
Mrs Cheveley has learned that Sir Robert, in his youth, was involved in insider trading on another canal project. He revealed a cabinet secret to her late mentor and lover, which enabled the rogue to buy shares in the Suez Canal Company three days before the Government announced its purchase. Sir Robert's payoff became the basis for his present fortune, and Mrs Cheveley has a letter as proof of his crime. 
 
Mrs Cheveley: My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am.
 
Mrs Cheveley’s price is more than money. It is Sir Robert’s reputation.

Mrs Cheveley: Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

She demands that Sir Robert withdraw the critical report about the Argentine venture, and state in the House that he believes the enterprise will be of great international value.
 
Mrs Cheveley: A few ordinary platitudes will do. In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude.
 
Sir Robert seeks the counsel of his wife. But, concerned that her love for him is founded on her belief in his rock-solid integrity, he cannot reveal the whole truth. And so he ties himself in knots.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: Public and private life are different things. They have different laws, and move on different lines… Truth is a very complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life, one has to compromise. Everyone does… I am not changed. But circumstances alter things.
 
Lady Chiltern is unimpressed.
 
Lady Chiltern: Circumstances should never alter principles.
 
Sir Robert tries again. 
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: It was a question of rational compromise. It is no more than that.
 
This prompts the response he most feared.
 
Lady Chiltern: Oh! Don’t kill my love for you, don’t kill that!
 
Distraught, Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring. ‘A flawless dandy’ and ‘the idlest man in London,’ Goring does not initially come across as a man for a crisis.
 
Lord Goring: I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
 
Surprisingly, however, Lord Goring reveals himself to be a sympathetic listener and a practical ally.
 
Lord Goring: The English can’t stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong.
 
This time Sir Robert argues that his misdemeanour occurred a very long time ago, and he has in any case given greatly to charity since.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: Do you think what I did nearly eighteen years ago should be brought up against me now? Do you think it fair that a man’s whole career should be ruined for a fault done in his boyhood almost?
 
We may recognise in Sir Robert’s mental gymnastics some of our own attempts to legitimize our actions when we are in the wrong: work operates by different rules; life is about compromise; the end justifies the means; it happened many years ago; times change; it was a victimless crime.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: And, after all, whom did I wrong by what I did? No one.
Lord Goring: Except yourself, Robert.
 
When we are at fault, we resort to casuistry; we lie to ourselves; we create self-justifying narratives. But in time, our faults find us out.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat.
 
The themes in ‘An Ideal Husband’ are particularly pertinent to young people. At the start of our careers, in a hurry to get on, we may be more reckless. We may compromise and cut corners. We may make bad choices.
 
We need to understand that old sins cast long shadows. The past always catches up with us. Indeed, the past makes the present.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: No one should be entirely judged by their past.
Lady Chiltern: One’s past is what one is. It is the only was by which people should be judged.
 
 
'What can I say, dear, after I say I'm sorry?
What can I do to prove it to you, that I'm sorry?
I didn't mean to ever be mean to you.
If I didn't care, I wouldn't feel like I do.
I was all wrong, but right or wrong, I don't blame you.
Why should I take somebody like you and shame you?
I know that I made you cry, but I'm so sorry dear.
What can I say, dear, after I say I'm sorry?’
Dinah Washington, '(What Can I Say) After I Say I'm Sorry?’ (W Donaldson, A Lyman)

No. 573

Strategic Fashion: Could the 20-Year-Rule Apply to Brand and Communication Planning?

Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980), Portrait of Mrs. Rufus Bush

I’m not fashionable, but I’m interested in fashion.

I like to read about skinny jeans, white jeans, barrel leg and baggy jeans; about rich neutrals, microbuns, bixies and man brooches. I like to consider bold pops, polka dots and pointelle fabric; French tuck collars, scelts and tomato red. I like to discover that they’re channelling Marie Antoinette and Diane Keaton, JFK Jnr and Carolyn Bessette; to learn that sandwich dressing is where you contrast a middle layer between two matching elements.

A while ago, I read in The Times (Rhys Blakely, 17 March 2026) that researchers have found evidence to substantiate the long-held fashion principle that trends follow a cycle of approximately two decades.

A study by mathematicians at Northwestern University in the United States examined nearly 160 years’ worth of women’s clothing records, scrutinizing databases of tens of thousands of garments, design drawings and archive images. In particular, it focused on the rise and fall of hemlines.

Employing a spectral analysis technique, the academics discovered repeating wave patterns of style, recurring on a timescale of roughly 20 years. For example, the shorter dresses of 1920s flappers gave way to longer hems in the 1930s, only for hems to rise again in the 1940s, and again in the 1960s with the miniskirt.

According to the research, designers’ and consumers’ desire to stand out – a little, but not too much - from popular conventions, creates a ‘cultural pendulum.’

‘Over time, this constant push to be different from the recent past causes styles to swing back and forth. The system intrinsically wants to oscillate, and we see those cycles in the data.’
Daniel Abrams, professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics, Northwestern University 

We tend to regard the world of brand and communication planning as one of steady progress; of evolutionary learning; of gradual ascent towards superior practices and techniques.

But what if strategy is also subject to fashion? What if the 20-year-rule applies to planning?

I seem to recall that, two decades or so ago, deep in the mists of time, we were concerned with user values and usage occasions; with KPIs, USPs and SWOT analyses; with brand personification, cognitive dissonance and calls-to-action. There was some weird stuff about Greek gods. And we created temples, lighthouses, pyramids and stadia; eggs and onions; task-based briefs, chords, conveyer belts and yin yang charts. (Source: Mintel)

Are some of these approaches relevant now? Could they be revived and rebooted? Could they be the mullet of modern strategy, returning to centre stage in a blaze of glory? Or are they destined to remain forever out in the cold, like pleather chaps and platform trainers; sweatbands, leg warmers and fascinators?

'She's the face on the radio.
She's the body on the morning show.
She's there shaking it out on the scene.
She's the colour of a magazine.
And she's in fashion.
She's in fashion.
She's employed where the sun don't set.
And she's the shape of a cigarette.
And she's the shake of a tambourine.
And she's the colour of a magazine.
And she's in fashion
And she's in fashion.’
Suede, ‘She’s in Fashion’ (B L Anderson, N J Codling)

No. 572

Hurvin Anderson: Identity and Belonging, Memory as Mood, Landscapes Haunted by History

Hurvin Anderson - Grace Jones (2020): an air of fading memories
(Image credit: Hurvin Anderson / The Thomas Dane Gallery / Richard Ivey)

I very much enjoyed an exhibition of the work of Hurvin Anderson. (Tate Britain, London until 23 August)

‘In order to observe, for me at least, I have to sit slightly outside of things. Perhaps this is my natural position.’
Hurvin Anderson

Anderson was born in 1965, to Jamaican parents, in Handsworth, Birmingham. In the early 1990s, he moved to London, studying at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art. 

 ‘I am the youngest of eight siblings. All my elder siblings were born in Jamaica, while I was born in the UK. For me, this has always created a tension and raised lots of questions.’

Hurvin Anderson - Audition
© Hurvin Anderson

Anderson began painting from found photos of family and friends. We see him as a child standing outside a pub with his father. We see his mates looking forlorn as their football is lost in the lake. Here are the trees that he climbed; the Banqueting Palace that he passed on his walk home from school. Here are the municipal swimming baths; the homes with patterned wallpaper and display cabinets for picture frames and china. 

 ‘What I do, it's about questioning my history, my place.’

Anderson returns repeatedly to the same images, each time making subtle adjustments: Mrs Keita in her floral dress and patent leather boots, a hand resting gently on the television set; the reassuring intimacy of the barbershop, its counters cluttered with assorted brushes, clippers and cologne, its walls pinned with pictures of heroes from the Civil Rights struggle.

 ‘Fade. Flat top. High top. Side part. Trim shave. Skiffle.’

Hurvin Anderson - Peter's Sitters II, 2009.
Image courtesy © Hurvin Anderson and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Catharine Wharf

Some of Anderson’s characters are painted in black and white, reflecting their source photographs. The faces tend to be blurred, implying the fuzzy indistinctness of recollection. And the artist mixes remembrance with imagination. Time dissolves, distance disintegrates. His sister Bev sits alongside her younger self. His brother picks apples in an English orchard, but in the background we observe the shadows of a mango tree – he is torn between two cultures. 

Visiting the Caribbean, Anderson grapples with his own identity: his sense of being at once an insider and an outsider.

‘My struggle with Jamaica: I don’t know it and I know it. I have this romantic vision of it and a lot of my painting is fighting that romance.’

Hurvin Anderson - Hawksbill Bay, 2020.
Tate Lent by Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of Mala Gaonkar 2023. © Hurvin Anderson. Courtesy the artist and VeneKlasen.

With precise brushwork, Anderson depicts dense, green-black foliage dropping dramatically towards the ocean. Figures gather on the citrus-yellow sand as a white wave breaks. A girl descends the hotel steps, in a pink dress that is striped blue, green and orange. We are bathed in colour and light.

But behind the languorous landscapes lies a history of colonial oppression. The atmosphere can be dark and ominous. The ravishing scarlet flowers at the roadside are from the shrub Ashanti Blood, recalling a brutally suppressed slave rebellion. And still today beautiful beaches are shut away behind wrought iron fences, luxurious apartments protected by exclusive security grilles. 

‘Painting, like most things, is a contradiction.’

Anderson teaches creative people to reflect on their identity - who am I? who are we?; to think of memory as mood - emotional, imprecise and unreliable, layered and dreamlike; to consider landscapes as haunted by history, veiled in the past.

In a number of Anderson’s Caribbean works, we see half-built and ruined buildings overcome by lush, towering vegetation.  All the while, nature is quietly reclaiming the land; covering up the memories; erasing the pain.

'Your love is a life for I.
Realized that so much,
When I first met you.
That was some time ago, 
From then until this.
Resist, no, no, no, close to you, see.
Oh, yes, right from the start,
Oh, no, no, no, could never part.
Oh, I hear from that thought, 
I wanna live in your house.
I wanna live in your house.’

Steel Pulse, ‘Your House’ (G Ballard, A Morissette)

No. 571

Konrad Magi: Sometimes Sad People See Beauty Differently

Konrad Magi - Norwegian Landscape

I recently enjoyed a trip down to Dulwich to see an exhibition of the work of Estonian artist Konrad Magi. (Dulwich Picture Gallery until 12 July)

Born in 1878 in rural southern Estonia, Magi spent his early adulthood working as a carver in a furniture factory. Argumentative, with left wing and anarchist sympathies, he suffered from poor mental health. Developing an interest in painting in his mid-twenties, he took some classes, but was largely self-taught. He travelled to Saint Petersburg, Finland and Paris, often in poverty and despair, complaining of the cold. 

The Parisian art scene didn’t impress Magi much. In 1907, on visiting a large show of contemporary work, he wrote:

‘I expected a lot, but got very little out of it, because not everything that is so much talked about and praised is good…It was boring to walk through those halls and look at all the hideousness and repulsiveness.’

Konrad Mägi - Portrait of a Lady (Klaara Holst), 1916, Oil on canvas, Art Museum of Estonia.

Magi found his artistic footing on a two-year stay in Norway. Inspired by the drama of the landscapes, he painted forest fringes, lakes and low mountains; watermills, distant towns and quiet hamlets - always using rich, vivid colours.

‘I am a son of the north, and everything that I am is but a fraction of its population and wilderness.’

Still desperately short of cash, Magi survived in Norway on blueberries foraged from the forest. His fortunes improved somewhat when he settled in Tartu in eastern Estonia, and took portrait commissions. 

Magi’s smartly dressed subjects seem gracefully sad, their skin pallid with shades of green and yellow, their large eyes staring mournfully down or into the distance. Perhaps the artist was endeavouring to convey his sitters’ inner feelings through their outward appearance. But these images also suggest his own enduring depression.

‘There is a dark melancholy inside me which I cannot seem to shake…I feel this endless discontent.’

In the summers of 1913 and ‘14, Magi visited the Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Vilsandi, still troubled by anxiety, and seeking out the mud baths to soothe his aching joints.

‘The air and mud have a divine effect on the nerves.’

Konrad Mägi - Landscape with a Red Cloud

It was here that Magi painted the landscapes for which he is best known. Experimenting in many modernist styles, he often applied dabs of paint in a kind of unruly pointillism. 

Remote tracks wind through quilted fields and across undulating hills. Pines swoon on the edge of azure lakes under restless skies. A lighthouse looms on the horizon. In the foreground rocky crags, unpeopled shingle beaches, wind-stunted trees. We see sinuous, organic, otherworldly forms; intense electric blues, deep emerald greens, brooding bright oranges.

‘Art is the only way out. At the moment when the soul is filled with life’s eternal suffering, art provides us with that which life cannot offer.’

Magi’s pictures suggest silent stillness, pastoral peace. One can’t escape the irony that a man cursed with such inner turmoil, found calm and tranquillity in the natural world around him, and conveyed it with such sensitivity. Sometimes sad people see beauty differently.

Konrad Mägi - Norwegian Landscape - Bog Landscape

In the sphere of commercial creativity, we set great store by optimism and positivity. But the truth is that many gifted practitioners are sombre souls, given to bleak perspectives and despondent observations. In my experience, some of the funniest lines were written by gloomy copywriters; some of the most elegant layouts were drawn by unkempt art directors; some of the most uplifting ideas were conceived by downbeat pessimists.

The challenge for anyone overseeing a creative business is to nurture a coherent, vigorous, confident culture, whilst also accommodating individuality, diversity and eccentricity; supporting cynics and sceptics, mavericks and melancholics.

Magi returned to Tartu, making occasional trips to Italy and summering in south Estonia. Gaining public recognition for his landscapes, he taught painting and founded an art school. However, with deteriorating health and growing depression, in 1924 he was treated at a sanatorium in Germany. Back in Tartu the following year, he began destroying his work. Some of his students intervened, taking him to a psychiatric hospital, where his condition declined irreversibly. He died aged 46 in 1925.

'Time has told me
You're a rare, rare find.
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.
And time has told me
Not to ask for more.
Someday our ocean
Will find its shore.’
Nick Drake, ’Time Has Told Me'

No. 570

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye: The Mindful Company

Leonard Daniels (1909–1998) - A British Restaurant at Winchester
© Southampton City Art Gallery

The voicemail that morning was brisk and businesslike: 

‘We’re looking forward to seeing you for lunch today. Please call to confirm the reservation. And be aware that we need the table back at 2-30.’

I called to confirm. 

‘That’s great,’ came the reply from the polite young man. ’We need the table back at 2-30.’

I arrived for lunch and was shown my place. 

‘Still or sparkling water, sir?’ 
‘Tap please.’
‘You do know you need to be finished by 2-30?’
‘Yes… Shall I just order a dessert and get out of your way?’

This exchange brought to mind the transience of contemporary life. 

The world is spinning faster. Things are over before they've started. And our accelerated culture inevitably causes stress and anxiety. We’re always worried about missing out, concerned about what’s happening elsewhere. What’s next, who’s next, where next? It’s hard to pause and reflect, to enjoy the moment. It’s even more difficult to plan for the future. 

The challenges of this accelerated culture impact the world of work too.

We live in an era of freelance and independent contractors; of ‘plug-in, plug-out’; of side hustles and the gig economy; of endless restructuring and reorganization; of periodic lay-offs and AI prompted redundancies. The cycle of employment is rotating faster, the turnover of staff is whirling quicker. Contemporary careers are fluid and flexible, polymorphous and plural. What’s in it for me? I’m at capacity right now. I’m jobscrolling, I’m jobhugging, I’m quiet quitting…

There’s also a revolving door of CEOs, a conveyor belt of senior management. Each has a unique vision and an inspiring purpose, a pressing and urgent agenda. They’re looking for a quick turnaround, preparing for a swift sale, planning to flip the business.

‘We’re interested in the long term, but only if you can deliver in the short term.’

No revelation perhaps that, in this climate, colleagues and clients are often looking over your shoulder for a more compelling conversation, a more interesting opportunity. No surprise that their eyes glaze over when you talk about abiding relationships and enduring loyalty.

‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ 
‘Somewhere else, clearly.’

We have been raised to believe that responsible brand stewards look to the long-term, to the future horizon. We have been taught that careers and relationships are built over time. But we also need to recognise that our customers’ and colleagues’ priorities reside in the present.

My limited understanding of mindfulness is that it asks us to set aside nostalgic longings for the past and fanciful hopes for the future; to ignore events and conversations that are occurring with other people in parallel places; to experience life in the here and now. It thereby addresses depression and anxiety. 

So, consider the Mindful Company: one that conducts business in the moment, in the present, with the best resources that are currently available. It would be intense, agile, fleet of foot. It would supply superior strategic and creative solutions for here and for now. And it would structure its remuneration model around premium-priced projects and tasks, rather than around commoditised, long-term account tenure.

Of course, an enduring appointment delivers security of income and enables confident financial planning. But if the reality of client imperatives and colleagues’ careers do not match that ambition, then perhaps we need to adapt?

If we properly align our priorities with those of contemporary culture, with our clients and colleagues; if we focus on the short-term horizon, then perhaps we can build the relationships, trust, careers and long-term brand success that we all yearn for.

As the great choreographer George Balanchine demanded of his exhausted dancers: 

‘What are you waiting for? What are you saving yourselves for? Now is all there is!’

'Take your hands off me,
I don't belong to you, you see.
And take a look in my face, for the last time.
I never knew you, you never knew me.
Say hello goodbye,
Say hello and wave goodbye.’
Soft Cell, ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ (D Ball / M Almond)

No. 569

Photobooth: The Same Technology Can Both Liberate and Constrain

A little while ago, I visited the Photographers’ Gallery to see a display celebrating 100 years of the photobooth. (The exhibition is now over, I’m afraid. But you can review the splendid vintage collection of Raynal Pellicer in his book ‘Photobooth.’)
 
In the decades following the birth of photography in 1839, various designs for self-operating portrait machines were patented. There was an appetite for photographs without photographers - and the attendant appointments, formality and inconvenience. But it was only in 1925 that Anatol Josepho, an immigrant to the US from Russia, introduced the first commercially successful photobooth, on Broadway in New York. And so the selfie was born.
 
Josepho’s machine was extraordinarily complex. It photographed, developed and printed, using a spider assembly mechanism and a carousel of water baths, developer and bleach, clearing agent and toner, heaters and rollers. And yet it also had a revolutionary simplicity.
 
‘Eight photos in eight minutes for twenty-five cents.’
Early Photomaton advert
 
In its first six months, the photobooth was used by 280,000 people. Subsequently the newly formed Photomaton Company placed booths nationwide, and in 1927 Josepho was paid $1 million and guaranteed future royalties. By the 1930s photobooths were a common feature of train stations, shopping centres and arcades, across North America and Europe.
 
‘I don’t want to be ‘took’!
But children lose all awkwardness and shyness in the Photomaton cabinet. They like it!’
Early Photomaton advert

Liberated from the human mediator, photographs became instant, affordable, universal. Photobooth images were more relaxed, informal and spontaneous than studio shots. People smiled, posed, kissed and laughed. They experimented with expressions, hand gestures and tilts of the head; with clothes, hats and disguises. Sitters took their photos alone, with their partner, or crammed in with friends. For soldiers a visit to a photobooth became a ritual of farewell on the way to war. And because photobooths were democratic, they didn’t turn Black people away, and they were a safe space for gay couples. 

Over the years, photobooths acquired their own culture. Sitters learned to navigate the challenges of the blinding flash, the wobbly stool, the merciless timing of the shots. They embraced the risks of a blink or an unintended movement; the occasional errors caused by blurring, discolouration or overexposure.
 
However, governments and institutions soon recognised the usefulness of photobooths for official documents. And they took on an entirely different role in people’s lives. Administrative images needed to be serious, stiff and standardised. And so a tool that had given unprecedented agency, became a mechanism for monitoring, recording and categorising. A platform for play, performance and memory, became a vehicle of control, authority and bureaucracy. 
 
The same innovation can both liberate and constrain. We’re quite familiar with this phenomenon in the era of social media and AI. However bright the technology, it can cast a dark shadow. 
 
 
'I've been looking so long at these pictures of you,
That I almost believe that they're real.
I've been living so long with my pictures of you,
That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel.
If only I'd thought of the right words,
I could have held on to your heart.
If only I'd thought of the right words,
I wouldn't be breaking apart all my pictures of you.

'The Cure, ‘Pictures of You’ (B Williams / L Tolhurst / P Thompson / R Smith / R O'Donnell / S Gallup)

No. 568

Michaelina Wautier: ‘She Designed It and She Made It’

Michaelina Wautier - Self Portrait

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of the work of seventeenth century painter Michaelina Wautier (The Royal Academy, London until 21 June). Poorly documented, and, for nearly three centuries, largely forgotten, her achievements are finally being recognised.
 
Wautier was born around 1614 in the city of Mons in the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium). With no access to training, it was very difficult at that time for women to become artists. Wautier at least had an older brother, Charles, who was a painter, and the fact that she never married afforded her a certain amount of freedom. She and Charles lived and worked together in Brussels, near the royal court.
 
Employing a restricted colour palette, a mark of artistic confidence, Wautier painted penetrating portraits of local noblemen and Spanish officers. With dramatically lit faces, the sitters sometimes turn towards the viewer, lending the images immediacy and informality. She displayed a particular sensitivity in her depiction of children. A well-dressed youth sits intently blowing soap bubbles – a reflection on life’s fragility.

Michaelina Wautier - Saint John the Evangelist, c. 1656–59. Oil on canvas. 69 x 60.5 cm

Women artists were the first to paint themselves at work. (Men worried that the tools of their trade suggested a lowly technician status.) Wautier presents herself wearing pearls, a white silk dress and a black velvet mantle, sitting at an easel, brushes and palette in hand. The paint colours she has on the palette are the ones she uses in the portrait itself. The unpainted canvas on the easel is simply the woven surface left bare. She looks directly out at us.
 
Wautier’s ready wit is evident in the recently rediscovered series of the Five Senses. A young boy holds a pair of glasses to his eyes, staring intently at his palm. Another plays the recorder. A third scratches his head while looking down at his cut left index finger. A fourth takes a tentative bite on a piece of bread. And, finally, a lad in a felt hat holds his nose, recoiling from the stench of a rotten egg. 

Michaelina Wautier - Smell

Whereas the convention at the time was for women artists to restrict themselves to portraiture and flower painting, Wautier ventured into mythological and biblical themes: a youthful Mary learns to read in the company of her parents; the angel Gabriel informs Mary of her destiny; Saint Catherine sits at the foot of the Madonna and Child. 

Michaelina Wautier - The Education of the Virgin

Perhaps mindful that religious art was thought to require masculine originality and intellect, Wautier signed two of her canvases with her name and the words ‘invenit et fecit’: 
‘Michaelina Wautier designed and made this.’ 
 
In making her assured claim to imagination and craft, Wautier presented us with an elegant summary of the core creative skills. But she had another talent, one equally vital to success. She was determined.

Michaelina Wautier - Triumph of Bacchus

The monumental ‘Triumph of Bacchus’ shows a group of revellers accompanying the god of wine, as he, somewhat the worse for wear, relaxes in a wheelbarrow. For centuries, Wautier’s authorship went unrecognised, and the picture was described by one critic as too bold to have been painted by a female. However, on the right of the procession, a woman has stopped to gaze out at the viewer. Wearing a long pink robe and carrying a staff, she bares a breast, and sports a confident, composed air. It is Wautier. It was the only signature she needed.
 
 
'So I like what I see when I'm looking at me,
When I'm walking past the mirror.
Don't stress through the night, at a time in my life,
Ain't worried about if you feel it.
Got my head on straight, I got my vibe right,
I ain't gonna let you kill it.
You see I wouldn't change my life, my life's just…
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.’
Mary J Blige, ‘Just Fine' (M J Blige / C Stewart / T Nash / P Alexander)

No. 567

The Wistful Barmaid and the Johnny Cash To-Do List

Manet - Un bar aux Folies Bergère

There’s quite a choice of local pubs available to me. I have a particular soft spot for the Old Red Lion, a big, slightly tatty, Islington boozer with a theatre upstairs. I like the friendly, easy-going staff, the mix of old drinkers and young thespians, the etched glass and intricate plasterwork. And I like its storied history: Thomas Paine wrote ‘The Rights of Man’ here; the pub featured in a Hogarth painting; and it was until recently the London home of Norwich City football fans.
 
I approached the bar and ordered a large house white. The raven-haired barmaid took a glass and placed it under some beer taps. She then returned with a bottle of Picpoul and found that she couldn’t quite pour it - the taps were in the way.
 
‘You’ve made it difficult for yourself there,’ I said helpfully.
 
She reflected for a brief moment. Then, looking straight through me, she murmured:
 
‘That’s the story of my life.’
 
Though I don’t know what disappointments lay behind the woman’s wistful reply, I’m sure we can all relate to her sentiment. So often, in and out of work, we compromise, complicate and confuse. We muddle and mess up. We make poor assessments and bad choices. We make things difficult for ourselves.
 
‘Getting faster is almost always about what you take away rather than what you add.’
Michael Johnson

Some years ago, I came across a to-do list written (on an unrecorded date) by Johnny Cash.  

As instructed by the pre-printed sheet, the Man in Black prioritises his 10 ‘things to do today!’ He is clearly concerned with some pretty mundane tasks. He aims to avoid smoking; to cough, pee and eat (‘but not too much’). He also has some sentimental objectives, resolving to ‘go see mama’; to ‘kiss June’ (Carter, his beloved wife), and ‘not kiss anyone else.’ There’s work to be done: he must ‘practice piano.’ And, finally, he commits to ‘worry.’ A strange determination perhaps, but one with which I can sympathise. I have always found a certain degree of anxiety to be healthy – making one more considered, alert, focused.

'Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.’ 
Edward de Bono
 
Overall, I rather approve of Cash’s goals for the day. When we are confronted with a troubling excess of options, a paralysing variety of dilemmas, it’s sensible to start with a to-do list - distilling and prioritising the tasks ahead. Even focusing on the commonplace helps. It gets the wheels turning, sets us in motion.
 
'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.'
Lao Tzu
 
It’s refreshing too to see Cash’s last remark on his list. Underneath the printed section entitled Notes, he has written ‘not write notes.’ A sense of humour also gets you a long way in life. 
 
 
'I hurt myself today,
To see if I still feel.
I focus on the pain,
The only thing that's real.
What have I become,
My sweetest friend?
Everyone I know goes away
In the end.
And you could have it all,
My empire of dirt.
I will let you down.
I will make you hurt.'
Johnny Cash, ’Hurt’ (T Reznor)

No. 566

Euan Uglow: ‘Controlled, and Therefore Potent, Emotion’

Euan Uglow - Detail “Root Five Nude”

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of the art of Euan Uglow. (MK Gallery, Milton Keynes until 31 May)
 
‘I’m trying to find out why a subject does look so marvellous, and trying to make that sensation manifest on a flat surface.’
Euan Uglow
 
Born in London in 1932, the son of an accountant, Uglow grew up in Tulse Hill and studied at the Camberwell School of Art. Not managing to sell a painting until eight years after completing his training, he took a variety of part-time teaching jobs - most notably, from 1961, at the Slade, where he worked for nearly 40 years.
 
Uglow often encouraged his students thus:
 
‘What is the most important thing in your life? Find out what it is and paint that.’
 
Uglow answered his own question with still lifes of pears, peaches and quince, daisies, honeysuckle and camellia; with sun-drenched Mediterranean landscapes; with large-scale depictions of the human figure.
 
Though his subjects were chosen for their emotional resonance, his process was highly rational.
 
'I want the brain to intervene between the observation and the mark.’

Euan Uglow - Quince

Uglow sought to capture what the eye saw - the visual reality - avoiding conventional notions of perspective, or how things should look. Consequently, his method was meticulous, slow, precise and painstaking. 
 
‘I wanted to be more extreme and work in a more intensified situation.’
 
First, Uglow would carefully calculate the shape and dimensions of his canvas. He particularly liked to work with rectangles based on square root ratios.
 
‘The root-five rectangle is a very beautiful rectangle with all kinds of lovely qualities.’
 
Next, he took extensive measurements, employing plumb lines and grids, and an instrument he designed himself from a music stand. Then, standing close to his subject, with one eye closed, sometimes looking through a tunnel made from his hand, he examined individual areas and gradually built an image. 

Such was his commitment to defeat perspective, that for one nude, Uglow worked sitting on a scaffold that could be raised and lowered - just so that his eyes were always looking at the figure straight on. 
 
With no attempt to hide the process of creation, Uglow’s paintings do not always look finished. Often small horizontal and vertical markings remain visible on their surfaces.
 
‘You come to a positive stop. You can’t go any further or you’ve lost your idea. Finishing sounds like filling in to me. The picture should end itself.’
 
Uglow’s nudes had a classical formality. Setting them in artificial spaces with the odd prop, he asked his life models to pose in simple, geometric, sometimes awkward, shapes - in absolute stillness, for up to five hours, five or six days a week. He said to one of his subjects:
 
'Nobody has ever looked at you as intensively as I have.’

Euan Uglow - Curled Nude on Stool, 1982, oil on canvas 30 x 39

Uglow often took months, if not years, to complete a work. Cherie Booth, future wife of the British Prime Minister, was an early model during her barrister’s pupillage. But the painting was left unfinished, as she simply didn’t have the time. 
 
Uglow’s sustained observation produced compelling results. Working from a sparse palette of radiant colours, his still lifes and landscapes had a quiet grace. His nudes suggested serene, sculptural beauty.
 
Uglow presents an interesting challenge to creative people. Is it possible to articulate emotional themes with rational precision? Can meticulous process intensify feeling? Can control be liberating?
 
'Basically, I'm trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion.’
 

Euan Uglow - Detail “Head of Pat”

'Looking counter clockwise,
Knowing what could happen,
Any moment maybe you, maybe even you.
Steadfast collapse,
Always certain any moment,
Maybe you, maybe you,
Maybe even you.
Recline, complete, dream too sweet.
I can't do it, not with you,
Not even with you,
Maybe never with you.
And I'd sell my soul for
Total control.
Yeah, I'd sell my soul for
Total control.’
The Motels, ‘Total Control’ (M Davis / J Jourard) 

No. 565

Summerfolk: ‘None of Us Seem to Have the Time. And Yet We Never Actually Get Anything Done’

Shalimov: Of course I’m disappointing. I’m a human.
 
I very much enjoyed a production of Maxim Gorky’s 1904 play ‘Summerfolk’ at the National Theatre, London. (A new version by Nina and Moses Raine. Until 29 April.) 
 
Nikolai: Sonya and Zimin think that the purpose of life is solving various social, moral and other problems, and I’m telling them that life is the art of looking at life.
 
We spend a long hot summer with an assortment of nouveaux riches Russians holidaying in their woodland dachas. 
 
Varvara: We’re just the…summerfolk of this country – just dropping by from somewhere else, and we never do anything except talk and talk and talk.
 
The group comprises a couple of doctors, a lawyer, an engineer, a retired businessman, a successful writer and a frustrated poet, along with assorted friends and family. 

Bassov: I think you’re reading too much. It’s not healthy, reading. It’s like a drug. Makes you neurotic…. It’s especially bad to read before you go to bed…. All that print makes your brain fizzy. 
 
They picnic, swim and stroll by the river, fish and mess about in boats. They put on amateur dramatics, try local cheeses, take tea and tinkle on the piano. They flirt, gamble, drink and play chess. 

Yulia: Little tip. When your voice reaches a certain volume, people just stop listening.
 
And all the time, they bicker and gossip. They complain about their kids and their partners; about their terminal boredom; about missed opportunities, tarnished ideals and growing old. 
 
Dvoyetochiye: Why did you marry him?
Yulia: He pretended to be interesting.
 
In ‘Summerfolk’ Gorky critiques the bourgeoisie. Many of its characters have come from humble backgrounds, and yet they have no sense of responsibility to the wider community.

Maria: We should be different, all of us! We’re the children of washerwomen, cooks, working people, in dirt and darkness their whole lives! They sent us on ahead of them to get a better life – but we left them behind, we drew up the drawbridge, we lost our way, created our own punishment, empty, anxious bustle on the outside, lonely fragmentation on the inside. We deserve our tragedy.

Despite their modest roots, these summerfolk are rather dismissive of the lower orders. 
 
Suslov: She’s always banging on about the working classes, the left-behind. Well, I’m from the working class and I left them behind as soon as I could.
 
Indeed, the dacha residents are consistently curt with their staff. They drive beggars away, don’t lift a finger to help find a missing local child, and thoughtlessly leave a mess behind them at the end of the day.
 
Suslov: It’s basic human nature and you cannot change it. Why should we give a kopek about the oppressed? I can’t heal the world, it’s not my problem. You can call us cowards or lazy or whatever you want, not one of us is going to rush off and do good works.
 
At the heart of the drama are brother and sister Vlass and Varvara. Both find themselves at sea - disappointed with their lot, frustrated by the company they keep, seeking some meaning and purpose in their lives.
 
Varvara: You know how sometimes, somehow,… not thinking of anything in particular…suddenly you feel trapped?...I’ve got this sense of doom. Looming doom.
 
Vlass: My life’s pointless too, remember. Somehow it makes me feel ashamed. Awkward, you know, like being at a party where you’re not actually invited, like a plus-one in my own life.
 
Varvara - beautiful, distant, always watching - is repeatedly fending off proposals from useless men.
 
Ryumin: But, can I, just, say –
Varvara: No. Don’t say. Please.
 
Realising that her friends are spiteful and self-satisfied, and that her marriage is unfulfilling (‘The honour of being your wife is not as amazing as you think.’), Varvara is anxious and alone.
 
Varvara: I feel fake. Like I’m in some strange foreign country, full of strange people…I don’t understand this privilege – it feels flimsy, like it’s going to come crashing down any minute.

Maxim Gorky

Gorky was born Alexey Peshkov, into a modest Volga background. Orphaned at 11, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, taking menial jobs, working as a journalist for provincial newspapers. In his late 20s he adopted the pseudonym Gorky. It means bitter. Writing about the hardships and humiliations of the common man, he became the protégé of Anton Chekhov. The older playwright, sensing the upheaval that was about to engulf Russia, liked to mock the ineffectual intelligentsia, but still felt some affection for them. Gorky was less forgiving. 
 
Vlass: It all seems pointless to me. All these people floating around here…what’s the point of them? I don’t love them, don’t respect them, they’re mosquitoes. I can’t talk to them. They’re so affected, all you can do is take the piss out of them – and then actually they don’t even notice you’re taking the piss.
 
Written in the year Chekhov died, ‘Summerfolk’ is in a sense a sequel to ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ The orchard has been sold and the land cleared for country cottages. The gentry have been replaced by the affluent middle classes.
 
Olga: Oh, Kirill, why get upset? You should be used to it by now. It’s all trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Dudfakov: Oh, trivial, is it? But what if the grand scheme turns out to be trivial? All there is? 
 
One can’t help watching ‘Summerfolk’ without thinking of the inertia that can grip the world of work. Sometimes, confronted with hard choices in a changing commercial landscape, we are paralysed by indecision. We talk and theorise; we prevaricate and postpone. The metabolism becomes sluggish. The pace slows. 
 
Dudakov: None of us seem to have the time…do we? And yet we never actually get anything done.
 
We should learn to seize the moment, to take decisive action now rather than leave the future to circumstance. We must take control of our own destiny. Or someone else will.
 
Suslov: He who philosophises, loses.
 
A sense of foreboding runs through ‘Summerfolk.’ Periodically, we hear the ominous sound of the watchmen whistling in the woods. Towards the end, a despairing Varvara predicts that the listlessness of her kin and class will precipitate their demise.
 
Varvara: I feel like, soon, the day after tomorrow, a stronger, bolder lot of people are going to come along, and sweep us off the face of the earth like - rubbish, whether we like it or not.
 

'Seven minutes to midnight and I’m crawling out my shell.
Seven minutes to midnight and it’s hell.
Seven minutes to analyse, my instinct must be quick.
Seven minutes to midnight, I feel sick.
You can’t justify it, not a word.
I don’t believe a thing I’ve heard.
You can’t justify it with your twisted facts,
Only the coming of the axe.’
Wah! Heat, 'Seven Minutes to Midnight’ (P Wylie, C Washington, Jonie, King Bluff)

No. 564